I think this poll has been beaten up in the press at infinitem. Is there a real
question here regarding operability or is this a social poll? Linus Torvalds
came out in favor of KDE stating, to paraphrase him, that Gnome was dumbing the
user down and not empowering them enough. I tend to agree with him on this.
Gnome is the Granny interface while KDE is the power user interface.

What is "empowering" is getting stuff done. If KDE presents so much choice to a
particular user that he can't get stuff done, then KDE is crippling, not
empowering. If Gnome is "welded shut" in such a way that the user can't get get
stuff done, Gnome is crippling, not empowering. It depends on what the user
needs and how he thinks.

Right now, for me, Gnome is empowering. It gets out of my way and lets me do
what I want. It has what I call "a reasonable set of defaults" and any
inconsistencies it may have are not troublesome for me. After I'm completely
comfortable with Linux, I'll want to explore KDE and XFCE. When I get *really*
comfortable I'll try my hand at booting to Bash and using only text-based apps
and screen for a while, just so I can say I can do it. :)

It's easy for Linus to criticize Gnome for being too simple. He's the ultimate
"I want every option available" kind of guy. (If he were not, we wouldn't have
Linux in the first place.) What he's ignoring or discounting is that only about
40% of the population is "wired" that way in any given context, and that almost
everyone needs to keep it simple and procedure-oriented in the context of first
learning something.

One of the things I miss about OS/2's shell is that it was *both* simple to use
in its default state *and* almost infinitely configureable. I still wish IBM
would port the WorkPlace Shell to Linux.

That's a blast from the past, OS/2. However, I do agree with you that it was
a great shell to work in. I actually had a Novell server running in one
instance ot OS/2 while working in the others. My desktop acted as a server for
the rest of the small office. The beauty of it was I never noticed a slow down,
nor did anyone else it was very cool. The only thing better was the Novell
Super OS of a slightly later time period. Now that was UNIX on steriods.
Later...

KDE is innovative, and at the cutting edge.

Gnome is more trad, less resource intensive and very stable.

Xubuntu is very light, great for old computers, but still highly functional.

You take your pick but remember you can try all of them and choose the one
that you feel is right for you.

I've been catching up on my e-mail and just found this thread today. I have
tried several windows managers on my Ubuntu installation, Xfce & Fluxbox in
particular. I used to be a big CDE fan on Solaris, so I used to prefer KDE,
but my needs have changed and I've learned to appreciate the simplicity of
Gnome, Xfe & Fluxbox. Fluxbox appeals to my sense of control over the
interface (read on it if you are not familiar), but I miss things like
automounting of CDs and thumb drives.

This brings me to a question. Does Xubuntu automaount thumb drives, CDs and
such? I've considered giving it a shot next time I reinstall.

Brandon brings up an interesting point. Why does the window manager have to
control the mounting of the USB or the CD. There should be some lines in a
inted file that allows for the automounting of devices. No? If the CD
automounts it automounts, should have nothing to do with the screen manager.
You should be able to access from terminal. Lets figure this one out!

Search the web for "gnome-volume-manager". The community of one of the
other WMs I mentioned (though I can't remember which off the top of my head)
favors Rox as a file manager, which reportedly provides the same
convenience. When I have a moment to do so, I will run gnome-volume-manager
under Fluxbox, perhaps at startup, and see if automount starts to work. I
noticed that my (sound) volume buttons work when I run the Gnome component
for governing sound functions.

> That's a blast from the past, OS/2.

Actually, it's still mostly current. A company called Serenity Systems
licensed it, made some modernizations, and is distributing it under the
name "eComStation". I only stopped using it this year.

> My desktop acted as a server for the rest of the small office. The
> beauty of it was I never noticed a slow down, nor did anyone else it
> was very cool.

It's still great... still works that way. It's a rotten shame IBM
dropped the OS/2 ball. I hope they don't treat Linux the same way.

I couldn't imagine that it was still drifing
around out there. IBM didn't drop the ball on OS/2, but what happened was that
they coded it in Assembler in the first place. Their SDLC model was completely
wrong at the time. New CPU's came out and OS/2 wouldn't work on them. There
was a lot of chat at the time as to what they should have done and IBM didn't
want to go back and have the expense of recoding it in C. I would have to
beleive that these guys have taken on that investment and moved into a model
that can be compiled for other hardware platform.

Choosing between the three, I prefer Gnome, since my hardware can handle
a full featured desktop. KDE, at least when coupled with Ubuntu, was far
too buggy the last time I ran it.

Thanks for the very relative comment. Anyone else out there have this kind of
comparative experience?

KDE didnt feel comfortable for me. Gnome did. Gnome is just 'smoother.'

This is really the best kind of dialog that we should have regarding the user
GUI's; otherwise, we just get into the endless jehad debate and no one LEARNS
from the other's experiences.

I can say this about the user interfaces, that I have used both with very good
sucess. There was a time when Konqueror was VERY robust and I loved it.
However; it was deemed to much for the comunity and it was dumbed down. I in
fact, loved the complicated one. Once that happeded I pretty much go with the
flow and whatever loads, loads.

In fact I too prefer Gnome more than KDE. We even
can't compare all this thing since all of this desktop
environment have their own advantages like KDE are for
those users who like GUI more. I think Microsoft
Vista is also nothing against latest version of Ubuntu
i.e. Fiesty Fawn. Xubuntu also works vary fast even on
older machine.