Intro: GNOME vs KDE

There are two major desktop environments in Linux: Gnome and KDE.
There is also a flame war between proponents of each.
So as a sort of disclaimer here is my take on them.

KDE is a new type of desktop environment. Very costumizable, somewhat busy and complicated. It is favored by programmers and famously the one used by Linus Trovaldis (the guy who created the Linux kernel). It is definitely new (it is not like Windows or any other OS), mature system with the better application integration. It has a steep learning curve. http://www.kde.org/whatiskde/

Gnome is sort of like a mixture of Windows XP and the Mac OSX. It is simple, but somewhat flat and while easy to costumize appearance-wise, it does not provide as much options as KDE. Because it is in-between the Windows and Mac interface, it's easy to learn. It is not as mature as KDE, but it's getting there. http://www.gnome.org/about/

I use Gnome. Mostly because I find it easier to use and it gets out of my way. Yet I use a lot of KDE applications which I believe are superior to their Gnome equivalents (like K3b for example). Like I said above the KDE is more mature and when the upcoming release of KDE4 it'll be far more advanced than Gnome. We'll see if I'll find it easier to use than its present form.

Funny thing, if you look at the website design of their respective website they are reminiscent of the Desktop Environments...

Other environments that I have used are:
XFCE which is like a simpler Gnome, Icewm which is like Win98 for Linux, and Fluxbox which is a super simple very fast window manager, but not a desktop environment.