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I got bored with XFCE4 + the inner voice in me that longs to look for some nice and working features coupled with a nice GUI kicked in. Result? I installed KDE again. I just installed it via Debian’s (unstable) apt-get tool and there it is. To free space, I totally got rid of XFCE4.

What about experience? I find KDE 3.5.5 (the one I’m using now) to be faster than it used to be and I didn’t upgrade my laptop and I’m using the same applications as before so I guess the KDE guys did something cool with the code.  Konqueror loads in 2 to 4 seconds, Firefox loads in 6 seconds (which means that KDE is not using that much memory at all), the desktop loads in as little as 15 seconds after logging in - well I’m satisfied.

But why KDE? Why not Gnome? Well, honestly, I don’t like the looks of Gnome - it’s too heavy for my eyes. On the other hand, KDE’s interface looks a lot better for me.

And oh, those GTK applications such as Firefox, Thunderbird, and Gaim. At first they didn’t blend well enough with KDE so I did a search on good ol’ google and guess what I found? I found MetaTheme!  Here’s a quote from the MetaTheme website:

MetaTheme is a project dedicated to unification of appearance between different graphics toolkits (currently GTK2, QT and Java).

The program is designed as a thin layer between toolkits and theme engines, creating unified API by which each theme engine can draw. The result is that every application uses the same code for drawing, making the appearance same across different applications. MetaTheme also adjusts behaviour a bit, so the overall effect of unification is impressive.

And guess what?  MetaTheme does exactly as it says.  Now Firefox, Thunderbird, and even Gaim blends beautifully with KDE!  Nice work MetaTheme people!

Lastly, why not Kopete?  Well, though Kopete supports webcams which I really like, it still crashes a lot so I’ll be using Gaim for now.

Now, if only I can make Openoffice load faster - and please don’t tell me to install the quickstarter.  It’s just unacceptable when its MS Office counterpart loads way faster.

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