X/Unix Question

[sraun]

KDE, GNOME, or something else? How do I decide?

I know just enough about X to know that I can use any of a lot of Window Managers. I have never taken the time to get to know any of them - mostly because until recently, I haven't had a system that I could get X working on (mrfl, mrfl proprietary video drivers). Yes, there were theoretically ways to get it working - but it was a low priority. I had no real reason to get X working on my server, and never had a workstation to play with.

I've recently come up with a machine that I can get X working on - I had Linspire working on it, it sounds like Ubuntu has a good probability of installing pretty painlessly. As I understand it, the default Ubuntu is GNOME, KUbuntu is KDE.

I'm very used to the current default Windows behavior. I was a moderately competent Mac user many years ago. I'd be using a two-button mouse. The other think I'd like is a tutorial - I'd be fine with something very basic that I could work through quickly, but I need something to tell me what habits I need to unlearn.

Comments

[jiawen]

It's not too inaccurate to say that KDE acts like Windows and Gnome acts like Mac. KDE has millions and millions of little tweaks that you can make, allowing you to customize your interface to a very high degree. Gnome has more of an "it just works" attitude, with less customization possible.

In my experience, for all of KDE's tweaks, it's often impossible to change the thing you actually want to change. And themes require actual installation (at least in versions I've used), rather than just drag-and-drop, and tweaking themes is quite difficult. In Gnome, it's fairly easy to go into a theme and edit whatever you want to change and then drag-and-drop the tweaked theme in. But KDE has a better menu editing app, and some people like that level of tweakability.

I've actually been using Xfce (Xubuntu) for a while, though, because my Gnome panels got screwed up somehow and were getting slow anyway. Xfce is much quicker, and has some nice additions that I like (a better basic file browsing menu, a way to edit system menus that actually works, better default right-click choices, better way of dealing with drawers).

If you want maximum niftiness, check out Beryl, Emerald, Compiz, etc. There are lots of videos of them in action on YouTube. I recently tried experimenting with Beryl+Emerald again, but it slowed my computer down too much.

[brashley46.livejournal.com]

I'd second jiawen on this. I use KDE 'cause it's the default manager in XandrOS, and because it is more mature than Gnome ... but XandrOS's version of KDE will run almost all Gnome apps, so it's all good.

If you want a leaner, faster manager you can go to iceworm or xfce; they run particularly well on old slow machines, or so I'm told. jiawen's other suggestions are good for much faster processors with larger memories.

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

I don't think there's that much to choose between them, myself. However, I'm on Kubuntu, because there are a couple of applications that are KDE-specific (although you can install the KDE libaries with Gnome, it doesn't quite work so nicely) - Ktorrent (a bittorrent client like utorrent) and Amarok, which is a very nice music player (although there is a Gnome port of it called "Exhaile").

I don't know about the equivalence of "gnome/mac", "kde/windows" - as a Windows user, I was quite happy with Gnome, and as far as I can tell, the actual drag-and-drop behaviour and mouse commands are pretty similar. It is fairly intuitive to use, although finding where some of the system stuff is hidden can be a bit confusing, and where pluggable media ends up. For the record, it's all mounted under /media these days.

One other thing - Ubuntu is good to install (it works fine with my Toshiba laptop), but some people have had problems with the current release, "Feisty Fawn". It has seemed a bit more buggy than the others. Try running the Live CD first (you get a Live CD if you order the disks online), and if all seems well, proceed with the install. If something seems not quite right, you might want to wait till the next release, "Gutsy Gibbon", which appears more stable for more people in beta (the final release is due mid-October).