It's some script which is using cron daemon to send a report of installed packages once a week and yes, it seems the stats are based on downloads:

http://www.archlinux.org/news/pkgstats- ... ving-arch/

As I suspected.

At first I was surprised to see Rekonq at 6%. To me, Rekonq is what a native Chromium would be only better but that's just my opinion.... then I realized I might not have bothered to install it either if it weren't already default in Kubuntu.

It would be interesting to see similar stats from all distros even if not an exact science e.g. I downloaded Chromium but I don't use it.

incadudeF wrote:i have only used GNOME and im wondering how hard it is to change to KDE and get used to it?

Gnome as a DE is easy to, "figure out". It's easy to understand what stuff works and how stuff works without very much previous experience, and it's easy to discover the limit of flexibility. It's not intimidating if you want to change simple stuff like its appearance and it tries to appeal to the, "lowest common denominator" by showing only the most popular features and options in configuration dialogues.

KDE is massively comprehensive in its feature-set and there seems to be no limit to the way you can change things. Its defaults are sane and easy to figure out (especially if you've used another quite popular operating system that I can't quite remember the name of right now), and many of its applications work in pretty predictable ways, but there's lots of stuff that users can change to alter its behaviour more to their liking. Big pushes have been made towards sensible-looking configuration dialogues and ways of changing settings without removing functionality (for example, the plasma-desktop panel's configuration is more comprehensive, offers more features and offers them in a very attractive and user-friendly way when compared with Gnome-panel's). The general attitude is, "Configurability and usability are not zero-sum" and it shows, with a comprehensive yet clear System Settings application and many re-written configuration modules and dialogues to help users find what they want to change (admittedly some modules are still quite aged and thus quite intimidating - I'm looking at you, File Associations...). However, there's also much more of a test-bed feel to it, with some new features ("new" as in, "new to KDE" and "new to the World") proving quite unstable, unrefined and incomplete. This is most often with stuff that nobody else has tried before, such as Activities: meanwhile, KDE have hit the nail on the head with any feature I've seen that other DEs/OSes include, and several yards beyond that.

The best answer is: try it. If you don't like something, see if you can change it. If you can't, file/confirm a bug and note it down on your cost/benefit analysis sheet. Please, just don't rant at us forum-goers - we're trying to help, yeah?

spoovy wrote:I find it strange hearing people say that GNOME is ugly and KDE is attractive. I have had an on-off relationship with KDE in the past but I can't imagine how it could be considered more attractive than GNOME. Making every single thing on a desktop look shiny is not good design, it just looks plasticky and cheap. Looks to me like programmers are doing the graphic design for KDE instead of graphic designers.

Ironically, it's the other way 'round: KDE have shifted their technologies to accommodate for graphics designers' lack of programming knowledge (and has quite a few designers working on Plasma themes) while Gnome sticks with legacy theming methods that are tied to a knowledge of C++. It only even starts being attractive after someone like Canonical have shoe-horned in a half-decent theme - the default is Windows 95-esque and hideous. Anecdotally, the people I show prefer KDE's looks over Gnome's, and I myself am used to making the comparison, "If KDE is polished glass or crystal, then Gnome is a cardboard box that's been filled with water, drained then stomped on a few times". Just because you, personally, don't like the default theme, don't just project your own opinion onto everyone else and assume everyone thinks the same.

spoovy wrote:I'm currently waiting for 4.6 before I give 4.x a go again, there have been just too many problems for me so far with 4.x (silent data loss in dolphin, dodgy PIM etc). Having all my google calendar events deleted by kcalendar was the final straw a few months ago; I got rid.

Google Calendar/Contacts integration in KDEPIM is experimental. They've plastered it up there in great big letters in the package information, assuming you're using Ubuntu.

spoovy wrote:I tried KDE 3.5 and GNOME as alternatives, and ended up using both on different boxes. KDE 3.5 is great but I know I can't use it much longer. GNOME is very stable and mature at the moment though as well. PIM works nicely, it's pretty fast on my hardware, and there are nice touches like global panel menu and slab menu, and I think GTK apps are better in general than the kDE4 versions, again, just more mature really.

Overall, maturity in the base KDE applications is rarely a problem - it's more often desktop features or brand-new releases that tie into KDE libraries that demonstrate instability or lack of features. Sometimes, though, this isn't true - for example, KMail 2 is damn-near impossible to distinguish from KMail 1, save that it's faster and more reliable - literally all the features have stayed.

spoovy wrote:I will keep trying KDE 4.x periodically though, and will probably switch back one day, because KDE's got more potential. Seems to me (a not_very_clued_up_at_all end user) that KDE reaches further than GNOME in trying for so much integration, which explains why it has more failings.

The more stuff you put in, the more there is to break. I'm similarly confident that KDE will eventually be as or more stable than Gnome 2 in everything it does as the platform reaches further into its 4th and 5th years.