Dropline vs. KDE
 

Now that I'm a converted Slacker I've been trying to make myself at home w/ my new desktop. Is there a difference in performance or memory footprint between dropline Gnome vs. KDE? I've used kde for so long that I don't really remember gnome all that well. Are there any overwhelming difficulties or differences in getting desktop apps to work with dropline compared to kde. Or are there any gerneal toughts about the matter are welcome.

Well I use (out of the two) KDE,
Dropline is nice, well rounded, a little less memory demanding but not that much.
Dropline has a nice installer and updater.
KDE has some nice tools...

I'd say they are about the same... try both and see which one you like better.

However, I also use Windowmaker... (My personal fav.) about as much as KDE...

And as for apps... run whatever you like... you can run gnome apps in KDE and KDE apps in gnome....

I've never used Dropline, however I just switched over to KDE from regular GNOME. I feel that KDE is by far the better of the two in a lot of ways.

People always mention the uber fonts that dropline has, but with anti-aliased fonts and bitstream vera sans, the fonts in KDE are great. KDE has a well-integrated control center and hardware info app. It's basically more mature as a system.

Although I'm not into this as much, apparently writing apps for KDE is a million times easier than for gnome - so in the long run this should mean that KDE outpaces gnome.

I'd go for KDE3.2 rather than dropline. I much prefer the user interface and it's so much more configurable (for stuff like custom toolbar icons etc, it's the little things that count). With preloading it's pretty damn quick too, konqeuror will load instantly. As well as not being as keen on the gnome interface, I also found that dropline wasn't as stable as I'd been expecting it to be.

Having said that, I've moved to fluxbox + a few gtk2 apps (that don't require gnome apps) + command line tools, I find it's a really good arrangement. About the only KDE app I use is kate, I wish there was something like it that was just gtk2.

I guess that brings up another point, I'm eventually planning on whipping up some personalized gui apps. I've noticed that kde uses the non-gpl QT, where as gnome uses gtk2 (and gtk1 which is not compatible w/ 2 supposedly). Does the whole qt thing irk anyone? 'eh, I guess it makes no real difference in the long run :)

The version of qt for non-proprietary apps is GPLed, afaik you only have to pay for a licence if you want to make a profit from your app or use it in a closed source project.

Bruce Perens wasn't going to include kde in his userlinux project but in the end he decided to include it because of the weight of popular opinion.

does KDE 3.2 create ~100 dot files? :-) that's the #1 reason i don't use gnome or kde, they clutter my $HOME dir...

Most of the kde stuff stays in ~/.kde/ or ~/.qt/, not sure about gnome but I think it tends to make a separate directory for each app.

lol, you have a point there (no pun intended)!

I've experienced "the qt thing irk anyone, makes no real difference in the long run :)" does REALY make non spuorious difference in very short term!! There is Sharp Teeth of the mouse jitter events, overwheelm the general conceptual of the event-handlers because the events propagation/promotion is depending on the rates generated events.

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A fish is spoiled from its stomach first, not from its head or tail, remember it.

What? If that was rant, it sure was an interesting read. :)

Whew!!! Really... I could only get through the first couple sentences of the second paragraph.... It made my brain lock up........ That was pretty cool actually........ :D

wtf :D

Well said Kovacs - KDE is clearly the most powerful, fully featured and comprehensive desktop out there, and 3.2 is seriously fast......... :)

Am very interested on how do they look like ? Maybe Kovacs can tell more ..

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Expose it man, let play CD cover side down, now !

@Kovacs: the syntax highlighting in ur aterm window is what app? what i liked about fluxbox was the empty screen i.e. space for windows. ofcourse, the 800x600 in gnome (linux in general) looks like windows 640x480.
even if (i reduce the font size), {web pages, etc. and all my windows will look big at least once. crappy work around}. i used to like enlightenment but after a while that brushed look can be irratating to look at if the whole screen is like that.

(offtopic, i know. was curious).

XFWM is a nice clean wm for smaller workspaces like 800x600 and below. It has a very polished look as well, I use it on an old p2 laptop :)

Hold on your horses, guys ...

KDE is written in C++, i think, and of course is faster. but i think that GNOME is a little bit leasier to use. And Dropline it is a good GNOME desktop for Slackware, the only thing that spoil it, it is gxine .... better use xine at command window. But that besides that, i think GNOME is neat and clean for a newbie like me.

That's just vim, you enable syntax by typing :syntax enable in the command mode.

I fail to grasp the logic behind this. C++ has much object-oriented overhead when compared to C. Though one might argue that GNOME is also written in some form of object oriented programming (GTK), still the choice of language has nothing to do with which DE is faster than the other one, and certainly being written in C++ is no advantage.

I think the speed is highly dependant on the framework (gtk vs. QT), but I'm not a gui pro yet. I've actually experienced some issues with KDE flipping out on me (ususally the mouse will just stop working). I've also experienced slowdown of applications w/in KDE but that's hard to blame on KDE itself. I have learned that starting up in text-mode on boot then starting X allows me the complete troubleshooting freedom required when working w/ X no matter what the WM.

if you install dropline gnome dont plan on updating your system with latest slackware stuff, in my opinion dropline should be its own distro.. better to stick with gnome or kde, ive tested both and when uninstalling dropline to use kde all hell broke loose.

dropline does to much to the system to ever bring it back to normal

I run dropline and keep my system updated to slackware-current with very few problems, none of which that could not be easily resolved (and what problems I have had could be caused by swaret, kde, or dropline). Of course, I've never uninstalled dropline then tried to run kde, but I have no problem running kde with dropline installed.

I plan on staying with dropline, but I was quite impressed with kde3.2. It seems to have the polish right out of the box that I have to install dropline to get with gnome (or spend a lot of time configuring to get with gnome). Also, if you want to use apps for both kde and gnome, kde seems to open gnome apps quite a bit faster than gnome opens kde apps.

true, i think i should have said if you ever wanted to revert back to your slackware system before using dropline gnome is almost impossible because just about everything breaks :(

but damn kde is so polished and works wonderfully ;)

That was exactly the type of info I was looking for, thanks!