Are the Nikkor prime D lenses worse than the G?

I know they're older, mostly manual and have an aperture thing on the lens, but as for image quality, build quality, elements, and stuff like that? Better or worse?

Optically they perform on par.

The differences have more to do with the auto-focus system. The D lenses use the older auto-focus system and can't auto-focus when using entry level dSLR's (under $1, 000)

The G lenses use the AF-S auto-focus system which is much faster at auto-focusing than the AF lenses and can be used on ANY Nikon dSLR.

Just for future reference, the proper way to classify them is AF, AF-D and AF-S.

All AF-S and G lenses are also D lenses.

In general, older MF focus lenses were built much better than AF lenses.

Some of the newer AF-S lenses (the 50 1.4 and 1.8, for example) are slightly flimsier.

Not bad

Not bad