KDE vs Gnome for my new Mandrake Install?

[MajorPayne]

I have gotten Mandrake 10.1 Official to install for my TV computer. I will be using this system for playing DVD's to our television (I have an ATI AllInWonder 8500 card for that), and my wife will be using it for this, email, games, etc. I have used both KDE and Gnome in the past, and like them both, but I have not used the current version of either one. I would like to get honest opinions of which one would be better for both me (who loves to play around and change stuff), and my wife (who wants me to NOT play with stuff, and likes things stable, and easy to use). I would appreciate any recommendations on which would be better (and why), or suggestions on alternate desktops.

 

[halfadder]

KDE is my personal preference, I like how Konq is both a file browser and web browser.

But GNOME is good too.

 

[daveqb]

xfce4 is coming along nicely. But more designed as a lightweight, super fast Desktop manager for slow old systems, many people use it on high end systems too
(must reach super sonic speeds on those systems. )

 

[D1gger]

I prefer Gnome, that is what I use on my FC 3 system.

 

[Zelmo3]

I like Gnome, but switched back to KDE because Gnome doesn't appear to have a menu editor.
Then again, KDE's menu editor rejects all my changes after I make about a dozen, so maybe the switch was for naught.

Install both and use each for a week or so, one will probably feel better to you.

 

[user1234]

Gnome looks a lot like a Mac interface, so I'd say your wife will love it. Similarly I can assure you she's gonna hate KDE.

 

[JFoobar]

I use Gnome, but is nothing more than personal preference. Try them both.

For me, the better integration inherent to KDE apps is of limited value.

 

[Nithin]

xfce4

 

[Davegod75]

mandrake is KDE based. I say stick with KDE

 

[MajorPayne]

Originally posted by: user1234
Gnome looks a lot like a Mac interface, so I'd say your wife will love it. Similarly I can assure you she's gonna hate KDE.

My wife has never even SEEN a mac, so I do not know if she will like it better anyway (although we ARE getting a REAL Mac tomorrow to go with the Linux machine discussed here, and the WinXP machine in my sig). We should have a real wife-annoying collection of computers running then! I will probably set her login to use Gnome and mine to use KDE, and then just play around in hers to see how Gnome works and if I like it (besides, she is so used to me messing around with things, that she probably would not recognize a stable computer anyway!).

 

[user1234]

most distro's overall look and feel is heavily biased towards their default desktop environemnt (e.g. kde or gnome), so it's not always worthwhile to try and use a different DE then the default one. Mandrake is KDE based distro, so I'm not sure how easy it would be to use gnome on it. For gnome distro I recommend Ubuntu which is a new hit distro that's gotten to the top of the charts by storm. It has quite a few advantages - very up-to-date software lineup, great software repository and superb package management tools, very good automatic hardware detection, fast, uses and commited to free open source software only (instead of proprietary tools like mandrake). It's also one of the most friendly and easiest to use. See distrowatch.com

 

[timswim78]

As others have said, you should have a lot less headaches if you use KDE as your default. However, you may want to install gnome and get used to it because you will probably want to try different distro;s in the future.

 

[JFoobar]

Originally posted by: timswim78
As others have said, you should have a lot less headaches if you use KDE as your default. However, you may want to install gnome and get used to it because you will probably want to try different distro;s in the future.

Sort of my thinking as well. The concerns over Mandrake being a KDE-oriented distro are valid, but you should be able to get a good feel for a preference between the two on Mandrake regardless.

 

[silverpig]

I prefer Gnome over KDE but I use fluxbox...