KDE vs Gnome

[DrMega]

I recently installed the Kubuntu desktop environment onto my Ubuntu box. Works OK (mostly) and looks quite nice, if not a little too much like Win XP.

I must say I prefer Gnome, but I forced myself to use KDE for a whole evening to see if I could get used to it.

I was wondering what other people's opinions are about Gnome vs KDE (or perhaps other desktop environments). Here's my thoughts:

* KDE seemed to handle OpenArena better. It has crashed and stuttered under Gnome a few times.
* KDE looks more professional in my opinion
* KDE was much much slower than Gnome
* Apps seem to take longer to open, and sometimes fail to open (with no messages back) under KDE, the same apps work fine in Gnome.

If you were pushing Ubuntu onto a Windows advocate, and knew you had only once very small chance of converting them, would you push Ubuntu (Gnome) or Kubuntu (KDE)?

[ericesque]

I'd take option C) Don't push Ubuntu on people.

[happysmileman]

If you were pushing Ubuntu onto a Windows advocate, and knew you had only once very small chance of converting them, would you push Ubuntu (Gnome) or Kubuntu (KDE)?

I'd push GNOME for Ubuntu, but for other distros I'd push KDE, it just doesn't seem to fit in well with Ubuntu

[Erunno]

* Apps seem to take longer to open,

I've read that this is mostly the fault of the GNU linker which is allegedly very slow at linking C++ applications.

and sometimes fail to open (with no messages back) under KDE, the same apps work fine in Gnome.

This is a Kubuntu specific bug. At least I've never encountered it in openSUSE and all the time on Kubuntu back when I still used it. I'm actually surprised that they still haven't fixed it, this just reassures my decision to ditch Kubuntu.

[kodak]

I use gnome, when i did have KDE running for a few months some time ago one thing i liked very much was K3B

[samjh]

I don't like pushing an OS on other people who are not interested. But if I must push Ubuntu, it would be the Gnome version: more polish and less problems.

But my personal preference is KDE. Kubuntu just doesn't seem to manage KDE very well. Perhaps it's the lack of devs or the relative lack of commitment by Canonical to support Kubuntu.