Replacing windows XP at home.

[Greg Groth]

doug wrote:
> 
> 
> On Wed, 26 Jul 2006, RW wrote:
> 
>> On Wednesday 26 July 2006 16:23, Joshua Lewis wrote:
>>
>>>    KDE seems like it is bloated so I was considering Gnome. I have also
>>>    been reading about enlightenment and it sounds interesting. I have
>>>    looked into Fluxbox and it also seems like it would do the trick.
>>>
>>>    Would I be better off just going with Gnome or KDE? I realize once I
>>>    start installing apps that I will probably wind up installing
>>>    something that uses Gnome or KDE libraries so I am going to wind up
>>>    bloating my system any ways right?
>>
>>
>> KDE is mostly application modules, which you don't need to install if 
>> you dont
>> want them. These days, though, the avoidance of bloat is mostly just a
>> fetish.  I've not noticed any speed difference between KDE and the 
>> lighter
>> window managers for years. And as far as disk space is concerned we are
>> talking about pennies. I've tried fluxbox and the like off-and-on, but I
>> always miss some KDE feature within minutes.
>>
>> Personally I don't like Gnome, it's less polished than KDE by a 
>> sustantial
>> margin; and while upgrading KDE is always easy, Gnome's complex depencies
>> mean that a special script has to be run, and even that doesn't always 
>> work.
> 
> I agree with this thought. There is a wrapper port/package kde-lite. I 
> run kde on a 400Mhz laptop and mostly can not tell the difference 
> between using that and my new thinkpad. OpenOffice is much, much, ..., 
> better the kdeoffice. The ultimate lightweight window manager is twm. It 
> is built into X. I use it to install KDE. All of this is very personal. 
> It is well worth finding the one you like.

If kde-lite is too much, you can just install kde-base, kde-libs, 
kde-admin & kde-utils and end up with kde having close to the 
functionality of new XP install.  I think the only thing that's missing 
are the games, Media Player and a messenger client.

Greg Groth