Kubuntu why?

[Ed Cogburn]

Cybe R. Wizard wrote:

> On Mon, 13 Jun 2005 17:55:20 +1000
> Serg Belokamen <serg.belokamen at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Since KDE does have an enormous application base, but then again
>> GNOME has some kickass apps as well, why not have both of them I say
>> :)
>> 
>>    Serg
> 
> But use IceWM to keep the bloat (of both Gnome and KDE) off your
> desktop. At least that's what I do.


Whether its bloat or not depends on whether you are using apps that can take
advantage of those extra features in GNOME/KDE which are what distinguish
those 2 Desktop Environments from a simple window manager like IceWM.  They
are doing a lot more than just managing X windows.  I understand your
feelings on this because for a long time I didn't use any GNOME/KDE
specific app that actually used that extra "bloat", so I just used XFCE. 
Then I discovered things like Kdevelop, Konqueror as a web browser,
Krusader, K3B, and biggest of all was KDE's io-slave subsystem that lets me
refer to an audio cd as "audiocd:/" in any KDE-aware file manager and end
up seeing my audio cd as a virtual filesystem with *.ogg files so I can
just use drag and drop to move stuff off the cd to my hard drive.  Suddenly
my perspective changed:  when you find those features actually useful, they
are no longer "bloat".  :)  Then I had an epiphany:  when people use the
term "bloat", it isn't a physical thing, its just an abstraction for how
much usefulness they feel they are getting out of the software, but since
this is one of those things that is very much in the eyes of the beholder,
the term effectively means different things to different people, so I
stopped using it altogether.  That word is really no more useful than your
typical GNOME/KDE flamefest on the net.