http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...mular+programs about gnome vs. kde

as far as programs there is everything...and all free. i finds that linux programs are usually better than the window equivalent.

as far as deciding if you like gnome of kde more you should just download 2 live cd's (i would say of the same distro) and see what you like more...different strokes for different folks.

Alright, I am very confused.

So far Sabayon works the best. Mandriva didn't even start. It was just black screen after the boot sequence. I didn't notice that it created any error logs. I watched it in verbose, and there were many errors that are beyond me at this point.

So I played in Sabayon a little more.
1) I can't get my network to work. My ethernet card is detected but if I enter an IP address manually I get no connection, or if I use DHCP I get no connection.

2) Konqueror can't access any of my drives. It's understandable if it can't access my windows dynamic drive, but it can't access either my Vista drive or my soon to be Linux drive, or my data (My docs..etc) drive. I've got a sector error on one and an $MST on another. I'm running chkdsk.

Just a note, my Mandriva CD works fine on my Tablet. No gateway active digitizer, but everything else is fine. It just doesn't work on my PC.

Why does the Mandriva desktop, which is KDE 3.5, look so different from Suse, and Sabayan KDE?

Ubuntu 7.04 any given day. Its such an easy OS that now even my wife uses it.

because they all customize it to look different

Yey! OpenSUSE! Works perfectly, I really like YsST, makes things very centralized and organized. I'm downloading Fedora right now. OpenSUSE even worked with my NIC no problems. I wonder why the others didn't. I'll have to try them all again.

GNOME vs KDE, it's hard to choose. What other popular (and thus most likely the most streamlined) GUIs are there? Arn't these several types of GUIs? One that's a full gui like Explorer.exe in windows, another that is just the menu and task bar?

How would I configure the KDE in SUSE to be like the one in Mandriva 2008? That way I can take advantage of the nice control center and the different gui.


I'm curious what the more experienced Linux guys run. Are the large distros like Mandriva, Suse, Fedora, Ubuntu, and I think there was a couple more, just for newbies and ex windows guys?

Nope. It all depends on your priorities. If you feel that a computer is just a tool, then by all means stick with the ones you mention. But if you feel that configuring and tweaking a computer is a hobby in its own right, then you'll have more fun using one of the less ready-made ones.

How about a tool that you tweak and modify as to grow your skills . Sometimes I bend my wrenches to get to hard to reach bolts.

Can Linux read and write NTFS partitions? Windows Dymanic Disk? What is an SFS partition? How do I configure network in KDE? I haven't been able to figure it out in distos other than suse. Is there a device manager equivalent?

Yes linux can read/write ntfs parititions, for most distros anyways

SFS = Secure File System. It is a set of tools to manage encrypted partitions. If your ntfs wasn't encrypted - knowingly or not - it shouldn't appear like that. Possible explanations include a bug in your partition manager or corruption in your ntfs partition which causes it to send incorrect information to the partition table.

Network should run out of the box. It may well be that your NIC is not supported by certain distros, in which case you can try and find a driver and install it yourself. If none is available, then you are unfortunately out of luck.

Cool. Thanks for the information guys.

For some reason some distros work, and some do not. I've gotten them all to work the NIC now. It just took me some time to find the network control center. It's all a little scattard for me having DNS and IP confiturations in seprate places.

For some reason Fedora GNOME works perfectly, but Fedora KDE will not load on any of my computers.

I've been trying to install one of the distros to see how that goes.

SUSE gets closest, but I get errors on boot.
Fedora's installer program freezes and won't respond after clicking next on the keyboard language selection.

I have two WD Raptors on RAID 1 on the SATA raid controller on my MB. For some reason Linux recognizes (in the partition program, I forget what it was called) the Raptors as two 34.4gig drives rather then my 68.9 gig array that the RAID configuration utility confirms is established. How can I install to my array? I see that SUSE has a raid option in it's partition manager (I don't know about Fedora). But I'd rather not have a pure software raid solution.

Maybe you should. Linux has always worked best with either software raid or the more expensive hardware raid. Anything in between may work but is a gamble.

ok, I'll give it a shot.

Any tips for troubleshooting Linux distos that wont boot? Say I wanted to check out Fedora KDE, it won't start on any of my systems. Being that these are live CDs, I don't see how it would create a log file.

The failure occurs when loading the desktop after the main loading screen.

Hey, try out Ubuntu 7.10 it's good!

With all the graphical effect(3d using compiz fusion, and avant window manager to simulate dock in Mac OSX) and background services like ClamAV(OpenSource Antivirus), etc, It's only take around 380mb out of 1280mb of RAM...Cool right? As long as you get it right it'll be very useful.

Ubuntu and Kubuntu didn't work on my system. Kubuntu didn't like my mouse and kbd, and Ubuntu didn't like my mouse and keyboard and I couldn't get it to mount any drives. One wasn't detected, and the others generated errors.

I'm installing Fedora right now, and see how that goes.

Suse was good, but no sound. My Audigy was detected, but no go. And I don't as of yet understand the /dev/ codes and other things associated with them. Sounds like I need a book!