Which desktop is best for newbies? I have never seen KDE and I barely know anything about Gnome. I want to know which is easiest, and which is the most useful.

their both good, kde is a little more like windows, so it may be a better desktop for a windows user to learn on.

Hi,
I agree with rshaw about that. However, in the future you might want to try one of the smaller, faster desktops. kde is a bit bloated.
Dallam

KDE is an excellent one to start with, but you may notice some differences that may become annoying: In order to open things, you SINGLE click it - like Internet style! Gnome is also a fantastic desktop system, which does feel a little more like Windows. To top them all, though, you could try ICEWM2 (or whatever it's called). KDE's start bar is a K, Gnome's start bar is a foot, and ICEWM2's start bar is 'Start', just like Windows.

I personally prefer KDE because it's just that little bit different you can't just relapse back into Windows User mode :-)

Related question - I have RH 6.1 with Gnome on Enlightenment. I previously had Debian with a variety of X desktops to choose from.
Gnome doesn't seem to give me the option of changing to other windows managers, like fwm2. How can I change this so I can use the smaller, faster fwm2 or something like that on my ancient P60 with 48meg (really need to speed this up).