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Kevin Carmony
November 16th, 2007, 07:45 AM
When I mentioned on the forums here (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=577927) that I had switched from Linspire to Ubuntu, some of you asked if I had switched to Ubuntu or Kubuntu. At that time, I mentioned that I was running BOTH Ubuntu and Kubuntu (dual boot), but that I wanted to ultimately decide on one or the other, and promised to report which I chose.

For those who care, you can see my ultimate decision on my blog (http://kevincarmony.com/indexBLOG.htm).

Kudos to both the GNOME and KDE communities for their wonderful achievements. Thanks for giving Linux TWO great choices!

Kevin Carmony

SunnyRabbiera
November 16th, 2007, 08:05 AM
yeh most surprising indeed.
but the thing is you do have some points, when concerning Ubuntu I feel KDE is really hindered and quite a slug compared to gnome.
I feel this is mainly because Ubuntu's focus is on gnome and not KDE, KDE is more of a afterthought it seems.
I have seen KDE perform quite well though, on my secondary distribution PClinux KDE whoops the pants off Kubuntu or Ubuntu with KDE added

Espreon
November 16th, 2007, 08:05 AM
OK great, but if you had any reason to have KDE as a possibility, you might wanna try KDE 4 since due to its port to Qt 4 it will be 20-30% faster and more stable. Plus KDE 4 is gonna have lots of great new things.

But Any DE is fine if it conforms to your needs and taste much like GNOME,Xfce,KDE 4 (NOT 3.5 and below), Openbox and Enlightenment conform to my needs and tastes.

For those who are wondering I use GNOME on my Mom's laptop, Xfce on my old, 7-year old desktop. Openbox on my Mom's laptop and I used to use Enlightenment but Openbox is a bit faster for a backup DE. I used the KDE 4 Live CD and I will try KDE 4 on my mom's laptop once it comes out.

But there are other KDE distros to go around like Sabayon (which is also a GNOME and Blackbox distro, I wish it was still also an Xfce), Kubuntu is like the worst KDE distro around, it makes KDE look bad and KDE is very sluggish on Kubuntu. On Sabayon it is much faster and Sabayon's default look makes KDE look good.

SunnyRabbiera
November 16th, 2007, 08:10 AM
I dont know if I share your confidence in KDE4 Espreon, I feel KDE4's going to bog down a lot of nonsense a lot of people dont really need.
I feel KDE4 could become a bloated mess.

kd7swh
November 16th, 2007, 08:11 AM
KDE was the first GUI I ever used in a unix environment. That was almost ten years ago... but I really do prefer GNOME. KDE just feels like it was rejected from candyland or something. GNOME is simple. I like simple when it comes to GUIs. Compiz, and the rest of the shinny stuff is cool, but sometimes you just want it to work.

Espreon
November 16th, 2007, 08:21 AM
I dont know if I share your confidence in KDE4 Espreon, I feel KDE4's going to bog down a lot of nonsense a lot of people dont really need.
I feel KDE4 could become a bloated mess.

Well I agree that it is gonna include some useless crap I don't need but some of it like Dolphin and Oxygen in addition to Plasma I am gonna welcome.

Don't forget the port to Qt4 will give it a bit of a speed increase 20-30%, but then again the useless crap I don't need might bog that down, but then again if it is possible to remove this useless crap then I am very confident.

Eventhough 20-30% does not sound that much, on school work grades thats like 1 letter grade to almost 2 letter grades.

SomeGuyDude
November 16th, 2007, 08:31 AM
But there are other KDE distros to go around like Sabayon (which is also a GNOME and Blackbox distro, I wish it was still also an Xfce), Kubuntu is like the worst KDE distro around, it makes KDE look bad and KDE is very sluggish on Kubuntu. On Sabayon it is much faster and Sabayon's default look makes KDE look good.

That's why I scrapped Kubuntu. It feels like an afterthought (at least Feisty did, though it recognized hardware better than Ubuntu proper). As a general rule, I go with whatever is the "main" version of a distro since that'll likely be given better attention by the developers, and trying out other versions will give a less than optimal impression of the given DE.

hockeyfighter09
November 16th, 2007, 08:46 AM
none use xfce on xubuntu!:)

GeneralZod
November 16th, 2007, 09:40 AM
Don't forget the port to Qt4 will give it a bit of a speed increase 20-30%

People keep quoting this figure, but I don't think I've ever seen a benchmark.

MRiGnS
November 16th, 2007, 09:50 AM
I don't know about numbers but QT4 is the first tool set which seems to allow smooth resizing of inner window content like on osx for example.

And it's much easier to build a gui in qt4 than in gtk2 or qt3.

kripkenstein
November 16th, 2007, 10:21 AM
OK great, but if you had any reason to have KDE as a possibility, you might wanna try KDE 4 since due to its port to Qt 4 it will be 20-30% faster and more stable. Plus KDE 4 is gonna have lots of great new things.

Faster, perhaps. More stable - I seriously doubt it. KDE 4 has so much new code, it'll be unstable for quite some time, even if the underlying Qt is better.

I would wait until at least KDE 4.1 or so to see how the new KDE is. Otherwise people might try 4.0 and be disappointed.

fuscia
November 16th, 2007, 12:02 PM
kde4, in its current state, makes e17 look stable. it sure is pretty, though.

podunk
November 16th, 2007, 02:42 PM
Kubuntu Dapper here. Blazing fast (used a stop watch rather than how it felt) and rock solid stable.

Chose Kubuntu over Ubuntu because of productivity considerations rather than speed at first. Kubuntu "looked" more like Windows and avoided some of the "I can't find this to do that" and "This is too strange and different! I'll never be able to adjust!" thing.

However! Playing around on my test bed I discovered quite by accident that only slightly more than half of KDE is installed with Kubuntu. Once I installed all of KDE there was just this huge speed jump.

Also, on the Kubuntu forums found some great speed tuning tips, easily picked up 10% there.

So, from business rather than hobbyist considerations Kubuntu is not only as fast as Ubuntu (faster on my personal machine by far) it's very much more productive than Ubuntu.

Since I do run my business with Kubuntu and the training stage is over I'll hold off on updating releases until the next long term candidate comes out and do all the machines at once.

I do like the look of KDE 4 and look forward to a stable release. :-)

Kevin Carmony
November 16th, 2007, 08:02 PM
I feel this is mainly because Ubuntu's focus is on gnome and not KDE, KDE is more of a afterthought it seems.


I got the same sense.

I don't get that same feeling about KDE, however, on distros that have their main focus on KDE, such as Linspire/Freespire.

Kevin

xArv3nx
November 16th, 2007, 08:08 PM
I got the same sense.

I don't get that same feeling about KDE, however, on distros that have their main focus on KDE, such as Linspire/Freespire.

Kevin
5.1 > 6.0 in that regard.

You guys put a lot of hard work into 5.1, and it showed.

Linuxratty
November 16th, 2007, 09:53 PM
Well,having used both,it's KDE for me cause I feel I can do more tweaking...And I do so love to tweak.
When my replacement Dell arrives,it's back to Ubuntu,then Kbuntu and finally,Klikit,which is based off Kbuntu.
The only desktop that could pry me away from KDE is Enlightenment

Incense
November 16th, 2007, 11:14 PM
I got the same sense.

I don't get that same feeling about KDE, however, on distros that have their main focus on KDE, such as Linspire/Freespire.

Kevin

I'm a big KDE fan, and really wish that Kubuntu could receive attention that Ubuntu does. I do have to admit that it is getting better with every release, but it's not quite there yet.

Also while you may be having fun on the gnome side, I think you'll make your way back to KDE. Once you go K, you don't to go back!

undine
November 16th, 2007, 11:49 PM
I'm a big KDE fan, and really wish that Kubuntu could receive attention that Ubuntu does. I do have to admit that it is getting better with every release, but it's not quite there yet.

Also while you may be having fun on the gnome side, I think you'll make your way back to KDE. Once you go K, you don't to go back!

I did. And haven't looked back.

gn2
November 17th, 2007, 12:20 AM
Kudos to both the GNOME and KDE communities for their wonderful achievements. Thanks for giving Linux TWO great choices!


I only count one great choice there.....:confused:

What about XFCE ?

You don't need to dual-boot, just: sudo apt-get install xubuntu-dektop

Then select XFCE in Sessions at the log-in screen.

Same applies for adding either ubuntu-desktop or kubuntu-desktop