A Sneak Preview of KDE 4

An anonymous reader writes "In recent times, a lot of discussion has been generated about the state of KDE version 4.0 and as Linux users we are ever inquisitive about what the final user experience is going to be. This article throws light on some of the features that we can look forward to when KDE 4.0 is finally released some time this year. The article indicates that the most exciting fact about KDE 4.0 is going to be that it is developed using the Qt 4.0 library. This is significant because Qt 4.0 is released under a GPL license even for non-Unix platforms. So this clears the ideological path for KDE 4.0 to be ported to Windows and other non-Unix/X11 platforms."

Memory

"For instance, Qt 4 is designed to save lots of memory and will perform faster."

They need to work more on that cause thats the reason why I'm not using KDE. I like the UI but KDE is just to bloated so I use Gnome instead, even though I hate most of Gnome's UI.

Re:Memory

This http://ktown.kde.org/~seli/memory/desktop_benchmar k.html [kde.org] article from 2006 shows you how much memory Gnome/KDE use. Even though it is written by a KDE member I can't see why he should have messed with the numbers. As you can see KDE actually uses a bit less (not much though) memory than Gnome.

Re:Memory

Here's an update written by a GNOME person:

http://spooky-possum.org/cgi-bin/pyblosxom.cgi/kde vsgnome.html [spooky-possum.org]

tldr: they have (essentially) the same memory requirements.

Re:Memory

Not only are they rewriting stuff to reduce footprint they're using more and more system components that everyone has (DBUS) rather than KDE-specific things (DCOP for example). Qt4 definitely uses a lot less memory as a whole than Qt3 but it's not backwards compatible.

What you will see is KDE4 by default using a huge glob less of memory, but if you run an old KDE3 or Qt3 app, suddenly memory usage will kind of go up when the compatibility libraries load.. disk usage will go up too because of them. But in most systems, 90% of the time the CPU is fairly idle and memory usage is the most important performance factor; not just memory-limited systems, on huge multi-GB desktops too.

What I really want to see is KDE4 running on Qt4 directly on the Linux framebuffer; get rid of X. Then something like MythTV running on top of it; bringing requirements down by removing some of the extraneous cruft (X no longer has magic mouse and keyboard drivers since the USB HID system does most of the work, would be one example) is a good goal too and KDE4 is also doing some of that.

I'm not sure what direction GNOME is taking, but at least there is a lot less ability to do so with GTK; they pride compatibility without compatibility libraries, and new functionality comes with new applications and rewrites of applications which never made the grade (Ubuntu Edgy had a bunch of them) - it seems to be a more pronounced, feature-rich development cycle with less chances to sit down and optimize something old. Both environments seem to be focussing on simply PROVIDING user experience than optimizing it. However KDE has a lot more baggage; components like the browser, office suite are all part of the KDE offering, which GNOME doesn't have an encumberance on. Optimizing KDE gives more results for less work. Optimizing GNOME seems harder to justify considering very few things will benefit but the toolkit and desktop itself. Maybe I'm wrong though... :D

GTD Anyone?

Agreed. Hard to understand what people are even talking about when it comes to "bloat". Gnome, KDE, Windows -- with today's hardware it's not like one has to wait for minutes for an application to load any more.

I use KDE for the sheer convenience and ease of use. Windows seems like it's virtually stood still in time for the last four or five years. KDE has far surpassed it, ease-of-use-wise. Gnome is still such a joke. I don't get it. How is it that Firefox, Thunderbird (at least on Linux) and other packages have to emulate Gnome when it comes to: finding files (GIMP and Firefox try to be so Gnome-like -- sucks!), the whole "Would you like to do this? No? Yes?" anti-natural-language (but oh-so geek-orthodox) OK / Cancel thing. Why do so many distros (Red Hat, Ubuntu) have Gnome as the default? Makes no sense.

I'll trade a little "bloat" for "getting things done" any time.
/rant

great

Ooooh... Kreversi, KMajhong.... both essential components of my desktop experience. The article is a little thin to say the least.

What is thin about it?

It shows some graphical pics of games that have been converted to SVG (nice to say the least). Then in the article, it talks about the various projects that are working on core libs. Once those are fleshed out, then more apps will come into focus. I would say that this is actually a pretty good preview of very unsettled work. As to the desktop, well, there will be more.

Performance

It should also be pointed out that the port to QT is expected to very noticeably improve performance.

When was the last time a new version of Microsoft Windows came out with a faster user interface?

Re:Performance

When was the last time a new version of Microsoft Windows came out with a faster user interface?

When you bought the new computer?

Re:Performance

It's not about "using the GPU", QT4 is just much faster and eats less resources.

"When Qt designer was ported to Qt 4.0 - only the neccesary changes to make it compile - the libqt size decreased by 5%, Designer num relocs went down by 30%, mallocs use by 51%, and memory use by 15%. The measured Designer startup time went down by 18%"

Now try to imagine the savings for the whole KDE desktop

From dot.kde.org

I monitor dot.kde.org pretty closely and there's a few things notable here. Firstly if you look at KDE at the moment it doesn't look much different to KDE 3.x. This is because the frameworks are currently being finished and polished - the interface will be the *last* thing to be finalised - remember guys tip of the iceberg - there's a whole lot more code that you don't see than you do see.

Also, with this article specifically, a few of the graphics are temporary, most notably the background that's pretty obvious in ksysguard. Yes it's horrible for that app, no it won't be there in the finished version. It's a temporary background being used in several apps at the moment for a placeholder.

Also, the start menu isn't finalised yet from anything I've heard, that's the start menu designed specifically for Suse - it's been on Slashdot before.

KDE looks like it will be coming together quite quickly and quite soon. Several major components are pretty much complete and are being polished now. Looks like pretty fun stuff - don't believe anyone who says it's vapourware.

Re:From dot.kde.org

Also, a similar KDE article is at http://dot.kde.org/1167723426/ [kde.org]

Read the comments there as well for some interesting info.

Still not there yet..

Although the 'titbits' are nice, I'm still waiting for some full screen shots go as far as eye candy goes, but I get the feeling that along with the eye candy comes overcomplexity, I hate that 'Start Menu' design, it lacks intuitiveness, and seemingly ease of use. (It also has the SuSE logo all over it).

I don't care about how the internals of my GUI work, all I care is that it's fast, intuitive and easy to use. It looks like KDE are finally working on the 'Fast', but as far as the others, I'm going to reserve judgement at this point.

Re:Still not there yet..

Funny how everyone says 'SUSE' these days to rhyme with 'traitorous scumbags' :-)

I'm a new convert to KDE, after years of predominantly fluxbox usage, with the odd dabble into Gnome. This is mainly because I principally used Linux over VNC or ssh, so KDE was out of the question, too slow over the network.

Now I have the novelty of a fast local Linux box, and decided to try out these fancy Graphical Desktops a bit more. The new Gnome is good, but I must say I am becoming more and more impressed with KDE as the days go on. I still like my fluxbox though, simplicity does have it's appeal sometimes. Can KDE ever be that fast though, I doubt it. Not that I care much about load times on KDE, 99% of my computer usage is text editors and the console. Those are two things that run fast on any system.

KDE on windows? Sounds interesting. Windows is just a games environment or dumb terminal into my linux cluster for me normally, I'd love to have KDE on XP. A fast KDE frontend for Vista might actually make me consider buying that heap.

Re:Still not there yet..

If by KDE you mean 'KDE, all the apps hosted on the KDE site, and all the features of KDE like the FISH protocol' then I am -so- with you. If apps like K3B would run also, nothing could stop me from buying it.

But if you mean just the window manager and such, and not Quanta/Konqueror/Konsole... I'd have to pass. KDE is useful to me. It's not about looks.

Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

KDE is a very slick desktop, but it doesn't seem to know when "less is more". The control center is probably the worst, most confusing configuration application of any desktop I've ever seen simply because the options that 99% need to get at regularly are mixed in with options that only 1% / nobody ever needs to touch. Then you have various K apps such as Konq or KMail where you might have up to SIX different preferences menu items to choose from to configure the app.

I wish they'd follow GNOME or Firefox and realise that overloading the senses with tabs, buttons and checkboxes does not make for a pleasant desktop experience. I'd be happy if all KDE 4 consisted of was a rationalisation of the menus and prefs to slash out most of the crap, or at least move it into an advanced mode where only masochists could see it.

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

It's funny that that's the reason why I detest Gnome - for some reason they got the idea that removing all the options that only 5% of users use is a good idea. Of course all the other options are used by a different 5% each time so in the end you've got the majority of users upset because the option they want has been removed. Note: Put to the side with an unknown and unguessable key combination counts as removed.

But that's OK because Gnome isn't for me.

Please, Gnome is a slim pick up and go desktop for new users, KDE is a customisable and flexible desktop for power, business or techie users. I like it this way, it gives everyone a desktop that they are comfortable with. As a techie, I want KDE to stay the way it is, please don't try to change it to something it is not.

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

Windows doesn't hide all the advanced options. Many are still easily accessible from the GUI. MacOSX, however, hides them so deep that you need to drop to the command like to tweak them. (Heck, Apple's complete hiding/elimination of options is why I ditch Apple's packaged apps whenever I find a suitable alternative, even if I used MacOSX every day at work)

Likewise, GNOME hides the options so deep as well, that only a poweruser spending the day on Google is ever going to even figure out how to get to them.

At least KDE (and Windows) put the options where you can find them using just the normal flow of the GUI.

This whole "assume the user is a drooling moron or an ubergeek, with *nothing* in-between" really puts off a lot of "competent" Windows users.

Some criticism of gnome mostly past

I hate gnome due to the cretinous idea of implementing an obfiscated MS Windows style registry on what was at the time a non-portable linux environment - and having one of these registries per user spread over multiple files named after the three stooges and others (not kidding) in a form where you cannot export the settings to another user let alone another computer. This has been fixed to a degree, not everything needs gconf anymore and with Sabayon many of the settings can be exported. However it remains an environment where a user can render their laptop unusable via a screen resolution applet which sets stuff in the weird registry instead of in the X windows configuration files where it belongs. Try fixing that over a bad mobile phone link to a remote area some time. Cretinous behaviour like making things executable without permission also occured at one time, but I believe was fixed rapidly.

Fortunately the people that wanted a version of MS Windows that they wrote themselves running on linux (only) but not understanding the features of the platform have moved on - leaving us with two fairly decent environments with just a few remaining flaws.

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

"Please, Gnome is a slim pick up and go desktop for new users, KDE is a customisable and flexible desktop for power, business or techie users."

Disagree.

I use Gnome because I have a million and one things to do and so long as the interface isn't annoying, looks ok and doesn't get in the way, then it's good for me.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a power, business and techie user. When KDE 1 came out I spent loads of happy minutes changing every setting just to how i liked it on my home PC. Partly because I could and partly because I found the default kde setup annoying.

I now use Ubuntu (at work) and have never felt the urge to change a single option. Now, the techie in me wants to do cool things at a PC, not change how the taskbar looks.

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

"I wish they'd follow GNOME or Firefox and realise that overloading the senses with tabs, buttons and checkboxes does not make for a pleasant desktop experience."

Hear hear!

You're so right! I wish the KDE team would realise that a pleasant desktop experience involves editing .gtkrc-2.0 by hand and adding stuff like

binding "gaim-bindings" {
bind "Return" { "insert-at-cursor" ("\n") }
bind "<ctrl>Return" { "message_send" () }
}
widget "*gaim_gtkconv_entry" binding "gaim-bindings"

This is Clearly preferable and more easily understandable compared to having to click a check box, as you had to do in the bad old days of Gaim.

You know that...

... a software package will suck when the most exciting fact about it, is its new license.

Re:You know that...

Only when it means Amarok on Windows and Macs. That's a good feature of KDE 4.

KDE4 will be the turning point

I dunno about the rest of you windows users, but it looks like kde4 will be the time when I finally switch to linux. I have always wanted to, but the ugliness has always made me hesitant. After doing some research I found that it can be made much nicer, but still, I really don't want to spend tons of time tweaking to make it look nice. If kde4 delivers, it might even be good enough to get lots of people to switch. If its so good that it looks awesome without any tweaking.... well then it might be good enough to compete with Mac's "just works, looks awesome."

I can't wait.

Windows port ?

My god, people wait a minute.
Sure - the gui lib will be gpl'ed.
The rest of kde is and will remain opensource too.
But i can not comprehend someone actually rewriting all of the system to make it run on windows.
There are just too many *nix connections in kde to make it run smoothly on windows.
MacOS ? Sure, its based on bsd.
Linux ? Sure, thats where they designed it (thou im sure some of the kde dev's use macOS or just *bsd too).
But windows ? Code can and should be portable.
But when you work on such a large scale - things tend to break.

Besides - by the time kde4 will be ready vista will actually be rolling out.
Nobody has the full specs for that system yet.

So - do they port it to XP ? Maybe. How long will it take ? (...)
How long will it take to make a vista port ?...

And no - i dont consider cygwin a real solution here.
Imagine the overhead of running a DE on top of a layer on a already blated OS.

The real news here is the new features of kde4 which look nice.

Re:Windows port ?

Perhaps you're unaware of the fact that QT, the API that KDE is based on, has always been cross-platform. The only thing that ever stopped KDE from running on Windows or Mac OS before was licensing -- it wasn't GPL'd on platforms other than unix/X11 until QT 4.

KDE on MacOSX

I can hardly wait to be able to run KDE apps on MacOSX without having to start an X server, and have proper copy-paste support, correct window stacking and native look an feel. There are KDE applications like Krusader [sourceforge.net] for which there is hardly any alternative on the Mac [mucommander.com].

KDE vs. Gnome

At the risk of being labelled a troll, I have a few obversations to make. I yearn to return to Gnome (I made the switch from Gnome--which I'd been using for 3 years--to KDE about a year ago. I'm not sure if it's a "feature" of Gnome, but when Gnome apps (at least on my systems) fail, they don't even give a reasonable error message. This may be a design feature, to make it "easier", but, in fact, makes things stupidly difficult. If something fails, then I want to know WHY (at least give me the option of more detailed error messages). KDE is consistent. Gnome isn't (yet). 3 years ago, I would laugh at KDE users, because I knew that "Gnome was best". These days I take a more pragmatic view. Ideoligally, Gnome may be better. In practice, KDE takes the cake.

Re:KDE vs. Gnome

This may be a design feature, to make it "easier", but, in fact, makes things stupidly difficult.

Troll or not I think you have just pegged the perfect Gnome slogan:

"So easy it's stupidly difficult."

KFG

Question: When will it be released?

Do they have any kind of official roadmap for KDE4 ? Looking at the not-updated-in-agesFeature Plan [kde.org] and yet-to-be-written Release Plan [kde.org] makes me doubt that they plan to ship anytime soon. Are you guys sure that it's going to be "some time this year" as the article states?

NOOOOOO.......

Plasma will provide the next generation desktop experience in KDE 4.0. It is planned to integrate three separate applications namely the Kicker (Panel), KDesktop and Super Karamba (Widgets) into a single application. And the surprise of all things is that it will be possible to run the beautiful Dashboard widgets of Mac OSX in KDE 4.0.

I like things as they are with separate applications. If Kicker hiccups and falls over I can relaunch Kicker, if Super Karamba falls over, then I can simply restart Super Karamba, if the desktop falls over then I can restart the desktop... if the "all in one app" Plasma falls over, than what??? do I have to restart KDE? I don't want flaky Super Karamba widgets threatening the entire desktop... and I only want to run Super Karamba if I want to, not by default...

Kool!

KNow,if Konly Kthey Kwould Kstop Kalling Keverything KSomething or Kother!

Re:Kool!

geah, gthat gis gsuch ga gpain.
MSPerhaps, MSthat MSshould MSstop MSeverywhere.
.netof .netcourse, .netI .netbe .netwrong.
ior imaybe iyour igrip is inothing.

Pardon my ignorance...

Why are they McNamed (I'm coining a new word. McNamed: Named in such a way as to be associated with an organization, entity, or product) anyways? Aren't applications written to run on any desktop. I seem to be running gnome, because there is an "about gnome" item on my system menu. However I have several "K" applications, such as kpovmodeller, that run just fine. Clearly they don't rely on KDE, so they must be written to some generic desktop standard. So, why the mcnaming? (They can't all be written by the same people who are writing the desktop software, can they?)

... don't like Oxgen

I don't like the Oxygen Icons. To many look tacky - probalby on purpose. How that is supposed to be a 'new user experience' I can't tell. I think we've got enough rull-color range Iconsets by now. They should put the work into refining and variation of what's there.

Both ways?

The article says that Qt4 can be used under Windows. Will that make it easier for Windows viruses to migrate to Linux in a double-boot system?

Abstract handhelds

Apparently, they will be doing a lot of work on PIM data. I, for one, look forward to the day where mobiles and handhelds will be hardware abstracted, just like printers. Instal your Nokia whatever driver, and it synchronises agenda, contacts, pictures and music, in exactly the same way as your iPod and your Palm.

Is KDE 4 really based on Qt 4.0?

Hope not, a bit outdated this version. The stable version is 4.2, which is much superior to 4.0. Gentoo currently uses a 4.1 version.

Gah!

FTFA:

The start menu is going to be redesigned.

*%&^&$! It's the K Menu! Even Windows doesn't have the Start menu any more!

KDE 4.0 to be ported to Windows

So we're runniong one GUI to run an entirely different one? Does this seem ever so slightly perverse? :-)

Bloatware?

So, will KDE 4 be:
      - smaller than 3?
      - lighter weight, with fewer programs running in the background just to *run*
              the damn thing?
      - faster?

      mark, who went to IceWM years ago, since *it* comes up in under 20 seconds, as opposed to a minute or more for KDE.

           

Thank God.

I'm so much happier now that qt4 is more portable. At least now I can use my KDE games in GNOME. I can't wait until the whole desktop is ported.

Whee... the first....

to mention XFCE. Time to done a flame retardant vest....

I tried Gnome, and hated it. As others have said, it's designed to be simple, but I found it aggravating. Haven't used it in years, and have no intention of ever trying it again. KDE was alright, but it was slow as molasses. I still haven't figured out why the default is to dump debug information to console... if I'm running in X, I don't need to see that, and every call to stdout() slows down the system. It's a lot faster if you go into the source and comment out all of those calls before recompiling, but you shouldn't have to do that. Ultimately, I switched to XFCE and have never looked back. It's lightweight, it's fast, and the eye candy is easily there. Especially if you turn on the compositor (I leave it off, because it affects my performance in Cedega, but Linux-native games aren't affected by it).

KDE is all well and good, but I find that neither it nor Gnome are viable options. I like the idea that you will be able to run KDE on a Windows platform, though. It means that I can install KDE as a replacement for explorer as the first step in migrating somebody away from Windows. Show them the desktop, and let them get used to it early in the shift. Change them over to KDE before you start changing them over to Abiword, or OpenOffice.org, that way by the time you're actually ready to change them over to Linux, you can do it without them noticing any change at all. It's a good thing. But I'm going to stick with XFCE on my system. Call me when they port that to Windows, and I'll be beside myself.

No, no, no

This is significant because Qt 4.0 is released under a GPL license even for non-Unix platforms.

Stop spreading this bollocks. Qt 3 was released under the GPL. GPL is GPL, and platform restrictions would contravene Paragraph Six. There's nothing to stop you from porting Qt to Windows, VAX/VMS or even the ZX81, if you were so inclined. The only reason that earlier versions of Qt were never ported to Windows is simply because most Windows programmers don't want to work on Open Source code for the benefit of Society At Large. They'd rather write closed-source software, distribute it in a crippled form and extort money out of users wanting to get the full functionality. Or viruses, trojans, spyware and adware. Or crack the lame "protection" schemes on crippled software.

KDE vs. GNOME

KDE: An unholy marriage of Windowws 98 and AmigaOS 2.0

GNOME: An unholy marriage of Windows 98 and MacOS 9

Personally, I prefer GNOME. The interface feels more polished (reminds me of MacOS 9). KDE does everything, and has more features, but it all feels like it's been slapped together. Plus, it just *looks* clunky (reminds me of AmigaOS). I could never get over the "button-overload" of KDE.

DCOP vs D-Bus

So, what's the deal with D-Bus? Is it really better? I have to admit I've become a bit fond of DCOP (Python+DCOP reminds me a lot of what I used to be able to do with ARexx on the Amiga) and know nothing about D-Bus, so this is a little bit intimidating.

What's The Deal?

I've got a bunch of good apps on kde.

Recent builds of Amarok + engine are great

Twinkle is an excellent sip phone. (there's kphone too, but I like twinkle more)

Eventually these apps will make it over to kde4. Why do they need new projects? How about promoting/assisting the ones that are already out there?

It's rather lonely in here!

Am I the only one that wants a WM, not a Desktop? I'm still using a rather heavily-customized version of E16, and anxiously awaiting E17. Sure, I use a bunch of stuff from the KDE project as drivers (arts anyone?), but I would love to see more options built into the "eye candy overhead" of KDE (i.e. turning off components, etc) to increase perfomance.

That said, the main reason I avoid KDE and GNOME is performance - most of the stuff it does is just overhead I don't need (and why does KDE -not- use the xscreensaver interface instead of their rather....useless wrapper?!!), but if they were able to improve the reliability of KDE, and make it possible to lower it's footprint to something that is, say, just -slightly- more than your average WMW I might consider it.

Differenct icons on each virtual desktop?

Is there finally an easy way to have different icons on each virtual desktop? Under 3.x it's an ugly hack...

Dynamically created menus sucks

I am really looking forward to the next release of kde. Got one gripe though: dynamically generated menus is a really STUPID idea. I have never really understood the idea "now you see it, noe you don't" wtf is the point of that. I want to know where the menu points are. imagine doing support on dynamically created program groups !!?? "eerhh... which applications do you use the most ??" Microsoft pioneered this bullshit with office, and i can imagine a developer getting all worked up with dicking around with the algorithms to generate those menus. Maybe if people only ever used the one desktop it would be great but people have to use: their own PC, their laptop, the pc at work and maybe others. menus with the entrys at a fixed position mekes a lot more sense. exsqeeze my english

The real question is:

Will we ever see Gnome 3.0?

Porting will be bad

If KDE4 is ported to Windows, many users will think "Hey, I can have the same thing as GNU/Linux, so why would I switch?" and they'll keep running nonfree software.

Re:Hmm , let me guess...

I like it when trolls say they're not trolling. If you've never used KDE before don't bother commenting on it. I made a comment before showing a screenshot of KDE looking exactly like Windows XP then another one showing KDE looking exactly like Vista then another one with KDE looking exactly like Mac OS-X. I don't think I'll bother here.

Re:Hmm , let me guess...

Stop kidding yourself that KDE is anything other than a windows rip off.

Actually its a CDE [wikipedia.org] ripoff.

CDE predates win95, and was based on the many desktop WIMP environments around in the late 1980s, such as HPs VUE.

A lot of the things you imagine are Windows interface paradigms are actually basic HCI stuff (Fitts law, Roman language left-right convention, and whatnot) that pretty much dictate colour schemes, icon size, icon behaviour, left to right conventions, etc.

The only thing I can think of that is a Windows thing is the position of a main menu button in the bottom left, its easier to mouse to the top of the screen than to the bottom because of the way the muscles in the hand/arm work. In truth the KDE button can be located anywhere, its just the default themes that just happen to position it there, cos that's where most computer users look to find a central control.

Re:Kstill Ktoo Kmany Koptions

Is it really so hard to strike some middle ground between no options and so damned many you can't find the one you're looking for?

Yes.

KFG

Re:Kstill Ktoo Kmany Koptions

"Is it really so hard to strike some middle ground between no options and so damned many you can't find the one you're looking for?"

Yeah, it's like compression BUT with the restriction you have to try to compress things (options) in a pseudoconsistent way, consistent enough so that people can remember it, but at the same time allow things to be added later on without breaking stuff.

You don't list out all the possible options in a single list. You try to put the popular ones first, then less popular ones in sublists and so on. BUT also try to maintain some consistency amongst popular apps.

I prefer KDE because it seems like if the devs can't figure out where to put some option, they often still just leave it visible (causing clutter). Whereas I hear GNOME devs would rather just _hide_ it away and force you to use gconf or some key sequence to enable it.

Re:Sorry, but why do we need 'KDE' at all?

1. if you are a newbie and just need a windows replacement, use Gnome. only MacOS has better GUI than Gnome.

Funny. When i'm using gnome, compared to KDE (or even Windows) i feel like my legs have been cut off and part of my brain has been removed. A "better" gui is a crock of shit. The "better" gui is the one that allows me to get my work done quicker and more comfortably.

Gnome has nothing to compare to KDE's ioslaves or kicker.

if you are nerd, why do you need a desktop environment at all?

Need? Why do you need X at all? I run it because I can, and it has a few cool features I like. I'm willing to trade 5% of my RAM for it. You realise Linus runs KDE right? :D

Why install a piece of crap when all you need is a bunch of cool apps?

This goes for gnome equally (more in my opinion, but opinion is divided). Personally I'd rather be running openstep (I'm wanting to play with GORM when I get some free time), but it's just not quite there yet.

if you a serious user worried about memory etc, use xfce or other light weight desktops.

If you're a "serious user", get out of your parent's basement, get a job, and spend the $50 on some more RAM if it's that much of an issue.