It wasn't too long ago when Linus Torvalds said to the open source world, "Just use KDE". During that time, I was a full time KDE user - I really didn't like Gnome. That quickly changed.

On my laptop, I was, as expected, using KDE. Annoyingly, the fans ended up blasting on full speed, and the system kept getting very warm. The fans ended up staying on full blast for the length of time that the laptop was powered on. Then I tried Gnome, and it was silent. Sometimes I ha to check to make sure the laptop was on - there was just no noise, finally!

One of the reasons people dis-like Gnome is because of its "dumbed down" approach. It hides most of the configuration options, giving the user only what they think is needed. KDE on the other hand, asks you for everything except your pets name. There is a rediculously high number of options, and many of these are in multiple places. You have the KDE control center, then the same options when you right click and configure desktop.

The thing is, Gnome does have many configuration options - they just aren't placed in large config panels left right and centre. It gets the job done, and it does it without taking up as many resources.

After using Gnome even for the shortest time, KDE looks cheap. You may argue that looks aren't everything - true, but for a start, we are dealing with a desktop environment, and if it feels poor, it won't please the user, and won't make them as happy to use their pc.