nickdalzell
Extreme Android User
i like widgets/gadgets--Android got me into them first, and KDE (whatever comes form the 12.10 repos) does not feel bloated! this isn't a very powerful laptop and it can do things as smoothly as in Unity but with levels of customization that makes Android feel primitive in comparison (trust me, a lot has changed since the KDE shipped with my ancient Red Hat 7 complete system discs)
besides, you can turn the bloat off, uninstall what you hate. the widgets are not permenant and not turned on by default. i do like how that annoying top bar is not covering up important parts of Star Trek Online now, i was unable to see how much XP i gained or how much i needed to level up again with that annoying Unity status bar up there being permenant even in fullscreen mode
what i found interesting is that after i installed and shut the system down when i turned it back on i was greeted by the Kubuntu logo and name, instead of the distro i actually installed. first time it did a disk scan (said unmounted unclean, even though i did a proper shutdown first?) the second time it locked up tighter than a drum, some weird kernel panic, third time it was fine. perhaps part of the install but it's fine now
i was able to disable the error (strange, kept getting this random 'Ubuntu 12.10 has encountered an internal error' even though not one program or widget had crashed which was weird) by editing some file to remove the 'apport' feature. i guess it is a lot like the annoying Bug Buddy in Mandriva since it, too, seemed to pop up when nothing was actually wrong, just like Windows 'This program stopped working'. some weird type of crash detection which is a lot of times a false positive. the stupid send crash report was a reminder of MS i hated so bye bye it went.
Unity was not THAT bad, had a nice selection of wallpaper and you can auto-hide the launcher, but the themes were not very flexible, lacked provisions to install new ones, no widget support, and you cannot relocate the launcher when it is visible. gestures seemed no-go, and it was hard to find apps of specific category in the launcher main menu, which resembled Pear Linux's launchpad (but without the organized category list up top) and i ended up using keyboard shortcuts to work around certain programs i couldn't find easily in it, such as the console. in a way it lacked most of the customization and felt very dumbed down, as if for newbies. Reading posts online this whole move to Mint has a lot to do with the change to Unity
besides, you can turn the bloat off, uninstall what you hate. the widgets are not permenant and not turned on by default. i do like how that annoying top bar is not covering up important parts of Star Trek Online now, i was unable to see how much XP i gained or how much i needed to level up again with that annoying Unity status bar up there being permenant even in fullscreen mode
what i found interesting is that after i installed and shut the system down when i turned it back on i was greeted by the Kubuntu logo and name, instead of the distro i actually installed. first time it did a disk scan (said unmounted unclean, even though i did a proper shutdown first?) the second time it locked up tighter than a drum, some weird kernel panic, third time it was fine. perhaps part of the install but it's fine now
i was able to disable the error (strange, kept getting this random 'Ubuntu 12.10 has encountered an internal error' even though not one program or widget had crashed which was weird) by editing some file to remove the 'apport' feature. i guess it is a lot like the annoying Bug Buddy in Mandriva since it, too, seemed to pop up when nothing was actually wrong, just like Windows 'This program stopped working'. some weird type of crash detection which is a lot of times a false positive. the stupid send crash report was a reminder of MS i hated so bye bye it went.
Unity was not THAT bad, had a nice selection of wallpaper and you can auto-hide the launcher, but the themes were not very flexible, lacked provisions to install new ones, no widget support, and you cannot relocate the launcher when it is visible. gestures seemed no-go, and it was hard to find apps of specific category in the launcher main menu, which resembled Pear Linux's launchpad (but without the organized category list up top) and i ended up using keyboard shortcuts to work around certain programs i couldn't find easily in it, such as the console. in a way it lacked most of the customization and felt very dumbed down, as if for newbies. Reading posts online this whole move to Mint has a lot to do with the change to Unity
They're in alphabetical order, and IMO are more memorable and distinctive than just numbers...ahem Microsoft..."Windows 8" i'ts not even the 8th version of Windows.
It wasn't until version 5.10, AKA Breezy Badger, that the alphabetical thing started. The first two releases, versions 4.10 and 5.04, were named Warty Warthog and Hoary Hedgehog, respectively.
How/when/where do you get lost? I'm actually having a hard time picturing this, because everything about KDE seems so intuitive and straightforward--to me.
That's why I've taken to using LXDE for this. The laptop I'm using is indeed a budget PC, a Lenovo S110, but on the other hand it's very lightweight, small and easily carried around, barely larger than an Apple iPad. 
Follow this path: System Settings | Desktop Effects. Then plunge in and start trying its ZILLIONS of options/combinations. 
