There is constantly a battle of users of which linux desktop is best. Frankly, there is no answer to the question, but to here why one user picked one over another often can make someone else's decision easier. For this reason, I am sharing my thoughts and opinions on my experiences with KDE4, Gnome and Xfce as it relates to usage on my Dell laptop with an Intel video card and using multiple monitors at work.
What I Look For
My goals are important to share, at least partially, to put into scope of why one desktop may appeal to me over others. Here are some of the things that I look for:
- Graphic appeal across many applications
- Mutiple application support, GTK as well as QT applications
- Customizability
- Theming
- Icons
- Window managing
- Panels
- Panel applets
- Theming
- Support for Compiz
I prefer to use applications that are the best for the job. So for example, I use firefox with no desire to ever use Konqueror for web browsing even if I were to run KDE. This results in my use of Gnome, KDE, generic GTK and console applications as I desire.
KDE4
My first experience on Linux was with KDE3, but I have not used it for many years. For that matter, I do preach that my opinion may be a fair overview of it. I will share my thoughts on it though as there are things that some people may appreciate to hear. Just today, I tried out KDE4 and was very disappointed.
First, the new Plasma functionality in KDE4 does not support multiple monitors. I loaded the new configuration and the Apply button stayed grayed out. The old KDE3 multiple monitor support uses xorg.conf, with the Intel 965 driver does not seem to work with. When I used XRandr 1.2 to enable my monitors, and position one above the other, one turned bright gray. No matter what I tried, KDE4 refused to enable both monitors. This made my decision right here, but there were other things about KDE4 that I did not like.
The customizability of the panel was not very friendly. The clock applet for example, had a huge font with no obvious setting to change the size. When I changed the panel size to tiny, the clock text extended below the screen. The KDE start icon also did not correctly resize and also extended below the screen. I also find the selection of available panel applets to be minimal.
KDE4 also seems to be not ready for prime time. For example, Konsole's 4 version is missing functionality than was in version 3. Also, in the short time I tried KDE4 I had several crash dialogs come up, one of which being KWin.
GTK applications are not supported in KDE. Firefox, Skype and other GTK applications looked horrid and out of place. Since KDE is based on Qt, there are no GTK theme configurators.
Gnome
I have tried Gnome a few times and like several things about it, but I chose not to use it. KDE and GTK applications run just fine in Gnome and the desktop environment is well integrated. But there are a few things that prevent me from being happy using it.
The configuration in Gnome is nice for UI, but its flexibility is limited. For example, the themes are very easy to install for example, but the ability to customize a theme isn't there. I find the gnome icon themes to be reminiscent of OS2/Warp, and I do not mean that as a compliment. KDE may be "cartoony", but Gnome is too close to old operating systems to my liking. Some may prefer that though.
What really disappoints me about Gnome, with at least Ubuntu's version of it, is the lack of functionality with the panel. It has no ability to stretch applets for example to take up space. So, if I place the window list and the tray applet in the same panel, I cannot have it so the tray takes only the room it needs for all of its icons and no more and the rest goes to the window list. This is also a problem with moving applets. If I add an applet between two, like the dictionary applet, and then remove it, the space is not reclaimed. As a result, I had to individually move each applet back to where I had it. I was also disappointed in the lack of numbers of available applets and the lack of ability to customize the applets. I also noticed that the panels were having problems repainting. With two monitors, I moved a panel from one to the other, and the area that the panel used to occupy would not repaint. The background of the tray icons also had issues, especially the Skype tray icon for some reason.
Even though these may seem to be a small issues, it is enough for me to not use it.
XFce
I have been using XFce for a few years as my primary desktop after I finally made the conversion from Windows to Linux. I have used it with Slackware, Debian and now Xubuntu. What I love about XFce is that it is very customizable. It is nice that it uses less resources than Gnome or KDE, but that is not the reason I like it.
XFce's panel is the best by far of the three. There are several applets to choose from, especially with the XFce goodies project. The applets have more functionality and custom settings than those of Gnome or KDE as well. My largest problems with an XFce applet is the volume applet which crashes very often on session startup, and panel restart (the end result is that it removes itself from the panel). The bug has gone unfixed for over a year now. XFce also can embed Gnome applets in the panel, so in the unlikely event that you find one in Gnome that isn't in XFce, you can use it.
XFce allows you to configure your GTK theme, the GTK icon theme and mouse cursor theme very easily. KDE and gnome applications run just fine with XFce. My major problems with XFce are:
- you have to use the Gnome control center and KControl to customize KDE and Gnome applications (not that I expect XFce to do this, but this is a consideration for users)
- you have to manually create .desktop files to change the system menu as there is no GUI configuration (you can modify the XFce menu, just not the system menu)
- To create application launcher applet instances, there are no icon pickers, and you cannot select an application from the menu, you have to hand configure each launcher instance.
- The XFce developers on the mailing list are extremely defensive and not very friendly
- The XFce developers seem to have fewer developers than the other desktops and therefore may make its growth slower.
Despite these problems, the ability to customize XFce and the quality of its panel make it my preferred desktop. There is no Compiz support, but running "compiz –replace" works fine.
If you are not a power user, I would not recommend XFce as it seems to require more manual configuration. It seems to be the most stable and be the most customizable though.
Summary
Well, this may not be a very thorough review, and many people will not have my same goals and share my opinions, but hopefully this blog will help some users make a decision on which desktops to try.
© Copyright 2007 - Andrew Robinson.
Please feel free to use in your applications under the LGPL license (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html).
