Gnome vs KDE
 

I have tried Unity, Gnome and KDE. I have noticed a great change from Gnome 2.x to 3.x

I can not say I was too happy with the changes for a non Tablet user like myself. But I can not totally be dismissive of Gnome 3 either.

I guess I also like the KDE how you can personalize each workspace to do 1 type of task and you end up more familiar with everything. KDE seems to allow more ease of customization. However the widgets can get cluttering at times as well.

What are your thoughts on the 2 desktops? Would love to hear your opinions. Thanks

While I have a variety of opinions, I can't see how they would help (much); for you, the question is most likely to be 'which GUI do I like best?'

(And, there are other options, too. You might like XFCE, LXDE, Enlightenment, etc.)

I moved to XFCE, via Gnome, from KDE when KDE4 came along.
I don't want "plasma" and "widgets" or anything else so I changed to an other DE. There are many, and all have their good points and fans so I am glad they are all there.
Imagine if you were using Windows and had to update to Metro^H^H^H^H^H Windows 8^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Modern Style UI.

And, pragmatically speaking, you're going to wind up having both of these on your system because there's no consensus of one vs. the other and no interoperability layer.

True, at least in terms of disc space if noting else.
Taking care though it is possible to avoid some of their libs.

Haven't tried anything but the 3 mentioned. I would not want to sacrifice productivity for resources. But if XFCE or the other LDEs do their job then why not.

Exactly that is the point. How productive you can use a DE/WM is solely dependent on how you work in general. I for myself found that I am much more productive with a tiling WM customized to my needs, other people use other DEs/WMs because they use their systems in a different way. Opinions on the usage/usability of DEs/WMs are for that reason rather pointless, except of course for opinions on the technical base of these applications.

I ditched desktop environments for a window manager (Fluxbox) a long time ago.

I found that I could do everything I needed to do without all the gimmickry and overhead, as long as I had the requisite libraries on my HDD.

My observation is that you are likely to use "apps that are designed for KDE" and "apps that are designed for Gnome" on the same system at the same time. And, "so it goes, I suppose." Sure, we're talking about libraries ... you don't actually have to switch desktop environments to use them both.

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Obviously, one of the very best characteristics of Linux is both its "client/server GUI" architecture (vs. the highly monolithic albeit legacy design of Windows), and the fact that you can meaningfully choose what you want. You can have a choice of window managers (or none at all), and on top of these several GUIs (or none at all). And if you want to use a GUI when talking to a rack-mounted computer that of course has no graphic card at all, "no problem." In a very real sense, "this is 'what all the fuss is about.' " Microsoft Windows (admittedly, by design ... and it is not an 'ulterior' design) simply has no corollary to these concepts. It pure-and-simple (and for entirely defensible reasons) was not designed this way.

What I was referring to was that it is not necessary to have the full Gnome or KDE desktop environment installed, just the libs necessary for any applications you use. Also that it is only hard disk space they are using up until you launch them, after which because of associated libs, the application may appear to take a larger chunk of memory. The point about it just being disk space is that many people newer to Linux don't necessarily realise that you can have Gnome and KDE installed but log in to LXDE and it is still lightweight and not affected by the other DEs, unless you then go on to load an application from one of them in which case more memory will be used.
Personally though I have a few DEs installed even though I rarely use KDE apps these days.