Hari's Corner

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Why I use Gnome these days

Filed under: Software and Technology by Hari
Posted on Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 10:25 IST (last updated: Thu, Oct 1, 2009 @ 10:42 IST)

Personally I've been using Gnome for a while after being a KDE user for a period of almost 7 years. KDE has always been my first choice for a Linux desktop and while I have been extremely happy with it, I felt strongly that KDE was leaning towards the heavy side since the move to 4.x. While KDE fans might have a lot to rejoice over the extra eye-candy and features of the 4.x series, I did not find much to justify such a major overhaul which left plenty of useful KDE apps orphaned in the 3.5.x universe with no maintainers willing to take over and port them to 4.x.

I always felt that the choice of desktop was dictated more by the application usage than by the basic desktop features. After all, KDE and Gnome share a lot of common aspects of DEs like the Start menu, desktop wallpapers, multiple desktops, session management, power saving support and so on. My guess is that not too many users require much more precise control of the GUI than what Gnome offers. It's precisely for this reason that I didn't mind moving from KDE to Gnome.

Gnome while not as configurable as KDE still does the job pretty well. It's unfussy and feels much lighter than that super-heavyweight of X desktop environments. More than anything I found a whole host of Gnome/GTK applications that can adequately replaces their KDE counterparts.

Here's a small table, in no particular order, of Gnome/GTK replacements I've used since moving from KDE to Gnome.

Purpose KDE application Equivalent used
Mail client KMail Claws Mail
HTML editor/web development Quanta Plus Bluefish
Remote file client Konqueror gFTP
Optical media burning K3b Brasero/GnomeBaker
Instant messenger Kopete Pidgin
Photo management/viewing digiKam gThumb
Image scanning Kooka XSane
LaTeX editor Kile TexMaker
Programmers' editor Kate gedit/SPE (Stani's python editor)

On the other hand, my office suite continues to be the desktop-neutral OpenOffice, I still use GIMP for image processing and editing and of course, my web browser is Debian Iceweasel. The only KDE application for which I truly cannot find a good or even basic replacement is Rosegarden - the music composition tool.

You will also notice, from the above list, that I have a tendency to move away from desktop-specific applications and towards applications that are desktop-neutral (i.e. don't tie themselves down to a specific desktop's library). Applications which use the Qt or GTK kit directly get their thumbs up from me as they will obviously have fewer dependencies.

I don't mean to start a KDE vs Gnome debate here. The real issue is that I don't think the DE should matter so much. I'd gladly switch over to KDE again if I found a good reason to, but what I will do is continue to move towards desktop-neutral applications, so that in the end, the choice of DE is not of much consequence except eye-candy.

2 comment(s)

  1. Interestingly enough I personally give each equal weight. I will choose a DE (currently KDE) if I enjoy using it, and I will choose whatever applications I like - regardless of their toolkit. So even though I'm enjoying KMail, Akregator, Quassel, Kopete and Amarok (and Okular, and Gwenvi- etc), but I use Firefox, OpenOffice, GIMP, XSane, GVim and Dia just as much on a regular basis.

    No wait, I see a flaw - there aren't any good replacements for those on KDE, or am I missing some?

    Comment by Dion Moult (visitor) on Thu, Oct 1, 2009 @ 13:04 IST #
  2. Hi, Dion. Seems like a good mix of applications. I certainly hope that application developers continue to create non-DE specific applications and target Freedesktop.org standards. Interoperability is the key here.

    My priority is to have all my Linux applications work together seamlessly in a stable environment. Gnome seems to be ideal for it. KDE users and developers certainly seem to prefer much tight application integration and more features.

    Comment by Hari (blog owner) on Thu, Oct 1, 2009 @ 14:00 IST #

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