I’m just curious and I wanted to know what the KDE and GNOME stood for ??
KDE means K Desktop Environment - the K may have once meant ‘kool’, then quickly stopped meaning anything it seems.
KDE - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gnome apparently used to stand for GNU Network Object Model Environment, but doesn’t stand for anything any more.
GNOME - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
It’s wikipedia… But I have no particular reason to doubt any of that.
KDE = K Desktop Environment. The ‘K’ doesn’t mean anything, it’s just meant to make the name sound kool. 
GNOME, as Confuseling said, used to stand for GNU Network Object Model Environment, but since that name now does not reflect the aim of the project anymore, people sometimes call it Gnome instead of GNOME.
Both are ‘desktop environments’ (DEs). They provide the graphical interface for your operating system and some programs, for example KMail and Konsole in KDE and Cheese and Gedit in Gnome. You can choose the DE you like to run with your Linux distribution (like openSUSE, Ubuntu, Fedora etc.) They can also be installed together on the same machine and you can choose which one to use while booting.
Or, of course, you can install neither, should you be building a headless server, or a box you only intend to run from the command line or through a standalone window manager.
Some of the window managers are great for squeezing extra power out of a system. I like to have a DE there as well, but they’re never strictly necessary, even on a normal desktop machine.
Actually, KDE has decided to make some changes regarding this.
“The expanded term ‘K Desktop Environment’ has become ambiguous and obsolete, probably even misleading,” the team writes, “Settling on ‘KDE’ as a self-contained term makes it clear that we have made the shift from a limited set of software components to a community providing an ecosystem of free software applications and platforms for the end user on the desktop, mobile devices, and more.”
Several components of the actual desktop environment will be renamed too:
* The KDE Workspaces will be separately referred to as "KDE Plasma Desktop" and "KDE Plasma Netbook"
* The KDE technologies used for building applications will be referred to as the "KDE Platform"
* The KDE Applications will stay as they are: "the KDE Applications"
* The product we currently have released as "KDE 4.3" is essentially a compilation of our software (Workspaces, Applications and Platform), and thus the next release will be named "KDE Software Compilation 4.4"Xande wrote:
> I’m just curious and I wanted to know what the KDE and GNOME stood for
some say Gnome is more like the Mac and KDE is more like Windows…i
don’t know, i’ve never used a Mac and use Windows only at net cafes
and borrowed computers while traveling, and can tell you that it is a
FACT that KDE is better than any Windows i ever tried.
–
palladium
Hi,
Many others have told you what the names KDE and GNOME stand for.
Regarding the title of this thread ‘What’s the difference between KDE [and] GNOME ?’, I would advise you to try them both using live-CD’s, using them to try to accomplish the tasks you normally use your computer for is the best way to get to know them.
I could run off a list of KDE programs and GNOME programs, but the real differences are easiest to see from using them.
The openSUSE 11.2 KDE and GNOME implementations are both outstanding, so give them a go.
Also you might like to try the many other Desktop Environments that are available (e.g. Xfce, LXDE, etc).
Xfce is known for it’s speed, KDE and GNOME both have a lot of great desktop effects.
Regards,
Barry.
Some people go as far as to say that Gnome looks like a cross between Windows 95 and Mac OS. Not really true now, at least not in Gnome running on openSUSE 11.2 or Linux Mint, or any other distro that makes some customization to the DE.
And yes, KDE running on a distro like openSUSE is hardly comparable with a Windows 7 desktop; Win7 would lose by a few thousand points I suppose, it’s GUI and functions are so lacking in features. Sometimes I wonder how the KDE and Suse developers (and the devs of other distros and DEs) can even bear to give away their wonderful creations all for free.
Then again, I suppose they make money by selling support and things like that, like Canonical does.