Gnome vs. KDE

I prefer GNOME. I have always found it to be easier to use, more visually pleasing. It's simple and well-organized – a few essentials are laid out, the rest sequestered in intuitively labeled menus and folders. I don't like KDE – it's too Windows-y, with recursive menus and icons all over the place.

If you think about it, GNOME is kind of Mac-like. But I friggin' hate modern Macs! I think they're too flourishy and obscure what you're trying to do. I hate Windows Vista most of all because it's Windows trying to look like Macintosh and ends up with the worst of both. GNOME isn't like MacOS X or anything like that. GNOME is still clean and simple. It looks like older Macs, around system 7.5.

Could it be that simple? Could it be that I like GNOME simply because it functions like the earliest desktop I learned to use?

Linus Torvalds, I hear, prefers KDE. He says something to the effect that GNOME is too simple, so it doesn't do what he wants to do with it – with, I'm sure, some inflection of superiority in the language. If you want to do a lot with your desktop, that's fine - but I'd rather work mostly from the command line.