Saturday, November 8, 2008

Going Gnome. So long KDE it was fun while it lasted

I did something I thought I would never do. I stopped using KDE and switched to Gnome. I have used KDE for a very long time. I have always preferred KDE to Gnome. I was never Anti-Gnome but reality has set in. The KDE development is going in a direction I do not feel happy with. Plasma is a wonderful idea but the implementation of it is not sitting well with me.

So now I am running Ubuntu instead of Kubuntu. So why am I not happy with KDE's new direction?

In a nut shell I don't care for the look and feel KDE4 is going to. Yes its a major improvement in many ways but the overall effect is well... I don't want to bash any KDE developers but I'm afraid they are losing touch with what the users want. All the bling is nice but users aren't as interested in that as they are functionality.

Besides what good is the bling if you can't customize it. I loved KDE 3 for the simple fact I could customize it. Gnome wasn't as easy to customize but KDE 4 is a bit (actually a lot) harder than either.

Of course I already got rid of the stock Gnome layout and fitted it to suit my desires. I will miss kickoff but maybe I can convince a gtk developer to make a similar style for menu system for Gnome.

Evolution has one issue. It doesn't iconify into the system tray like Kontact did. I have to use Alltray to get that and its a bit of a PIA but hey now I can see the html design mails I get now and then. A trade off I can live with.

Finally I was actually running more gtk based apps the qt based apps. Seems to me it is simpler to use the gtk based GUI where those apps integrate readily. Honestly it was worth the switch.

Oh and the updated hardware support in Ubuntu Intrepid ROCKS!!!!

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