For someone running Ubuntu 12.10 with "basic" desktop needs, can anyone come up with some recommendations for a more open, forthcoming distro and DE? Someone to reward for their efforts?
It seems like using and supporting Ubuntu, Gnome etc at this point would be sending out the wrong signals.
Even though some simple things are still hard to do (you still need to go through few hoops to get a custom application launcher added to taskbar), I haven't yet found something which can't be managed with either straightforward GUI configuration or with scripts. Things I like:
1. I have a sane & traditional icons+multiple taskbar+desktop setup
2. I get to choose how many windows I can see at a given time and what size they are (KDE also remembers the size)
3. Dolphin retains Split/compact/tree view and infact does it with all the customizations I could ask for based on what I need regularly.
4. Dual displays took exactly 2 minutes to setup - all driven by GUI. It even has the audacity to offer me separate wallpapers for each display without actually going through any kludges. Depending on which desktop I right-click and choose "Desktop settings", it allows me to set background etc. for that display.
5. I can choose the sort order and grouping of the applications on the taskbar - I like them unsorted (i.e. the order in which they were launched) and ungrouped (until there are too many and need to be grouped) - all this was configurable in "Task Manager settings".
6. I get to choose my own Terminal Emulator and I'm absolutely happy with Konsole because it even lets me customize the shortcut keys to manage tabs.
I could go on (and I never thought I would about KDE; I've always considered the simplicity of Gnome 2 superior to KDE) but KDE 4.8 is a fantastic experience for a Linux power user.
Started using it and I can't stop using it now. Pure and simple efficiency.