# <s>KDE</s> XFCE rocks


I could not agree
[more](http://blog.workaround.org/2009/05/08/thanks-for-the-great-time-kde/)
with Christoph Haas.

I've tried KDE briefly during the last 6 months or so, but it never
really stuck.

# Some observations.

1. I've bought an EeeBox (Dual Atom, with 1 GB of ram), boy, how *slow* 
is KDE. Do I really need a Vista capable machine to run KDE?

2. I like my current ([XFCE](http://www.xfce.org)) desktop. Why?
Because it's nice and clean. I have no use for desktop icons. I have
no use for fancy clocks running on my desktop. I have no use for any
fancy stuff running on my desktop. Why?

    > Because I *don't* see my desktop as I'm running lots of terminal
    > sessions!

3. Basically *any* desktop environment should be able to display *all*
it's important information in a (top) panel no larger then 24 pixels.
This is what I have now with XFCE and I *love* it. The first KDE4
version I used (4.1 I think it was), could only handle a bottom
panel. Luckily this is now fixed.

4. Even if I would switch to KDE, I will probably still need Firefox.
And Firefox is a GTK application and call me stupid but I hate
mixing toolkits... Firefix looks like shit in a KDE env. Yes
Konqi is nice - but I'm *way* too much used to Firefox now.

5. I don't like using the mouse.

6. Basic stuff like a KDE network manager didn't work when I was
ready to try KDE. Well no network, no KDE.

As I'm a long time Linux user, I've used lots of desktop environments
and window managers. I even used KDE1.2 (or KDE2) for quite some time.
But alas, KDE never captured my imagination so it did not stick. After
that I switched to [WindowMaker](http://www.windowmaker.info/) and kept
using that for a few years. Then with Ubuntu I just started to use Gnome
as it was nice and clean. But Gnome seems to have lost its lustre and
was also running quite slow. So currently I'm a XFCE user and I'm
very happy with it.