I'm thinking I might want to try out a new distro (I just like to switch it up occasionally, even when I'm happy with my current distro), and I just thought of something that might be useful to know: Would choosing KDE or Gnome affect overall stability? Would I have more crashes if I chose one over the other? Or are they pretty much the same? Or would it depend entirely on the distro?

Thanks!

You'll never notice the difference - if any. Both are mature and stable. Actual stability will depend on the specific build and what applications you are running. If stability is a major consideration for you, you should consider a much simpler desktop.

Ok, that's good to know, otherwise I'd be paranoid Thanks!

Personally I found Konqueror to be unstable.

It depends.

If we can dismiss KDE 4.0.x (as of the last version that I played with, not yet ready, not yet up to the stability of the KDE3.5.x series, for example) as really the few distros with a current 4 are doing it as a technology preview and not a sensible end-user solution (...this will soon change though, 'cos kde 4 is shiny, shiny, shiny...).

And then we can dismiss the distros that do a really bad job with KDE (stand up Kubuntu for horrible memory leaks, and a general lack of effort in this department compared with say SuSE and probably the kde-ubuntu derivatives), then I think its reasonable to say, you'll never notice the difference.

(If you have a reasonable amount of memory, and you don't leave the computer on 24/7, you may never notice the memory leaks. I still think its a pretty horrible thing to do to people, though.)

But those caveats might be significant caveats for you.

I have found that any system --Linux or Windows--can become unstable with the right amount of abuse. In the last 10 years, I have setup maybe 50 configurations, starting with Win 95, then Win 2K, and then most of the mainstream Linuces**. I have yet to find a system that my wife cannot totally bring to its knees. It goes something like this:

Printer not working? Keep sending more print commands--let's see how many the queue will hold.
5-10 instances of Firefox running--each with 10 tabs
5-10 instances of the word processor.
Under all the other windows, several dialogs with computer desperately seeking clarification of some action going back several days.
..
..
Then I get a call at work: "my e-mail isn't working."

**Well, what IS the plural of "Linux"?? Webster's no help...

I've found that my system become much more stable after a great deal of abuse.

Note:
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Linux
"Linuxes"

Of course, it's supposed to be GNU/Linux ... so does that mean the plural is supposed to be GNUs/Linux? LUs/GNinux - er - Loose/Gnuinness ... arrrgh!? What a Gniusence!

Perhaps we should start with how to pronounce "Gnu/Linux" Assuming that the "/" is not pronounced, I'd say:
Noul-in-uks (The Noul rhyming with Ghoul)
Or maybe
New-lin-uks (But then everyone would wonder about the "Old-lin-uks"

So if the last syllable is "uks", then the plural would be "ukses" that's no good.....

This is not going well.......

Frankly,kde is unstable.no bias.
Gnome-nautilus used to be unstable.now it is working gr8 with release gnome-2.18 onwards(current version 2.22).

I run both and I have found that Gnome to be morew intuitive than KDE but really there is no difference in my mind

What makes you conclude that KDE is unstable ? Please explain. I am using KDE from last 5 years and never seen a single crash. On the contrary, I have seen many times Gnome crashes, and that too in Debian Stable.

^no flame wars pls!I had used kde too for a long time;even latest kde-3.5.9 if that matters ,but frankly,most applications crashes on different PC's we got.most being konqueror!

But Gnome,is a clean and less buggy desktop,fewer crashes

kde4=utter crap at this moment,wait for kde-4.2.x or so for a stabler option

It depends on which version of KDE you mean. KDE4 is very unstable, more so than GNOME. I am not a fan of GNOME, however, as it is GTK-based, and I've found that (not all but) most GTK apps-including GNOME-tend to be unstable. KDE3.5 is definitely more stable than GNOME, and it's Konqueror can do almost anything you would need it to do-it can view PDFs via a KPDF plugin, it can work as an embedded text editor if you need it to (though normally it launches an external text editor), it can do SFTP, it can be a file manager, and act as a (not-so-good) browser. Combine KDE3.5 with your favorite browser and office suite, and you've got a pretty good desktop environment.

But as with anything Linux, it is pretty much personal preference. If you are lucky enough to get GNOME working on a stable distro, it isn't that bad working (though it will never match KDE in stability as long as it's GTK-based).

GTK is unstable?I see!
meh!but most apps I see are GTK+ based

...and ppl tend to hate most qt apps due to most apps passionately binds full kdelibs as dependencies? :x

Qt requires KDE libs? I didn't know that...seeing as to how Qt is cross-platform and works on Windoze and Macintosh (which don't run KDE, btw), I'd like to know when Qt became as such?