On Thu, 2003-11-20 at 21:54, Joel Konkle-Parker wrote:
> I think it would be useful to cover these and others, and I think it's 
> possible to do it in a nonsubjective (or barely subjective) way. Take 
> the following for example:
> 
> "If you are looking for a complete desktop solution that comes close to 
> approximating what you would get out of the box from Windows, try GNOME 
> or KDE. They both have fairly mature component applications, and either 
> will work well for a full-featured desktop environment. Note that these 
> are large application sets, and will take a long time to merge.

But GNOME won't take half as much time as KDE on the same machine and on
a recent system it's done in a few hours most. Anyway, stage 1-ers will
have a great deal of compiling behind them, so the DE is relatively
insignificant (well.. except for KDE maybe).

>  GNOME 
> and KDE also don't share a common toolset, so applications written for 
> KDE will look and act differently than those written for GNOME. XFCE is 
> a relative newcomer to the full-featured desktop world, and focuses on 
> speed. It is more lightweight than the others, although it shares many 
> of the most useful features (note: I don't know XFCE, I've never used it.)

Last time i checked XFCE it wasn't really well balanced and smooth
running out of the box.

> On the other hand, if you are looking for a more unix-y environment that 
> will stay out of your way and give you the ultimate customizability and 
> speed, you might consider something like WindowMaker or BlackBox.... 
> (yada yada, here's the differences, here's their reputations, here's 
> what they're good for, yada yada)"

What's a unix-y environment ? I'm a newcomer to linux here. I got a lot
of choice, what do i have to choose ?

What i mean to say here is, these are qualitative indications done by
one individual and already the amount of different DEs is confusing. Not
to mention added WMs (do i get a full desktop with blackbox too?).

A little descriptive story like this would be ok, but it should focus on
the major DEs : KDE & GNOME and maybe XFCE, not certain about the latter
'from scratch' quality. To my knowledge (but it lacks in this) the first
two at least are part of a stage3 iso, so the compilation time issue
doesn't even have to be mentioned (people with a stage3 iso do not need
to compile anything, others have compiled most of the system all the way
and don't expect anything else from that point on).

- foser


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