KDE in SuSE and Mandrake

[LTD602]

Isn't KDE . . . well, KDE ? I keep hearing how "awesome" and "sweet" KDE in SuSE is. Does this refer to the default look of the SuSE KDE? Is the SuSE KDE more customizable? I use Mandrake 10, and most elements look very similar. Here's a shot of what I was able to do in MDK10 so far.

 

http://www.customize.org/details/34807

 

Maybe KDE's functionality in SuSE is what has people so excited? I was under the impression that differences in KDE from distro to distro are relatively minor.......

[Darkelve]

No, it's about the same. Only the themes used by default and the menu layout are different. SuSe 9.1 is running KDE 3.2, I think Mandrake 10.0 OE is the same, possibly even higher version number.

 

It's what you do with it that makes the difference, really.

Edited July 20, 2004 by Darkelve

[Ixthusdan]

I just wanted to add a little twist to the pretty correct answer already given. While it is true that kde is kde, there are liberties taken by the distros to customize the desktop. Just try loading Mandrake rpm's into fedora, for example. Once I tried to build a kde version for Mandrake, somewhere around 3.03, with the software sources at kde.org. It didn't work. At that time texstar was making rpm's for mandrake, and his did work. When asked about it, he said that there were some customizations that you had to be aware of, stuff over my head!

 

Do the kde's can be a little different in working speed and "smoothness". Currently, pclinux os has the best kde on my box. (texstar!) My sound doesn't work in mandrake's kde after I upgrade from the initial 10 release. Libranet kde sound works fine. All the same box.

[Gowator]

The main differences are just where they put stuff.

Mandrake makes a few changes but they are relatively minor

Suse completely changes KDE locations so if you do compile something you need to tell the compiler where to put them when you do the make install and where to find the libraries when linking.

 

I guess most regulars here know i hate this... I reckon KDE should go where KDE say... but then the themes would work regardless and KDE could make 'official' RPMs and/or Debs which would work for everyone using linux

 

Then again if this is a selling point for Suse then thats pretty sad.

You just have to browse the show-off your desktop thread to see what can be done so why live with someone elses choice of decoration? Worse why let the default desktop influence your choice of distro.

 

that would be like going to buy a house and buying based on the previous tennants choice of furniture.

[arctic]

I once used suse and i have to say, the main difference between suse-kde and other kde`s is that they choose a different wallpaper, automount all drives on your desktop and have their menu in a slightly different layout. And yeah, they have some little things added to the panel, other distros do not have necessarily. The main advantage was a little plug-in-symbol in systray, to connect and disconnet to i-net, which was useful for newbies. The main disadvantage is really that they put things in different folders like /opt/kde or /opt/gnome. This was annoying when updating the system (I killed my box 3 times trying to update kde from 3.1 to 3.2) and that is the reason why I uninstalled Suse.

Edited July 21, 2004 by arctic