am i goober or is linux confusing?

[flufadelic]

I am used to windows, real simple you boot up, you get a desktop and you go from there. O.k. now i got Mandrake and i have a GUI and i pick KDE or i pick Gnome and *poof* i have a desktop...or so i think. What is the diffrence and why? Mandrake 7.0 came with a few GUI's. (I think??) is it a plot against me?

[Strike]

Plot against you? No no no, friend - far from it. It's a plot to free you to make your own decisions.

Actually, I find your reaction interesting though not surprising. It's funny to see people react to the many choices of GUIs when before there were no choices. My advice - embrace the possibilities. Fool around with a bunch of them (posting here is a great start with this, by the way). See what you like and don't like about each of them. Come back here and chat with others to see if you can get the ones you like best to do more of what you want. I know that there are people here who are avid supporters of


KDE
GNOME
Enlightenment (my personal favorite)
Sawfish/Sawmill
Blackbox
xfce
Windowmaker (Sensei's favorite)
and many others...


So, it seems that no matter what you pick, you aren't alone - there will be someone here willing to help you.

For starters, I'd say give GNOME and KDE a shot. These provide you with the most Windows-like environment, in my opinion. But, another one of my opinions is that "desktop managers" like those aren't very necessary and that a "window manager" should take care of everything you need - hence my adoration for Enlightenment. So, after trying out KDE and GNOME, find out how to stop using a desktop environment and go with a simple window manager all by itself. You may like it, you may find that it doesn't satisfy your needs. The most important thing here is that you have tons of choices.

[mattmorrow]

You're no goober. Even to an expert Unix user, all the choices can be confusing. And face it, some people just don't want that many choices! First read up on the differences between a Desktop (KDE, Gnome) and a Window Manager (twm, ICEwm, Enlightenment); and of course X in general. Often, people choose a desktop/window manager pair that work well together (like Gnome/Enligtenment or Gnome/Sawfish). If you want to explore different desktops, WM'ers or combinations, the real challenge will be for you to determine what config files and script(s) your distro uses top start X, your desktop and the window manager. Not all distros are the same. Another Mandrake user can probably help you out there. I set up a simple script under RedHat just so that I could bring up any one of about 8 window managers (and desktops) to see which ones I like the best.