KDE is as impressive as I've been told.

[ooagentbender]

Ive been using linux for about 3 years now, and I've tried a few different distros. Ive settled on a stage one install of Gentoo but Ive recently been messing around with my desktop alot. I finally got tired of the really light weight window managers that I was used to from the days on my vaio picturebook and I wanted something that would alow me alot of configurability and more importantly stability. I tried gnome and it is an awesome desktop, especially when combined with enlightenment, but I wanted to give KDE a shot too and I finally did.
I have to say that the tight integration of everything, and a solid implementation of every imporant app I use (from Knode newsreader to Krita for some basic image editing) is quite usefull and comforting. Whats more, its not as heavy and slow as I intially thought it would be.
Thusfar the only problem I have had is working with xinerama across my two screens with an nvidia card, the windows just wont respect the screens on maximization.
Kudos to the KDE team for the awesome work they have done on their desktop environment, which has imporoved my productivity, and also for the work they have done with their office suite (better than openoffice in my opinion).

[quip]

I have to second your opinion. I was using xfce for a while, and it was very nice. I have tried gnome before, and it was nice as well. But recently, I upgraded notebooks, and the new one was powerful enough to go back to kde. It has been really nice, for the reasons you mentioned: ease-of-use, integration, eye candy, and it even feels lighter than before.

Anyway, nothing against the other de/wms; however, kde has really impressed me, and I moved my desktop to it recently as well. I must disagree on one point, though. KWord's problems with MS word docs, and a recent problem I've had with creating pdfs in kword (letters get crooked) make OO indispensible for me.

[ooagentbender]

One thing I forgot to mention, is amaroK. Its everything I ever wanted in a music player, and it blows iTunes out of the water (Im an avid mac fan). I have never been so utterly impressed with an open source program in all my life. I would pay money to use this, and I plan on donating. To those guys over at amaroK, congradulations on creating one of the finest peices of software i've ever used.

[Lucas_Maximus]

Amarok is very nice I still use Beep, but may go back to amarok later. Whether you like KDE is your opinion, I prefer Gnome. It seems though you have already tried KDE though.

[blackbelt_jones]

I also prefer Gnome. I like the way I can use the mouse to line up the open applications in the workspaces, in whatever order I like, simply by dragging and dropping. I also get that with XFCE. (Here is where someone ususally responds by telling me that there's a way to get that with KDE. It wouldn't surprise me, and I'd love to hear about it.)

Anyway, isn't it great to have a choice?

[Parcival]

Its everything I ever wanted in a music player, and it blows iTunes out of the water (Im an avid mac fan).

Geez, so I use KDE for three years now, too, and haven't tried that app yet! Dude, you just really made my day! :)

[cybertron]

KDE's bloat has gotten a lot better over the last couple of years that I've been using Linux. When I first started with it I had to wait around a minute for KDE to start, but recently when I installed 3.4 and started it up to test something it came up almost as quickly as Fluxbox (though without some of the extra apps I start with Fluxbox like superkaramba). It was a more than acceptable startup time. I'm sticking with Fluxbox because I like it (text configuration files make re-installations soooo easy:)), but I'm an even bigger KDE fan now than I was back in the day (I'm not old enough to use that expression:mad: ).

[quip]

...(I'm not old enough to use that expression:mad: ).

:D
I tell my students that all the time.

I really like the direction this thread is going. Maybe there are others like it, I haven't checked. So far, no flames, just kde/gnome/whatever fans posting features they like about their chosen de/wm, which would be a nice thread for newbies asking which one they should choose. Not to hijack it, but I would like to see more listings/comparsions added to this thread.

[Calipso]

When I started using Linux almost 2 years ago(Mandrake 9.1) I chose to use gnome because I read many times on forums that its lighter on the resources and since my computer wasnt exactly a beast I thought conserving resources was a good thing. I tried KDE once or twice since then but keep going back to gnome. I think the biggest reason for it is that since gnome was the first DE I used, I got really used to it. Im familiar with gnome and kde just gets me a little confused when I use it. What really annoys me about gnome is no menu editor. However I did find SMEG the other day and it works great. I dunno why gnome doesnt implement this editor :confused:

I intend to give kde a fair shot though. Ive been hearing really good things about suse 10 :) (I tried SUPER suse 10 with gnome and it wasnt good...suse and gnome just dont seem to work together in my experience).

Oh and just because I use gnome doesnt mean I hate kde apps....I recently( a day or two ago) started using amaroK....so far so good :)