[SC.LUG] Choosing a distro - KDE or Gnome

[John Southern]

On Thursday 13 October 2005 15:18, Dave Briggs wrote:
> which hopefully won't spark too many flame wars
> between various factions!

Vi! Emacs is a full OS just for bloated editing of text.

> I haven't yet decided on a distro, but before I do I have some questions
> about desktops.
>
> Most distros seem to be connected to one of the main desktops (ie KDE or
> Gnome) in some way, though obviously making both available. Before I get to
> thinking about which of the two is the best to go for, what difference does
> it really make? If I decided to go for Gnome, would it ruin my linux life
> to use a distro that prefers KDE?

No, and there are many window managers. The main difference is going to be in the libraries that are required for particular applications. Running KWord on a Gnome setup will require some of the KDE libraries to also be loaded and vice versa for any Gnome application under KDE.
This is not really a problem unless you have a slow or limited memory machine.

> Also, where applications are focussed towards one desktop or another - does
> it really matter if you use them under a different one, other than it
> possibly not being as aesthetically pleasing, possibly?

The only one I have every found annoying is GnomeMeeting which works perfectly under KDE, but on one of my systems seems to leave a zombie process hanging whenever I close it down.

> And lastly, which is best out of KDE and Gnome?! [ducks]

<Flame proof suit>
KDE is very slick and lots of nice tools such as Konqueror and K3b. Gnome appears to be a little behind, but does seem better thought out in its functionality such as GnomeMeeting and Gnumerics.
My children have three similar machines next to each other and each has a different window manager. They do not seem to notice any difference and happily switch between them.
In saying that, I don't think any window manager is perfect and it is probably down to the applications you want to use.
Eye-Candy wise I think KDE has the edge at the moment with projects such as SuperKaramba (Anyone know of a Gnome version?) but it is really down to how much you want to customise.
I was shocked at watching Richard Smedley run Window Maker on an old box with limited resources, but then have a Xfish background because he thought it less boring. His choice, his setup. Everyone will be different. I just like the console, although I have been taken with DamnSmallLinux and transparent Xterms recently.

Just about everything runs with everything, but if you want some particular cutting edge piece of eye-candy, then you may need to consider a distro with that latest window manager as default.
Most distros should let you switch amongst window managers. 
<Extra flame proof pants>For distros I would look at something such as a Debian based one - Ubuntu or Kubuntu because this has apt-get rather than rpm. But again this is not a hard rule as Debian based distributions should be able to use Alien to install rpm packages and rpm based distributions should be able to use Apt4rpm. <pulls tongues at Slackware and Gentoo users></Extra flame proof pants>

For fun I run :-
Suse - was easy to set up the firewall
Fedora - I know one of the maintainers
Ubuntu - Wanted to see the installer and it sort of stayed
Kubuntu - As above and probably used on the family main machine
Debian - Hurrah the one true....Sorry wrong script...Used it since forever.
Damn Small / Puppy / Feather Great for USB booting
Knoppix - Ideal for testing a box to check hardware
Mandriva - Kids like the install and has good printer support
YellowDog - PPC version
Dyne:Bolic - Amazing multimedia and a neat way of building a distro rather than the usual Knoppix copies
IPCop - firewall
Smoothwall - Old firewall that just keeps on going
FreeBSD - Honest I thought it was a Linux...
Mandrake Games Edition - It came with a Sims game that still works.
Caldera - Anyone else remember the Lizard networking tool?
Beyond that I have a couple of boxes that run a sort of home-brew distro that is really me just playing about with the Linux from scratch documentation.

Vector - Was a good idea at the time... but then again so was BearOS / Phlak / Auditor / BlackCat and Vine - Where I found namura search.

What I want to try is Mephis and Arch (the last has a mirror site at Parrs Wood School in Didsbury).
I must also get around to making a new Xwoaf / Xdenu floppy system
</Flame proof suit>l

Just remember Vi is the true way...

John