Gnome, KDE, or Xfce?

[kaldor]

Which do you prefer?

[NikoC]

Tried them all out, also fluxbox and icewm and I always get back to Gnome... a colleague of mine on the other hand, is a kde fan!
This question has been asked before by many, many users and most of the time this 'issue' gets settled by the user trying out each desktop environment for himself and then making his own choice...
They can be installed all together and you then can choose at login which environment to load...

Also you could try the different live cd's

[dur]

I've always been partial to GNOME. I don't really care for the look and feel of KDE, or the minimalistic layout of xfce.

[F4l3]

I love KDE :)

[ladr0n]

Gnome or ratpoison.
I go back and forth on KDE. It has a nice app suite, but it's so... well, fat. I used Xfce for a little while, but I couldn't really find a compelling reason to use it instead of gnome. It's heavy enough that it doesn't have a noticable speed difference, but it provides a little less functionality.
During my experimentation with Arch, I used TWM for a while because I was too lazy to set up anything else. That was an experience.

[cardinals_fan]

My wm rankings, w/brief descriptions:

1. dwm: fast, light, powerful, and tiling
1a. any other tiling wm
2. Openbox: fast and clean
3. Fluxbox: fast w/cool features
4. EvilWM: about as minimal as it gets. FAST!
5. IceWM: decent, fast wm
6. KDE 3.5: reasonably light (for a DE), good apps
7. Xfce: acceptably light, configurable
8. Enlightenment: light but BUGGY!
9. GNOME: slow and lacking in configurability
10. KDE 4: it will be great, now it's buggy and bloated

[gameryoshi600]

Gnome- for the average computer
KDE- older version ftw. for average computers
xfce- older comps.

[John T. Monkey]

i started by using kde a fewyears ago, but used gnome in ubuntu from dapper through to gutsy, and was very happy with it.

with hardy, i gave kde 4 a go. wasn't too keen at first but its growing on me, not sure if i'm getting used to it or if the updates are making it better, but looking forward to 4.1.

i also always like to keep fluxbox installed, for whn i need speed/can't be bothered with the bloat...

[knavarathna92]

I believe that GNOME offers the most versatility in theming and skinning.

[bufsabre666]

kde on opensuse, gnome on everything else

[N3um0rin]

Kde..its more mature than gnome..I never liked gnome because it was too plain..and didnt have as many cool apps at kde..

[RiceMonster]

Openbox

[gabhla]

KDE. Great apps.

[smartboyathome]

E17, it isn't as buggy (usually :p) as lead to believe, but it is very light and very fast. You can use apps from either qt or gtk with it (no ties to library dependancies besides its own, which is really optional), though I like to install gtk and then qgtkstyle so that any KDE apps I install blend in.

[FFighter]

KDE 4, specially 4.1 seems to have some new amazing concepts and a new beautiful look and feel, it might be my next DE of choice.

While Gnome is great, I do feel its rendering engine is kind of slow. I can't say the same about KDE. This slowness happens with every DE that is based on GTK, but that is only my opinion.

[cardinals_fan]

E17, it isn't as buggy (usually :p) as lead to believe, but it is very light and very fast. You can use apps from either qt or gtk with it (no ties to library dependancies besides its own, which is really optional), though I like to install gtk and then qgtkstyle so that any KDE apps I install blend in.
E17 is really grea- *crashes* :)

[jrusso2]

I have always been a KDE fan unless its an older computer where I need a light weight window manager.

Then I live fvwm crystal or ICEWM

[Skorzen]

The ones I've tried were GNOME and KDE and the one I loved much was GNOME. Who knows, someday I'll try XFCE...

[Trail]

Kde.