kde vs gnome - help needed on finding articles
 

i have been googling to find the difference between kde and gnome for half an hour now, but what i find are basically old discussions or descriptions of small cosmetical difference and a philosophy of "less is more" in gnome and "more buttons, better functionality" in kde. problem is that i am about to order a new computer and on that i want to try ubuntu, which everyone is recommending to me. i'm almost satisfied with the newest opensuse and a little bit reluctant to going away from kde, but kubuntu is said to be less "userfriendly" than ubuntu. if you have any good articles, please let me know. thank you in advance!

best regards
ungua

I dont have any articles, but I have used both, currently I use kde 3.5 and my gf uses gnome. I think kde is more windows like, in design, and I am faster at clicking things. Gnome seems more like mac to me, it looks nicer but I am just use to the way windows works. Now dont get me wrong this is very basic, both systems allow you to change everything about them so they can look and act however you want. Both gnome and kde are x based so they share similar features. I use kde right now because I like how it hands the virtual desktops. kde 4.2 is the newer and still being worked on but it looks amazing. I really think the difference is very small, but if you are not sure what to do you can just install both. I like kde because its simple and dose what I want. Gnome is great and I use to use it but kde to me just seems to handle desktops better, and overall I can click faster. Really there isnt a button difference because you can change the windows frames. If i were you though, Id recommend using gnome because its better if you plan on using compiz fussion, which is just amazing, and makes your desktop do things that most people enjoy looking at. In any case if you have any specific questions feel free to ask :).

There is a very easy answer to this--one which would not occur to most Windows users--Install both.

You can have many different Desktops/Window Managers installed and simply choose the one you want every time you start X-Windows (you don't even have to re-boot.)

I'll offer another slightly more flip answer:
Q: Which is better--KDE or Gnome?
A: XFCE

I know this is not what you ask but... If you are happy with KDE and opensuse, just keep them! Install it first, then, if you really want, you can play with Ubuntu. I am not so hot about Ubuntu myself, actually.

thank you very much for your replies! :) i'm stunned that this seems to be a discussion free of fundamentalist fights. i currently use kde 3.5 myself and i think that opensuse 11 certainly is a big developmental step in usability above its predecessors, even though there still are some media files i cannot open conveniently.
compiz fusion is another way of organising a desktop? just as xfce? so do people agree on what the "stupid user", just as me, would prefer? i'm not so interested in spending much time learning things.
@synss, what's your critique on ubuntu? everybody tells me the troubles i have with opensuse will be non-existent in ubuntu (even though i don't know of potential new problems that might arise). i will at least have to try the live version of it. :)

best regards
ungua

just to throw into the mix, there's still
lxde
flukebox
twm / xwm (or similar)
and of course
CLI :)

and probably a whole bunch more, so yeah, the choice is yours, poke around with what ever feels suitable

Compiz-fusion is not a desktop environment like KDE and Gnome, but a window manager, like Metacity and Kwin. That means you can use compiz within Gnome and KDE.

Maybe because I am able to set my computer the way I want, starting from a base Debian. I regularly found regression in Ubuntu, it now takes a very long time to start on my computer with a slow 5400 hard disk drive, it was not the case before. There are always problems around suspend/hibernate and networking although I know it can work on this computer. But I tend to go back and forth between plain Debian unstable and Ubuntu. When a new Ubuntu arrives, I usually install it, then I go back to just Debian. 8.04 was a bad release (sad for an LTS) many things were broken, the new audio server and the desktop search was not very well integrated, a stupid regression calling DHCP in the foreground when resuming, the computer just needed 2 more min to resume thanks to a missing &. Another thing is that I am not fond of orange and brown.

Well, you can call all of this details, but there are the details that make the differences between the distros! But maybe, as I said, it is just my style to start from a minimalist base and put things I want on top instead of starting from a full install.

I do not know what problems you have with Suse, but if it is hardware related, changing distro will most likely not help. Hardware support is mostly in the kernel, not in the distro. Ubuntu can install proprietary drivers easily, I think, I do not need any so I cannot say how well it works.

You can also simply try the Live CD, you would have a pretty good idea of how it works for you.

One thing to remember is that different distros will each have their own sets of problems. It's up to you to find them. :)

The "sheer beauty of it all" is that you are free to choose. Not only Gnome and KDE, but any others. ("Enlightenment," anyone?)

You can have both of them at the same time, if you want to.

You see, the Linux system is what we call "loosely coupled." It's perfectly possible to be running an interactive graphical session against a distant computer that has no graphic-card installed. It's possible to use any "desktop" that you want ... or, none at all.

Microsoft Windows, per contra, is a fairly "tightly coupled" design. The various subsystems are very, very close-knit. I'm not saying that this design is "wrong," or "inferior," or that it lacks good software-engineering justification! It's just the intrinsic way that that system was designed.

thank you, again, for your replies! :) my troubles are quite limited with the newest distro: opensuse detects my hp laserjet 1220, but i have not managed to print a page yet. i still lack codecs for some videofiles and can't watch too many videos online, apart from standard pages such as youtube.
i lack the user skills to build my system from scratch, adding whatever software i fancy. so i'll go for either ubuntu or opensuse when my new dell xps m1530 arrives next week, i'll download a live disk of ubuntu right away.

best regards
ungua

Both KDE & GNOME?
 

Just help me, I am new to Linux and on my cousins suggestion I installed Open Suse 10.2 KDE. I understand both KDE and GNOME can be installed simultaneously and we can flip from one to other without rebooting.

Please suggest me how do I go abt it? Will GNOME get it installed in the same partition as that of KDE?

Thanks in advance,

Prashant
-------------

It is just softwares, they will go somewhere, most likely in in /usr/bin, and you will have the choice to go for one or the other at the login screen. That's all there is.

just a short and supposedly simple question, as i know some experts have subscribed this thread. :) the new machine arrived today and now i am downloading two files, called ubuntu_amd64.iso and kubuntu_amd4.iso. i just wonder about one thing, my new processor is an intel core2 duo, not amd. does this matter? since the name says "amd"?

good night!
ungua

No problem, they should rename it x86_64, like the kernel. It is called amd64 for "historical" reasons.

Great, thank you! I am about to start this adventure now, a friend found a XP version with SATA-drivers. I really need two installation cd's to have both GNOME and KDE, right?

Best regards