I have always been interested in computers, and would find myself hanging out with the Computer Science students instead of the Aviation Management or Business Management students I was a part of. At home and at work I have been largely self-teaching myself using computers starting with Excel and Access with VBA through ASP and SQL at work. Thankfully my current employer values education, and so I have been taking classes and not only learning the technology, but un-learning what I have been doing wrong over the years. At home, though, I have been teaching myself Linux, system administration, networking and the overall method of migrating our system from Windows to Linux. I am involved in the Danbury Area Computer Society (DACS.org) I have the opportunity to take what I've learned the hard way and hopefully help others.. I have been enjoying Open Source for a while now, and I am hoping to get a better understanding of the entire model and application.
Authored Comments
I've been using KDE lately and find myself keep coming back for a number of reasons:
First, it looks and feels like a solid, cohesive environment with spit-and-polish like any of the non-FREE environments. This gives me a strong feeling of confidence when using it that it isn't going to get in the way and does provide everything I'll need, especially when I am using it in front of non-Linux users.
Since Gnome moved to 3 (shell) and Unity came out, neither of them are as customizable as KDE even with the growing list of extensions. Just try to make the wallpaper auto-change causes you to hunt for an extension (which BackSlide needed users to add ver. 3.14 manually and it still didn't work fully) or extra programs (WallCH works, in Ubuntu at least). Meanwhile KDE (and Xfce) includes it with the environment. Or change the panel's background to transparent. I find KDE enables the users, while the others require a Tweaks tool, or customized theme.
There is a difference in the overall philosophy for KDE and Gnome. While Gnome gives users choices, but tries to make it streamlined and not-overwhelming, KDE provides options for just about everything to let the user decide. Most of the time, I like the choices but sometimes it is overwhelming.
The Apps I find in KDE are very powerful and while I know I can install the Gtk apps in KDE, I prefer to try the environment's apps first. I've been falling more and more in love with DigiKam as I find out what it can do.
I also was surpised by KDE's flexibility, to run on a very low-end Netbook my brother gave me. Of course Desktop effects were turned off, but KDE handled that and was usable (Gnome just never wanted to work on the device without siezures). I have since tried Mate, which is much lighter than KDE or Gnome and seems to work alright.
I look forward to trying Plasma5, but am not rushing into things. I'll probably wait for the next release of openSUSE to upgrade.
I've tried Gnome shell, Unity, Xfce and Lxde on a number of devices but when I want something that just works, looks good and is stable I find myself being drawn to KDE.
The most annoying feature Nautilus removed was the ability to do split view between 2 directories.