Language Selection

English French German Italian Portuguese Spanish

KDE vs. GNOME: Is One Better?

Filed under
KDE

One of the hardest things for users of other platform to understand is that GNU/Linux does not have a single graphical display. Instead, there are dozens, ranging from basic window managers that control the look and positioning of windows in the X Window system, to complete desktop environments with a wide variety of utilities and specially designed applications.

However, for most users, the choice comes down to either GNOME or KDE, the two most polished and popular choices.

Which is right for you? In this two-part article, we'll make a close comparison of the two desktops, trying to get away from the holy wars that often obscured this topic. The goal is to discuss the differences as dispassionately as possible.

In Part 1, we'll discuss where the KDE and GNOME desktops come from. We'll also discuss the basic features that distinguish them from desktops on other platforms and their customization options.

In Part 2, we'll discuss the utilities, administration tools and desktop-specific applications of each.

History

In the mid-1990s, desktop options for GNUI/Linux and other UNIX-like systems were limited by lack of functionality, or by philosophical freedom – or both.

Full Story.

KDE vs GNOME

Although I've use both interfaces I have always preferred KDE over Gnome. KDE seems to be easier and more flexible to configure to my likings. Konqueror alone is another deciding factor. The "K" names at times are annoying however.

So many new linux users, Ubuntu for example, must assume that Gnome is superior to KDE or why else would the developers have used it. This, IMHO, will keep a large number of persons from experiencing how great KDE is.

Rich D.
Linux User 297743
Linuxified Oct 2000
I was a gopher before www.* was cool.

re: KDE vs GNOME

"This, IMHO, will keep a large number of persons from experiencing how great KDE is."

what the heck are you talking about? KDE users are estimated 65% of linux desktop users, gnome only takes up to 25% or something, KDE is well overrated, but it remains a matter of opinion, i never did like kde, but that's just ME!

More about style than about function

I have to admit that I grew familiar with KDE before GNOME became popular, so by the time I got much air time with GNOME, I already had a number of KDE habits. Coming from a prior DECWindows/Motif and CDE background on Digital UNIX workstations, at first, KDE was easier for me to get adjusted to.

Over the years, those adjustments were less necessary. It was the Novell SLED 10 implementation that really showed me a lot of what is possible with GNOME, even though the SLED implementation is spartan compared to many other implementations. It told me that GNOME could do the job very well.

Ubuntu, UbuntuCE, Fedora, and Mandriva are among the other distributions that have shown me that a GNOME desktop is a perfectly viable one, and I would not steer anyone away from using it, and I would gladly help anyone wishing for assistance in using the GNOME based applications or the desktop itself.

Given my background and interests, I am still partial to the window and desktop managers that feel, either like the original X with its spartan window managers, or like the old CDE with better functionality and appearance. Given that, I probably still use KDE the most, followed by XFCE, IceWM, and Fluxbox. I also use LXDE, Openbox, and JWM on some small, light distributions, and I won't hesitate to use GNOME when it is the featured desktop manager on the distribution that I am using or testing.

As Bruce Byfield suggests in his article, why not have both desktops around and use the best features from each of them, and experiment every now and then? That is what I do. I'll still have my own personal biases, and I suspect nearly every reader will have their own. What I like in the matter is that we all have the opportunity to choose, and all of the choices have quite a bit to offer.

Brian Masinick

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

More in Tux Machines

digiKam 7.7.0 is released

After three months of active maintenance and another bug triage, the digiKam team is proud to present version 7.7.0 of its open source digital photo manager. See below the list of most important features coming with this release. Read more

Dilution and Misuse of the "Linux" Brand

Samsung, Red Hat to Work on Linux Drivers for Future Tech

The metaverse is expected to uproot system design as we know it, and Samsung is one of many hardware vendors re-imagining data center infrastructure in preparation for a parallel 3D world. Samsung is working on new memory technologies that provide faster bandwidth inside hardware for data to travel between CPUs, storage and other computing resources. The company also announced it was partnering with Red Hat to ensure these technologies have Linux compatibility. Read more

today's howtos

  • How to install go1.19beta on Ubuntu 22.04 – NextGenTips

    In this tutorial, we are going to explore how to install go on Ubuntu 22.04 Golang is an open-source programming language that is easy to learn and use. It is built-in concurrency and has a robust standard library. It is reliable, builds fast, and efficient software that scales fast. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel-type systems enable flexible and modular program constructions. Go compiles quickly to machine code and has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. In this guide, we are going to learn how to install golang 1.19beta on Ubuntu 22.04. Go 1.19beta1 is not yet released. There is so much work in progress with all the documentation.

  • molecule test: failed to connect to bus in systemd container - openQA bites

    Ansible Molecule is a project to help you test your ansible roles. I’m using molecule for automatically testing the ansible roles of geekoops.

  • How To Install MongoDB on AlmaLinux 9 - idroot

    In this tutorial, we will show you how to install MongoDB on AlmaLinux 9. For those of you who didn’t know, MongoDB is a high-performance, highly scalable document-oriented NoSQL database. Unlike in SQL databases where data is stored in rows and columns inside tables, in MongoDB, data is structured in JSON-like format inside records which are referred to as documents. The open-source attribute of MongoDB as a database software makes it an ideal candidate for almost any database-related project. This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the MongoDB NoSQL database on AlmaLinux 9. You can follow the same instructions for CentOS and Rocky Linux.

  • An introduction (and how-to) to Plugin Loader for the Steam Deck. - Invidious
  • Self-host a Ghost Blog With Traefik

    Ghost is a very popular open-source content management system. Started as an alternative to WordPress and it went on to become an alternative to Substack by focusing on membership and newsletter. The creators of Ghost offer managed Pro hosting but it may not fit everyone's budget. Alternatively, you can self-host it on your own cloud servers. On Linux handbook, we already have a guide on deploying Ghost with Docker in a reverse proxy setup. Instead of Ngnix reverse proxy, you can also use another software called Traefik with Docker. It is a popular open-source cloud-native application proxy, API Gateway, Edge-router, and more. I use Traefik to secure my websites using an SSL certificate obtained from Let's Encrypt. Once deployed, Traefik can automatically manage your certificates and their renewals. In this tutorial, I'll share the necessary steps for deploying a Ghost blog with Docker and Traefik.