We`re not just talking about changing the colour of a couple of windows and menus and a new background image. Using one of the many window managers and desktop environments available, users can mix and match to their heart`s content, making the desktop of their wildest dreams.
Gnome in the early days suffered from trying too hard to be all things to all people.
Alastair Otter, journalist, ITWeb
In the past I`ve been a great fan of the KDE project; a project that over the past couple of years has best suited my needs, and a desktop environment that I notice most distributions now install as their default graphical interface. The reason for this is probably that KDE (which stands for K Desktop Environment) most closely resembles the Windows environment with a default installation having all the buttons and menus exactly where a Windows user would expect to find them. This obviously makes conversion of the new inductee much simpler and far less painful.
Sluggish
Recently, however, I have begun to notice that KDE is starting to resemble Windows in another, and more ominous, way: overkill and slowness. The most recent version of KDE was noticeably sluggish on my laptop with 256MB of memory, and even more so on my desktop machine, making speed a real issue. And this is for an operating system that we proudly claim can even be run on pre-Pentium machines. Clearly KDE is starting to buckle by giving into the supposed benefits of `feature-heavy` applications.
As a result, I started looking around and, after much hesitation, decided to give Gnome another go. Gnome is widely regarded as the 'true` desktop environment for open source advocates because it makes a concerted effort to avoid using any non-free software, a pitfall that KDE stepped into with the QT libraries early on in the game. My experience of Gnome, however, had not always been a very favourable one and when I first tried it there was a lot to be desired, not only with regards crashing applications but also on the usability front. Gnome in the early days suffered from trying too hard to be all things to all people.
The latest version does not suffer the same flaws and I was amazed by the maturity level the system has reached. Gone are the days of a screen filled with icons, menus and pop-up menus. They are probably still there if you really want them, but the latest Gnome (as standard) is simple, clean and does away with a lot of clutter. It is, also, probably the most attractive looking desktop environment around and not only resolves many of the usability issues I previously experienced but in fact takes usability to another level. In short, it all makes sense now.
Fire it up
Gnome is not a window manager. It is a complete and, rather neatly, integrated desktop environment that includes everything from a simple editor (GEdit), through to a browser (Mozilla), through to a personal finances tool (GnuCash). The 'killer application`, however, has to be Red Carpet, the package management tool that makes keeping your desktop up to date literally as easy as pointing and clicking.
Forget all the hype you`ve heard before. This tool works and works well. Each day I fire it up and it gives me a list of software that I could update on my machine. Compare this with the other main method of achieving the same feat: type [application name] -V (or some such command) into a terminal; work out what version you`re currently running; search the Internet for a more recent release; download, decompress and compile; in most cases, head back to the Internet to download additional files on which the first depends; start process again for most recent applications downloaded.
Red Carpet does all of this seamlessly (to use another term popular in the IT industry). No more hunting for applications. No more fighting with dependencies. And no more wasted downloads because you can`t meet all of the dependencies.
Of course, most of the Gnome packages could be run without a full Gnome desktop in place but given that Gnome is infinitely faster than KDE to run and has very few noticeable bugs, that option doesn`t really make any sense. Oh, and did I mention that Gnome is extremely attractive?
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