Gnome or KDE?

[Andy]

On 4/18/05, Drewcore <drewsph at gmail.com> wrote:
> granted, gnome and kde both look nice...
> 
> but i'm an xfce user... it's way faster on my machine, i haven't had
> problems getting both gnome and kde apps going... it just works for
> me...
> 
> but everyone has their own taste.
> 
> drew
> 
> On 4/18/05, Laurie Savage <sav at pvgsc.vic.edu.au> wrote:
> > On Mon, 2005-04-18 at 12:37 -0700, Karl wrote:
> > > I've used them both, find them both excellent products, but personally
> > > prefer Gnome over KDE.
> > >
> > > Can we all at least agree that vi is better than emacs?
> > >
> > Well, it all depends ... !
> >
> > Laurie
> >


I've certainly used both KDE and GNOME.  Here are what I see as the
differences.  KDE has a beautiful structure.  Programs are very well
integrated with each other thanks to DCOP.  Konqueror is the swiss
army knife of the computing world.  It can not only browse your web
and hard-drive, it can do SQL searches, read man pages, and I think it
mixes drinks too.  It takes a while to leanr how to really use Konqui,
and it is definitely one of the shiny feathers in KDE's hat.  However,
I still believe QT is KDE's achilles heel.  You can use QT as open
source ONLY if you are righting a GPL'd program, because QT is
publised under the GPL.  In contrast GTK, which is the toolset GNOME
is built off of is licenses under the LGPL/some BSD (I think). 
Anywho, you can write a non-opensource program on top of GTK, and NOT
have to pay royalties on it.

Thus, GTK and thereby Gnome/XFCE seem to be where the corporate
interest is greatest.  For example, the Real Player 10, the new Adobe
Acrobat, etc are all proprietary but free, and use GTK2 as their
widget set, not QT.    This is part of the reason why "corporate"
dekstops usually ship with GNOME as the default desktop....it's
friendly to the IT department at the possible new site....this is an
opinion, not a fact.  Even if it's not the #1 reason, I know it weighs
in.

In years past Gnome wasn't well integrated but with 2.8/2.10 they seem
to have spent a lot of time getting more of that integration, because
right now it feels great on Ubuntu.

I've never had much problem with either Nautilus or Konqui being
unstable...although I do think you should tend to avoid .0 KDE
releases, since I have had a hard time before with them.

KDE's eyecandy is fun for about 15 minutes, and then you start to
appreciate GNOME's simplicity.

There are more themse colors, icons etc. for KDE...in part because it
is handled more intelligently in KDE....chaning the icon theme in
GNOME is such a joke because soooooo many things don't change.

These are a few of my thoughts....

-- 
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Andy Choens
Teen Leadership Program Director
Ramapo For Children
Office: 845 - 876 - 8403
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