Gnome vs. KDE

[Mark Eggers]

> No - sorry - haven't run KDE in a while - there may indeed be a CD drive
> mounting problem in KDE and I wouldn't know it.

This was a problem in 3.2 / 3.3.  You could get automount to work or CD burning to work.  Getting both to work was a pain.  This appears to be fixed in 3.4.  I downloaded the rpm's from www.kde.org, installed them, and I now have both working well.

There are still some issues with KDE 3.4.  In no particular order, here they are.

1) Screen savers do not work in an integrated fashion.  You have to use xscreensaver rather than the KDE implementation.  This is a known issue and at last report won't be fixed.

2) At least on Fedora Core 3, KDE doesn't handle ALSA volumes correctly for some sound cards.  The startup sound starts out correctly, and then goes to one side (left in my case).  Adjusting with the gnome-volume-control tool fixes the problem.

3) Background and fonts conspire to make a slightly blurry effect by default.  I've not been able to pick the right fonts and background to give a crisp rendentition like Gnome (especially 2.10 as tried on several live CDs).

This last one is particularly annoying, and until I solve it I end up using Gnome more than I like.

There is one major issue with Gnome that really bothers me.

1) There is no way to make per-user menus.  This is considered a 'feature' by the Gnome team, but I think it's a particularly bad choice.

I know, I can go in as root and make the appropriate desktop files for all applications, but would like to just run a menu editor and be done with it.  I realize that large installations like to nail down the desktop, but having the choice would be nice.

In short, KDE appears to be more flexible, and apparently needs it.  Gnome is less flexible so will be inconvenient for those who like to tweak the desktop.

Just my opinion . . .

/mde/