hi,
Just as you said its shifting from the platform to the realm of distribution, i can very well state that your experience of KDE is distribution dependent. And well talking of my distro its RH 9.0 with a nice stable complete gnome/kde distribution.
If you wanted screenshots I could send you plenty. But well the question comes of posting them. I don't really like the idea of posting them on a list.
And about there's lot more going on in KDE is quite not the case. If you checked the release schedules of gnome and all the gtk based software i'd say gnome is far more active ;) Both the desktops have been releasing neck to neck.
As far as memory usage, startup times is concerned i can say a trifle unscientifically that gnome starts about 5-6 seconds faster than kde. Then again memory usage: on rh 9.0 with gnome the usage on immediate startup is 128 mb. for kde ? 213 mb. eh ? A quick look at system-monitor will tell you all the story. and my suggestion use gnome-monitor.
i don't think its right to call the decision of selecting gtk over kde for programming as legacy. Even the latest and the finest software that turns out today on freshmeat.net is gtk based.
While there is a wide difference in the philosophies of these two toolkits both have very stable and viable reasoning behind them. On a general principle developers prefer gtk for its "lightness" and simplicity with enough power to modify it.
The visual clutter that i referred to is not due to bad distro. I wouldn't go so far as to call debian-sid,rh9.0,knoppix3.2 as bad distros. The visual distraction is what the gnome developers trying to fight. Agreed there are many sharp edges to gtk but they are rapidly being addressed by the developers. That is what exactly the lead developer for gnome recently gave a call for.
What software you prefer is matter of personal taste. I prefer mozilla for my surfing and mail. I dislike konquerer for too many reasons that i do not care to list here for the sake of sanity.
There are far too many non-default softwares that work n-times better than the default softies of kde or gnome.
And if you are talking of startup times etc. gnome beats the pants off kde anytime. U definitely don't need me to give quanitative comparisons for that ?
I don't know what customization you are talking of but its equally easy to customize a gnome toolbar/desktop ! Its all a matter of personal taste,familiarity and as far as mine goes i love speed, neatness and min. of visual clutter. gnome fits the bill. I was a lover of kde till rh 8.1(psyche) until rh 9.0 came along.
Its no going back now for me. The choice is yours buddy, thats what linux about ~!
later,
C Get Your Private, Free E-mail from Indiatimes at http://email.indiatimes.com
Buy The Best In BOOKS at http://www.bestsellers.indiatimes.com
Bid for for Air Tickets @ Re.1 on Air Sahara Flights. Just log on to http://airsahara.indiatimes.com and Bid Now!