Losing one's work isn't a "silly problem". You can't say that and at the same time blame developers for disregarding user's problems. They had to take in account your problem, and this "silly" problem. Your problem lost. This doesn't mean they didn't listen.

KDE 4.6 is now old, it is 4.8. My PCLOS (a rolling release) just updated & the maintainers only do this when very happy with the source & find the result rock solid. These days it is easy to switch DE's. Give it a try.

Just my experiences. Gnome v KDE does polarize supporters.
Used to be the argument was, 'Gnome, lighter on resources than KDE'. From what I read there is nothing in it these days.
The other one is, 'Gnome is a "cleaner" desktop'. Again KDE4 now (as well as the usual workspaces) has 'activities'. Set up a desktop activity for graphics or video or 'writing-your-novel' & have them as clean or as cluttered as you want.

For other DE's and I use E17 Enlightenment and have used LXDE, maybe not for the absolute beginners. I have (had) these on my netbook and E17 (Bodhi linux) is very light on resources, a great tool. Had less success with it on a desktop.

Bottom line, always keep an open mind.

Ofnuts maybe i was not too clear :
mark the difference between Save and export help to solve problems, and that is positive, but is implemented as you would expect from a severe Teacher...n
Allow to save and export also a single operation may help even more to solve the same problem and with a more friendly approacho

Hmmm. So, we agree there must be a safety belt, and like all safety belts it is annoying, and your solution has IMHO exactly as many problems as the current behavior albeit different ones (what if I don't want to export, or just want to export?). The safety belt, over the left or the right shoulder?

Interestingly, this is exactly what we have been telling newbies to do for all those years over on GT - save as xcf, only export to jpg etc when needed. My beginning GIMP tutorial advocates this method as well. Saving as a jpg and then wondering where all the layers went is a very common misconception among newbies. Teaching them the correct way to save used to be a very critical step.
Now GIMP supports this sane way of working out of the box and I could not be happier. I'd say GIMP devs did know what they were doing with that one.


... Oh, and to stay on topic, I've always liked the gnome window decorations (which you get when programs use GTK+). But I never liked the gnome desktop. I've ditched KDE too these days, using it only as an underlying system for my totally clean openbox desktop. Fast and without any icons or other pizazz. Keyboard shortcuts and command line FTW.
I use Debian SID otherwise.
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Griatch

If you think that, I will be very hard to convince you to use GNU/Linux
Linux is far from dead. Linux and OpenSource are successful: Android, Servers, Super Computers ... Even GNU/Linux (OS for PC's) users has similar number to MacOS. Do MacOS unsuccessful? Is it dying?.
What happens in the world of desktop PCs is that Microsoft has managed to build a monopoly with captive users. Against that, nothing will be as successful.
You speak of who are uncomfortable with the new environments in yours desktop PC's. That's normal because the new environments are not designed for desktop PCs. You have to know to see the future, and the future are touch screen devices, smartphones, smart TV. Android, Unity, GNOME Shell even Windows 8 are designed for those devices.
Regarding the difficulty of GNU/Linux. I would agree with you 10 years ago. Now I think to install and use GNU/Linux is as easy as Windows. Now you tell me that there are many more programs for Windows, and it's true. Then I go back to what I said before, the Microsoft monopoly. Companies develop software for the environment where they can earn more money, where more users: Windows.
So the argument: "I do not use GNU/Linux because I have more programs in Windows" does not help anything to GNU/Linux. That's a wicked reasoning that only benefits Microsoft. So we need more users so that there is more software, but with the above argument we are always under Windows. Our developers can not make a Autocad, a Photoshop, etc. to satisfy users of Windows. It should be the other way, companies should be interested in GNU/Linux. Again, we need more users.
And please, when you talk of OpenSource, not be so hard about:
Closed software compatibility: Do you know how hard it is to do that when you have no access to the software code or specification sheets? Often our developers must use complicated techniques of reverse engineering to achieve it.
Drivers: Again, companies are only interested in the system with more users. Thanks to our smart developers can have drivers without help from the hardware manufacturers.
Developers: Hey! mostly they are doing their work for free or for little gain. Help more and criticize less.
Well, I have spread far and my English is not good. I hope you understand.
Regards.

I made a sweeping statement about open source developers that I regret. My info comes from a few isolated incidents. I do appreciate the work that developers do without payment, my issue isn't with that. In the incidents I was referring to users wishes have been totally ignored on the grounds that "we don't want to do it that way". I accept that's their choice - I just don't think it's a wise one. I love linux and its ethical stance, particularly Fedora, its the attitudes of some developers that I don't like. I'll stay out of these discussions in future because as usual I have a minority opinion and it just seems to wind people up. Your English is excellent YAFU. In the UK there are many who's English isn't as good.

I still use a lot of "K" apps under Gnome but due to it's size and all the updates that come along, I'm not so sure I really want to install KDE 4.x to my drive just to preview it. I think I might just load up the Fedora Live KDE spin and take a look see. Perhaps it's not as bloated and resource hungry as I remember.

Out of interest, how "user friendly" will this be. I'm not being sarcastic here, but the term "adjustment layers" is simple English whereas the term GEGL node editing sounds frighteningly technical. I understand how to use adjustment layers but will I understand this?

Sure you will...just look to mandelbulb3d

now you may call each formula a "node" and if in your parameters you assembled more then 1 formula in M3D you did "Mandelbulb3D node editing"

So you already did a lot of node editing