Distributions, Applications, and Toolkits

Programs that "run better/faster" on specific Desktop Environments

Keep in mind your distribution uses different programming toolkits for their applications, so to minimize the amount of overhead that gets loaded up you may want to make sure your applications are native to what's already running. For this reason, you may want to use Transmission instead of Ktorrent if you're using Xubuntu.

gtk toolkit users:
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Xubuntu
Transmission bittorrent client
Synaptic Package Manager
Gimp (yes, rly)
Firefox

qt toolkit users:
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Kubuntu
Ktorrent
Adept Package Manager
qt browsers include Konqueror and Opera. I'm guessing you'll just stick with Firefox anyway!)

You may have seen "apt-get" and assume it refers the Adept Package Manager. It doesn't. APT is an acronym "Advanced Packaging Tool", package management system for Debian-based distributions. Synaptic and Adept are merely front-ends for this tool (i.e. they make it look purty).

Wikipedia articles on pieces of software often mention what toolkit the software uses, either in the first paragraph, or in an infobox on the right.