Kde 4.6 Vs. Gnome 3.0: A Critical Review before Release

Gnome 2.32 seems to have made its mark in terms of usability and reliability although lacking essential luster and eye candy. This was taken care by the Macbuntu package for Debian and Ubuntu systems with the quintessential Docky dock that imitates the Mac OS X bar. Gnome 3.0 will be out in the second or third week of April 2011.

The first time I used KDE was on Mandrake Linux 10.1 back in 2004. As of that time it was version 3.4 or 3.5. I knew immediately that there was no substitute for this experience. Then I went out and tried other distros and KDE seemed to buggier and buggier as per the usability on the desktop is concerned. Since the past 5 years I've used Gnome. I really liked it since it wasn't buggy, took less memory overhead and was easily customizable.

Last week I installed kubuntu for the first time and not to mention I've tried KDE many times. Initial version of kde 4.x before version 4.4 was extremely buggy, unstable and a horror to anyone new entering the linux world and even to the veterans. KDE 4.5 lived up to expectations but is still flawed in its working. Yes it provides the perfect eye candy to the Unix environment - definitive and original. The font layout and rendering is just brilliant. Reading text in the KDE is pure pleasure but then again it has always been that way. The kerning between characters makes viewing text a maestro's work. KDE is the future of Unix and Linux. The future of KDE looks good as long as the stability and bugs are eliminated.

Gnome 2.32 on ubuntu 10.10 is another masterpiece but without eye-candy. It retains its aesthetic appeal. Version 2.32 completes Gnome as a desktop environment but still not what one would consider when comparing it with corporate operating systems. The kerning still is far from perfect and the flaws are noticeable. Gnome is the desktop environment for corporate servers and other mission critical computational tasks because of its stability and easy reconfigurability.

The ubiquitous and omnipotent Compiz that revolutionized Unix is present and works well with current KDE and Gnome environments. Gnome 3.0 hasn't integrated compiz and users will have to fall back to the Gnome panel.

Gnome 3.0 is going to be out in April 2011. I've installed Ubuntu netbook 10.10 on my acer netbook. Canonical's Unity desktop along with the Gnome shell is present in this edition. So this edition exhibits the prototype version of things to come. Gnome shell is a new concept developed for Gnome 3.0 and will appear in it.

Gnome 3.0 gives the look and feel of a lustrous cellphone non-customizable interface. If usability and making Unix feel and look like the next generation desktop environment and O.S. is considered, it falls short.

Both Unity and Gnome 3.0 are a boon for touch-panels and not so much for the desktop segment. Not to mention most people who just use computers for entertainment it still works out just fine - especially the elderly people and people who aren't concerned with computing hassles.

As time passes more and more people who use Unix will move over to KDE. The Unix interface has always been an issue to newcomers and everyone else too. Gnome 3.0 and KDE 4.6 invariably bridges those gaps albeit in different ways - some good and some bad but nonetheless its the adopters of these new technologies that have to adapt and the age old problem of the Unix world comes up again--> Standardization. There are a certain lack of standards in the Unix world although not profound but its effects can be drastic but never in harms way. A lot of time gets killed and its the only drawback. Things keep changing and sometimes suddenly and without warning. With the new Grub2, configuration files and methods have become different- but that's a different issue.

Posted in: RHCEG