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And KDE is for hackers?

Seems to me that KDE is more for power users ... people who like to configure everything, including the kitchen sink.

Gnome seems as if it were catered to the OSX crowd - 'just give me something that just works and has sensible defaults out of the box so I don't have to think about it too much.'

I would think a combination of the above approaches would be ideal. On one hand, you don't want to make it so damn complicated that many users are put off by it, but at the same time, you don't want to alienate the power users either. So what you do is this:

1. Streamline the interface so that the 'just make it work' crowd aren't immediately put off by it
2. Give power users all the configurability they want, but put these options just far enough out of reach so that Joe Average will only find them if he makes the effort to look for them. As another poster said, maybe 'a master switch to change into some uber user mode'
3. ... but not TOO far out of reach where all the options are in config files, where only geeks will ever play with them

Personally, I fall into the power user crowd. For example, apps like Directory Opus are my cup of tea, where even the status bar is customizable to infinity So if I used Linux full-time, KDE would probably be me DE of choice.

Edited 2007-02-17 19:53

Seems to me that KDE is more for power users ... people who like to configure everything, including the kitchen sink.

I can't agree with You my friend.

I used KDE for about a year and I can not sat that it is configurable a lot.

fluxbox / openbox / pekwm / fvwm
these and similar fit to Your definition of KDE:
for power users ... people who like to configure everything, including the kitchen sink.

I use Fluxbox personally with GTK2 apps [QT only for Opera] I also prefer CLI a lot.

About KDE vs Gnome

I like about Gnome that GTK2 apps are independent of Gnome, they can be used with nice GTK2 themes and so. By ~/.gtkrc-2.0 for example.

What KDE brings here? A big mess. There are just a few themes that can work with QT without KDE libs, and when You need KDE libs to switch theme to QT it is pretty jelous.

For those who do not like Metacity:
You can always change it to xfce4-wm/openbox/fluxbox for example.

Edited 2007-02-17 20:05

And KDE is for hackers?

I always thought KDE was for people that really liked windows but didn't want to pay for it.

Some of us use KDE because we want to get a desktop that is not stuck in the early 90's. Like, fe., a thumbnail view in the open dialog that can even show thumbnails of videos.

Gnome not only doesn't show video thumbnails in the open dialog, it doesn't even have a thumbnail view. You're forced to use this completely stupid and user-unfriendly "select a file in order to preview it" method. With gnome you're stuck with a vertical list view that doesn't even allows to order files by *size*

Yes, KDE is not the most usable desktop, but you know, at least has the basic functionality to compete with 00's desktops.

I have noticed this too, all my friends which switched from windows tend to use KDE

I always thought KDE was for people that really liked windows but didn't want to pay for it.

I came to Linux from Mac OS X, and I still prefer KDE. Yeah, it's a bit cluttered, but it's a logical clutter for the most part, and I DO like the configureability. And I like the K-apps as well.

oo good, so ur goin back to windows?