Re: Anyone else switching to KDE thanks to Nokia?
 

I am using KDE nowadays because
- Gnome is broken in my Linux installation
- Because I wanted a more interesting desktop for a change

However, there are many things that still work a lot better on Gnome than on KDE, at least that way in Ubuntu. For example:
- On Gnome when I connect my N900 to my computer, the Gnome immediately mounts it and it can be found from the places menu. Actually that worked before the Gnome got broken.
- On KDE it is thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking, hanging for moments, thinking, thinking, thinking, woosh a popup appears. This asks if I want to open Nokia N900 on Dolphin. If I don't want to open it on Dolphin, it does not mount it at all (and I can't even access it from command line).
- Network manager on KDE side is missing some vital functionality that is available on the Gnome side.
- There is slowness in many places in KDE that works quite fast on the Gnome.

Sometimes I have felt that I just fix the Gnome and give up again on KDE. I have not done that because I have some work stuff compiled on the machine and I don't want to break it since now it works (all the libs etc. I need are now working).

But there is one but:
- both Gnome and KDE don't have radical new things at the time of this writing, they both are quite old-fashioned desktop environments. For example both KDE and Gnome use the typical standard widgets (does not look that cool and does not have any cool behavior and they are not hardware accelerated) instead of graphics widgets (like Maemo 6 UI will use (ref. Tomas Junnonen's speech at Maemo Summit 2009) and there is nothing new invented to the desktop methaphor even if the KDE looks a slightly cooler than the Gnome these days (KDE 4.3). But then it is looking only slightly cooler, not with significant margin.
- So neither is "really cool" or "significantly better", and momentarily I have feelings that I really want to switch back to Gnome just because it works.

In my opinion, the future of desktop environments would be on the Gnome-side building on top of clutter and on the KDE side building on top of QGraphicsView. Neither environment is taken any significant steps to that direction as far as I know. I think there would be both demand and place for a yet another desktop environment which would innovate rather than just follow proprietary desktop environments and it would not even be so hard to implement. It could also be ready for touch screens (touch friendly by design, neither KDE or Gnome is), since I have a feeling that in the future most if not all computers will have touch screens as pointing devices, not only small handhelds.

So here is what you maybe should do:
- Install both KDE 4.3.x and Gnome. Try both and whatever suits you more, use that. Or use mixture of these two like I use - I use some Gnome programs still from the KDE like I used to use some KDE programs from Gnome before. Neither is silverbullet nor perfect and both are quite functional to quite large extent. Gnome is faster and more stable but KDE is seems to be slowly catching up (there is a huge improvement from 4.0 to 4.3.x in both speed and reliability). On Ubuntu it is easy to install both and then you can choose on each boot from login screen which desktop environment you like to use today. I use at the moment KDE, but there is still lots of work to be done on KDE before it will be really great.

Re: Anyone else switching to KDE thanks to Nokia?
 

I have been using KDE since, oh, about 2003. I was using Enlightenment as my primary desktop, however, when I converted my family over from Windows to Linux, KDE seemed the most functional and complete desktop. I used Gnome back around RedHat 6 times (~1999?), but always had problems with stability. Moving back from KDE to Gnome was always painful for me, in fact, I felt I lost a lot of configurability.

I ran kde3.5.10 until 4.1 came out, since 4.0 was all but unusable, then jumped into kde4 with both feet. I am currently running kde4.3 with compiz atop it. I know that kde has its own compositing engine, but last I checked, there were a couple of features that Compiz has that KDE doesn't, like the group and tab of windows. KDE may have gotten that, but to be honest, I don't see a reason to change until compiz becomes unmaintainable with KDE.

Absolutely! This is one of the biggest boons for Linux. The fact that Gnome apps will run on KDE and vice versa blurs the lines between them. I use several Gnome apps on my KDE, and they run fairly well. Evaluate your favorite tool for each type, e.g. RSS feed reader, web browser, office app, etc and they should all run reasonably well regardless of which desktop you use.

--vr

Re: Anyone else switching to KDE thanks to Nokia?
 

GNOME libraries have been LGPL from the start, including GTK.

You can remove that nonsense. There is a C(PP) port of Tomboy.

Oh yes, the creator, well back in that time de Icaza created GNOME, KDE was using a proprietary Qt. That was then. We're in 2009 not 1999.

I don't care about de Icaza's or Novell's current endeavor. As GNOME user I care about GNOME's endeavor. There is Linux source code written by a convicted murderer (Hans Reiser) too. What does that have to do with running a Linux kernel? Nothing. You haven't proven some kind of negative impact because of the relation between GNOME's creator and GNOME's current path.

True, and that is the only reason you mention why I consider to switch to using and developing Qt software.

GNOME 2.2.28 looks good too!

There are many reasons why KDE 4 is good, why KDE 3 is good, why Fluxbox is good, and so forth however all the reasons you state are political. None are technical, or talk about certain positive features of KDE, except the last one ("it looks good"). Well, you're not gonna win hearts with that and tons of fallacies.

And, new is not always better. For example, one thing I liked as GNOME user was Amarok 1.x. However Amarok 2 I cannot get used it. The UI is a horror although I can imagine it works OK on huge resolutions and huge monitors.

All that said, I am glad KDE exists, am keeping eyes on KDE, and I believe in the longer run Qt will be widely used instead of GTK (and all the other libraries related to it in GNOME because you cannot compare Qt with only GTK). That is just my belief though, and if you want compatibility between Maemo with Qt and your Linux desktop then a desktop based on Qt (KDE) is a logic step. However if I'd switch I'd need to change a lot of settings, learning curve, and all that...

To try KDE on Ubuntu simply install the metapackage kubuntu-desktop this will install all the required packages. Then log out and use GDM to log into KDE. If you prefer KDE to GNOME in some stadium you can make KDM the default display manager by typing sudo dpkg-reconfigure kdm

PS: the name is GNOME, it stands for GNU Network Object Model Environment.

PPS: the name is Qt, it is pronounced as 'cute' in English. QT may refer to e.g. QuickTime.

Re: Anyone else switching to KDE thanks to Nokia?
 

As I said, I tried Kubuntu Karmic beta and I was not impressed. I tried OpenSUSE 11.2 milestone 8, and I would have to agree with what this guy said:

http://movingparts.net/2008/12/22/op...11-and-nvidia/

As a dedicated Ubuntu user, I am surprised to find myself saying how much better OpenSUSE is so far. The installation is vastly superior and so much more stuff on my laptop just works out of the box.

Next I need to find a support forum. Is there anything that rivals the Ubuntu forums for OpenSUSE + KDE?

I have a Thinkpad T61p and I want to tweak the Trackpoint settings and maybe fiddle with NVidia stuff...

Thanks everyone for all the helpful feedback. I am really enjoying having Linux running everywhere from my web server to my PVR to my desktopps and laptop all the way down to my NIT. That's really cool. :D

Re: Anyone else switching to KDE thanks to Nokia?
 

That was the last time I found KDE usable. KDE 1.x was really good at its time IMHO, and it was the last KDE I actually used, instead of turning away in disgust after a few minutes trying to work with it.
Then I was toying around with fvwm2 and other small window managers until GNOME 2 became really good. I tried to give each major KDE release a chance, but unfortunately it horribly failed each time. :(

Re: Anyone else switching to KDE thanks to Nokia?
 

How is PIM on KDE btw? From what I read, Kontact is rather mature.

Linuxmint is an elegant looking Ubuntu-based distribution using KDE, targeted at end-users. Its made in Germany. :D

The GNOME CD/DVD burning application is lightweight and minimal and does usually what I want, but K3B is much more feature complete.

If it ain't broken don't fix it, but its useful to keep your 'compiled stuff' as .deb packages or otherwise keep that in one directory. In general, its wise to make sure you can freshly install your system (keep backups, etc). You can also make a backup of your currently installed packages (using dpkg --get-selections and dpkg --get-selections; examples here, don't follow the guide, read the comments instead) although you'll still need your /etc/apt/sources* to be the same. I'd also backup at least /etc, /var, and /home, and daily, using rsync over SSH (many scripts for that). Either just for safety or because you do want to reinstall.

I don't use any widgets like desklets and although I find Compiz neat, I'm not using it on any desktop, and it doesn't work well in remote desktop clients.

Tell me why it is broken, maybe I can help...

Check out GNOME Shell, Zeitgeist, Mutter (Metacity + Clutter), and so forth to be part of GNOME 3 (GNOME 2.30). It'll be released march 2010.

Agreed, good advice. KDE 3.5.x is also stable.

Room for that desktop which does everything different, I think that desktop is called Enlightenment, and they've been doing some stuff well before KDE or GNOME (or the OSX DE or Windows DE) have done 'em, such as Edje, virtual desktops, Evas (animated rendered background (and I can link to much more cool demos!! :)), and better rendering performance than X) ...

PS: Love your audio compositions, karoliina

Re: Anyone else switching to KDE thanks to Nokia?
 

KDE since about 10 years - always openSUSE since 12+ years.
Never had any real problems since years for all work related stuff.
I work full time on computer - hence I never waste my time for any video or gaming stuff on a computer.
FUN strictly is in real life. KDE on openSUSE always has been stable working environment.

Re: Anyone else switching to KDE thanks to Nokia?
 

KDE? Gnome? Naah, both of those are too fragile for my use. it's IceWM for me. :-)

Re: Anyone else switching to KDE thanks to Nokia?
 

i'm not.
I'm still use iceWM or Gnome

Re: Anyone else switching to KDE thanks to Nokia?
 

opensuse user and have loved kde for a long time now.