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This morning I thought I would shake things up a little and start using KDE instead of Gnome. Installation of KDE is simple enough, but actually using it turned out to be a little different for a KDE newbie such as myself.
Since I use Arch Linux, I had the choice of installing the standard version of KDE 4.2 or going with KDEmod. I went with KDEmod as it has been optimzied for Arch and installed it along with all the bells and whistles of kdemod-complete.
After the installation was complete, I logged out so I could log into my new desktop environment. It looked like the login hanged for a bit, but then the screen flickered some and then it loaded up the K environment. I was immediately notified of a few errors, and for the life of me I already forgot what they were. Nevertheless, I closed the notifications and started to browse around.
First thing I noticed was that none of my windows had titlebars! What the heck? At that time I thought it might be related to the error notifications I received, so I exited that session and logged back into Gnome.
I then deleted KDEmod and installed the normal KDE environment. There seemed to be less packages to install and it went a little quicker than the KDEmod install. After the install, I again logged out and back into KDE.
This time there was no hang in the loading and there were no error messages popping up. But I did have the titlebars issue again.
I fixed that problem quickly by removing my dunce cap and seeing the compiz-fusion icon in my system tray. I switched my window manager from compiz to kwin and the titlebars magically reappeared. Couldn’t readily find the kwin manager though.
Now that everything was back in order, I started exploring around a bit to see if this would be a good fit for me. After using KDE for a grand total of 15 minutes, I have this to say:
- I don’t like the default menu system. It takes a step or two longer to navigate to a program as compared to Gnome. I did manage to add a panel widget that resembled the menu tree of Gnome a little more. As I am a total noob to KDE I don’t know if you can change the Applications menu or not.
- Yahoo does not like Konqueror. When I go there, it presents a page telling me to use a different browser.
- Dolphin is faster than Nautilus. I like that.
- I use Gnome-do religiously, and I’ve heard that Launchy is the KDE equivalent. I haven’t tried Launchy yet; would be curious to see what that’s like.
- What’s the deal with almost every app starting with “K”?
I need to be able to get some work done, so I’m back in the Gnome environment, but would like to play some more with KDE in order to give it an honest assessment. Without starting a flame war, what do you find beneficial to using KDE? What do you find lacking? And how would you help steer a Gnome user over to the K side?
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
For KDE4, there are various KMenus; you will have to Unlock Widgets, then click the little yellow ‘cashew’ on the Plama bar (at the bottom), and select Add Widgets (or add plasmoids, or something; sorry, I am not in front of my system right now). From the Add Widgets popup, you should be able to find various menus such as Lancelot, maybe Raptor, perhaps others, not sure. you may also be able to right-click the current menu to change its style, again I am not sure since I like the default menu. Try its search option at the top; ‘music’ brings up music apps even if you don’t know the app name, etc.
Programs start with a K because initially it was meant to be a way to distinguish the executable program; the Mail program was supposed to JUST be called Mail and its executable named kmail, but then people just called it by the executable and it stuck. That was years ago, and the tradition is still here I guess.
[alt][f2] is KRunner; I don’t know Launchy nor Gnome-Do but try that app; I use it more than the menu for sure.
KWin’s 3d effects are in the System Settings > Desktop > Effects screen. Some non-3d stuff is in System Settings under Window Behaviour, I think… look around
Other non-3d effects (always on top, etc) are usually handled on an app-to-app basis by right clicking on the title bar and selecting options there, I suppose depending on what you want to do; you can use the Advanced to program a certain window to always act that way.
I love KDE because its very configurable, it has always looked great, and its in-build network options are awesome. In a KDE program, for example, you can open a Samba (windows) share and access files with smb://user@machine (up top in the path area of the Open dialog). These are called KDE IO Slaves (kioslaves) and work across the board on KDE apps. The apps also integrate very well together, including drag-and-drop stuff etc.
Finally, I like KDE because it has sensible defaults but allows you to make changes, which I feel that GNOME apps don’t allow a user to do. They keep it too simple and make doing anything complex, into a big complexity…
I’ll be back as I’d like to hear what others have to say, and read more on your experiences!
lefty… people like you are a great help to others!
I know Gnome pretty well, as it’s what I’ve been using for years, but I’ve been itching to try KDE and see if it’s as great as some people say. There are parts of it that I do prefer over Gnome, I guess it’s just the learning curve that’s holding me back at the moment. But I will keep on plugging away at it, as the goal for anyone’s Linux system is to customize it to their needs and desires.
Use KDE for first 2 years,
then on Gnome for 2 years after trying KDE4.0,
now dual boot (yes dual boot, in case i do not prefer dconf and mono) between gnome and kde.
KDE is good specifically at :
- kioslaves (lefty.crupps already said that
- kget (gwget can’t compare when downloading, say 60 items)
- easy configuration to a new user (no gconf knowledge required, kde option is open for you to fiddle with)
- konqueror (now dolphin, if you prefer file management in gui)
Gnome is good in a sense that most distro (rh/centos/fedora, ubuntu, opensuse[they pioneer mono]) is using it by default so should be the politically correct one to use if you want to learn something for work related.
Hi there,
Thanks for the blog, it is useful and seems to be better in time.
I don’t like nautilus, first of all. Especially when you use dolphin for a time, going back to nautilus is more difficult. Dolphin’s split view is really good.
Secondly, I cannot tweak gnome easily. I just want to add “Always on top” button to the window titlebar, but I could not do without googling for hours. It is easy to change the order of the buttons from gconf-editor, but folk, what is the keyword for always on top? (close, maximize, minimize are obvious).
Furthermore, I am an IC designer and the tools I am using have many small windows around. I can easily configure kde so that the windows I select are always on top automatically. It is possible to do this with gnome also with a small tool, what was its name? whatever, but you should first understand that tool’s scripting language, etc.
Lastly, I don’t use compiz for some reason. And gnome’s Alt-Tab is terrific. KDE’s alt-tab tool let me choose the window by clicking.
So kde fits better for me.
Regards to all
“What’s the deal with almost every app starting with ‘K’?”
Ever notice how many Gnome/GTK apps start with ‘G’?