hi,
i newbie am currently using kde on mdk9.2. although i have not had trouble using it, i do feel it is slower than what i'd have like (or is it mdk?).
so is there some other popular environment out there that suits my needs:
- fast.
- simple: i don't like fancy gui and animation.
- popular (so applications are many <-- or this is not true?)
thanks.

ps: i am aware of the following: gnome, icewm, blackbox, fluxbox, xfce.
thanks.

just a little info for you, and to clearify that
things such as KDE and GNOME are desktop environments
and others such as blackbox/fluxbox are window managers ...
here is a quick simple explanation of what i just said ...

i chose flux anyways
and coincidently it fits all your criteria perfectly
fast, simple, and popular

Probably Mandrake.

Quote:

so is there some other popular environment out there that suits my needs: - fast. - simple: i don't like fancy gui and animation. - popular (so applications are many <-- or this is not true?) thanks. ps: i am aware of the following: gnome, icewm, blackbox, fluxbox, xfce. thanks.

KDE and Gnome are IDEs and slow. XFCE is trying to be an IDE and isn't slow... yet. They're all popular except blackbox is maybe waning and ice isn't especially popular - not unpopular but doesn't have the user base of Knome or flux.

But this has nothing to do with apps. What apps will run depend mostly on what libs are installed. Some odd little specific doohickeys like config tools that are specific to a GUI will only run (or make any sense) under that GUI, but good WMs don't come with those and the apps depend on the libs. Those will slow things down, too, and Knome apps expect the huge Knome apparatus to be running, so they seem slower outside those environments. (Like IE in Windows only avoids being extremely slow because most of it is always in memory anyway and most of the things it relies on.) It's worth seeing how little of the Knome libs and Knome-specific apps you can get away without using.

If you want fast and simple, you don't want an IDE, but a WM. And most any WM would do except weird stuff like Enlightenment (which is also trying to be an IDE). I voted ice. I used blackbox and then fluxbox for a long time but flux got a little flaky and development took on questionable goals and they still didn't fix basic usability issues. More on buggy eye candy than genuine usability. But you're going to get a flood of people telling you to use flux and it is a good wm.

Check out http://www.xwinman.org/ for a bunch more.