I am not a complete newbie to Linux/Unix however I would like to have the more experience of users to give me their reasons as to why they prefer either of the Window Systems.

Thank you in advance

however much I HATE kde, i'm not gonna say use Gnome just because i think it's less insulting. you just have to find out which one YOU prefer for your own reasons. you shouldn't let someone elses opinon affect it. Just install them both, and try them.

btw. use blackbox instead.

no doubt... what's the point of using linux if your window manager is a windows clone? gnome and kde suck.

use blackbox or windowmaker. mmmmmmmm :-)

Could you give me a link to blackbox or somewhere I could gain further information on it as http://blackbox.alug.org/ isn't working.

This old X .vs. Y desktop manager or Windows manager debate is never easy to answer. It really comes down to machine power, and user preferences.... What you intend to use the desktop for also enters the equation.

I suggest you try Gnome, KDE, IceWM, Sawfish, fvwm, Afterstep, Blackbox to name just a few, and make your own mind up. You can find links to these here: Linux Salute.

Having tried just about every Window manager, desktop manager and combination possible, I have returned to the Gnome/Sawfish combination.

heh... if you want your machine to run at about half it's capacity, then gnome/sawfish are fine. if you actually want to take advantage or linux and have X run at console type speeds, then lose gnome and go with windowmaker (http://www.windowmaker.org).

gnome/kde are for those who can't truly cut their ties to windows (or just really like having X bogged down with useless fluff); in my humble opinion, anyway. :-)

yeah that alug site has been screwed for ages.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/blackboxwm/

You people can't accept the fact that KDE and GNOME are simply the most PRODUCTIVE and easy to use desktops out there. I mean who wants to right click and go through menus to launch a app when they can have a quick launch icon in Gnome and KDE. Who would want to have a ugly window decoration that only has close and minimize.

Ok, so you will say you do everything in the command line i know, but it gets old, face it.

Hi,
KDE and GNOME are very similar. They look nice and have good "feel" for new users. But they are not perfect. First thing is their speed (I think that GNOME is a bit faster). And they are not the only ones.
Well, when I want a good looking GUI, I start Enlightenment. When I use my Pentium machine, I use Window Maker (with a nice theme).
The best choice is to install ALL your distro gives you and try. Then you'll know.

Mara

I thought you'd finally got the message and gone away, oh well.

You are, of course, wrong. firstly, WM's like fluxbox and xfce let you have desktop icons AND lanuch bars, so that's your "argument" wasted. I'd guess productivity is generally higher on a small, well configured, WM as it's FASTER. on my machine, a full all singing all dancing Gnome takles like 20 seconds to load, black box takes 4. and that also applies to loading speed of applications too.

as for ugly, i think my desktop looks much nicer than gnome. more basic, much certainly nicer.

either way, as far as productivity goes, I'm certainly prepared to listen to the opinion of a developer or such like, but not someone who hasn't "produced" anything.

you think all these WM developers are simply WRONG, and that, if they had a nice warm cup of tea, a few biscuits, and half an hour with a therapist, they'd realise that all along they were wrong??

Can't resist, have to join the melee.

Productivity is an individual thing based on having tools to do things the way you like to do them. Being able to tweak the tools and optimize them to your own style.

My personal beef with most of the Unix/Linux desktops out there today FORCE you to use the mouse for certain things. There are no keyboard shortcuts. People berate Windows as a point and click beast but the most productive developer I know on Windows doesn't even have a mouse connected to her machine. She knows the tools and knows the keys and she is productive. If she loads a program that doesn't have all of the keyboard shortcuts, it gets unloaded or configured to use them. I know a Unix oldtimer that won't even touch a machine if it has X installed. His machine is setup using TextConfig to drive his consoles at something like 160x100 character displays. He runs a copy of emacs on 5 or 6 virtual consoles. He knows the tools and he knows the keys and he is productive. I'm almost that bad; I hate to use a mouse but I'm forced to on some desktops. I use most any Window manager that supports xterms and If you look at my desktop, that's about all you will see except a browser.

On the other hand, the best Java programmer I know is a hunt and peck typist, but with the development tools he has, he never takes his hand off the mouse. Point, click, drag, drop. He knows the tools he knows the buttons and he is productive. Now, I would use some of his GUIs if I could just get him to put in the keyboard shortcuts. He says the paradigm is point and click, enforces it and loses half his potential users. The same philosophy appears to drive a lot of the desktop developers.

let's not talk about productivity, don't know what that means. Someone asked Kde or Gnome? I answer none of them, or both maybe... Personally I use Enlightenment (www.enlightenment.org) and don't think I'm getting bored.

1) It looks very nice
2) It's much faster than kde or gnome
3) It's completely themeable
4) I like it

I'm waiting for E17! when is it going to be released?

el_felipe

which E17 would you be talking about...

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mjanello/e17.html
http://www.msite.sk/e-17/

El Felipe, do you know how to get these Enlightenment icons everyones spreading with these screenshots? each time i install Enlightenment there is no icons.

therion12 I *don't like* icons... so I'm fine with E's menus and some buttons on Gkrellm's applaunch plugin.

But if you really need icons the easiest way is to automatically have gmc started by E every session, so that it loads the GNOME icons, which you can personalize later just like in a normal GNOME session.

To automatically start gmc at every E session you have to add the following line to your .enlightenment/...e_session-XXXXXX.snapshots.0 file:

[...]
NEW: Gmc
NAME: Gmc
CLASS: Gmc
CMD: gmc
[...]

but don't do that when E is running, otherwise it'll ignore it

el_felipe