[Mars]

IMHO

I've been using KDE for years, but...

I've been struggling to get basic functionality into Kubuntu with KDE 4.1... and I just can't. I'm switching to GNOME, and leave the bloat-ware to other people. I don't want pretty clocks and fancy menus if it means all types of graphical glitches, unexplainable errors and slowdowns, and a complete inability to change my timezone within the GUI (it locks up every time I try, and I end up having to restart the x server). I mean this would be okay if it was KDE 4 beta... but it's supposed to be kinda, sorta stable.

Hell... maybe I should go the whole way and get Xubuntu.

[Ghostavo]

GNOME has been better than KDE for a long time. The only thing KDE got going for it was tons of great QT products like Amarok and Opera being done and being easier to customize than GNOME (which in truth is pretty relative). That said, you'll find some bloatware and some other issues with GNOME, but not as bad as in KDE.

Regarding XFCE4, it's a very interesting DE, but in my experience it's taskbar and applets are awful, the sound mixer applet being the worse in this regard I've encountered.

If you are into customizing try openbox or fluxbox.

[WMCoolmon]

Ah, Linux. The operating system where you can have four or more different window managers, based on each other, with the same niche, and yet somehow people passionately believe they're different enough to keep splitting their resources between them all.

So has somebody come up with a minimalist, lightweight window manager that starts up instantly, requires no extra graphics media files besides fonts to run, yet can be fully skinnable with a variety of image formats from text configuration files, has fully graphical configuration abilities, and can run either Gtk+ or Qt apps with a minimum of wasted disk space and CPU power? Not to mention has a working desktop with icons, and uses fewer than 15 base files, and has a graphical package-based installer that lets you pick exactly which things you want without having to spend hours researching config files because people are too lazy to put a known crash in the documentation.

Oh, and it needs to use OpenAL or run directly on top of the ALSA sound layer. I get tired of having to crosslink four different sound management or emulation systems to run all the programs on a computer.

I forgot to mention the most important part - it has to use hardware video acceleration via OpenGL. And support shaders. But these shouldn't be required for it to work (except for default shaders), just an option for the skins.

[captain-custard]

i always use gnome , ive tried a few distros , and in there gnome/kde variants and always have had mor problems with kde, at the moment im running my acer laptop on ubuntu studio/xp/leopard ....still some things i need in windows...
and on my eeepc im running ubuntu eee would love to use eeepcoslinux but its kde based and it just anoys the hell out of me , and the problem is i eed to run mixxx on the eee and kde just wont have it ????


as for the sound isues try pulse with a bit of head scratching at first and a little rechearche it set up works well even if your having to run jack for music production

all said linux/unix systems have come a long way and as always with community developed os's n games there are going to be 20+ different  things that do the same thing with varying levels of bugs and features ,( just look at how many 3.6.10 builds are around at the moment and need testing)

but at least they work and your not excluded from how they work , im not a coder /programmer etc , but ive learnt more in the last 2 years about how IT and computers work because of linux than i did in the previous 10 years of windows and mac based systems....

[Mars]

ive learnt more in the last 2 years about how IT and computers work because of linux than i did in the previous 10 years of windows and mac based systems....

I'm not sure that's a good sign... see... supposedly... you should never have to use the shell. *giggles*

I used KDE mostly because of Amarok... but it just isn't a big enough advantage anymore. I think there's some sort of GTK+ knockoff, I'll have to check that out.

[Ghostavo]

Ah, Linux. The operating system where you can have four or more different window managers, based on each other, with the same niche, and yet somehow people passionately believe they're different enough to keep splitting their resources between them all.

So has somebody come up with a minimalist, lightweight window manager that starts up instantly, requires no extra graphics media files besides fonts to run, yet can be fully skinnable with a variety of image formats from text configuration files, has fully graphical configuration abilities, and can run either Gtk+ or Qt apps with a minimum of wasted disk space and CPU power? Not to mention has a working desktop with icons, and uses fewer than 15 base files, and has a graphical package-based installer that lets you pick exactly which things you want without having to spend hours researching config files because people are too lazy to put a known crash in the documentation.

Oh, and it needs to use OpenAL or run directly on top of the ALSA sound layer. I get tired of having to crosslink four different sound management or emulation systems to run all the programs on a computer.

I forgot to mention the most important part - it has to use hardware video acceleration via OpenGL. And support shaders. But these shouldn't be required for it to work (except for default shaders), just an option for the skins.

I'm sure some developer will get back to you... as soon as someone makes a X11 alternative.

ive learnt more in the last 2 years about how IT and computers work because of linux than i did in the previous 10 years of windows and mac based systems....

I'm not sure that's a good sign... see... supposedly... you should never have to use the shell. *giggles*

I used KDE mostly because of Amarok... but it just isn't a big enough advantage anymore. I think there's some sort of GTK+ knockoff, I'll have to check that out.

Why isn't it a good sign to use the shell? I've used (and still use) distros where unless you explicitly install xorg, the shell is all you use.

Regarding the GTK+ knockoff, it's Exaile but it still has a long way to go.

[Spicious]

Fluxbox > Gnome > KDE.

[Fury]

KDE 4.0 was pretty much a public beta, KDE developers themselves said so before the release. Yet it was dismissed by many distro maintainers and the general public was "forced" into beta testing a product they didn't know was a beta. 4.1 is the first stable release. At the moment no distro comes with KDE 4.1 out of the box.

KDE 4.1 packages aren't in main (K)Ubuntu repositories and thus you cannot expect KDE 4.1 to work flawlessly on Kubuntu 8.04 or earlier. I'd wait for Kubuntu 8.10 which comes with KDE 4.1 before dismissing KDE4 entirely.

Gnome is practical and in my experience more bug-free than KDE. However, Gnome isn't very aesthetically pleasing.

[castor]

What I'd like to see is someone take kwin and create a _simple_ alternative DE on top of it.
Already in KDE3 the window manager itself was pretty smooth and snappy (at least for me), but the complexity of KDE as a whole is sometimes disappointing (in terms of stability). I doubt the Gtk development to be able to keep up with Qt in future, thus it would be nice have another Qt based alternative.

[Fury]

I doubt the Gtk development to be able to keep up with Qt in future, thus it would be nice have another Qt based alternative.

Quite possible since QT developer Trolltech is now owned by Nokia and Nokia supports KDE developers as well. Since Nokia aims to phones and handhelds, QT and KDE may rapidly improve on how efficiently it uses available system resources (read: as little as possible). Money talks. At least Firefox is being ported to QT at the moment, probably many other high profile applications will follow.

It'll be interesting to see how much QT/KDE has progressed in two years time compared to GTK/Gnome.

[S-99]

IMHO

I've been using KDE for years, but...

I've been struggling to get basic functionality into Kubuntu with KDE 4.1... and I just can't. I'm switching to GNOME, and leave the bloat-ware to other people. I don't want pretty clocks and fancy menus if it means all types of graphical glitches, unexplainable errors and slowdowns, and a complete inability to change my timezone within the GUI (it locks up every time I try, and I end up having to restart the x server). I mean this would be okay if it was KDE 4 beta... but it's supposed to be kinda, sorta stable.

Hell... maybe I should go the whole way and get Xubuntu.

Hey mars. If you haven't heard. KDE 4.1 is not ready for usage yet either. KDE 4 is still being worked on. KDE 4.1 is a workable release, but the KDE devs recommend not to use it until they greenlight a release. Anyway mars. Switching to gnome because kde 4.1 isn't working for you when  you should still be using kde 3.5.9 is dumb. You wonder why kde 4.1 sucks? Not all of the features are implemented yet.

Mars, just use kubuntu which has kde 3.5.9 and stay away from kde 4 until the main release hits, and this happens when you research kde more.

Everyone else in here, how about we don't talk about which DE is better. For the record it's way easier to tweak and mess around with kde than gnome. Kde has many applications that are more mature than gnomes. Kde is also better for first time linux users because it's default configuration is a very similar to the windows DE. And for someone messing around with a desktop environment. Recommending fluxbox or openbox because it's more customizable is not a good recommendation. This is mars were talking about here, he just went to gnome for customization because he didn't know kde 4 is still in development.

Mars should just go back to kde 3.5.9. And as far as distros like fedora and opensuse taking kde 3 out of the repos and only including kde4. This really confused users and was a bad move by the two distros (suse and fedora are taking a lot of flak for their move). There's a reason mandriva and ubuntu offer kde 3 still as the default desktop environments for mandriva and kubuntu.

Lastly, aimed straight at mars here. Using kde just to use amarok is half intelligent. You can install and run amarok just fine in gnome, just as much as you can install and run gnome apps in kde.

[Mars]

I know 4.1 isn't fully released yet, but the fact is it's supposed to be fairly stable.

I've been using a mixture of KDE 3.5.9 and KDE 4 for a while now, but to be honest, I really don't like the direction KDE 4 is headed in. While both GNOME and KDE 3 aim to be fuctional, KDE 4 goes in the direction of looking pretty for the sake of itself, not for functionality.

This is mars were talking about here,

lawls

[S-99]

Yes mars, kde 4.1 is stable. That does not in any imply that it's feature complete and or not still in development. Just don't use kde 4 yet. Yes gnome and kde3 aim to be functional. But, you can't even see the direction kde 4 is taking because it's not complete yet. Like i said and will say again, stable does not imply a feature complete product that's not still under development. Kde 4 is obviously still under development since it's only pretty right now and not as functional as kde 3. The kde devs are smart, they're not done yet, when they are done then you'll have something better than kde 3 (that's the idea behind upgrading).

Mars, stick with gnome or kde 3. You don't know what you're talking about anything concerning kde 4. You're assumptions for it are hasty and uneducated.

And yes mars, this is you were talking about here. The one who switched to kde just to use amarok when you can install and run amarok just fine in gnome just as much as you can install and run gnome apps in kde.

[Ghostavo]

Lastly, aimed straight at mars here. Using kde just to use amarok is half intelligent. You can install and run amarok just fine in gnome, just as much as you can install and run gnome apps in kde.

But there is a problem with that. Using the example of Amarok in GNOME, besides having an overhead because of Qt, you have to install several packages related to KDE which along with having an increased overhead because of having to load the KDE libraries, it would IIRC install almost 300 MB for just a media player.

Interestingly, the opposite is less noticeable (although there is always that overhead), because unlike many Qt applications which use KDE's libraries, most GTK applications don't use GNOME's libraries. Of course, there are pros and cons with this.

[Mars]

I did not in fact switch to KDE just to use Amarok, it was the thing that was keeping me from changing for a while. I used KDE to begin with because I found it easier to mess about with, and more attractive out of the box, that was about 3 years ago. And yes, Amarok will, of course, run in GNOME, but I try not to run qt applications in GNOME or GTK+ applications in KDE, as the memory requirement is higher than it would be in its native environment. ^ What he said.


Exaile is proving to be very functional however.

KDE 3.5 was nice, really, but even before I started exploring KDE 4 in earnest, I was beginning to get annoyed with it. ATM all I need in a desktop environment is access to basic applications, while it's nice to have a giant karamba system monitor, there's no real point to it.

As for KDE 4.1 being stable, we must really have different definitions of stable, mine being "it doesn't crash on a routine basis because of a standard mundane task the user attempts"

[S-99]

Now you have made an intelligent decision in switching to gnome. Yes exaile is very good, it really is a gtk equivalent of amarok. Some things about gnome suck, like that the devs keep removing some stuff that you used to be able to tweak (gnome devs hold the hands of the user too much), and then some necessary apps in gnome suck (why the hell would i want to use brasero or gnomebaker when i need the extra features they don't offer yet unlike in k3b...burning apps in gnome, it's odd to find that they're still so young). Why would i want to use pidgin since it doesn't support webcam when kopete does. In essence i found i use kde apps mostly and like them too much, the next thing is that kde offers the level of tweaking that i desire via gui and not modifying text files. Aside from all this stuff, gnome is very cool, but i can't keep with it for more than a week.

As for karamba, i have no use for desktop widgets. In kde 4 it's got similarities to the vista desktop, like built in widget support. But, it implements a **** load of new things, including slightly changed usability. Something like the fact that there is no desktop icons in kde 4 at all. Idk what they mean yet, i haven't used any of kde4 yet at all myself. Kde4 has taken a very long time because it really is more than just about the desktop environment. It's about the new version of qt which is qt4, and qt4 is the magic bullet. Of course when qt4 came out all of kde apps are going to move to it, but qt4 was the magic bullet i said. Qt4 has different licensing, licensing it for more than just linux, but also win and osx. That's right, while a new desktop environment is being designed, a whole bunch of the developers that go into kde4 can finally port their apps to different platforms. In the future this means nice thins like k3b in win and osx (no more cracking the nero trial). Qt4 also heralds in a new speed offering, qt4 is faster than qt3. Also, the move over to qt4 has sparked some big changes in the kde desktop environment. Stuff like cleaner code, and code cleanup (konqueror functioning as a web browser rather than a file manager is an example of necessary code cleanup, i have high hopes for konqueror 4 and the new khtml engine finally being able to replace firefox 3 for me, konqueror really is a good browser, but khtml sucks ass in kde 3).

Kde4 is a big undertaking for the kde devs.
Cleaner code
Faster underlying architecture
Better working programs
What looks to be an awesome DE in development that will change the way linux users use linux
Porting to different platforms

Gnome doesn't need to do any of this stuff really, except for maybe clean code, all devs should do that. Gtk has a license that lets devs port their programs to osx and win. Several gnome apps have been ported to other platforms for years. Stuff like porting apps...this is the first time kde can do so, which means devs are working especially harder at making apps for different platforms as well. Stuff in action for example is amarok 2.0 for windows. You can download alpha and beta releases of amarok 2.0 that will run in windows, there is most definitely a port to osx as well. K3b is also working slowly on a port to windows, many other apps are doing this as well.

It's quite an exciting change for kde and humongous nonetheless