I searched these forums a bit...coulnd't find an answer directly. So, I'm asking..

I've last used KDE as my main desktop environment at the age of RH6. Since then I've used Gnome, and been happy.. (tried KDE 3.1 but didn't use it actually) also, fluxbox has been my favourite. Anyway, it's pretty likely I'll get somewhat faster internet connection in the close future, and therefore it would become possible for me to get KDE and try it out...now that the new version is out and everything. But...I use some apps that use GTK, and as far as I understand, KDE uses qt - so what about these apps, do they still need Gtk (which I of course have)? And if they do - does it slow down the gigantic KDE even more than usually? If this is the case, then I might forget about trying KDE out...

Thanks for information, KDE users and others too.

Yes, applications that use GTK, require GTK, no question about it.
If it will slow down your system - it depends. If you have enough RAM to fit in both KDE and GTK libs, then you should be OK.
I'm running it the other way around, e.g. gnome as environment and some KDE/QT apps. and besides some longer start-up times, it runs without a problem with my 512MB of physical RAM.

ok..as I suspected. I only have 256Mb of RAM, on a 1,2Ghz machine that I'm planning to do this with..Gnome and it's apps seem to eat up quite much of this, but not all however. I suspect KDE will do the same, so I guess running some memory-using apps like Gimp (image editing etc) might get the whole thing slow..don't know though.

the only Qt app I (have) run on Gnome is dcgui-qt, but I don't use it anymore..well, I actually didn't notice any great slowness while using it, so perhaps I could do with KDE+GTK too..don't know. if anybody has as much/little memory as I do, please tell if you know would this thing I'm planning to do, work...

EDIT: one more thing. my package manager doesn't calculate the size of the packages I'll have to download (not that I'd usually even need to know that), so how much space do the KDE packages take (tgz-format, I guess quite the same as sources do) on my HD before installation, roughly?

If you want to stick with Gnome, but run Qt apps, you don't need to install the full KDE. I believe the base libraries are in a separate package.

I've got 256mb as well, running Fluxbox, and never had trouble with Qt applications. I don't particularly like Qt because it looks like crap, is too big, and takes too long to load...but the applications themselves will run without KDE fully installed.
Gtk is still a much more efficient gui system, in my opinion.

edit: Oh...did I say "crap"? Sorry, I meant "Windows".