Re: How to Switch Between Gnome and KDE

[Joe <joe@jretrading.com>]

On Sat, 5 Apr 2014 20:43:51 -0700 (PDT)
ray <ray@aarden.us> wrote:

> 
> > At logon, you can choose between any desktop environments and window
> > 
> > managers you have installed, and usually there is also a 'last one
> > 
> > used' entry.
> > 
> > Joe
> > 
> 
> Great, thank you.  I can now switch.  I was hoping to see a change.
> For example, I understand the Gnome has the date and menu at the top
> and KDE at the bottom of the screen.  After switching to KDE and
> rebooting, I see a new log in window, but when I get to the desk top,
> nothing is different from Gnome.  The menus are also the same.
> 
Yes, the menus should remain constant, though some DEs seem to be able
to display the Debian menu and some don't. But the main menu system
finds most things these days, it tends to be older applications which
exist only in the Debian menu tree.


> I must be missing something.

I don't know, I haven't run Gnome3 for a long time, and have never run
the latest KDE. I use Knoppix occasionally, but that dropped KDE in
favour of LXDE years ago. Gnome and KDE used to be quite different,
with KDE looking slicker and more like Windows, which helped people
migrating, and Gnome being more free in software terms. But KDE is now
as free, and Gnome has evolved towards Windows, so I suppose there may
not be many superficial differences. They both run the same
applications, of course.

I think the main differences are in the bells and whistles attached to
the desktop. Gnome and KDE use different sets of 'widgets', the
controls and other building blocks of screen furniture, and I think
that Gnome-specific plugins won't run in KDE task bars, and vice versa.
These days, most of the useful plugins have variants for most desktop
environments. But I had a weather plugin running on Gnome2 which
doesn't work in LXDE, for example, and I haven't yet found the right
incantation to see the (Gnome) Network Manager applet in the Xfce4
panel, though I believe that should be possible. It claims to be there,
I just can't see anything.

-- 
Joe