4 ms·

It's no coincidence. Libre software devs saw what MS and Apple were doing and went "oh no we have to do the same to stay relevant!" Couple that with the rampant

by Asooka 10y ago

It's no coincidence. Libre software devs saw what MS and Apple were doing and went "oh no we have to do the same to stay relevant!" Couple that with the rampant egos typical for an OSS project lead and you have today's situation. Of the big 3 (or is it 4 now) DEs, I feel KDE has stayed the most sane and provides the same desktop metaphors. Then again, they mostly bet on the "semantic desktop" direction, which was thankfully stillborn and didn't impact the actual GUI much.

yellowapple 10y ago
I feel like Xfce and LXDE actually do a decent job here, too (respectively). Both have stayed pretty consistent over the last decade from what I've seen. openSUSE + Xfce is my go-to for installing a desktop system for a new Linux user. While openSUSE moves a couple things around relative to a typical Xfce installation, they tend to feel a bit more natural to Windows XP users (which, amazingly enough, still exist). Users can typically be relatively productive after some basic education to cover the day-to-day usage quirks ("use Writer instead of Word; use Firefox instead of Internet Explorer; etc."). The only thing I significantly dislike about it for non-technical users is the scary warning that pops up if you drag a menu item to the desktop and try to run it; sure, it's easy to fix (click on "Mark Executable"), but that's still very unusual and unintuitive, and your average user doesn't know or care what "Mark Executable" means (they might know what "Launch Anyway and Don't Ask Me Again" means, though).
- narag 10y ago
  Both have stayed pretty consistent over the last decade from what I've seen. I used LXDE until they removed the tree panel in the file manager, many years ago. After having left KDE because another update that killed my workflow and reading that GNOME was not any better for this matter, it made me abandon Linux desktop completely, after two years of exclusive use. I wonder if they brought the tree back, but... too late.
pantalaimon 10y ago
Unfortunately KDE gets rewritten with every iteration of Qt, so it's foolish to expect it to work.

by Asooka 10y ago

yellowapple 10y ago

I feel like Xfce and LXDE actually do a decent job here, too (respectively). Both have stayed pretty consistent over the last decade from what I've seen. openSUSE + Xfce is my go-to for installing a desktop system for a new Linux user. While openSUSE moves a couple things around relative to a typical Xfce installation, they tend to feel a bit more natural to Windows XP users (which, amazingly enough, still exist). Users can typically be relatively productive after some basic education to cover the day-to-day usage quirks ("use Writer instead of Word; use Firefox instead of Internet Explorer; etc."). The only thing I significantly dislike about it for non-technical users is the scary warning that pops up if you drag a menu item to the desktop and try to run it; sure, it's easy to fix (click on "Mark Executable"), but that's still very unusual and unintuitive, and your average user doesn't know or care what "Mark Executable" means (they might know what "Launch Anyway and Don't Ask Me Again" means, though).

narag 10y ago
Both have stayed pretty consistent over the last decade from what I've seen. I used LXDE until they removed the tree panel in the file manager, many years ago. After having left KDE because another update that killed my workflow and reading that GNOME was not any better for this matter, it made me abandon Linux desktop completely, after two years of exclusive use. I wonder if they brought the tree back, but... too late.

pantalaimon 10y ago

Unfortunately KDE gets rewritten with every iteration of Qt, so it's foolish to expect it to work.