Personal Preference: GNOME vs. KDE and GUI vs. CLI

I have a strong preference for the Gnome desktop. I’ve played with several window managers over the years and watched them evolve. I still experiment with others all the time, but I find myself back in Gnome when I want to really get stuff done.I’ve watched arguments about which is better; Gnome or KDE. I’ve tried to run them side by side and usually ended up with preference files and libraries SO messed up I wipe the drive and perform a clean install. So I’m going to focus 99% on Gnome and gdm based packages.I am also a fan of the GUI. I hate the fact that I just can’t seem to do some things without opening a terminal and typing commands in bash. I will try and do as much as I can without resorting to the command line – but there will still be a lot of typing. I am a fan of sites that provide code that can be cut and paste – so I will do the same whenever I can. 

Meet the hardware

Time to meet the machine! My main PC is an older home built system named Sett. I built it several years ago now. It is far from cutting edge technology. However, Ubuntu runs like a champ on it. So here he is:K7VTA3 Mobo w/ a 1.8 GhZ AMD Duron Processor (333 FSB), 512 MB of PC2700 RAM, Nvidia FX5500 8X AGP Video Card, a Pioneer DVD-RW DVR-111D Burner, a 60 GB Quantum Fireball Hard Drive (root) and a 250 GB Wester Digital Hard Drive (/home).  I don’t have much ’spare’ money to spend on computers and parts. The next (and probably last) purchase for this machine will be RAM. 

Welcome

This space is a personal notebook where I plan to write about the processes I go through in tweaking my Ubuntu desktop. It is not intended to be a comprehensive how to for the masses. It is specific to my own set up.I plan on listing my favorite ‘How To’ links and will probably paraphrase many of the guides I’ve found on-line with specifics for my own set up as it sometimes differs from the guides I’ve found.Please feel free to comment on my entries as well as pointing out any errors I make or tips for better ways to do things.