This is a topic that you can still start a ReligiousWar over, even though the deep schism it caused in the Linux community for a time has lessened drastically. These days, most everyone sees is as what it is: a matter of choice, and not even an absolute one, since you can always use programs from the other desktop under the one you're running. And even that matters less yet ever since RedHat also made an attempt to unify the two with the BlueCurve theme that provides a largely identical LookAndFeel to both desktops. So evaluate both and decide which one you want. Or ignore the big fish entirely and use something else. Have you seen XFce?

If you like KDE, you might want to look into Mandriva, a LinuxDistribution that was started because RedHat refused to support KDE in their distribution. If you like GNOME, take a look at Ubuntu or FedoraCore.

Americans seem to tend toward GNOME while Europeans seem to tend toward KDE. RichardStallman definitely doesn't tend toward KDE.

It's worth noting that KDE uses the GPL'd version of TrollTech's Qt ToolKit, while GNOME makes use of the LGPL license?d GTK. Because of this, applications built for KDE using Qt must either be released under a GPL compatible license?, or, if non-free?, the developer needs to purchase a license? from TrollTech. Due to the slightly more liberal nature of the LGPL, you can use GTK for your non-free? or GPL incompatible OpenSource Software without needing to comply with such conditions.