Note: ported from kaear.co.uk, written ~2004.

My first DE was KDE. I'd heard great things, and after some brief research I found it had a wonderfully large user-base (anything with a large user-base is easy to find answers to questions that crop up during use/installation). So, on goes Slack 9.1 (Toshiba, again) and on goes KDE - full-bloat-version 3.0 …

Actually, that's not entirely true, but you'd have to read about my first experiences with Linux and the Toshiba to decipher that one!

… so the GUI login crops up, and I get into KDE eventually (the startup process took in excess of 2 minutes!). I'd heard Linux was fast and more stable and blah-blah-blah - obviously a 2 minute GUI startup time, on top of the login and boot up was a bit much, but I persevered regardless and tinkering a bit.

Very often, however, I found myself getting into KDE and opening up a dozen xterms, especially when I started kernel patching & recompiling!

Yes, I know, there are KDE tools for the config files, the kernel configs and all the rest - but very often I found them incomplete, or lacking in functionality. "The Definitive Desktop Environment Comparison" is one of the best short articles I've found comparing the desktop environments from different OSes “UI and usability”.

The writer seems to have a chip on his shoulder regarding KDE (I quite enjoyed my first foray into Linux with KDE, so we're likely both bias), but many of the points he makes are very valid.

Making a choice about an DE is almost as important as the OS itself (unless you're using command line only, I suppose) - and doubly so if you intend to spend a lot of your working time in that environment. Something that no one ever told me, but is now painfully apparent, is the level of integration of applications into desktop environments.

My view of Linux was one very similar to the "Nucleus" metaphor, and so I had this great concept of mix-&-match (Linux: the Pick&Mix of OSes?) programs that could be readily swapped around and sorted out as I wanted them, not as anyone else wanted them.

I was mostly right.

In some ways, though, I was so very, very, wrong.

Making a decision about what desktop environment to use on a 2.2Ghz x86 processor with 512MB of RAM and a 120GB hard disk is one of personal preference - I don't think it matters, performance wise, what you use - they'll all be fine.

If you have disk-space issues, or performance issues, you'll likely choose a more light-weight DE/WM like Fluxbox to something more intensive like KDE. If you're not a native Linux user (or at least have a passing fluency) you will very shortly become one with your command line or die trying, because many of the tiny little applications you're used to with Windows, or even if you're switching from KDE/Gnome, suddenly become inaccessible to you unless you jump through the myriad of hoops required per program.

KDE applications aren't usually too troublesome if you've installed the kdelibs packages, and Gnome applications by rights should be fine if you've got Gtk and it's bolt-ons. If you're trying to stay clear of installing the entirety of KDE or Gnome to get Konqueror or Nautilus up and running you might have problems. Equally valid are the so-called “Dock-Apps” that the *Box varieties of WM have given us - certainly in Xfce, there's no kind of docking bar for these to sit, there's no way of moving them around the screen, they're just in the way and not terribly useful.

An unusable application; what do we do? We go find one that's usable.

Ah.

With such a large user-base, the three (KDE, Gnome, and the *Box variety) main desktop environments have plenty of willing followers - and thus plenty of people whipping up swish looking applications for their Utopian desktop.

Not so many people whipping up apps for the rest of us sods who want something else.

So you end up with a binary with static linked libraries, which works in some cases, or the source. Configuring the source gives you a bunch of error messages about your system not having some pre-requisite. You jump through the hoops, only to find that you've installed the whole of another WM, or in the *Box, case, you have a dock-app that has nowhere to dock!

If, like me, you fancied something different like Xfce (and enjoy it, like me!) then you need to be prepared to either install KDE/Gnome to make sure you satisfy their dependencies, or go and find replacement apps that don't require KDE or Gnome, or Dock-Apps!

Edit (May 2005): As it turns out, Xfce is actually based on Gnome, so you've already got a small amount of Gnome installed if you're using this WM. Of course, the installing rest of the gtk+ libraries is long-winded, but not too bad if you're prepared to jump through the hoops.