You know I'm considering ditching Gnome for good, especially after sampling the latest version, Gnome 3. While the Fallback Mode offers some solace, it's a far cry from the fully usable desktop that I want and need. It's also a manifestation of a disturbing trend of equating power computing with the touch-screen nonsense of inferior mobile computing, but more about later.

I'm looking at all kinds of alternatives. The most prominent one is KDE4, which has turned great with version 4.6. Featured in Pardus 2011 and openSUSE 11.4, it's a streamlined, well-packaged environment that can almost turn a Gnome head around, back to the glory days when KDE reigned supreme. But there's another project you may want to test, and it's called Trinity KDE.