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I wish KDE had the same level of resources behind it as GNOME does. I keep occasionally trying new versions of GNOME but it feels like a DE optimized to look g

I wish KDE had the same level of resources behind it as GNOME does. I keep occasionally trying new versions of GNOME but it feels like a DE optimized to look good in screenshots and always falls short when actually using it. KDE on the other hand looks relatively good and is infinitely more usable to me. It's got some rougher edges and a weaker application ecosystem but still comes out ahead for me. I also vastly prefer using apps written in QT to those written in GTK and despise CSD...

flyingpenguin 6y ago
I don't want to defend Gnome because I also can't stand it over KDE most of the time, but I think GNOME is built for one actually useful thing... laptops. Gnome feels good on a computer with a single small display.
- CoolGuySteve 6y ago
  I'm probably the last person who still uses Unity and it's for this exact reason. I set the launch bar to auto hide and use the compiz Expose clone hot corners to switch windows. It all just gets out of the way. I don't know why Gnome didn't adopt the Unity menu bar integration, instead you get to waste space on the taskbar on the bottom AND that useless status bar on the top.
  - mroche 6y ago
    > I don't know why Gnome didn't adopt the Unity menu bar integration, instead you get to waste space on the taskbar on the bottom AND that useless status bar on the top. Are you referring to the Window List extension? Why not use Dash to Dock instead, or even Dash to Panel (not sure if it’s current state, I don’t use it) which will also replace the main top status panel. I’m a GNOME user on a single display (X because NVIDIA and 3D industry apps) and it works well for me. I do like the other DE’s though, I’m pretty agnostic in that sense.
    - CoolGuySteve 6y ago
      No I'm talking about how the "File Edit " etc menu is drawn in one and only one place like in MacOS so that every application doesn't waste screen space drawing their own menu.
      - mroche 6y ago
        Oh, right. It’s been such a long time since I’ve used unity I completely forgot that was a thing, my bad. Most of the time when I think about Unity these days I think about the sidebar launcher and the maximized window mode integration, not the rest of the features it provided; I didn’t get to spend a lot of time in Ubuntu.
  - huftis 6y ago
    FYI, KDE/Plasma supports all of those features you mentioned: 1. You can set the launcher/taskbar/panel to auto-hide. 2. You can set up the screen corners (or a keyboard shortcut) to show an Exposé-style view of all running applications/windows. 3. You can have a global menu bar.
    - aibara 6y ago
      You can get pretty close to emulating Unity's interface with Plasma, especially if you use Latte-dock. But there are still certain things that can't be done; the biggest to me is having the menu bar (File, Edit, etc.) in the title bar of all the windows (a global menu at the top works though). You can get a button that then gives you those options, which is close but an extra click.
  - Beldin 6y ago
    After installing Ubuntu 18.04 I tried staying with Gnome. I installed extensions to get closer to the behavior I wanted. I realised i basically had a cheap, slow knock-off of standard Unity functionality. I installed Unity and never looked back. I'm no longer waiting for the window manager when switching virtual desktops. Load on the system is now once again due to me using it, instead of the window manager.
- kevinherron 6y ago
  I actually find that GNOME is worse on laptops. My X1C6 is running at effectively 1600x900 and the amount of vertical space wasted by the height and padding of GNOME/GTK titlebars and widgets drives me crazy. With KDE on a laptop I just set up the dock vertically on the righthand side and I'm good to go. GNOME's workspace switcher/overview thing is better than anything KDE has though. It's much closer in function and polish to macOS than KDE is.
  - aibara 6y ago
    Maybe there's some extension to fix this now, but I always hated how GNOME's workspaces were just small boxes on the opposite side of the overview button/hot corner. And even more so that they were a row, not a grid. KDE's exposé-like grid that separates all the windows on all the workspaces is so much more useful to me (not sure if that's enabled by default though).
blinkingled 6y ago
Yeah but I hope it's not the same kind of resources - https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=HarfBuzz-Hinting-Woe https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=HarfBuzz... Gnome developers have their head buried deep and firm in sands at this point.
- cycloptic 6y ago
  Harfbuzz isn't a GNOME project. It's used by GNOME, KDE, Chromium, LibreOffice, and several other projects. The entire open source text rendering stack depends on it at this point.
  - blinkingled 6y ago
    https://blogs.gnome.org/mclasen/2019/05/25/pango-future-directions/ https://blogs.gnome.org/mclasen/2019/05/25/pango-future-dire... > Using Harfbuzz for font loading means that we will lose support for bitmap and type1 fonts. It's not as straight forward.
    - cycloptic 6y ago
      That is not related to the other article that you linked. The Type1 format is extremely old/deprecated and has been superseded by OpenType. And bitmap fonts don't even have a concept of hinting, they are just bitmaps.
      - blinkingled 6y ago
        Pango is a Gnome project. They moved to using Harfbuzz and as a result dropped support for bitmap fonts. That hurt not just Gnome/GTK users but whoever else uses Pango and there was user pushback about it. Pango prior to version 1.44 used kerning hints provided by FreeType but now makes use of the hints provided by HarfBuzz. But HarfBuzz doesn't support all of the hints supported by FreeType and thus a regression for some users depending upon their font hinting preferences and what visibly looks the best to them and their displays. Remember Pango is a Gnome project.
the_angry_angel 6y ago
I switched some years ago to KDE from Gnome. The only thing I wish I had from Gnome is the quality of text rendering. Maybe it’s subjective, maybe it’s a measurable thing. I’ve not looked, but I feel KDEs text rendering is worse on my daily driver.
- mixedCase 6y ago
  Linux apps pretty much universally do font rendering via FreeType. Have you tried switching to Cantarell? I for one fell in love with Inter UI back when I used Plasma.
  - the_angry_angel 6y ago
    I haven't, I'll give it a go :) Thank you!
    - the_angry_angel 6y ago
      FWIW if anyone else comes back to this I spent a little time last night and I've addressed my font rendering issues by; * Removing an errant font-config lcdfilter configuration entry (this was a left over from when I was running "infinality" and should have been removed) * Switching font from Noto Sans to Ubuntu Its not perfect, but its a lot better. I'll probably play with oversampling (rendering X at a higher resolution and scaling down like OSX) at some point to see if I get the quality I want.
Quekid5 6y ago
KDE works much better for me, personally. Just avoid the aboslute shitshow that is Kubuntu. (I know they try hard, but...) Go for a distro that follows upstream more closely.
- kevinherron 6y ago
  Yes, I've settled on Manjaro KDE since the demise of Antergos. Do vanilla Arch once for the experience and then find better things to do with your time after that...
  - Quekid5 6y ago
    I honestly don't understand the idea that Arch is time-consuming or weird... but maybe my needs are less esoteric than the rest of the world. I'm just a bit mystified, but... whatever makes it work for you.
    - kevinherron 6y ago
      I'm not implying that Arch is time consuming once you set it up... but if you can't see how installing Arch is more time consuming than installing Manjaro you're just being intentionally dense and contrarian.
- reddotX 6y ago
  KDE neon?

flyingpenguin 6y ago

I don't want to defend Gnome because I also can't stand it over KDE most of the time, but I think GNOME is built for one actually useful thing... laptops. Gnome feels good on a computer with a single small display.

CoolGuySteve 6y ago
I'm probably the last person who still uses Unity and it's for this exact reason. I set the launch bar to auto hide and use the compiz Expose clone hot corners to switch windows. It all just gets out of the way. I don't know why Gnome didn't adopt the Unity menu bar integration, instead you get to waste space on the taskbar on the bottom AND that useless status bar on the top.
- mroche 6y ago
  > I don't know why Gnome didn't adopt the Unity menu bar integration, instead you get to waste space on the taskbar on the bottom AND that useless status bar on the top. Are you referring to the Window List extension? Why not use Dash to Dock instead, or even Dash to Panel (not sure if it’s current state, I don’t use it) which will also replace the main top status panel. I’m a GNOME user on a single display (X because NVIDIA and 3D industry apps) and it works well for me. I do like the other DE’s though, I’m pretty agnostic in that sense.
  - CoolGuySteve 6y ago
    No I'm talking about how the "File Edit " etc menu is drawn in one and only one place like in MacOS so that every application doesn't waste screen space drawing their own menu.
    - mroche 6y ago
      Oh, right. It’s been such a long time since I’ve used unity I completely forgot that was a thing, my bad. Most of the time when I think about Unity these days I think about the sidebar launcher and the maximized window mode integration, not the rest of the features it provided; I didn’t get to spend a lot of time in Ubuntu.
- huftis 6y ago
  FYI, KDE/Plasma supports all of those features you mentioned: 1. You can set the launcher/taskbar/panel to auto-hide. 2. You can set up the screen corners (or a keyboard shortcut) to show an Exposé-style view of all running applications/windows. 3. You can have a global menu bar.
  - aibara 6y ago
    You can get pretty close to emulating Unity's interface with Plasma, especially if you use Latte-dock. But there are still certain things that can't be done; the biggest to me is having the menu bar (File, Edit, etc.) in the title bar of all the windows (a global menu at the top works though). You can get a button that then gives you those options, which is close but an extra click.
- Beldin 6y ago
  After installing Ubuntu 18.04 I tried staying with Gnome. I installed extensions to get closer to the behavior I wanted. I realised i basically had a cheap, slow knock-off of standard Unity functionality. I installed Unity and never looked back. I'm no longer waiting for the window manager when switching virtual desktops. Load on the system is now once again due to me using it, instead of the window manager.
kevinherron 6y ago
I actually find that GNOME is worse on laptops. My X1C6 is running at effectively 1600x900 and the amount of vertical space wasted by the height and padding of GNOME/GTK titlebars and widgets drives me crazy. With KDE on a laptop I just set up the dock vertically on the righthand side and I'm good to go. GNOME's workspace switcher/overview thing is better than anything KDE has though. It's much closer in function and polish to macOS than KDE is.
- aibara 6y ago
  Maybe there's some extension to fix this now, but I always hated how GNOME's workspaces were just small boxes on the opposite side of the overview button/hot corner. And even more so that they were a row, not a grid. KDE's exposé-like grid that separates all the windows on all the workspaces is so much more useful to me (not sure if that's enabled by default though).

blinkingled 6y ago

Yeah but I hope it's not the same kind of resources - https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=HarfBuzz-Hinting-Woe https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=HarfBuzz... Gnome developers have their head buried deep and firm in sands at this point.

cycloptic 6y ago
Harfbuzz isn't a GNOME project. It's used by GNOME, KDE, Chromium, LibreOffice, and several other projects. The entire open source text rendering stack depends on it at this point.
- blinkingled 6y ago
  https://blogs.gnome.org/mclasen/2019/05/25/pango-future-directions/ https://blogs.gnome.org/mclasen/2019/05/25/pango-future-dire... > Using Harfbuzz for font loading means that we will lose support for bitmap and type1 fonts. It's not as straight forward.
  - cycloptic 6y ago
    That is not related to the other article that you linked. The Type1 format is extremely old/deprecated and has been superseded by OpenType. And bitmap fonts don't even have a concept of hinting, they are just bitmaps.
    - blinkingled 6y ago
      Pango is a Gnome project. They moved to using Harfbuzz and as a result dropped support for bitmap fonts. That hurt not just Gnome/GTK users but whoever else uses Pango and there was user pushback about it. Pango prior to version 1.44 used kerning hints provided by FreeType but now makes use of the hints provided by HarfBuzz. But HarfBuzz doesn't support all of the hints supported by FreeType and thus a regression for some users depending upon their font hinting preferences and what visibly looks the best to them and their displays. Remember Pango is a Gnome project.

the_angry_angel 6y ago

I switched some years ago to KDE from Gnome. The only thing I wish I had from Gnome is the quality of text rendering. Maybe it’s subjective, maybe it’s a measurable thing. I’ve not looked, but I feel KDEs text rendering is worse on my daily driver.

mixedCase 6y ago
Linux apps pretty much universally do font rendering via FreeType. Have you tried switching to Cantarell? I for one fell in love with Inter UI back when I used Plasma.
- the_angry_angel 6y ago
  I haven't, I'll give it a go :) Thank you!
  - the_angry_angel 6y ago
    FWIW if anyone else comes back to this I spent a little time last night and I've addressed my font rendering issues by; * Removing an errant font-config lcdfilter configuration entry (this was a left over from when I was running "infinality" and should have been removed) * Switching font from Noto Sans to Ubuntu Its not perfect, but its a lot better. I'll probably play with oversampling (rendering X at a higher resolution and scaling down like OSX) at some point to see if I get the quality I want.

Quekid5 6y ago

KDE works much better for me, personally. Just avoid the aboslute shitshow that is Kubuntu. (I know they try hard, but...) Go for a distro that follows upstream more closely.

kevinherron 6y ago
Yes, I've settled on Manjaro KDE since the demise of Antergos. Do vanilla Arch once for the experience and then find better things to do with your time after that...
- Quekid5 6y ago
  I honestly don't understand the idea that Arch is time-consuming or weird... but maybe my needs are less esoteric than the rest of the world. I'm just a bit mystified, but... whatever makes it work for you.
  - kevinherron 6y ago
    I'm not implying that Arch is time consuming once you set it up... but if you can't see how installing Arch is more time consuming than installing Manjaro you're just being intentionally dense and contrarian.
reddotX 6y ago
KDE neon?