KDE vs Gnome

Dumb and basic, but I didn't see it asked here! Normally flavors are a dumb question because each distro serves a different purpose, but UI's ... well they serve a pretty basic purpose and there aren't many flavors.

What do you use/prefer? I can't decide on gnome's simplicity or kde's customization.

 

I request this thread to be closed. It is intended to be "dumb and basic" and will inevitably turn into a political or religious flaming thread.

 

I don't see why it should

Anyway to answer the OP's question, for me it depends on the distro. Kubuntu looks awesome and as nice looking as Windows 7 but I don't like KDE with Mint. Those are my two favorite atm.

I just installed Kubuntu 11.04 and i'm waiting for Mint 11 final.

 

This is a bad poll, because there are people who would choose NEITHER. I myself prefer XFCE.

 

I voted. But to each their own, yet I still suspect this will turn into a hate thread...dunno why I just get that historical feeling.

 

I also think this poll should be expanded to include other desktop environments. I think it'd be incredibly helpful for many to have a discussion on the perceived strengths and weaknesses in the various desktop environments in linux (and not have it degenerate into bickering).

That said, I myself personally (slightly) prefer KDE over gnome mostly for aesthetic reasons and the easy to use widgets, but im equally comfortable using both. I've never felt like I'm at a huge disadvantage when running one rather than the other. I have LM 11 RC, LM 10 KDE, and Kubuntu 11.04 installed installed on two of my computers, and I am quite happy with all of them. And I LOVE being able to have the choice to use what works best for me, or what fits a particular mood.

It'll be interesting to see how these desktop environments continue to evolve into the future.

 

^^^ This

I also like the Menu UI layout too.

 

where's LXDE?

 

1. kde
2. xfce

For now, anyway.

 

I must admit Im a gnome fan, but I have been curious of KDE for the widgets and very feature rich UI. One day Ill get off my butt and try KDE.

 

at the moment KDE for me

 

This can of worm shall remain unopened.

 

I'd say plain Openbox or LXDE. Lightweight is so nice. <3

Actually... in retrospect I'm kinda obsessed with lightweight applications... not quite sure why.

 

Gnome used to be fairly good but now I think it has just regressed.
It now resembles a giant smartphone and it take more steps to do the same thing and that is a regression.
KDE now has superior workflow IMO.
Now before anyone accuse me of flaming, Gnome 3 now requires you to press the Windows Key before all shortcuts are available.
And oh the Shortcut bar is found on the side of your WIDE Screen so it takes even longer for the cursor to reach there with no ability to customize its position.

 

Thank God squeeze is on 2.30.2 and I can get 11.04 to run 2.32.1. Makes me feel at home a bit.

Edit: But Im also downloading KDE as we speak to test it out.

Edit 2: WoW that was a watse of time.

 

Butter side up!

Starting to look into xfce, y'see... cos gnome 3 ain't what it used to be.

 

IMHO gnome 3 and KDE 4 are both painful.

xfce looks like a cross between kde and gnome. Might have to check it out.

 

Which Part of KDE looks painful? It is KDE 4.6 that I am using.
I am not sure if other distributions with KDE is doing it justice but openSUSE is certainly doing KDE a lot of justice.
Seriously the longer I use KDE the more I am convinced Microsoft borrowed their ideas into Windows 7.
It is so good I don't feel like booting into Windows anymore.

 

Is openSUSE noob friendly like Mint and Kubuntu? I may give it a try. Also what sets openSUSE apart from other distros?

 

Yast and Zypper.
But IMO it is good because it is updated but stable.
I had enough of Fedora breakage because they like to fix stuff that ain't broken. It is good to be cutting edge but it sucks for daily use.
Yast lets you modify the system without editing config files but I still like to edit config files.
It is possible to configure an openSUSE system without firing up a single terminal.

 

Thanks weinter, i'm checking it out now. I downloaded the torrent last night. I went to the website and Novell is behind the project so that was encouraging and like you said it looks snazzy.

I also like that you can choose on installation between KDE and Gnome.

edit:Installed, up and running. So far so good and looks really stable so far. The only negative is how long it takes to check for updates. Going on 15 minutes now. But no error messages or stuff unexpectedly shutting down like in Kubuntu. Crap the Kubuntu web browser would crash several times.

 

Zypper is slow at first because it doesn't have the rpms downloaded.
Once the rpm is downloaded it is cached
Any updates is done via delta rpms and updates the cached rpm then installing it just like Fedora's Presto, making updates more bearable.

Get the Muzlocker fonts the default fonts is horrible but they can't include the improved fonts because of patent issues so get it from a trusted external repo.

Did you download the DVD by any chance? Actually to install a new Generic Desktop System a Live CD is good enough.

 

Thanks, I like it so far. Haven't figured out how to partition for a Swap file. I find the partitioning is much easier with the Canonical stuff. But the trade off is the stability I guess.

openSUSE looks just like Kubuntu, it also boots faster to me versus Kubuntu. The other thing I notice is that by default Kubuntu and Mint adds more 3rd party stuff to the initial installation versus SUSE.

I think openSUSE looks like a keeper for me if it's as stable as you say it is.

Yup DVD 32bit version 4.2 GB

 

Is this how one creates a swap file in openSUSE? How To create and use swap file (Adding Swap Space) | Linux Poison

 

During partitioning you setup the swap file.
You need to specify a / partition and a swap partition.
If you want to separate any partition like /home from your / simply create and mount a separate partition for that.
You do it at partition so fstab will include the entries automatically (more convenient)

 

Thanks i'll give it a try later on. I was able to create partition /. It then said no swap file was available. I couldn't figure out how to create one from the menu. Partitioning is a little different from what i'm used to but i'll keep trying. I want to dual boot openSUSE and Mint 11.

Will Mint 11 recognize the Swap File Partition I created in openSUSE? I'd like to use the swap file for both when I dual boot.

 

Maybe? I didn't try.
Anyway you are only allow 4 Primary partitions if you want more you have to convert to extended partition. You have to provide 1 partition to graft swap on it. Since swap doesn't need formatting I think you can "share" swap btw 2 Linux System.

 

Rodster, how is opensuse treating you? Did you get everything working?

I'm intrigued by opensuse, but the slightly higher learning curve has me thinking twice about installing it on my hard drive.

 

It's just like Kubuntu and like weinter said, it's stable. In Kubuntu you can count on 1 or 2 crashes after you change something. The UI is ala Kubuntu, very easy to navigate.

 

Weinter, I now know what I did wrong re: the swap file. In other distros i've been learning on, I always set the swap to logical. I took logical to mean extended in openSUSE, my mistake.

Also I realized that you should be connected to the Net because the initial setup makes a call out for a repo request. If you are not connected to the Net it generates an error and ask for the Repo media. If you have it on disc no problem but if you don't the installation aborts. For the Vets in this forum they already know that. For Noobs like me and others, I give you fair warning.

One thing I like about the initial boot process of openSUSE is you can actually see line by line as the drivers are loaded, i.e. touchpad, AHCI, chipset, etc., nice touch. It's like the good old DOS days.

@ Livestrong, openSUSE runs and looks like Kubuntu except by default it's a green theme whereas Kubuntu is blue. The interface is the same and 85-90% there's a crossover between the two. What I like so far is this OS runs quick and IS STABLE. I have yet to encounter an oops or what was that?

The only difference between the two is that Kubuntu tends to install more 3rd party apps i.e. Flash etc while connected to the Net. openSUSE on the other hand tends to be more streamlined so you add what you need, which isn't much by the way and is all available via the Repo.

 

You can see the same stuff loading in Ubuntu, you just need to get rid of quiet splash at the grub prompt, or edit your /etc/default/grub

Of course the boot scripts are different, so it's not going to be exactly the same.

 

Thanks didn't know that.

OK so I saw my Dell 1397 Wireless card load on boot but it's not active after installation.

 

What do you get from sudo iwconfig

 

I believe Dell uses Broadcom Wireless Adapter.
Some one had a similar issue and here is a possible solution.

 

Rodster, just wondering... what is your outlook on OpenSuse now that Novell has been acquired by Attachmate?

 

No opinion really. It appears Novell put itself out to be acquired by somebody and they were. It shouldn't affect openSUSE at all as Novell eventually became a sponsor to the project.

This is taken from a Wiki article: SUSE Linux distributions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The openSUSE Project

On August 4, 2005, Novell announced that the SUSE Professional series would become more open, with the launch of the openSUSE Project community. The software had always been open source, but openSUSE opened the development process, allowing developers and users to test and develop it. Previously all development work was done in-house by SUSE. Version 10.0 was the first version that offered public beta testing.

SUSE Linux 10.0 included both open source and proprietary applications and retail boxed-set editions. As part of the change, YaST Online Update server access became free for all SUSE Linux users, and also for the first time, the GNOME desktop was upgraded to equal status with the traditional KDE.

Attachmate takeover

On November 22, 2010, Novell announced that it had agreed to be acquired by Attachmate for $2.2 billion. Attachmate plans to operate Novell as two units, SUSE becoming a stand-alone business[13] and anticipates no change to the relationship between the SUSE business and the openSUSE project as a result of this transaction.[14] The acquisition has been completed on 27 April 2011.[15]

 

Thanks weinter that did the trick. I first tried what AYG requested and I got an unknown or invalid command. Now I need to get my updates. I don't know if the Wireless issue is related but it looks like the package cache and package lists are doing there thing much faster.

I'll post again if it works too.

 

I don't like the updating portion of openSUSE, very frustrating to say the least. I'm about to go back to Kubuntu LOL

Generating the package cache and lists and waiting for that has gotten old.

 

**facepalm.. uncheck autorefresh in the repo option.
Please do justice to the developers' intellect...
If you want to check for updates do:
sudo zypper lu
To install updates
sudo zypper up

 

Can't wait for Mint 11. I swear openSUSE doesn't like me.

OK, so I get past the generating cache and lists. I FINALLY get to the downloading screen. I see 168 updates. I check ALL and my next screen gives me two choices. It needs to install 7 packages and 108 updates.

I choose the 108 updates first, I wait "jeopardy theme". I get looped back to the 7 packages and 108 updates awaits you. I select 108 updates again, I wait then get looped back to the two choices again. This time I select I select 7 packages to install, nirvana it's downloading or so it seems because 30 minutes later nothings really happening. Occasionally I see the router LED starting to fast blink, then it stops. I wait "jeopardy theme" once more. After 30 minutes or so I gave up.

 

I hear ya. I got Opensuse working, but not without a ton of troubleshooting and a fair amount of time looking up commands. I still think its a great OS (its definitely stable, quick, and has a pretty gui), but I'm thinking that its not the right distro for my Latitude D630 (my workhorse machine).

 

I decided to try a different and final approach. I'm doing a reinstall and selected the Add-On option during the installation process and told it to go to the DVD. It went out and synchronized the Repo database and found both the Wireless and Ethernet cards.

I'll see if this did the trick.


Update: OK now we're getting somewhere. I see things are happening faster now and it's actually hitting the repo server. I don't know which did what. The two things I did differently this time was:

1) Select Add-On option during install (DVD)
2) Turned off the Firewall via YaST. I am very impressed with YaST.

Will update again if i'm able to download my updates via Software Manager. If not i'll try it weinter's way via the Terminal.

 

2nd update:

Well things didn't work via Software Manager. I mean it gave me a list of updates, it's done that in the past and it just sat there with the scroll bar pacing back and forth for 20-25 minutes.

So I tried it weinter's way and it took the command via terminal. Boy is it ever slow. Most of the files are downloading between 3.1-40k/s.

Maybe and hopefully it's the server getting hammered. On the flip side Kubuntu updates like a bat out of hell.

One other thing after a reboot the wireless card needs to be reset.

I really want to like openSUSE but it's not making any friends with me LOL. The one thing I do give it has in it's favor is, it doesn't crash and it's quirks are consistent throughout. I have yet to encounter a WTH moment.

 

Sometimes it takes a while because the server dispatching the update is slow. It should not matter which interface you use, but I prefer the ncurses interface myself..yast is really awesome.

Regarding the wireless card, which interface are you using to control it? Ifup or network manager? Network manager is easier for laptops/desktop wireless. Ifup can be made easy with wicd.

 

Just experimenting a little and performing your updates via the Terminal is definitely the way to go. Things are downloading wicked fast now. Thanks to all for being patient especially weinter, that command is da bomb.

I found a sweet looking green wallpaper and openSUSE looks awesome at the desktop.

 

zypper is somewhat apt-get and yum like. If you prefer a menu like interface, you can su and type yast in the terminal and you'll get the ncurses version of yast2. Try it and you'll see what I mean.

 

Very nice

I also got a kde1 crash message when shutting down. This also happened in Kubuntu and if IIRC after the updates.

 

Id have to say the whole UI. I dont hate it, just doesnt seem right for me. Still not 100% settled on it but as of right now kde just doesnt feel right. I love pre 3.0 gnome and Im REALLY looking forward to trying xfce. So with squeeze still using gnome pre 3.0 I have time to experiment.

 

I've been running xfce for a couple of days now on my lappy. It takes some getting used to, I'm still breaking it in but I like it so far. I would say it's definitely worth checking out.

 

Not so sure what happened there, I use GNOME/LXDE myself. OpenSUSE forum is very responsive, so help is always available.