phaedra wrote:The idea behind Gnome is that we users aren't intelligent enough to use a full featured desktop... Take a look at what they've done to xchat-gnome and the native azureus builds. Makes me sick. Instead of improving the desktop they keep trying to simplify it, thereby keeping it featureless and sterile. The first time I fired up Ultimate Edition 1.5 on my laptop I was shocked to see that someone had actually set the system up the way it *should* be. A fully functional system with plenty of config options. Thanks to TheeMahn.
Well I think ORIGINALLY Gnome came to be cuz KDE started it's existance using some closed-source, non-GPL stuff and a lot of people didn't like that, so they started Gnome to be a fully GPL-compliant desktop. From what I understand, KDE has since changed so it's not really an issue anymore. Personally I DO think KDE is a little bloated, so I get that part, but Gnome is stripped WAY down and performs even worse. Not a
great combo. It just FEELS half-baked.
phaedra wrote:I agree, KDE is way faster, has tons of configuration dialogs, the apps are first rate and not too dumbed down. I've had trouble with the wireless under kubuntu but I believe it's because of the Gnome oriented Canonical developement process. I'd forget E17 right now, it's still very beta. XFCE is fast, lightweight and good for laptops but... The way Xubuntu has slapped XFCE on top of the Gnome undercarriage leaves much to be desired. For one the screensaver will always start up now matter what you do. It just doesn't respond to the menu dialog and I tried xset in terminal with no luck. I got so mad I wanted to make my own build. You'd like Thunar too. I prefer it over Nautilus
Dunno about Xubuntu. I tried Dreamlinux which is XFCE and another one I can't recall, and I've added it to a couple distros myself. I like it. It's insanely light-weight, very usable and efficient, and it still supports all the 3D bells and whistles. The problem is with Gnome or with KDE, you're using a lot of the same guts and apps and such. XFCE doesn't rely on any KDE or Gnome innards to do it's thing, so it'll take a little gettings used to, since most of my favorite apps are KDE or Gnome. Oh I know I can run the guts of either inside XFCE, but I'd prefer not to if I can get away with it. It'll take a little playin' around first before it becomes my primary desktop, but it will be sooner or later.
E17 is more or less interchangeable with XFCE as far as functionality goes. It's also very lightweight and has the ability to be very pretty all by itself. Problem is, you lose all that 3D stuff with E17. To be honest, there's only maybe 3 compiz plugins I like, so I wouldn't miss it too much. For E17 I tried Elive and one other I can't recall atm and also put that on a few distros myself. It's beta, but it's not "very beta". I found it completely usable with no noticeable bugs in the time I used it. You want "VERY beta" try KDE4... (Shudder!) I tried Pioneer Explorer and that comes with 3.5.8 and 4.0 pre-installed. Yeck. KDE4 is twitchy to the point of being completely unusable for one thing, and for another, I just don't like it. It's definitely the KDE guys tryin' hard to make KDE into MS Vista. I want performance and stability. I don't need more desktop widgets and animated icons. There's plenty of tinsel on the tree. Another reason I prefer XFCE and E17. I'm not thrilled with the design philosophy behind the direction KDE's headed.
Re: Nautilus, eh, I'm not a huge fan. I'll take Dolphin or Krusader over any other option right now. Tho a couple of the often overlooked file-managers are nice too. Try xfe sometime. Visually it's a little Windows-ish, but it's the swiss army knife of file managers, with at least as much functionality as Konqueror, and being an X program, it's very lean and fast.
i have an issue with my ethernet controller i think.. my board is an ASUS M2N with nvidia nforce gigabit ethernet controller but i can't get it working with Ultimate Edition 1.7... i've tryed opensuse and fedora and it works fine.. can anyone help me with this?
as soon as possible i will use lspci to get info but what i really think about this is that no ethernet controller as been detected.. i've tried also to reinstall IA32 nforce drivers (downloaded from nvidia website) but with no success.. if you can help me finding drivers for my mobo i would apreciate.
