Sunday, January 25, 2009

The KDE 4 to GNOME Switch

I was happy to see the latest news that Linus switch to GNOME--a move I made and blogged about previously.

While testing out KDE4 and deciding on GNOME, I kept thinking, "...but if Linus prefers KDE, I must be missing something."

Anyway, the word on the street is that "KDE 4.2" is the "KDE 4" we've been waiting for. I'll definitely give it a spin and see.

I think KDE 4 visually looks great--even when in non-compiz/non-accelerated mode--the widgets and desktop look good.

In order for GNOME and KDE to compete with modern OS's, they need to look and behave like other modern desktops. The non-compiz GNOME desktop is starting to look dated to me, and I just don't trust a compiz-enabled GNOME desktop to be stable enough--based on my most recent Fedora 10 testing. Sure you can run compiz and change out panels and add cool applets, but that's a lot of work especially for the non-techie desktop user. Out-of-the-box, KDE 4 just looks modern, though it's been buggy and lacking in usability.

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