KDE (or) GNOME?

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Which is better of the two KDE (or) GNOME?

I really require the answer purely out of your experience and I appreciate if you could back-up your answer with a short explanation.

Thanks a lot!!!

2

Desktop choice is a very personal. It is like what is the best editor.

You can install both and find out which you like the best. :wink:

3

Cool… Nice reply… I’ll anyways check it out but I wanted to find out the user’s experience on this one… I am pretty new to the Linux side and thought of finding out your experience…

Anyways thanks a lot for your reply…

4

This is in part a moderator pre-emptive request to our forum members … PLEASE be civil in your replies. I know the issue of Gnome vs KDE ( vs xfce vs LXDE vs Enlightenment … etc ) is very emotional , and I know this has been discussed to death a thousand times, but PLEASE do not slander the question, nor slander the desktops you do not choose.

Many new users like sekhorr have this question, so please keep your answers civil !!

Now for my personal views:

sekhorr IMHO they both are good. There is a different underlying philsophy in each, although I am not certain if I can express it well.

IMHO Gnome tries to keep things logically simple (and possibly has less options as it tries not to confuse the users). IMHO KDE tries to offer way more capability to configure, but some (typically Gnome) users claim this can be very confusing.

Add to that the fact that KDE is experiencing a MAJOR update from KDE3 to KDE4. This is especially upseting to many fans of the old KDE3, as pretty much every Linux distribution is dropping support for KDE3. KDE3 and KDE4 are not equivalent but rather while there is tremendous overlap in functionality, there are things that KDE3 does that KDE4 still does not do as well (as the KDE3 users like) and there are also things that KDE4 does now (that KDE3 never did or never did do well). Hence some KDE3 users now prefer Gnome over KDE4. And some users prefer KDE4 over KDE3 and Gnome. And some users simply prefer Gnome ! :slight_smile:

gogalthorp’s statement that the selection is personal is really a polite understatement. :slight_smile:

5

Personally, I like KDE. But my decision is just that… a personal one.

Like oldcpu says, arguments for the two can make politicians blush.

6

“Use whatever you like the most ™” :wink:

7

On Mon, 2010-01-11 at 16:16 +0000, sekhorr wrote:
> Which is better of the two KDE (or) GNOME?
>
> I really require the answer purely out of your experience and I
> appreciate if you could back-up your answer with a short explanation.

I think this is a decision best worked out individually. Try them
both and find out which one works best for you. That’s my best
advice.

KDE4 is immature at this point… I’d like to point that out so
that you won’t get too discouraged if it blows up or doesn’t
seem to work right out of the box for you. It will get better.

Gnome is fairly mature right now…

8

Try them all, KDE4, KDE3, Gnome, use what you like, when you like. In general the DE’s can run eachothers programs.

9

OpenSUSE’s favored default is KDE, so if you are nervous about getting support for openSUSE you may want to use KDE (if all else is equal).

If are experienced in one or the other, or have friends experience in one or the other then you may want to go with whatever they are using until you get comfortable enough to try out the other.

Great thing is most KDE apps work in Gnome, and most Gnome apps work in KDE.

Personally I think I am a Gnome guy, but I have been fooling around with KDE lately.

I prefer Gnome’s simplicity in some cases, and the breadth of applications built for it. I like some of the tweaks that KDE has made giving it more of a polished, professional (consumer) feel.

10

It’s not immature. 4.0 was immature, and 4.1 was still a bit immature as well. 4.2 was already nice, and the current 4.3.4 is very solid. The upcoming 4.4 (final coming at beginning on February) will even improve on that.

By comparison, Gnome suffers from looking quite shabby and clunky, and the usability is often rather poor and leaves a lot to be desired.

Try it for yourself, and you’ll see what I mean.

11

Eh? you first trying to present a “try out & decide for yourself” view but then pointing out, based on your own experience which may not be the same as someone else’s, that KDE4 is immature… KDE4 has been working out of the box for many many people and a lot of them are happy but then again others aren’t. So don’t bring bias into your arguments because you think/found KDE4 immature while others disagree with that and then you present your founding as a global fact and tell others if it’s mature or not

12

They will all work - Gnome, KDE, xfce, etc.

I’m sticking with Gnome for now -
* KDE4 has gotten too many KDE ppl upset
* many ppl on forums seem to agree that Gnome looks (historically KDE was supposed to “look” better) have improved to the equivalent of KDE (Gnome now has Compiz)
* I have a hard time getting over the (to me) too cutesy naming convention (k this, k that, k everything) (silly, but . .)
* choosing between the two is not as important as 5 or 10 years ago, since hard drive space is no longer at a premium (couldn’t run both, or parts of both because drive space cost $$)
* “light” desktops (xfce, window maker, etc.) require more manual configuration (translate edit text files to configure) (ot from orig Q, but hey, still there, eh?)
* I started out with Gnome, because I started this adventure with Fedora and Gnome came by default. I don’t need a new learning curve right now.

On the KDE side- they do have some things that work “better”. One of those is Konqueror as a file manager. I have found nothing on the Gnome side that is as good a file manager. On the other hand, Konqueror is also a browser, by KDE design, so when I use it on Gnome (which you can do), it carries significant supporting real estate with it, and more than I need. <sigh> If you don’t need a dual pane file manager with a nav pane included, AND directory compare, AND CLI functionality from the file manager, then that example isn’t a worry.

13

I started using Linux with openSUSE 11.1 KDE 4.1 and tried Ubuntu Gnome at the same time.

I ended up choosing openSUSE/KDE because it just looked and felt nicer than Gnome.

Gnome can be made to look nice but KDE looks great out of the box.

I knew I made the right decision when I found out how easy KDE was to customize/configure.

14

sekhorr, note also that while KDE and Gnome are by far the most popular, there are also other selections, for older PCs, where some of these other selections, while having significantly less features/flexibility, also can run much better on older PC platforms, such as

And as I noted previous, this Gnome vs KDE is a very emotional question . Some users have a “bee in their bonnet” and will badmouth the other desktop just because the bee bothers them. I would take comments such as immaturity (in this thread) or comments about ugly sound implementation (in other threads) or comments about an old desktop never useful for corporate prime time because it can’t support corporate external presentations (in another thread), with tons of salt.

i.e. Don’t believe a word of it until you confirm it yourself !!!

You MUST try this out for your self and come to your own conclusion. Any opinions to the contrary IMHO are typically biased or frustraed users grinding their axe, whether that axe is to put down one desktop, or to refute another users view point.

You need to try the desktop out for your self, and given liveCDs are available for KDE3 (for openSUSE-11.1), KDE4 (for openSUSE-11.2), Gnome (for openSUSE-11.1 and 11.2) , LXDE (for openSUSE-11.1) and Enlightenment (for openSUSE-11.2) you have a lot of choices.

I assume you know with a LiveCD you can try out the desktop without installing.

15

@spokesinger

KDE4 has dropped a lot of the K naming, only a few remain. There’s now Strigi (no K in its name) Okular (a k, but isn’t at the beginning), Dolphin, Phonon, Nepomuk, etc. Moslty 3rd party apps tend to use the K very often

And don’t blame KDE for having a k in its apps while GNOME does the same (GSmartControl, Gnumeric, etc)

16

I`m novice too & tried both,decided stay in KDE,because,as for me,its most nicely and comfortable than gnome,but gnome is much simple to customize I guess.:wink:

17

Don’t forget for KDE

  • Amarok
  • DigiKam
  • Quanta Plus

And Gnome has

  • gThumbs

Then there is Apple;

  • iMac
  • iSight
  • iLife
  • iWork
  • iPod
  • iPhone
  • iMovie
  • iPhoto
  • iTunes
  • i-yi-yi-yi-i

rotfl!

18

2 of those are not part of the KDE core package and are external projects, and those are Amarok & Quanta… dunno if DigiKam is part of KDE core

And Gnome has

  • gThumbs

A few more probably, but since I don’t use many GNOME/GTK apps, I can’t tell you which

Then there is Apple;

  • iMac
  • iSight
  • iLife
  • iWork
  • iPod
  • iPhone
  • iMovie
  • iPhoto
  • iTunes
  • i-yi-yi-yi-i

rotfl!

Apple doesn’t count and is excluded since they’re so fashionable and so “cool”… What a bollocks rotfl!

19

Newcomers migrating from Windows may find that KDE gives more of a Windows “feel,” if only visually. Of course, both KDE & Gnome can be configured to look and feel like anything you want them to, but out of the box, KDE may be more familiar to them.

20

That can be both good and bad.

Good, in that it is less intimidating and more comforting.

Bad, in that they loose the reality that they are in a system different from Windows (and thus operates different). For a moment they may try something that works in Windows with unhappy results and while they can logically think “this isn’t Windows, I can’t expect it to work as such”, that emotional strike against Linux sits there, waiting to be validated again (and again).

With Gnome, though, it is harder to “forget” you are not in Windows.