I have had my share of experiences with SuSE 8.1 and now 9.0.
In playing around with all the various available desktops provided- I found that GNOME was most to my sensibilities- I understood how it worked and could make it work even if not elegantly as I would hope. [learning curve takes frequent u-turns]
But I have a devil of a time figuring out which - if any of the distros rely on GNOME instead of or and not alongside KDE or some other thing.
I'm not proficient enough with linux to compile manually much of anything as I have a different life than one spent all the time at the computer but this has broken me from MS and that I like.

Any short answers for me to understand/look at?

yrs-j

Most distributions I've tried (Mandrake, Debian, Gentoo, Redhat, and Slackware) seem to have equal amounts of KDE and Gnome, since both are about equally popular as desktop environments. Usually, you can install one or the other (or both), and stick to what you like; as long as the correct libraries are in place, applications from either one will run under the other.

Like wapcaplet said, they don't solely depend on the one Window Manager. It could rely on one, both or none. If you don't want KDE installed, just don't install it. But you won't find one that is solely dependant on GNOME.

Might want to check out the Gnoppix project....

http://www.gnoppix.org

I've never had any problem installing/using either desktop on any distro I've tried.
From what I've seen or heard of, RedHat is strongly Gnome oriented, and Debian is more up to date on Gnome than on KDE (mainly because KDE3 wasn't ready when Woody released), Mandrake and SuSe are more KDE based, and Slackware defaults to KDE (at least thats where the cursor was when it gave me a list of desktops to choose).

Thank you all- what I notice is that even though one can install just the GNOME or whatever desktop there seem to be problems because the distro prefers one over the other- ergo my question.
Next question is i looked at gnoppix and started to download it but on a 56 modem it has taken two days and I'm not done yet.
I couldn't find a place to either buy or get a cd of it- does anyone else?

Thanks again.
j

slackware has Dropline Gnome made especially for it. you might want to try that. plus you can definitely get the slack discs through the mail:
http://store.slackware.com/cgi-bin/store

or maybe at other places for even less.

I'll throw in with the Dropline Gnome on Slackware folks. From what I've seen Dropline and Ximian are the best configured Gnome desktops. I like the Dropline and Slackware combo better. Dropline is also available on CD, so that's another plus.

Have fun.

joe f.