LXDE is an acceptable substitute for Gnome 2

[Marko Vojinovic]

On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 8:03 PM, Joe Zeff <joe at zeff.us> wrote:
> On 09/16/2011 06:19 AM, Marko Vojinovic wrote:
>> If you want to adapt the DE to your needs (as opposed to adapting
>> yourself to a new DE), KDE seems to be the best possible choice.
>
> The first time I used XFCE after installing it, my desktop looked almost
> exactly the same way it had under Gnome 2.  My wallpaper was the same,
> my panel was where I wanted it, with most of the icons I wanted right
> where they'd always been (I'd love to get rid of the Trash icon and Show
> Desktop icon, but aside from that, it's almost exactly the same.) and so
> on.  Almost no learning curve.  That's why I recommend it.  Can KDE do
> the same?

Well, you certainly can configure all that stuff to fit your taste.
However, KDE will not pick up your Gnome settings automatically, so
you need to configure it yourself, at least once.

That said, KDE is extremely flexible, and can be tweaked to suit
anyones taste. This was precisely the reason why I went the KDE way
instead of the Gnome way --- Gnome never offered enough flexibility to
configure the DE.

So once you get it configured to suit your taste, there is no such
thing as a "learning curve", since you are not expected to adapt your
workflow to the DE, but rather adapt the DE to your previous workflow.
KDE can certainly be tweaked to behave exactly like Gnome (apart from
the Qt visual appearance instead of GTK). The only thing you need to
put some effort into is this initial configuration. But that is also
quite easy --- there is the "systemsettings" app which contains all
configuration options you might imagine, and it is fairly easy to find
your way around it.

Of course, if you want to use the advanced features of KDE (activities
etc. --- which have never been present in Gnome2) you do have to learn
how to use them, but that's something you would need to learn in
Gnome3 as well, so it doesn't count as a drawback.

I admit I have never migrated from/to Gnome, so I cannot judge
firsthand, but I have a feeling that it is much easier than what
people generally expect. :-)

HTH, :-)
Marko