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I'm looking at KDE 1 and thinking it actually looks better than the latest and greatest. Aesthetically I think KDE really went downhill. KDE 1 might not look m

I'm looking at KDE 1 and thinking it actually looks better than the latest and greatest. Aesthetically I think KDE really went downhill. KDE 1 might not look modern, but at least the design is well thought out, consistent and not full of strangely balanced UI elements with either too much or too little whitespace.

mrweasel 10y ago
KDE seems to either appeal to people or turn them away completely. While I appreciate all the hard work the developers have put into KDE, I have always found it to be down right ugly, regardless of version. Not that Unity or Gnome is much better.
- JBReefer 10y ago
  Unity is terrible, but at least Ubuntu admits it. I do think Gnome can be made to be pretty.
  - hd4 10y ago
    What's wrong with Unity? And where did they admit it was bad? It does the job, it doesn't need a lot of RAM, it's good-looking, stays out of the way. By far the best experience I've had as a developer on desktop Linux.
- uola 10y ago
  I almost can't believe I'm saying this, but there nothing wrong with the look as such. The, maybe controversial, problem is that the substance isn't there. Things you expect, or strive for, in modern application development like developers tools, multimedia support, security features, adoption, distribution etc. isn't up to the task. It seem like whenever Linux desktop technologies get good enough to go somewhere they reinvent themselves under a slightly different paradigm.
- unicornporn 10y ago
  I actually just went back to Linux after 11 years of macOS and I can't say Gnome 3 does it for me either. 10.6 was my favorite version of OS X and I think that OS has been going mostly downhill from there. When switching I realized I've been spoiled with well thought out design and UX, but I must say I really enjoy the simplicity and polish of MATE DE[1]. It's sort of like traveling back to a time when a desktop was a desktop (oh boy, am I getting old) and not a shopping mall were I'm supposed to buy stuff and have my habits tracked and measured. [1] http://mate-desktop.org/ http://mate-desktop.org/
  - PerryCox 10y ago
    If you want a DE that is almost as lightweight as MATE, but has a more modern feel I would recommend Cinnamon[1]. There is also a Fedora spin if you prefer that to Debian based distros. I've been using Cinnamon as my DE for about a year now and I absolutely love it. The biggest thing that made me switch is the fact that it just works. GNOME would shit the bed every time I docked my computer into its docking station, Cinnamon handles it just fine and can even remember my monitor configurations. [1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinnamon_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinnamon_(software)
    - smcl 10y ago
      Isn't cinnamon a little cpu/gpu heavy, and therefore power hungry? I tried it a year or so ago and it ate my battery for breakfast (and iirc it was pretty RAM heavy too, but my memory might be failing me here) - switching back to xmonad sorted everything out. Happy to be told I'm wrong, Cinnamon was very pretty and it'd be a nice option for tasks where my xmonad setup gets stuck on (Arduino/Processing and fullscreen VLC)
      - nix0n 10y ago
        > Arduino/Processing and fullscreen VLC You might find LXDE to be a good choice, it is quite lightweight and I have had success with it for both of these. Extending the desktop across multiple monitors was a bit tricky though, but this was about 3 years ago so that may have improved.
- AsyncAwait 10y ago
  > Not that Unity or Gnome is much better. Looking at [1], [2], [3], [4] I would be curious to hear why do you think that they look worse than what i.e. macOS has to offer? 1 - http://i.imgur.com/KIUkPBU.png http://i.imgur.com/KIUkPBU.png 2 - http://i.imgur.com/T5AMpdG.png http://i.imgur.com/T5AMpdG.png 3 - https://i.imgur.com/duA9HpA.png https://i.imgur.com/duA9HpA.png 4 - https://i.imgur.com/c6epiwe.png https://i.imgur.com/c6epiwe.png
  - leadingthenet 10y ago
    Is there a guide on how to make Unity or Gnome look like that? I haven't used either in quite a while.
    - petepete 10y ago
      Plenty of info in /r/unixporn https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn
    - matwood 10y ago
      This is a good point. All of those screenshots look much better than out of the box Unity, so why is the out of the box look so bad.
  - rplnt 10y ago
    Gnome (or is it Unity?) I have in my Fedora looks nice. Visually much beter than KDE. But it's like 50% empty space. Which is really, really bad. These screenshots look fine to me at the first glance.
  - unicornporn 10y ago
    Those are desktops are quite riced. My experience is that it often looks good in screenshots, but then end up being constant fight to get all aspects of your DE to adhere to your now pimped desktop experience. https://imgur.com/T5AMpdG https://imgur.com/T5AMpdG is a good example of bad design. White space is all over the place. Distance between icon and icon description is too short. Distance between search box and icon grid is too long compared to distance of menu bar. I could go on...
- rplnt 10y ago
  I've used KDE when I used Linux as my main OS (I've since moved it into VM and use mostly command line). Not because it looked nice (it didn't), but the customization options were far ahead of Gnome (not to mention Gnome2 felt like Windows 95). And to this day Gnome has the worst "Settings Panel" I've seen. Windows 95 included. It's just.. horrible.
- dom0 10y ago
  I don't think KDE looks particularly good, but it works for me (usability wise, and it's not ugly enough to constantly barf - some details look quite nice, but the big picture kidna doesn't). Gtk on the other hand I can't really handle. Both Gnome and Unity look not that different on a basic level, but aren't nearly as usable to me as KDE (personally I find many design features in both of them also more ugly). Other DEs just look worse. I recently tried Qubes (3.2) on a laptop and was amazed how ugly it is. There are literally dozens of window decorations in Xfce, and all of them look like shit. Practically nothing changed there since half a decade ago when I last used Xfce. Even some obvious graphical bugs persisted! Color scheme support is also universally bad in Linux land (or maybe generally? Windows is poor here, too. OSX I don't know). Wrong combinations of colors (dark grey text on slightly darker background? A pleasure!), apps just not using the color scheme, inverted colors in some apps/places etc. Some "DEs" don't try and just admit design failure. Eg. i3 which I'm using on some laptops since a couple years. It doesn't even have any design to speak of. I only use it, because it works extraordinarily well for me. </rant> Don't even get me started on font rendering. I know it's an utterly difficult topic, and that a lot of work went into it to improve it (and some of this is fairly recent). Still, the font rendering quality is often still rather underwhelming. And in past times, or on older or misconfigured distros (F23 on Qubes for example) the quality is just heinous.
  - dom0 10y ago
    Re. development of KDE - I don't really get the hate here. I used KDE 3, 4 and KF5 currently. Still don't get it.
    - pooper 10y ago
      I use KDE (in fact typing this in Kubuntu Xenial) but my main criticism is that KDE would definitely not pass a hallway testing. Here's an example: switch the desktop theme to oxygen. Suddenly, something as mundane as switching airplane mode on and off with the default panels becomes crazy difficult because you can't see the images next to the check box (oh and for some reason all check boxes look like square radio buttons now). I'm sure KDE works great for the people who have used it for years but they don't have newcomers complaining about usability or they don't listen to newcomers complaining about usability.
- shmerl 10y ago
  KDE is a as ugly, as you configure it to be ;) Really, you can change so many aspects of the UI, that it's kind of pointless to complain that you don't like how it looks.
Asooka 10y ago
That was my initial thought, too. But then I started thinking we should get the perspective of someone who grew up with Windows 7 rather than Windows 3.11. It could just be nostalgia talking.
duaneb 10y ago
Do you have an example of the well thought out or consistent design? It looks very generic to me; that is, not questioning the design mistakes of the 80s and 90s like using `ctrl` for terminal and UI shortcuts.

mrweasel 10y ago

KDE seems to either appeal to people or turn them away completely. While I appreciate all the hard work the developers have put into KDE, I have always found it to be down right ugly, regardless of version. Not that Unity or Gnome is much better.

JBReefer 10y ago
Unity is terrible, but at least Ubuntu admits it. I do think Gnome can be made to be pretty.
- hd4 10y ago
  What's wrong with Unity? And where did they admit it was bad? It does the job, it doesn't need a lot of RAM, it's good-looking, stays out of the way. By far the best experience I've had as a developer on desktop Linux.
uola 10y ago
I almost can't believe I'm saying this, but there nothing wrong with the look as such. The, maybe controversial, problem is that the substance isn't there. Things you expect, or strive for, in modern application development like developers tools, multimedia support, security features, adoption, distribution etc. isn't up to the task. It seem like whenever Linux desktop technologies get good enough to go somewhere they reinvent themselves under a slightly different paradigm.
unicornporn 10y ago
I actually just went back to Linux after 11 years of macOS and I can't say Gnome 3 does it for me either. 10.6 was my favorite version of OS X and I think that OS has been going mostly downhill from there. When switching I realized I've been spoiled with well thought out design and UX, but I must say I really enjoy the simplicity and polish of MATE DE[1]. It's sort of like traveling back to a time when a desktop was a desktop (oh boy, am I getting old) and not a shopping mall were I'm supposed to buy stuff and have my habits tracked and measured. [1] http://mate-desktop.org/ http://mate-desktop.org/
- PerryCox 10y ago
  If you want a DE that is almost as lightweight as MATE, but has a more modern feel I would recommend Cinnamon[1]. There is also a Fedora spin if you prefer that to Debian based distros. I've been using Cinnamon as my DE for about a year now and I absolutely love it. The biggest thing that made me switch is the fact that it just works. GNOME would shit the bed every time I docked my computer into its docking station, Cinnamon handles it just fine and can even remember my monitor configurations. [1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinnamon_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinnamon_(software)
  - smcl 10y ago
    Isn't cinnamon a little cpu/gpu heavy, and therefore power hungry? I tried it a year or so ago and it ate my battery for breakfast (and iirc it was pretty RAM heavy too, but my memory might be failing me here) - switching back to xmonad sorted everything out. Happy to be told I'm wrong, Cinnamon was very pretty and it'd be a nice option for tasks where my xmonad setup gets stuck on (Arduino/Processing and fullscreen VLC)
    - nix0n 10y ago
      > Arduino/Processing and fullscreen VLC You might find LXDE to be a good choice, it is quite lightweight and I have had success with it for both of these. Extending the desktop across multiple monitors was a bit tricky though, but this was about 3 years ago so that may have improved.
AsyncAwait 10y ago
> Not that Unity or Gnome is much better. Looking at [1], [2], [3], [4] I would be curious to hear why do you think that they look worse than what i.e. macOS has to offer? 1 - http://i.imgur.com/KIUkPBU.png http://i.imgur.com/KIUkPBU.png 2 - http://i.imgur.com/T5AMpdG.png http://i.imgur.com/T5AMpdG.png 3 - https://i.imgur.com/duA9HpA.png https://i.imgur.com/duA9HpA.png 4 - https://i.imgur.com/c6epiwe.png https://i.imgur.com/c6epiwe.png
- leadingthenet 10y ago
  Is there a guide on how to make Unity or Gnome look like that? I haven't used either in quite a while.
  - petepete 10y ago
    Plenty of info in /r/unixporn https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn
  - matwood 10y ago
    This is a good point. All of those screenshots look much better than out of the box Unity, so why is the out of the box look so bad.
- rplnt 10y ago
  Gnome (or is it Unity?) I have in my Fedora looks nice. Visually much beter than KDE. But it's like 50% empty space. Which is really, really bad. These screenshots look fine to me at the first glance.
- unicornporn 10y ago
  Those are desktops are quite riced. My experience is that it often looks good in screenshots, but then end up being constant fight to get all aspects of your DE to adhere to your now pimped desktop experience. https://imgur.com/T5AMpdG https://imgur.com/T5AMpdG is a good example of bad design. White space is all over the place. Distance between icon and icon description is too short. Distance between search box and icon grid is too long compared to distance of menu bar. I could go on...
rplnt 10y ago
I've used KDE when I used Linux as my main OS (I've since moved it into VM and use mostly command line). Not because it looked nice (it didn't), but the customization options were far ahead of Gnome (not to mention Gnome2 felt like Windows 95). And to this day Gnome has the worst "Settings Panel" I've seen. Windows 95 included. It's just.. horrible.
dom0 10y ago
I don't think KDE looks particularly good, but it works for me (usability wise, and it's not ugly enough to constantly barf - some details look quite nice, but the big picture kidna doesn't). Gtk on the other hand I can't really handle. Both Gnome and Unity look not that different on a basic level, but aren't nearly as usable to me as KDE (personally I find many design features in both of them also more ugly). Other DEs just look worse. I recently tried Qubes (3.2) on a laptop and was amazed how ugly it is. There are literally dozens of window decorations in Xfce, and all of them look like shit. Practically nothing changed there since half a decade ago when I last used Xfce. Even some obvious graphical bugs persisted! Color scheme support is also universally bad in Linux land (or maybe generally? Windows is poor here, too. OSX I don't know). Wrong combinations of colors (dark grey text on slightly darker background? A pleasure!), apps just not using the color scheme, inverted colors in some apps/places etc. Some "DEs" don't try and just admit design failure. Eg. i3 which I'm using on some laptops since a couple years. It doesn't even have any design to speak of. I only use it, because it works extraordinarily well for me. </rant> Don't even get me started on font rendering. I know it's an utterly difficult topic, and that a lot of work went into it to improve it (and some of this is fairly recent). Still, the font rendering quality is often still rather underwhelming. And in past times, or on older or misconfigured distros (F23 on Qubes for example) the quality is just heinous.
- dom0 10y ago
  Re. development of KDE - I don't really get the hate here. I used KDE 3, 4 and KF5 currently. Still don't get it.
  - pooper 10y ago
    I use KDE (in fact typing this in Kubuntu Xenial) but my main criticism is that KDE would definitely not pass a hallway testing. Here's an example: switch the desktop theme to oxygen. Suddenly, something as mundane as switching airplane mode on and off with the default panels becomes crazy difficult because you can't see the images next to the check box (oh and for some reason all check boxes look like square radio buttons now). I'm sure KDE works great for the people who have used it for years but they don't have newcomers complaining about usability or they don't listen to newcomers complaining about usability.
shmerl 10y ago
KDE is a as ugly, as you configure it to be ;) Really, you can change so many aspects of the UI, that it's kind of pointless to complain that you don't like how it looks.

Asooka 10y ago

That was my initial thought, too. But then I started thinking we should get the perspective of someone who grew up with Windows 7 rather than Windows 3.11. It could just be nostalgia talking.

duaneb 10y ago

Do you have an example of the well thought out or consistent design? It looks very generic to me; that is, not questioning the design mistakes of the 80s and 90s like using `ctrl` for terminal and UI shortcuts.