What am I missing by not using KDE?
 

<newbie questions>
I'm using Redhat 9 with Gnome as my desktop environment (Install default). What am I missing out on by not running KDE? What features, what programs, etc?

I guess I don't really yet understand exactly how a desktop environment affects the use of the system.

What do you use (Gnome, KDE, etc.)? and why?

</newbie questions>

Thanks,

Jacob

Why don't you find out what you are missing by choosing KDE when you login (under system)?
or type
$ switchdesk
and select KDE as your default

as for which one I use, the name says it all. I used to use Gnome but found that KDE is more user-friendly to newbies.

what your missing - slow loading programs, cluttered, pointless features, cpu bled dry....

as for opinions please search this site for a lot of identical questions...

Nothing much, they all have good points/bad points.

fully agree use fluxbox :)

Yeah!, try fluxbox, blackbox or even icevm. If you like the full desktop environment feel, then Ice will be better for you, exept that is much faster then Kde and Gnome.


My 2 cents,
Figa

you can still run most kde programs under gnome, and
most gnome programs under kde, and most gnome
and kde programs under blackbox. The interface matters
little. You can still use the programs.

Nuts to that....

You're missing the cleanest, best-looking, friendliest, integrated desktop out there. Of course fluxbox and their ilk are going to run faster, but it's at the price of features.

Have you used kde since version 1 Acid? All my apps fire up pretty much instantaneously. If kde really bled a cpu dry then why would millions of people use it? Bled dry on a P100 perhaps.

Gnome, and all GTK crap looks horrendously amatuerish in my eyes.

Of course there is no accounting for some tastes, and everyone's opinions are different so your interests will best be served by firing it up and deciding for yourself if you like it.

I just felt the need to defend my beloved kde from the philistine nonbelievers :)

KDE vs. Gnome

By default, SuSE goes with KDE and Red Hat with Gnome. We have relied on their default choices. To us it is just great that different distributions have started to make choices for the user. This helps the distribution makers to ease their workload, to collect their resources to better support the way they go and to help their applications of choice to integrate more efficiently. It also saves a lot of time for those users that do not want to make all the decisions themselves but willingly rely on professionals' opinion.

SuSE's default KDE 3.1 interface is faster than the Gnome 2.2 interface coming with Red Hat 9. The difference is so big that it is difficult to go back to Red Hat after some time with SuSE. Especially annoying is that basic everyday applications are tediously slow in Gnome, like Nautilus, calculator, text editor and others. You almost here clock ticking when you select "run application" from the menu ... Gnome may have a perfect architecture down there, but as long as it reflects this bad to the usability compared to KDE, Gnome has little chances to overthrow KDE in the desktop race. Gnome's general slowness may result in from the fact that everything is not ok with the general configuration, rather than from Gnome itself. However, default configuration is used, and failures in that are regarded to the loss of the vendor.

In my opinion, Red Hat's simplistic Bluecurve theme is not very efficient. It mostly fails to hide the fact that Open Source applications come from here and there and look very different. KDE's Keramik icons and SuSE's own window decoration are so effective together, that old and new, Gnome and KDE applications all blend together surprisingly well. However, if you go changing the SuSE default window decoration, Gnome applications get an ugly out-dated appearance under KDE.

A major plus for SuSE is a rather well-working clipboard. Perhaps the most annoying single issue in Red Hat (and Gnome) is the lack of an integrated copy & paste solution. For example, if you copy a piece of text, close the application from which you took the copy and then try to paste to another application - and find the clipboard empty...uh-oh! That drives you mad. Also the paste may be available via CTRL + V, SHIFT + CTRL + V or via the mouse roller. Red Hat really must work on this, there was no progress whatsoever in 9 as compared to 8.

SuSE has integrated their system control tools much better than Red Hat. Basically, SuSE's control tools are divided into two sets, one for KDE and one for system hardware, called Yast. Red Hat barely has any controls over hardware, bootloader or other lower level parts of the system. Also Gnome controls are scattered here and there, but not as badly as they used to be in Red Hat 8. Gnome 2.2 controls for desktop appearance and functionality lack seriously behind those of KDE 3.1.

Overall, Gnome still has a long way to go, that is, to catch KDE. You can use Gnome for your daily work, but be prepared for continuously annoying moments. A typical example of Gnome is that if you have a shortcut on the desktop, it does not say in its properties what application it will launch. Only the minimum amount of features seems to be implemented in Gnome. From my personal point of view, KDE 3.1 is not lacking any important features any more. It has tons of nice touches here and there that make you feel happy and relieved when you realize that hey, they've done this too, great! I can not name a single feature where Gnome would be ahead of KDE. Or actually, even close.

http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=3423

Please read before asking.

Blech, sorry but this:

http://vhost.dulug.duke.edu/~louie/s...ots/2.2/10.jpg

looks way, way, way more professional to my eyes than this:

http://kde.org/screenshots/images/3.1/fullsize/92.png

Apparently that file dialog is streamlined. What?

Don't get me wrong. I like KDE and what they've done, but I prefer Gnome, and the professional clean look is one reason why.

the mods keep saying this to new members. I think this is a mistake. it might discourage them from asking questions. there ought to be an easily available link or section dedicated to FAQ of new members - instead of telling new members over and over to search for the answer to their questions.

the reason they joined linuxquestions.org was to get an answer to their question. if they wanted to play the search game they would have used google instead of linuxquestions.org

=)

just a recommendation.

I really like kde, and I don't find it slow at all.

i like kde too, but it takes a while to load.
i'm the impatient type, that uses a text login,
have a symlink to startx called x, so i don't have
to take the time to type startx. i have a script
called p that runs ppp-go, and startx, so i don't
have to click anything to go online, and i've usually
clicked the right mouse button to get the blackbox menu
to click a program name before the background image
has time to load and before the modem has had
time to start dialing. i set the modem tone duration
to the minimum that would work, 60ms, so i don't
have to wait for for each dialed tone to sound for the
normal full length of time. thats why i don't use kde
a lot, but i am very happy to have it when i need it.
i would hate not to have it, but i would hate to have it
start automatically every time i boot.

I might be the only one, but I logged into gnome to see how long it took and then into KDE to compare and they were about the same and if anything, gnome was slower.

Odd but true.

yowwww:
i agree... i have tested both enviros... and
i find kde faster... better looking...