I started playing around with KDE the other day but all my apps take alot longer to load then with GNOME, KDE seems more configurable to me that why I was using it. Is it? or do I just have to poke around with GNOME more?

KDE is more configurable than Gnome.
Gnome is faster than KDE.

You can speed up both Gnome and KDE by adding more memory to your system.

hi

yes kde is more featured but slower. you can configure kde services in kcontrol - kde control center

turn off kde write deamon and others
turn off the desktop wallpaper
in particular dont use a diff wallpapers for each virtual desktop.
switch to low colow themes and icon set
turn all fancy features like anti aliasing and alpha blending including shading effects and menu transparency


if this all wont work switch to a more lightweight window manager like xfce or fluxbox

Weird, I'm always experiencing KDE as the faster one. But I think that's because GNOME likes to anti-alias all fonts, in KDE I disabled lot's of that stuff and that's what really made it a lot smoother.

Though it seems a problem with X, GNOME has less trouble moving windows vertically than KDE does. Unless you don't use the titlebar but grab them while holding the alt key. Has anybody else noticed, especially in KDE, that moving windows around with the titlebar goes a lot smoother when moving sideways than moving up and down?

Another option is a lighter Window Manager like :

IceWM
Fluxbox

For all things Window managers :

http://www.plig.org/xwinman/

If it takes reeeaaallly long you might want to check if your localhost is set ok.If the network is down and kde can't connect to localhost it takes forever for things to happen.