From GNOME to KDE and Back: Computing Habits Hard to Break
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 21st Mar 2008 21:49 UTC
Editorial "I used KDE as my primary desktop from 1996 through 2006, when I installed the GNOME version of Ubuntu and found that I liked it better than the KDE desktop I'd faced every morning for so many years. Last January, I got a new Dell Latitude D630 laptop and decided to install Kubuntu on it, but within a few weeks, I went back to GNOME. Does this mean GNOME is now a better desktop than KDE, or just that I have become so accustomed to GNOME that it's hard for me to give it up?"
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RE[5]: From GNOME to KDE and back
by gustl on Sat 22nd Mar 2008 18:50 UTC in reply to "RE[4]: From GNOME to KDE and back"
gustl
Member since:
2006-01-19

I am a power-user myself too, still, an interface with dozens of needless menus, buttons and all that distracts me and hinders my productivity, not boost it. I could also say that stuffing every possible feature in an app is not a solution..but that is an opinion, not a fact.


Concerning cruft and bloat:
I was just doing a comparison of Konqueror and Iceweasel.

Iceweasel has 6 buttons:
- Back
- Forward
- Reload
- Stop
- Home

Konqueror has 13 buttons:
- Back
- Forward
- Up one level in directory hierarchy
- Home
- Reload
- Stop
- Print
- Search current page
- Increase font size
- Decrease font size
- Encryption indicator (is just in a different place in Iceweasel)
- Download Manager
- Clean URL bar

From the Konqueror buttons I almost never use:
- Print
- Download manager

From both browsers I never use:
- Home

That's 3 unused buttons in Konqueror, and no feature missing, and one unused button in Iceweasel and the following features missing which I use very often:
- Up one level in directory hierarchy (very good in FTP mode)
- Increase font size
- Decrease font size
- Clean URL bar

So for me, Iceweasel is a usability nightmare (just try to highlight a text URL and paste it into the URL bar of the browser, using UNIX-style copy-on-highlight and middle-mouse-paste). Tried it? Found out, that you have to select the text in the URL bar first, delete it, then highlight the new URL and middle-click in the URL bar? Now you understand, why I miss the "clean URL bar" button in Iceweasel.

Other people may have different needs, and for them the features I deem necessary would not be used anyway and are (rightly) seen as bloat.

I think it is nice to have the choice, and would hate to see the two desktops converge towards the same usability paradigms.

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