After having a look at PCLinux OS then the latest Linux Mint KDE edition, I came to the conclusion I don’t like KDE. I know there is a lot of discussions about kde and gnome, but in my opinion it does not look as clean, the file managers, dolphin and konquerer just don’t cut the mustard for me. I know kde is “more configurable” as they say, and does some nifty things like having amorak plugins to the file manager so it’s always at hand, but I just think the whole thing looks more cluttered and after several attempts could not get the font rendering to look any good. It’s all a matter of personal preference….
I finally settled on Linux Mint (Gnome version) which has all the benefits of ubuntu, which I used for several months but has some nice enhancements. The Mint Menu is superb. It’s simple, uncluttered and allows you to have favourites. The inclusion of most codecs working out the box in mint also is a benefit and getting compiz going was the easiest process of all the distros.
1) install restricted-manager
2) enable ati driver
3) install xorg-server-xgl
It just works.
If you are coming from windows and moving over to linux, I heartily recommend Linux Mint (not the KDE edition though it’s still a bit buggy).