Having a limited internet connection has its own shortcomings. For me this is always the case throughout the month as I have to be concious to bandwidth as well. Having used Kubuntu 6.10 which was not quite up to the mark as I’ve discussed here, I was forced to restrain myself to download KDE in June and I was hesitant to download it in this month as well. As it turned out I had to scan some documents and manipulate it. Since I only had GNOME, I tried Xsane but after an hour spell, did not like it at all and missed Kooka thoroughly. Kooka, the KDE program for scanning was much better, with superior interface and features. So I finally made the resolution to install KDE:

sudo aptitude install kubuntu-desktop

After waiting for 3 hours for packages to download and install. I used Kooka and performed the scanning job easily. Unlike Xsane Kooka does not open multiple windows like Gimp and has very confusing options.

With KDE I also got back the programs I was missing like Amarok, K3b, and Gwenview.

However, I chose using GNOME as my default running environment over KDE because I my past experience Kubuntu was slugglish and not as rock solid as GNOME. And when I logged in KDE enviroment, this remained the same in spite of the fact that I disabled most of its ‘eye-candy’. Moreover GNOME handled KDE applications pretty well, at least as well as KDE handles GNOME applications. What I liked was that GNOME identified all the icons of KDE applications in its menu but KDE on the other hand had no icons for some GNOME applications like Serpentine.

My observation from this experience was that Ubuntu and Kubuntu alone become quite alone when one desktop package is without the other. For instance, Ubuntu(GNOME) has no true matching program like Amarok or K3b or Kooka. Similarly Kubuntu(KDE) seems unfinished without Gimp or Synaptic and does not include Firefox. What in end the default environment the user ends up with depends on her choice and her machine’s choice or both (in case of mine).

Another ‘myth’ I believe is that installing kubuntu-desktop package in Ubuntu is much smarter choice than installing ubuntu-desktop package in Kubuntu. In my experience when I installed ubuntu-desktop package over Kubuntu, whenever I logged in GNOME, none of my keyboard shortcuts worked (like Alt + F1, etc. Moreover the KDE environment became more slower as well. Maybe it’s only my experience or maybe problem of Kubuntu Edgy (the distro I used in which I wanted t use ubuntu-desktop).

While wrapping up I must clarify that I’m bashing neither GNOME and KDE since I love both. In my opinion both work great, but nothing really can be univerally perfect can it? There may be problem in fine tuning of the DE (as KDE in Ubuntu is not as good as in other KDE distros), or maybe for the user, her problem is her mentality!