What's your fave--Gnome or KDE

[Temlakos]

On 03/06/2010 12:48 PM, Marko Vojinovic wrote:
> On Saturday 06 March 2010 03:50:04 pm Temlakos wrote:
>    
>> In looking over the reviews of Fedora 12, I was shocked that a big piece
>> of the possible Fedora 12 experience is missing: KDE.
>>      
> KDE is not missing in Fedora (and never has been). It's just that Gnome is the
> default DE when you install Fedora and don't customize anything.
>    

I didn't express that properly. Of course KDE has always been available 
in every iteration of Fedora. What I don't see are any reviews that use 
KDE with Fedora. All I see are reviews that use Fedora with Gnome. Don't 
any reviewers ever try out KDE?

>    
>> Sure, I had a learning curve--like how to use the new Desktop Folder as
>> a widget, and how the wallpaper actually shows through it wherever you
>> need to place it. And how to use Desktop Activities, and the K App
>> Launcher. But these seem vastly superior to Gnome.
>>      
> Sure. Since version 4, KDE has been completely redesigned and rewritten. It is
> now a much more powerful DE than KDE3 or Gnome. Just ask a Gnome user to
> configure the screen so that he can see icons from two different directories
> simultaneously on the desktop. ;-) Gnome just can't do that. And that is just
> scratching the surface. :-)
>    

So that explains it--KDE is better than ever, and certainly better than 
I found it, way back in the Fedora Core 1 days. I just tried out KDE 
instead of Gnome as an experiment. Better yet, I tried first with Gnome, 
and then with KDE, and that's when I made my discovery.

> But Gnome developers are going to engage soon into a similar rewrite and
> redesign of Gnome, with a goal of providing equivalent functionality. When KDE
> devs did that and Fedora pushed the KDE 4.0, a lot of people got extremely
> disappointed (lack of previous features, plenty of bugs, learning curve...),
> and switched to Gnome. However, it is just a matter of time until this history
> repeats for Gnome users, and many will switch back to KDE --- which has by
> version 4.4 become a very stable, bug-free and feature-full DE, like no other
> before. :-)
>
>    

Which illustrates, by the way, one key reason why Windows is "WinDoze": 
they lock you in to one desktop only. Whereas with Linux you have a 
choice--in fact, as I understand it, lots of choices. And the developers 
of those choices are always competing. Competition is wonderful--brings 
out the best.

>> I can't be the only KDE fan here. What does everybody else think?
>>      
> You are not the only one. There are plenty of us using and loving KDE.
>
> But the bottomline is --- it's a matter of habit. Everyone likes what they are
> most used to. My beginner's days with Linux started with RedHat 6.2 back in
> spring of 2000, and my experience of Gnome in those days can be described only
> as a "miserable piece of s*** full of bugs", while KDE was a sensible and
> usable DE (for those times). I stuck with KDE, and since Fedora times I
> occasionally take a look at Gnome whenever a new Fedora release comes out. I
> have never got used to the idea of a "simplistic" Mac-like user experience
> that Gnome is targeting, and I stuck with KDE even in 4.0 days, since I knew
> it was not going to look so poor for too long. ;-)
>
> So a lot of people will tell you "Gnome does this", "KDE doesn't do that",
> etc, but essentially it's all a matter of taste and developed habits.
>
> Best, :-)
> Marko
>
>
>    

So Gnome is trying to emulate Mac, while KDE is trying to emulate--what? 
Windows? I suspect so.

Actually, the thing that really made the deal with KDE was the Switch 
User feature. I had never been able to switch users in Gnome as 
seamlessly as I can do in KDE. And I've got four different user accounts 
that I have to manage, and it's a whole lot simpler if I can log into 
them all and switch among them as easily as switching desktops. (Of 
course, getting new hardware with 3 GB of RAM and a dual-core Pentium 
doesn't hurt.)

Temlakos