guppetto Posted May 25, 2006 Report Share Posted May 25, 2006 Some people hate this question, because it is probably the most devisive of all questions you can ask the linux community and most people stand on one side or the other, but becuase I'm not afraid of a little good old fashioned debate, i'll give you a real answer. I started with Gnome, so it is near and dear to my heart. 75% of everything I know about Linux I learned using gnome. It's a great desktop with great apps, and you won't be dissapointed if you use it, but without question, you should use KDE. KDE is more multimedia centric in my oppinioin. It provides a lot more settings that are readily availible for tweeking in the display and sound system in general. In Mandriva, the win32 codecs availible from the PLF repositories will get you set up for most of your codec support, and just about every kde multimedia application readily makes use of these codecs. Also, there is a thriving community of multimedia applications availible over at http://www.kde-apps.org for you to experiment with. Gnome has more than it's share of multimedia applications and frameworks, but to me, some of the most active projects are availible for KDE. Yes, nothing precludes you from running KDE apps from gnome or vice versa, but you'll have a lot of extra libraries getting loaded that won't exactly help your system run any faster. Multimedia work is usually very memory and processor intensive, so every bit of memory helps and you'll get better performance going one route or the other and minimizing cross usage when possible. Today, i use kde as my primary desktop and I generally prefer it over gnome despite my admiration for gnome. There is nothing stopping you from trying out both, but in my oppinion, KDE is going to take you closer to where you really want to go. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted May 25, 2006 Report Share Posted May 25, 2006 Some people hate this question, because it is probably the most devisive of all questions you can ask the linux community and most people stand on one side or the other, but becuase I'm not afraid of a little good old fashioned debate, i'll give you a real answer. Sorry, has nothing to do with that. Googling or searching will give you all the information that could possibly exist on this debate. People are tired of going over it, that's why no one cares to reply. It has nothing to do with being afraid of a debate, and everything to do with not wanting to beat a dead horse. I've been using Linux since 1999 and this debate has been going on since before then, and to be honest nothing new has ever resulted from it. The best answer is always "try both and pick what you prefer, and use it". Gnome has more than it's share of multimedia applications and frameworks, but to me, some of the most active projects are availible for KDE. that's just simply wrong. gnome-files. almost all multimedia apps either use mplayer, xine, or gstreamer as their base - almost everything is a frontend to one, or various combinations, of those three backends. gstreamer, one of the more actively developed multimedia frameworks, is intended to be used with gnome/gtk. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw1974 Posted May 26, 2006 Report Share Posted May 26, 2006 I have both installed, and go back and forth between both. One thing I like better with gnome, at least in my case, is that it pops up an icon on my desktop when I stick in a usb flash drive. KDE does not. I generally use KDE mostly. Another thing, I don't think CDs play under gnome, if I remember right. You can get KDE to put icons on your desktop when you plug in your USB drive, etc. Right-click your desktop, and choose the configure option. Choose Behavior, and then go to the devices tab. You can then enable, and choose whatever you want to popup on the desktop. Used to be enabled by default in 10.x Mandrake, but I think they changed it for some reason to keep the desktop cleaner, and now you have the devices icon to get access to it all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scarecrow Posted May 26, 2006 Report Share Posted May 26, 2006 For me, the SOLE reason of preferring KDE over Gnome, is the KDE VFS, which is simply awesome. Surely enough the Gnome VFS has improved quite a bit lately, but it's nowhere close. Other than that, I would probably prefer first XFCE4, and then Gnome- but then its only me, that issue may not mean much for other people. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Des Kinsman Posted May 26, 2006 Author Report Share Posted May 26, 2006 Thank you all for your valuable opinions........I've a hunch that new thoughts have come out of this debate and therefore it has been worthwhile. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iphitus Posted May 28, 2006 Report Share Posted May 28, 2006 whoa, one of the greatest debates has been [solved]. who won?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted May 28, 2006 Report Share Posted May 28, 2006 [insert your DE/WM of choice here] did Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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