A current mania is to exile yourself for a certain period of time into the rival desktop environment, to see how bad (or not) you would feel: a KDE fan would use GNOME, while a GNOME guy would use KDE.

I have undertaken the challenge myself, and it wasn't bad at all. I have used KDE in the past, albeit without very much enthusiasm. Ubuntu 4.10 converted me to GNOME, once for all, so I was very upset when Slackware dropped the support for GNOME.

In the meantime, I have changed my preferred distro more than once (BTW, I don't use Ubuntu anymore), yet my strong bias for GNOME was very visible. Fortunately enough, the world seemed to be synchronized with me and my preferences of the time: two notorious KDE-centric distros, SuSE and Mandriva, have adopted GNOME as an environment as important as KDE. Other personal preferences, like Debian, CentOS and Fedora, were already having GNOME as the primary DE.

GNOME is not the heaven on earth, so that my almost religious love for it looked bizarre. The complete rebuttal of KDE too. I wanted to feel how is to only have KDE while having GNOME habits and idiosyncrasies.

After some 3 days in KDE under Slackware (preceded by a week of isolation in WindowMaker, to keep me "free of GNOME"), then a KDE experience with PC-BSD, and an unexpected decision to adopt Pardus, I had the proof that life in KDE is possible even for the incredulous.

Frankly speaking, my dependency of GNOME was not determined by either of these possible reasons:

• KDE is so much more bloated -- well... it actually is, yet not that much;
• GNOME has oh, those great apps -- what apps? except for GnomeBaker, most of the application I use are GTK+ only (gxine, GIMP), or their GNOME dependencies are not crucial; or the applications itself are replaceable (Abiword, Gnumeric, Planner, Liferea);
• I have develop in GNOME, and I must use Anjuta -- this is not true because no, I don't write GNOME software and... to be honest, very few people use Anjuta.

The major things that made me stick with GNOME are in another list:

• The two-panel default layout: one panel at the top, one panel at the bottom. I simply need space for the window list (taskbar).
• Any GNOME theme is better than almost all the default themes KDE uses in various distros: the Qt widgets using Plastique, with rounded 3D buttons and some ugly widgets (think QLCDNumber) look... spongy and toyish, just like the Luna interface vs. Windows classic in XP.
• I simply can't read vertical text, and the Universal Sidebar uses vertical text and cryptic icons.
• The overall feeling that "KDE tries to be like Windows", and that "KDE users are frivolous, just look at SuperKaramba!"
• Everybody switches to GNOME, isn't this for a good reason? Besides, doesn't this prove I am right?

After some more time of balanced use of both KDE and GNOME (KDE in Pardus, on the laptop, and in Mandriva Flash; GNOME in Mandriva 2007 and in Debian testing), I guess I can have a rather real knowledge of:

• What I liked in GNOME and I miss while in KDE.
• What I like in KDE and I miss when back in GNOME.

— § —
I'll summarize here the main metaphor and usability differences as I have felt them, mentioning in each case "who is the winner".

When you press F2 to rename a file, only the basename is selected in GNOME, whereas in KDE the full name is selected. This is a matter of habit, so there is no clear winner here. GNOME's approach is usually better though.


Take a look at how my desktop looks under GNOME, vs. the same desktop under KDE:


The GNOME desktop provides me with large thumbnails, and this makes my life easier. Under KDE, the option to have the thumbnails larger than the regular icons does not apply for the desktop, and even when it applies (in Konqueror), the thumbnails are smaller than in GNOME. Winner, GNOME.


Oh, wait: GNOME/Nautilus also show me the full name of the files, no matter how long they are. KDE/Konqueror only show "some long filename you ca...". Very annoying. Winner, GNOME.


Re-wait: but KDE/Konqueror have nice file tooltips, with a really large preview (can be turned off) and useful file information. I miss the file tooltip under GNOME! (Even Windows has file tooltips, albeit w/o preview.) Winner, KDE.


And again: the backup~ files are invisible on the GNOME desktop, even when you can see them in a regular Nautilus window! Furthermore, the show_backup_files option can be toggled separately only using GConf (or by manual file editing), because Nautilus has a menu option only for show_hidden_files: "Show/hide hidden files (CTRL+H)", and a preferences dialog option for both of them together: "Show hidden and backup files". Confusing and delusive. Plus, you might have hundreds of residual *~ files left on the desktop! Winner, KDE.


Oh, but at least Nautilus has a shortkey CTRL+H for toggling the view of the hidden files. In Konqueror I have to use the menu. Winner, GNOME.


Konqueror vs. Nautilus: at first, I thought of Konqueror as being bloated. Too complex: 9 types of file view, versus 2 types in Nautilus. However, it is much more practical after getting used with it. The history of the visited places is a real history, and fish:// is more responsive than ssh:// in Nautilus (which blocks all its windows while waiting for a response). Overall, KDE is a winner in this department.


Oops! Exception: in Nautilus I can right-click and arrange items by one of the 6 criteria. The right-click in Konqueror doesn't have any Arrange Items menu! Winner, GNOME.


Nevertheless, here's where GNOME has a bad approach: when comes about overriding files.

1. Copy and paste some files over themselves, in the same directory: Nautilus creates duplicate files with "(copy)" appended to the name (actually, this is like in XP), while Konqueror asks me for the new filename:
 

2. Copy and paste some files in another directory, when files with the same name exist: Nautilus asks me something, but I can't tell which is the difference between the files, I can't even tell which one is newer! GNOME is a lame loser here:


Guess how much more detailed is the question in Konqueror?


It's even "intelligent": I can compare images by thumbnail, and other files by size and date. Winner, KDE.


Nautilus doesn't have by default any file templates under Create Document. Annoying. Winner, KDE.


I was so used with the lack of a real clipboard in GNOME, that I was taking the same care even in Windows: not closing the source application until I paste the "clipboard" contents in the target application. With KDE... I don't really need multiple buffers, but at least I can be sure there is a real clipboard!* (I know, X doesn't have a clipboard. So what? It's not about TWM, it's about the two major DEs!) Winner, KDE.


The Embedded Advanced Text Editor in Konqueror. It's not bloatware, because it spares me from the need to open a text editor. Winner, KDE.


Kate's Regular Expression Editor §§ is a godsend! I miss it in Gedit! Winner, KDE.


The screenshot application is dumber in GNOME. Yes, I know about Alt+PrnScr. Yes, it has CLI switches. Yes, it's undergoing some improvements. Yet it's too spartan. And it's prone to crash at times. Winner, KDE.


To balance things: the default layout in KDE is having a single panel, usually with some huge launch icons added, and the space left for the taskbar (window list) is terribly small: this is bad usability design by my book. Winner, GNOME.


QLCDNumber is the worst-looking widget ever, and the KDE clock uses it by default! Even with regular text, the clock is still unpractical: you can't see at the same time the hour and the day if the height of the panel is not "double"!** Winner, GNOME.


Configuring a theme in KDE is confusing, as the possible tweaks are spread over several places (three, five, depending on how and what you count). Theming GNOME is much simpler.*** Bonus: new themes can be added from art.gnome.org with drag and drop! Winner, GNOME.


That was all. Some other issues are non-issues, just different defaults. Example:

Konsole:

• Switch between sessions (tabs): SHIFT+left/right
• Move sessions (tabs): CTRL+SHIFT+left/right

GNOME Terminal:

• Switch between sessions (tabs): CTRL+PgDn/PgUp
• Move sessions (tabs): SHIFT+CTRL+PgDn/PgUp

It's a matter of taste. Sure thing, you can also move tabs with your mouse in gnome-terminal, but the shortkeys are a little dumb, aren't they? No winner here.

— § —
Let's count now:

• GNOME: 8 points
• KDE: 9 points

It's almost tie, thus irrelevant.

Choosing KDE over GNOME or GNOME over KDE should be based on some other criteria too.

— § —
I'm still undergoing an analysis of what distros I will use on my desktop from March onwards, and each of them will use only one of the two major desktop environments.

Chances are to have KDE as a winner, because the current nominees for both the desktop PC (multi-boot) and the old laptop are:

• Pardus 2007: with KDE.
• Mandriva 2007.0/2007.1: with KDE (switch from GNOME).
• CentOS 5 or Fedora 7: with GNOME.
• Possibly (secondary) Slackware 11: with KDE.
• Possibly (secondary) PC-BSD: with KDE.

openSUSE and Ubuntu are out of the question. And Debian will get erased.

UPDATE: To add one more small point to GNOME, here's a naive feature of it I actually like and use sometimes: emblems.


SIDE NOTES:
* Almost nobody uses xclipboard(1) nowadays (and it only knows about plain text). GNOME 2.16 has a "desktop-wide clipboard" that can save your paste buffer even after you have closed the application from which you copied... but only if the source application is a GTK+/GNOME app! Read the 17th comment for details.

** I mean, not on the same line, like in GNOME's clock. I need it to be on the same line because I customize KDE to use two "thin" panels instead of one (à la GNOME). For having date and time you need a "thick" panel (the default layout):


*** A reader pointed out that GNOME doesn't let you change the color scheme of any theme. True, this is really annoying at times.

§ Handling of the removable media "in a sane way" was suggested as being one of GNOME's (Nautilus') pluses. How about Nautilus sending to .Trash files you delete from USB sticks, thus not freeing any space when you'd expect the opposite?

Overall, there isn't a clear winner. Have I mentioned that KMail can have a visual notification when new mail arrives, whereas Evolution can not? (Say "Novell", then flush.)

§§ What I actually meant is (obviously) KRegExpEditor, part of kdeutils, which can be accessed from KWrite too.

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