Linked by Neil Lucock on Tue 22nd Feb 2005 22:17 UTC
I'd better start by admitting that I'm a fan of KDE. It's not because it works like Windows, but for the quality of the tools available. However, a GUI is just a way of doing something and I think I've been a bit dismissive of the Gnome desktop up to now. I read a few reviews of Ubuntu, looked at their web site and decided to have a look. I wanted a general purpose (desktop) distribution and an opportunity to get to know the Gnome utilities.
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I have been using Linux since 1999. When I first installed Mandrake (I think version 6.2 or something) I was impressed by both: kde and Gnome. Since then I switched many times from various distros and desktops but till recently KDE and Gnome were similiar. But that's changed! While KDE is now a kind of "generic" but well developed and stable desktop, it does poor support for hardware. It is likely that KDE team aims at wide variety of unices, not only Linux, and KDE is ideal for e.g. terminal servers or corporate desktops.
On the other hand, new versions of Gnome have significant support for automatic hardware detection and configuration. With Gnome come a lot of configuration tools similiar to those we used to have provided by commercial distros (e.g. Mandrake Control Center). What is strange (I mean I never dreamed about it), Gnome supports community-driven distros with ready to use, enterprise class desktop with significant integration with OS (I mean Linux).
I believe that in a few years we won't see distros with both desktops any more. Gnome does too much integration with system (this was the reason why slackware dropped it).
But, what's realy strange, both desktops are just great! I can't do anything else but keep switching from one to another again and again. And I believe that in the near future I will be watching Linux (or *nix) getting simply better every day.
Ok, so now I'll shut down my slackware box and go to bed (it's quite late here in Central Europe) dreaming about perfect desktop...