Failed Attempt To Use KDE 4.6

I haven't used KDE in many many moons but after hearing about the improvements they are making I gave it a whirl. I installed Linux Mint 10 KDE. After becoming irritated with intervals of the desktop coming to a halt, flickering window gui and not loving the widgets I gave up.

I loved KDE in the past but it looks to me like a bloated cow ready to tip over.
How is Fluxbox and Enlightenment these days? Gnome seems to be making some changes that I may not like with Unity and Gnome Shell. What are the options?

 

KDE 4.xx is based on configurable widgets that are part of a plasma shell. The shell can be configured to a given device, desktop for PCs and large laptops, netbook for netbooks and tablet for tablet PCs.

I find myself liking it and I haven't had any problems with KDE.

It resembles Windows, which is why newcomers to Linux will feel right at home with it.

GNOME caters more to those who come from Mac OSX. And it can be also be configured to resemble that operating system as well as Windows XP and 7.

If you don't care for KDE, GNOME in any of the variants I mentioned may be to your liking. XFCE and LXDE are a good choice for beginners.

Enlightenment, OpenBox and Fluxbox take some work to be a useful desktop environment.

Good luck.

 

if you want to stick with same gnome options are OpenSuse / ScientificLinux

second option is debian or debian base mint as its still on gnome 2.30 so long way to go at least more 4-5 years

how about xfce they are pretty good as well

 

I remember using Kubuntu Maverick on my netbook for almost a month, for the sake of the Plasma Netbook interface. Never had any problems, with a Intel GMA 3150 IGP.

I agree the widgets are a bit unwieldy; I'd love it if I could snap them to borders like Win7 gadgets, but otherwise they're more powerful and flexible than GNOME panel applets. I'm not all that sold on KDE 4.6 either, the settings and configuration options are unintuitive and seem to need to be fought at almost every step, and UI integration with common GTK programs can be hideous... but all in all, the problems seem typical of Linux anyway, and no worse than what one should reasonably expect.

 

@apathy,

I had similar rendering issues with suse 11.4 video until I added the nVidia repository, then installed the recommended drivers for my cards. No problems since.

 

I was a KDE addict from around 1999-2002, now it just doesn't do it for me. The plasma widgets are somewhat lame and the desktop felt laggy and too heavy. It's ok because it is all about preferences and my KDE love died around Y2K. I've got much love for GNOME now but change is a comin'.

Anyone got a time machine? I was a happier linux user before Linux interfaces catered to people who can barely handle Windows.

 

Just use xfce and be happy. I have the occasional flirt with kde, gnome, fluxbox etc but nothing beats the middle ground that is xfce. It's full featured, traditional, light on resources and above all stable.