Re: [gentoo-user] How many people use KDE?

[Holly Bostick]

Neil Bothwick schreef:
> On Fri, 20 Jan 2006 17:10:13 +0800, Linux Java wrote:
>
>> I wanna to know KDE and Gnome which is more popular.
>
> Why? Use whatever suits you.
>

I hope that you all appreciate my extreme restraint in not posting to
this thread until now, given how very much I dislike KDE.

But for the record, just so that all you KDE-heads don't skew the
results com*plete*ly:

I always (from my first attempts at Linux some 3 years ago) preferred
GNOME to KDE. Never liked Nautilus, though (it's tied for second on my
list of "most hated file managers"), and since I've never been fond of
desktop icons and all that cr... junk... I still found it too heavy. So I
switched to Openbox 3 (with a GTK "backend"), and now I use fvwm-crystal
(with a GTK "backend"). Gnome-light is (always) installed, but I don't
use it as a desktop.

I have only two KDE-specific applications that I would not do without
(both compiled -kde and -arts to the greatest extent possible): Krusader
(though this needs Konq and some other KDE utils for best usage, as it
recognizes KDE apps much much better than GTK apps for viewing files and
the like), and K3b. These apps require kdebase, so I've got that, but
the day you see me logging into KDE, you can rest assured that either:

1) my system is so seriously broke that it's the only DE/WM I can get
into (which is pretty unlikely. I mean, I've got iceWM and *afterstep*
on the system, for Pete's sake; the day that doesn't work but KDE does
will be... "The" day);

or

2) I have been replaced by an alien clone (shoot first, ask questions
later).

I prefer to use GTK-based applications wherever possible because I find
them more attractive in general, and I'm more used to them (as a GNOME
user originally), unless they're junk, like Totem, in which case I use
"non-affiliated" programs like Xine or mPlayer. Yes, I know Totem can be
configured to use a Xine backend. Imo, there's no point; if that's the
only way Totem works, I might as well just use Xine. Plus I want to see
when gStreamer gets its act together. However I have no objection to
QT-based apps (as opposed to KDE apps) when necessary. It does need to
be "necessary", though (meaning, if I need it, I'll install qdvdauthor,
because there's no GTK alternative that I know of, but I can just as
well use the CLI original, unless the GUI version has some additional
feature or makes it easier to understand than the CLI version's man page).

So anyway, Neil is of course right: use what you want; it's *your*
desktop (finally!). I don't need a whole lot of GUI features (in fact I
dislike a whole lot of GUI features), so KDE is not for me, the one who
never liked Windows(-like) desktops, even when I was using Windows; I
used an alternative shell from my Win98 days on. But for those who feel
more comfortable with a more Windows-like environment, and Windows-like
assumptions about what a user wants/needs from their desktop, KDE may be
just the thing; that is, after all, what it's designed to do to a great
extent.

You can have it, though. I'll be elsewhere.

Holly


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