Ok, upgraded to 8.10. Installed KDE4. It looks like Vista on Crack. Don't like it. I always set up my KDE so it resembled gnome anyway, so I figured I'd try out gnome again. Well. I like the panels to be transparent. I happen to have a dark background at the moment. Hence, I can't read the text on the Applications, places and system buttons. Ok, no problem. I open up system>preferences>appearence. Look for font color. No options to change the color to something I can read. Ok, I must be missing it somewhere. I google it. First 3 results are about how I should open a terminal and edit a text file with a color code that contains a # symbol and a lot of FFFFFFFFFFF's. It gives me the name of a helpful program that can tell me the color code for any color I want, and how to install that program.

ARE YOU SERIOUS ? It's 2008. Windows could do this via a GUI in 1995 people. I hope I missing something, because if I'm not, and we still have to change the color of the text via a terminal and color codes, for the largest most popular GUI in Linux land, we should be embarrassed.

Someone please tell me I'm just missing it somewhere. We can not possibly be more than 13 years behind M$ in something this basic.

David

Install appropriate dark theme which will configure fonts for you. And it's not often you find a post that trolls against KDE and Gnome at the same time.

Remember - by design Gnome is not as configurable as, say, KDE but the idea is to make it easy to use.

"Vista on crack" - debatable

I'm not trolling. I'm old. I like kde 3.5.x. 4.x, not at all. Up until now, every kde has been better than the last. Maybe it's back to fluxbox for me, though I do like the eye candy once in a while. Every time I've tried gnome before I got frustrated about something I couldn't change, and went back to kde. Now kde isn't there to go back to any more. I try to stay with the times, but what do you do if the new times suck ?

David

KDE is trying too hard to be like "Vista".. I don't know about "on crack" but it's on something.

IN any case...

"by design Gnome is not as configurable as, say, KDE but the idea is to make it easy to use."

One of the solutions would be to ..

System > Preferences > Look and Feel > Appearances

Select your theme (choose a dark one) > Customize, fiddle with the options here.

Or don't use transparency - it's just smoke & mirrors anyways.

In my own experience.. yes, KDE has been far more customizable, more configurable. But it's precisely this that I lose time on. I'll spend about an half hour to an hour a day just fiddling with font settings and colors. Is this necessarily a good thing? When you have a family and hardly any time on the box, maybe not. When I switch to fluxbox or gnome, I'm far more productive.

Screw staying with the times.

I still use vi after all these years.. When I have ot use windows XP I have tried Notepad++ and a plethora of editors for example.

What do I use the most?

GVim (with Cream, it's sweet).