Reasons I prefer GNOME to KDE: • It's C-based instead of C++. I don't like the idea of excluding C apps from the stock desktop environment, and you cannot write C QT or KDE apps. C and Unix have a rich history. This alone pretty much means that I won't be using Qt. • The whole Qt license fiasco. That's long over, but I still distinctly remember TrollTech trying to maneuver the Linux desktop to the point where any developer of a non-free application would have to pay a tax to them, and that still has a bad taste in my mouth. I don't trust Microsoft after years of nasty behavior, and I don't trust Qt.

Reasons I haven't used GNOME or KDE for years: • Sluggish. I like a computer to respond crisply to actions. Hypersonic 2 TEAM AiR Win7 64bit. Xfce and console apps and sawfish and everything I use but Firefox (and that's gotten a lot better, though web browsers in general are kind of a the biggest sticking point here) are responsive and pleasant, with very low latency to user input.

• Not catering to power users. I recognize and am enthusiastic about the need to adopt an environment that is more-accessible to the general population to help Linux gain more acceptance. Unix is a lovely power-user environment, but it is not friendly to people who don't spend a lot of time at a computer. However, the vision I'd been hoping for was that the environment that came out would continue to be friendly to Unixy power users and simply also be friendly to others. Instead, I find my emacs keys being repeatedly disabled in GTK, movement away from being able to manage programs via text config (rather than simply having a friendly front-end to control it), rebindable keymaps going away, and so forth. • They're buggy. I'm used to Linux being really solid.

I've seen emacs crash, but it's not common. Grep doesn't crash. Symantec Norton Ghost 15 Boot Cd Iso Download. GNOME and KDE are both disappointingly unstable, well below my standard expectation for apps on my Linux system. Years of a certain level of flakiness -- gconfd crashing, desktop applets crashing, gobs of failures spitting out of stderr from Typical GNOME app -- have not endeared me to the desktops. • The 'desktop environment' developers don't play nicely with the traditional Unix desktop. Pulseaudio and NetworkManager both shipped without acceptable console control support, which I view as totally unacceptable for core Unix infrastructure. • Constant user interface change.

This is a big one. I want to invest time in a program and learn it to expert level and then use that tool at expert level from then on for many years to come. I do this with a large collection of Unix software; emacs is constantly being extended, but existing workflows continue to work with no problems. GNOME and KDE break workflow via interface changes like some people change socks. That whole collection of developers love redesigning things. I stopped using Red Hat's GUI admin tools at about GNOME 1, after Red Hat had repeatedly broken my workflow dating back to the Tcl/Tk admin era. Much easier to learn the underlying config environment and tools, which (a) are universal across distro and environment, and (b) don't change every release.

Aug 10, 2015. For fans of Linux Mint who might be thinking of installing Cinnamon from scratch on Debian or anyone else who wants an alternative to the GNOME shell installing Cinnamon on Debian 8.0 is actually very easy. It isn't exactly a lightweight desktop environment (if you want a light weight desktop environment. Using this PPA repository, you'll be able to install Oracle Java 8 (which includes both JRE8 and JDK8) in Debian for both 32bit and 64bit as well as ARM.

I also am suspicious that some of the bugginess comes from here, where instead of people simply knocking out bugs, development effort goes into redesigning things. And to top it off, I'm not going to be submitting patches myself because neither GNOME nor KDE are something that I enjoy using, for the reasons listed here. My patches almost entirely go into non-GNOME, non-KDE apps. • Constant API change. I know numerous perfectly good KDE and GNOME apps that are dead because those DEs redesigned their API again and the developers weren't into rewriting things again. I have a better handle on GNOME, but KDE's done the same thing; stopped compiling relatively-shortly after patches stopped going into it, and the GNOME changes (and actually, including GTK changes) are downright infuriating. GTK still, to this day, has poor dev docs and examples that are often out-of-date because the interface doesn't remain unchanging: the developers want to go break compatibility and move to their Grand New Vision.

Microsoft doesn't deprecate Win32 like that. If I look at Posix or the kernel API, I don't get that constant, program-breaking set of changes. I don't think that the Linux desktop API needs to have that kind of API breakage.

I'd rather have an extended-in-a-less-pretty-fashion or limited API than one that keeps breaking programs. In fairness, I guess I should say that there has been some improvement in some areas. The two DEs don't have different sound servers any more (though last I looked, they still had incompatible VFS backends -- gnome-vfs and kioslaves -- and thought that the DE was the appropriate place to do a VFS layer and that All Apps Should Just Be Written To Their DE.gah). While I'm not sure that I like D-Bus, it definitely sucks less than Bonobo, and at least there aren't two different IPC mechanisms for the two desktops. They have adopted some degree of ability to be automated, which was a serious complaint I had with GNOME in particular at one point.

I don't think that Debian even needs a 'default' desktop environment. Desktop use is not the sole nor even primary use of Debian, and I suggest that fewer than half of all Debian installations even have a DE installed. Of my three Debian boxes in regular use, only one has a DE at all (LXDE), one uses Openbox and the other does not even have X installed.

I don't know any reason why Debian desktop tasksel choice can't just offer a list of available DEs with an explanation for new users that they can simply choose one or more. GNOME can even be #1 on the list for all I care- but I don't think it's necessary or desirable that the Debian Project should promote GNOME over any other DE. I don't want to 'raise linux adoption'. I don't care about that at all. Debian is doing fine in terms of adoption. The point of Debian isn't to introduce new users to Linux.

There are plenty of other distros which serve that space. Debian is lots of things: a Universal Operating System, a base from which to build your own distribution, a social experiment, and more. It's not a company needing to make money or a needy teenager (at least, ) aching for popularity.

Anyone can use GNOME3 on Fedora or CentOS or Arch or any other distribution which supports it. I agree that Debian should have GNOME3 available - I'm not arguing that it should be removed from the repositories. If you want a DE, install the one of your choice. If you aren't informed enough to make a choice, don't know how to install packages, and aren't willing to take steps to find out, then maybe you shouldn't be using Debian.

IMO Debian is not a good choice for first-time Linux users. The Debian way!= the easy way.