SuperKaramba can also be taken from the package manager, or downloaded from their site. After the download and installation you can start the tool from the terminal with superkaramba. It will probably also be in your start menu, but that wasn’t the case on my Gnome based distro.

After you started SuperKaramba you can click the New Stuff button to get new widgets. There is a nice list of widgets you can choose from in that list. There are also sites like KDE-Look.org and Biodesign that have some widgets on their site that you can install. After an widget is installed you can click the Add to Desktop button after you have selected it, and the widget will appear on you desktop.

I like SuperKaramba more then gDeskets, it has a more modern interface and it has a bigger user base behind it.
But the fact that it isn’t completely native on Gnome makes it a bit “unstable” at times, so if this bothers you i advise to stick with gDesklets.

You can install gDesklets from you package manager or download the binaries. After installation you can start it from your start menu, it was listed under accessories in my case. You can type gdesklets in your terminal alternatively. After you have started the daemon you get the gDesklets shell with a nice number of available widgets.

There are mostly normal widgets availible, like calenders or system information, but also things like verse of the day and dinocam. You can also view a list of availible widgets at the Gdesklets website, the list is located here.

There is also a KDE widget tool called SuperKaramba, but i haven’t had the change to test it yet so i cannot say at this point if it’s better, but i’ll handle SuperKaramba tomorrow and tell which has my preference.