GNOME is for Speed and Simplicity (Gnome Desktop)

Member Name: kamal

Product:	Gnome Desktop
Date:	26/01/09 (20 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Speed, Simplicity, Great bunch of applications

Disadvantages: Not as glamorous as Mac or Windows, Less responsive in user feedback

GNOME is a simple desktop environment provided by many well known linux distributions. While KDE is more customizable and similar to Windows interface, GNOME offers simplicity instead of complexity.

I tried KDE on ubuntu distro, but realized that latest version of does not allow you to put files on the desktop. And it is very difficult to create shortcuts altogather. So, I switched back to GNOME.

Let's talk about its down side first. It is like vanilla version of any desktop environment. It is not very elegent, and does not look as professional as Windows or Mac. Fonts are not as smooth as Windows or Mac. The interface is not very intutive and responsive. i.e. If you click on OpenOffice, nothing will happen for a while. There is no feedback to the user that it is starting the program. New user will assume that nothing happen and will click again, few times more.

Now let us look at the positive side.
It is a good change from Windows like interface. It is simple and very lightweight. So, GNOME eats less memory and CPU and thus we have more CPU and memory for actual programs. The speed of the machine is easily noticable while running with GNOME, against KDE or Windows XP.

The desktop looks very neat and clutter free. All the options are organised in 3 sets of main menu. 1. Programs 2. Places 3. Settings. That makes navigation very fast.

All the required utility and accesories are provided with GNOME. e.g. Calculator, TextPad, Paint Applications, File Explorer etc.

Full installation of GNOME also includes very useful list of software, which are comparitively lot better than their Windows counterparts. Rhythmbox music player, Totem Media Player, Disk Usage analyzer to name few.

At the end, it achieves main goal of speed and simplicity.

Summary: No-non-sense performer. Highly recommended.

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