[SC.LUG] GUIs

[Matthew Tolley]

Hi there,


Following on from my previous email, I am putting some thought to
experimenting with another GUI. 

I've been on Ubuntu 7.04 for a few months and have got used to Gnome,
but I also have some K-based applications like Konsole, Konqueror and
Amarok. 

I did play briefly with KDE many moons ago, but I read recently that
XFCE is faster than either Gnome or KDE.

I even tried a live distro of SymphonyOS with the Mezzo GUI and was
simply stunned but unfortunately it isn't stable enough yet. 

Narrowing down the options to Gnome, KDE and XFCE, then, I would have to
say that my main concerns would be Stability, Ease of use, Speed,
Compatability and Openness.

My questions would be:

1) 	Are all these GUIs equally 'open'? I read once that some people
consider KDE to be less 'open'. How accurate is that?
2) 	Are they all equally stable?
3) 	Is XFCE really the fastest of the three?
4) 	If I move to XFCE, does it restrict my software options in any way?
Or can I still use Gnome- and K- based applications?
5) 	Can I move between GUIs without doing an OS reinstall?

Looking forward to all thoughts on this,




Matthew