Which is Faster? KDE 4.1 (or) GNOME - Some Views

KDE is designed to be similar to Windows, and it shows. Gnome is and is designed to be much faster. I don't like KDE much, but I need it for applications that still use it. Unfortunately, KDE 4 was such a different coding than KDE 3 many programs still don't have versions for it, so you end up stuck will all 3. Unless you can't find an alternative, Gnome reigns by far.

Xfce IMO is a superior desktop environment to GNOME. I guess I like the fact that Xfce is modular and I find it more customisable than GNOME. I also prefer it's built in programs - Xfwm is better than Metacity and Thunar is a far better file manager than Nautilus.

KDE4 has a very small memory footprint. Almost as small as XFCE. In time, it should evolve into an extremely good DE, but as of now it lacks some serious functionality as well as not many apps. have been ported over to the new widget set. They need to better optimize the KWIN composition manager as well, because currently Compiz is faster even with minimal effects.