I am hooked on KDE 4 and the plasmas. KDE has its own compositor so there is
no need for Compiz. It has a Fancy panel that can replace Avant Window
Navigator. It has replacements for just about everything Google Gadgets,
Screenlets, Superkaramba and gDesklets combined have. It all works together
in perfect harmony.

GNOME is contaminated with Mono and isn't going anywhere. It is a piecemeal
desktop environment, IMO. XFCE is better right now. GNOME 3 has been delayed
and it isn't likely to give Mono the boot. I still keep it around and use it
from time to time just because I want to be able to help users on GNOME.

Trying other distros is good if only to convince you that you are in the
right place. I will give Fedora 12 a spin when it comes out today or
tomorrow. I actually am looking forward to it.

OpenSuSE's installer gave me a bit of scare. It wanted to format my Windows
partition and I could not seem to undo that despite trying a custom
installation which I am very familiar with. I took a chance and it installed
without difficulty. However, it did not install grub where I wanted and it
left out Ubuntu 9.10 from the list. I had to boot into another drive and use
the grub there to get back to Ubuntu. Not a good distribution, IMO. Like
Alexandru said you can't install VLC and lots else. I could not access all
of my drives. My Ubuntu partition did not even show. I could not open a jpg
because of permissions problems. Not fun!

I like Mandriva better. It came with VLC installed. However, it did not have
all of my programmes. I could not get Inkscape at all so had to settle for
something less. I thought that I was in KDE 3.5 instead of KDE 4 because it
was dumbed down and everything was locked. The KDE4 desktop folder plasma
was the full screen which allows you to copy files to the desktop like KDE3,
but you could not add plasmas. I finally clued in and unlocked and made it
to my own liking. However when I tried to do this it messed up my desktop so
that all of the icons were on top of one another and the panel was about an
inch high. The only way out of that one was to delete the .kde folder and
start over. Mandriva's installer does not have a back button. I got my email
address wrong, but could not go back to fix it.

Needless to say, I appreciate Kubuntu all the more. It is not perfect, but
it is much better than the alternatives. However, if you can help me
troubleshoot any of my current problems I would appreciate it.