8 ms·

Personally I consider the KDE the only DE that feels like it can compete with an OS like Windows or OSX. It's just a lot of small things that add up to make it

by Jonnax 6y ago

Personally I consider the KDE the only DE that feels like it can compete with an OS like Windows or OSX. It's just a lot of small things that add up to make it feel cohesive. Like how the file explorer has a built in terminal that follows the folder you're in. A lot of people call that philosophy bloat. But honestly I've got a PC with 32 GB of RAM and a laptop with 16GB. Like the Ubuntu Studio people have said 50MB more ram usage compared to XFCE isn't a bother at all.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
stestagg 6y ago
> Like how the file explorer has a built in terminal that follows the folder you're in. That’s a nice feature. But it has little to do with Windows/OSX equivalence. It also highlights something I felt last time I tried KDE (admittedly a while ago). There were lots of nice UX innovations and polish. But they didn’t feel familiar to me (as a user of many desktop environments). This makes switching much less of an appealing prospect to me.
- dahfizz 6y ago
  > But they didn’t feel familiar to me. I'm shocked by this, especially when the alternative here is GNOME. You can put a lifelong windows user in front of a plasma machine and they will be able to figure it out easy. There is a start menu, a bottom taskbar, all the window buttons are where they belong, etc. Contrast with gnome, where you can't get anything done unless you already know the magical keyboard shortcuts. Plasma gets criticized often for having too many configuration options and too many features, which I think is just insane. It works perfectly well out of the box, but it allows you to tinker to your heart's content.
  - stestagg 6y ago
    No disagreement here. I don't use gnome desktops, for similar reasons (although I'm also not the target audience for adopters, as I currently use Linux as my primary desktop environment!) I use cinnamon, as, for my personal preferences, it strikes the best balance between familiarity, 'prettiness' and functionality of the options I've tried.
    - suby 6y ago
      I think Cinnamon is really underrated. It has sane defaults, is reasonably performant, and will be familiar to anyone coming from Windows. In general I feel that Gnome has terrible defaults, and are hostile to the user making changes away from these defaults. It's also less performant than Cinnamon -- animations can lag on my machine for example, and my machine isn't exactly bad. I think Plasma is nice, and it's certainly more customizable than Cinnamon, but I think this comes at the cost of reliability and an overall feeling of cohesiveness. I also think there's a point where you don't want every right click menu to contain an option which allows you to fundamentally change the functionality of your desktop. I'd probably be using XFCE or Mate if Cinnamon didn't exist.
- Quekid5 6y ago
  What? You literally said you have only a limited amount of experience with KDE (from 'undefined' time ago), and yet you felt qualified to opine on its suitability for X... now? What?
bananamerica 6y ago
As you said, you got a PC with 32GB of RAM and a laptop with 16GB.
- orf 6y ago
  Exactly - a desktop experience should track the current desktop hardware. If you have 512mb of ram and a pentium 4 then too bad. Let’s not hobble the future because of the past.
  - shrimp_emoji 6y ago
    Amen. Stop fighting the last war.
  - wtetzner 6y ago
    And you don’t need every desktop environment to handle every use case. If you have limited resources, run something like XFCE.
  - guug 6y ago
    What about people who bought a low-to-mid range laptop last year? While 8G isn't .5G, it's still low enough that you'd quickly hit swap (a bloated modern browser + multimedia authoring tools) Tracking "current" desktop hardware is a quick way to get yourself another vista.
    - mrrsm 6y ago
      If you bought a budget computer do you really expect it to be able to handle running even minor taxing applications. In my experience most people who are buying a budget laptop need a great web browsing experience and maybe an office suite (if they aren't using a cloud one already). My guess is running a browser with Spotify or YouTube, some social networking tabs, and maybe google docs or office 365 word will not pose any issues.
    - vosper 6y ago
      > While 8G isn't .5G, it's still low enough that you'd quickly hit swap (a bloated modern browser + multimedia authoring tools) High memory usage from a browser or multimedia authoring tools is not the fault or responsibility of the desktop environment? Edit: Or was your point more that the desktop environment should use minimal memory so that the user can have a better experience with their applications? That makes sense, except in this case Ubuntu Studio explicitly states that it’s designed for powerful machines and not ones with more limited resources
madprops 6y ago
To me the problem with bloat is that it makes projects harder to maintain, also more bugs, not so much about ram usage. If the system in place makes sure the codebase is easily understood and adopted by contributors, then by all means, make all the crazy features you can think of.
shrimp_emoji 6y ago
Besides an integrated terminal, Dolphin also has a split mode! https://i.imgur.com/4blIFer.png https://i.imgur.com/4blIFer.png How does a file manager made by four Dutch guys for free beat Explorer, the file manager of the 99.9% marketshare multi-billion-dollar hegemon OS (which only got a dark mode like yesterday)?
- madprops 6y ago
  And tabs. And drag-dropping things by accident doesn't simply move/copy files but asks you what you want to do.
- nyanpasu64 6y ago
  The integrated terminal behaves badly with zsh/oh-my-zsh (random memory being printed to screen, extra space on the prompt whenever you switch folders), and sometimes fails to track folders. Should I report these issues?
  - jefft255 6y ago
    Of course! The answer to your question is always yes. This is very helpful to OSS developers.
- Sharlin 6y ago
  Well, Norton Commander[1] had a split view and an integrated terminal in 1984. Shipping a power-user file manager has simply never been a priority for Microsoft. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton_Commander https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton_Commander
- mnm1 6y ago
  Not too mention whatever passes for a file manager on osx (finder) that looks and acts like it was created by a thirteen year old boy as his first real program. And not even a boy that's going to go on to program for a living at that.
Kye 6y ago
>> "Like how the file explorer has a built in terminal that follows the folder you're in." You can type cmd + enter in any Explorer address bar and Windows will start a command prompt in that folder. It's not the same, but at least simplifies things.
vondur 6y ago
KDE is actually one of the lightest in terms of memory usage of all the DE's.
- masnao 6y ago
  today. after gnome rewrote the whole thing under "new management"
  - Jonnax 6y ago
    That was 9 years ago.
    - masnao 6y ago
      that's how long KDE prejudice is going on (and how long gnome is still missing old functionality ;)
brnt 6y ago
What KDE can compete with I don't know, but I do know its the only DE I can stand and actually enjoy using. And I compare it not only with Gnome, but Windows and MacOS too. Highly recommend you take a look if you don't know it (recently).

by Jonnax 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

stestagg 6y ago

> Like how the file explorer has a built in terminal that follows the folder you're in. That’s a nice feature. But it has little to do with Windows/OSX equivalence. It also highlights something I felt last time I tried KDE (admittedly a while ago). There were lots of nice UX innovations and polish. But they didn’t feel familiar to me (as a user of many desktop environments). This makes switching much less of an appealing prospect to me.

dahfizz 6y ago
> But they didn’t feel familiar to me. I'm shocked by this, especially when the alternative here is GNOME. You can put a lifelong windows user in front of a plasma machine and they will be able to figure it out easy. There is a start menu, a bottom taskbar, all the window buttons are where they belong, etc. Contrast with gnome, where you can't get anything done unless you already know the magical keyboard shortcuts. Plasma gets criticized often for having too many configuration options and too many features, which I think is just insane. It works perfectly well out of the box, but it allows you to tinker to your heart's content.
- stestagg 6y ago
  No disagreement here. I don't use gnome desktops, for similar reasons (although I'm also not the target audience for adopters, as I currently use Linux as my primary desktop environment!) I use cinnamon, as, for my personal preferences, it strikes the best balance between familiarity, 'prettiness' and functionality of the options I've tried.
  - suby 6y ago
    I think Cinnamon is really underrated. It has sane defaults, is reasonably performant, and will be familiar to anyone coming from Windows. In general I feel that Gnome has terrible defaults, and are hostile to the user making changes away from these defaults. It's also less performant than Cinnamon -- animations can lag on my machine for example, and my machine isn't exactly bad. I think Plasma is nice, and it's certainly more customizable than Cinnamon, but I think this comes at the cost of reliability and an overall feeling of cohesiveness. I also think there's a point where you don't want every right click menu to contain an option which allows you to fundamentally change the functionality of your desktop. I'd probably be using XFCE or Mate if Cinnamon didn't exist.
Quekid5 6y ago
What? You literally said you have only a limited amount of experience with KDE (from 'undefined' time ago), and yet you felt qualified to opine on its suitability for X... now? What?

bananamerica 6y ago

As you said, you got a PC with 32GB of RAM and a laptop with 16GB.

orf 6y ago
Exactly - a desktop experience should track the current desktop hardware. If you have 512mb of ram and a pentium 4 then too bad. Let’s not hobble the future because of the past.
- shrimp_emoji 6y ago
  Amen. Stop fighting the last war.
- wtetzner 6y ago
  And you don’t need every desktop environment to handle every use case. If you have limited resources, run something like XFCE.
- guug 6y ago
  What about people who bought a low-to-mid range laptop last year? While 8G isn't .5G, it's still low enough that you'd quickly hit swap (a bloated modern browser + multimedia authoring tools) Tracking "current" desktop hardware is a quick way to get yourself another vista.
  - mrrsm 6y ago
    If you bought a budget computer do you really expect it to be able to handle running even minor taxing applications. In my experience most people who are buying a budget laptop need a great web browsing experience and maybe an office suite (if they aren't using a cloud one already). My guess is running a browser with Spotify or YouTube, some social networking tabs, and maybe google docs or office 365 word will not pose any issues.
  - vosper 6y ago
    > While 8G isn't .5G, it's still low enough that you'd quickly hit swap (a bloated modern browser + multimedia authoring tools) High memory usage from a browser or multimedia authoring tools is not the fault or responsibility of the desktop environment? Edit: Or was your point more that the desktop environment should use minimal memory so that the user can have a better experience with their applications? That makes sense, except in this case Ubuntu Studio explicitly states that it’s designed for powerful machines and not ones with more limited resources

madprops 6y ago

To me the problem with bloat is that it makes projects harder to maintain, also more bugs, not so much about ram usage. If the system in place makes sure the codebase is easily understood and adopted by contributors, then by all means, make all the crazy features you can think of.

shrimp_emoji 6y ago

Besides an integrated terminal, Dolphin also has a split mode! https://i.imgur.com/4blIFer.png https://i.imgur.com/4blIFer.png How does a file manager made by four Dutch guys for free beat Explorer, the file manager of the 99.9% marketshare multi-billion-dollar hegemon OS (which only got a dark mode like yesterday)?

madprops 6y ago
And tabs. And drag-dropping things by accident doesn't simply move/copy files but asks you what you want to do.
nyanpasu64 6y ago
The integrated terminal behaves badly with zsh/oh-my-zsh (random memory being printed to screen, extra space on the prompt whenever you switch folders), and sometimes fails to track folders. Should I report these issues?
- jefft255 6y ago
  Of course! The answer to your question is always yes. This is very helpful to OSS developers.
Sharlin 6y ago
Well, Norton Commander[1] had a split view and an integrated terminal in 1984. Shipping a power-user file manager has simply never been a priority for Microsoft. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton_Commander https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton_Commander
mnm1 6y ago
Not too mention whatever passes for a file manager on osx (finder) that looks and acts like it was created by a thirteen year old boy as his first real program. And not even a boy that's going to go on to program for a living at that.

Kye 6y ago

>> "Like how the file explorer has a built in terminal that follows the folder you're in." You can type cmd + enter in any Explorer address bar and Windows will start a command prompt in that folder. It's not the same, but at least simplifies things.

vondur 6y ago

KDE is actually one of the lightest in terms of memory usage of all the DE's.

masnao 6y ago
today. after gnome rewrote the whole thing under "new management"
- Jonnax 6y ago
  That was 9 years ago.
  - masnao 6y ago
    that's how long KDE prejudice is going on (and how long gnome is still missing old functionality ;)

brnt 6y ago

What KDE can compete with I don't know, but I do know its the only DE I can stand and actually enjoy using. And I compare it not only with Gnome, but Windows and MacOS too. Highly recommend you take a look if you don't know it (recently).