I switched from Windows to Ubuntu a couple years ago. At the time I decided I prefered Gnome over KDE. And I have looked at KDE a few more times and always decided to stick to Gnome.

However, the following facts have made me decide that I am now going to switch to KDE as soon as it is convenient.

Is anyone else thinking about switching to KDE on their desktop or laptop for any of these reasons?

1. Nokia buys Trolltech (Qt), pledges to support KDE, GPL

2. Nokia announced that Qt will be available under the LGPL version 2.1 license from the release of Qt 4.5.

3. Mono is a dependency for Gnome apps (e.g., Tomboy).

4. Gnome creator Miguel de Icaza joins the board of Microsoft's new Codeplex Foundation. (Related http://www.itwire.com/content/view/27785/1090/)

5. Nokia releases N900 running Maemo 5, and clarifies roadmap for future devices and Maemo.

6. Nokia officially ports Qt to Maemo 5.

7. In Harmatten (Maemo 6), QT will be the primary development environment.

8. KDE 4.3 is looking good!

Everything is pointing toward KDE on my desktop!
(BTW, I'm not a developer. I'm just a user who values freedom.)

I've tried KDE several times, could just never get use to it (and for some reason problems like Firefox integration). Though KDE is steadily improving and Gnome is just.. out of whack for some reason. So I might give KDE another try in the next Ubuntu release.

The only thing that could make me move to KDE would be the PC-BSD

PS: item 4 is just flamebait or it's just me?

www.sadviolin.com

(i'd like to have a f1 engine in my mazda 2, shame that mazda doesn't enable that out of the box. i value freedom too)

I have tried KDE several times but never could stand working with it for more than a couple of minutes. It's simply not my taste. I still prefer GNOME.

I tried KDE 0.x 1.x 3.x frankly I was never impressed. I don't run GNOME as well. I like GTK+ based apps though(plain GTK NO GNOME[and I love the GTK file open/save dialogs]). As for tomboy and such... try gnote or what's that C++ alternative

What would be nice is to have an UI middlelayer that everyone could use and then basically have that interlink with the final toolkit so that users would be free to pick and choose what they want and still have all the apps available to them. Of course this would most likely require some sort of coordination from all camps.

I love KDE, the configurability, especially kicker.

This is "official" KDE hackers reaction on free N900.

http://dot.kde.org/2009/10/12/free-n900

Very positive of course

Info about some KDE/Qt software running on N900, future plans and
video of Plasma widgets running on N900.

Those of you thinking of trying KDE, please use a distro that is really into KDE. Canonical puts a lot more resources and interest in Ubuntu, which explains why Kubuntu has never really shone. I personally would recommend Mandriva or Fedora, although PCLinuxOS is doing really well in its KDE 4.x test release.

As for feeling comfortable with KDE 4, maybe this will help:

http://temporaryland.wordpress.com/2...ties-tutorial/

Enjoy.

I am Open Suse user, and startedout with KDE. but 4.X has been a bit buggy till now. With Open Suse 11.2 I will probably switch back.

Mind you I have not found Gnome a problem as I have been able to run my fav apps like Kaffeine and Amarok just fine.

Mike C