Recommended Software

    I have to declare myself an absolute fan of the K Desktop Environment (KDE).  I started as someone who favored GNOME, not only because it was and acted more professional and because it is part of the GNU Project, but also because I believed for a while that KDE was more worried about beauty and looking a lot like MS Windows than functionality.  That did not work for me.  When KDE 3.5 was released, I have to confess that they were worrying more about being professional and functional, providing the user with very important tools for his or her daily life, including some tools for encryption, which I really needed but which GNOME at the time could not provide me.  It did not become my default desktop environment yet, but I did smile at the way it was being developed.

      Later, KDE 4.0 made few significant changes to its desktop.  First of all, they began using the Qt 4 toolkit as basis, and redesign the whole desktop, even the icons.  They introduced plasma, widgets and the Oxygen icons.  At the very beginning KDE 4.0 was not functional, it was extremely buggy.  So bad it was at the very beginning, that many people, including me, criticized it and said that those changes were big mistakes.  The KDE proved all of us wrong!  When they released KDE 4.2 we were extremely impressed by its accomplishments.  Now I am using KDE 4.3, and I cannot stop smiling when I load it.  It has become my default desktop.  For this reason, Kubuntu (which has KDE as default desktop environment), and not Ubuntu (which has GNOME as default desktop environment) is my preferred distribution now.

    It still looks more eyecandy now, it is more beautiful, it now looks a lot like Windows Vista or Windows 7, BUT it is more functional than they are.  Widgets are a nice touch and adds functionality, but what impresses me is the combination of making things much simpler for the user, more appealing, and at the same time it provides the user with many tools, including the professional KOffice, whose version 2.1 is more functional than they admit, as well as tools for education (science, math, geography, languages), games, software development ... you name it.  Konqueror, its browser, filesystem manager, and document viewer, is a gem!  It still does not reach Firefox's level, but it has become a great free alternative to other proprietary browsers.  The KDE team has made sure that Konqueror complies with all web standards, including the famous acid tests, some of which Firefox still has not been able to pass.  They also made a wise decision to use Webkit, a forked version of KHTML, as browser engine, a decision soon followed by GNOME for its own web browser Epiphany.

    Better yet, they not only provide this desktop for GNU/Linux and other Unix-like systems such as FreeBSD and others, but also they are making a version for Windows and Mac.  This completely blew me away, because none of the other free desktop systems are doing this.  I hope KDE keeps succeeding, because its team of volunteers really deserves it.  I bow to you KDE team!

    Finally, there is also another aspect about KDE which I would like to mention, and that is that it has not fallen into the temptation of making key and main components depend on C# and Mono, which makes it less likely for Microsoft to attack it using patent claims.  Unfortunately, the GNOME team is falling into this, and I hope this is corrected very soon.