Would someone explain the practical difference(s) between GNOME and KDE? I already know about the licensing issue that led to the creation of GNOME; but what would be different in practice if I switched from KDE (the only interface I have used) to GNOME?

Try it and find out

I don't know about the distributions you use, but on Fedora 4 I needed to install "brightside" and the "alacarte" menu editor to approximate the functionality built in to KDE.

Also, even using the KDE display manager, GNOME does not support multiple sessions. (Except Ctrl-Alt-F[7-10] will switch sessions, but you need to have the session started for that to be usefull.) KDE's "Switch User" on the rigt-click pop-up is much cleaner.

It depends on exactly what you're asking.

Gnome is based on GTk whereas KDE is based on Qt - what the differences actually are, I don't know.

What I do know (apart from the licencing thing that you've already alluded too) is that some of the functionality is different. Things work in a slightly different way, though you can usually attain the same or similar result.

With KDE, I've found that many things seem more intuitive, that the package linking seems better. I'm probably wrong, or someone will disagree. For instance, I've found it easier to get GTk packages into my KDE menu, whereas if I try the opposite it appeared to be a little harder to do.

I would suggest that you just install Gnome as well, and then just have a play too see which you prefer. They both seem to have pro's and con's, but it's probably down to personal preference and what you want to do (oh and don't forget if you are running a system with minimal hardware specs both can be hard/slow to use and run stuff under, hence the plethora of other windowing apps).

With both installed, you just log out as user and then tell the system to use the other "environment" from the login choice(s).

regards

John

i sure hope i don't cause flames.
well the difference comes from the underlying toolkit and the fact that KDE is object oriented c++ and gnome is lower level c.
so some of the difference is taste and style.

gnome is kind of hobbled together this and that. It seems to still try to use a version of gimp dislay that is kind of funky on reloads and scrolling.
not as much in gnome is provided by the underlying toolkit in a consistent way so gnome can be confusing. gnome configuration is more confusing if it gets messed up than kde.

Qt underlying KDE was written by a couple of guys from scratch for a particular purpuse and in a very object oriented way. KDE has extrapolated that out to an object oriented user experience that seems more consistent and predictale.

just my opinion and most likely based on subjective preferences for objects over scruffy improvisation. I'm sure others feel just the oposite.

Nice signature, Komakino. The panda must appreciate you.

Hi from Ritz(Lady)...
Sorry I don`t know where to put this,so you put it were it goes thankyou...
I am a newbie to this forum,
I find it hard finding my way round it..
Question:- I have been deleting items from my pc, now I have no sound,am now thinking have a deleted anything to do with the sound... can anyone help me out here please..I found this forum by default while searching pc for some answers to do with sound.. Thankyou all...
Ritz...

This reply isn't meant as a "snap" Ritzz, but you should really do a search for something like "sound problems" or similar.

The moderators are strict, but quite fair IMO and would probably suggest starting a new thread in the main "Linux - newbie" forum.

You do often get "snotty" replies if someone thinks you're trying to "hijack" a thread.

regards

John.

p.s. Oh and one of the quickest ways to get everything back to square 1, is just to re-install over the top. Of course, if you just installed and accepted all the default settings then it's probable that you will loose any preferences/customisations etc that you might have set up, but if thats not a problem and everything just seemed to work from the initial install then why not?

I know that thats a bit of a "windowsesque" way of doing things, but it worked OK for me when I'd just started (I was just too impatient when I first got into linux - I've learned a little more patience since then - sometimes ).