[Gllug] Which Linux Desktop to go for?

[George Wright]

On Thursday 11 November 2004 12:23, Vic Lilley wrote:
> Mandrake, IBM and Debian. I tried ringing all of them and the
> only one I
> could through to was Sun. I had browser problems with the Red
> Hats web site
> and I couldn't find a phone number on Mandrake.

Don't forget SuSE/Novell. SuSE is based on KDE and is a very nice distribution 
imho. It also has gnome if that's your thing (boo, hiss). SuSE 9.1 Pro is on 
the cover DVD for the current issue of Linux Mag.

Debian is quite good if you want superior package management (dpkg and apt-get 
are brilliant), and Mandrake is excellent for newcomers.

I don't think IBM make a Linux distribution.

> It seems to me that Linux was basically a server operating system
> and lacked a desktop like Windows. Now there are a number of
> competing contenders with a proprietary desktop operating system
> grafted on to Linux. So all other things being equal it seems
> better to go for the most open options, which seems to rule out
> Sun with its supposed very non-typical operation.

I personally prefer KDE. From a developer's standpoint, the API is very clean 
and simple, and from a user's standpoint the interface is completely 
flexible. Almost everything can be customised and made to look any way you 
want it. Because of this, KDE can look like Windows, Mac OS X, Mac OS Classic 
etc. The applications all follow strict guidelines so that all apps feel the 
same. The only issues that I've found are that some of the apps are a bit too 
overcomplicated (the KDE Control Center springs to mind).

-- 
George Wright, http://www.gwright.org.uk
KDE Developer - http://www.kde.org
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