7 ms·

Yes, and Gnome is in part responsible for a lot of "desktop" issues with linux. Distros must switch to KDE by default to help eliminate part of this stigma. KDE

Yes, and Gnome is in part responsible for a lot of "desktop" issues with linux. Distros must switch to KDE by default to help eliminate part of this stigma. KDE is so amazingly good that there is no excuse to keep using Gnome.

Shared404 6y ago
> there is no excuse to keep using Gnome. Don't know that I agree there. I actually really like GNOME's workflow on laptop, especially with Pop OS's extensions.
heavyset_go 6y ago
I disliked KDE 3 & 4, however KDE 5 is great. Plasma Desktop is impressive and pleasant to use.
- k_sze 6y ago
  Yep. I’ve been a long time GNOME user and I switched to KDE Plasma when I upgraded from Ubuntu 18.04 to 20.04. I don’t think I’m looking back.
- kdtsh 6y ago
  In the early-2000s like many other people I was attracted to the Crystal[1] theme/icon pack, but it did not take long for it to start looking tacky to me. I feel like KDE never really abandoned this kind of look-and-feel until Plasma was released, which is very clean and pleasant. It has discarded cartoon-ish icons and has sharper lines and colours which are nicer to look at. I am a big fan! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everaldo_Coelho#Crystal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everaldo_Coelho#Crystal
eznzt 6y ago
My personal opinion is that KDE is less polished, more bloated (in terms of features and options), and slower than GNOME.
- jdright 6y ago
  Did you try it recently? That was also the stigma of KDE 4.x. 5 is snappy and bloated is probably the wrong word to featureful. I just can't stand gnome exactly due to the opposite: bare bones, missing features, lack of integration and mainly lack of standardized ux.
  - Zardoz84 6y ago
    Add that Gnome it's painful slow and uses more resources that KDE.
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  Plasma Desktop uses about the same amount of resources as XFCE.
- O_H_E 6y ago
  > more bloated (in terms of features and options) that might be subjectively correct to a lot of people, but I find that they are usually set to sane defaults and a lot is disabled by default. Also, I would like to emphasis that the choice of disto kinda matters here as they sometimes change defaults.
- just_for_you 6y ago
  I think this may have been true in the past, but KDE 5 is nowhere near as bloated as KDE once was. (And they've also made huge strides in consistency and a sane UI experience.) I've tested comparing Gnome/KDE on old hardware (eg, 2 GB of RAM and CPUs built for power conservation), and subjectively I found KDE to be a lot snappier (Gnome Shell always choked for me when hitting Activities) and, after a few hours of uptime, found it used less memory than Gnome. On the same box, it even gave Xfce a run for its money, which was surprising. Although, when it comes to peddling Linux to other people, I'm hesistant to install KDE for anyone because it's a bit too configurable. I'm always afraid of getting asked for help because of someone accidentally messed up their UI and losing their taskbar or something like that. KDE's came a long way in recent years, but that "you can configure everything" core will always probably be there. And on the flip-side, if I install Gnome, people often find it outlandish and barebones...
JeremyNT 6y ago
> KDE is so amazingly good that there is no excuse to keep using Gnome. I have nothing against KDE, but come on. Many of us really do prefer GNOME despite its perceived deficiencies. This is just a matter of personal preference.
- jdright 6y ago
  Nothing against options, but having distros with a default on Gnome just seems wrong, defaults are supposed to be good and complete.
  - Kalq 6y ago
    Wish somebody would tell that to the Emacs maintainers.
- ziftface 6y ago
  I'll never understand this. It's like people who swear by xfce. Both are borderline unusable to me, but gnome certainly isn't in that category, despite its bugs.
  - alekq 6y ago
    Which feature(s) exactly do you miss on XFCE that makes it unusable in comparision to GNOME?
    - ziftface 6y ago
      Didn't mean to pick on xfce, I haven't used it in a couple years to be fair. But when I did, it just didn't fit my workflow that well. For example, I'm used to pressing command+space and getting system-wide search for all files and apps. This is basically the default behavior on gnome, I just needed to remap the shortcut. I also often move desktops and the "activities" view makes that really simple.
  - koolba 6y ago
    Xfce is stable, lightning fast, and best of all, its users never have to learn a new interface layout every other year.
young_unixer 6y ago
I find KDE to be pretty ugly. For instance, margins and paddings seem to be all over the place [1]. At least Gnome gets that part right. [1] https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Notifications https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Notifications
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  If you don't like the defaults, there are thousands of 3rd party themes that are directly listed and installable from KDE's theme preference pane.
  - pseudalopex 6y ago
    Do any of them solve the problem?
    - gsich 6y ago
      No.
- O_H_E 6y ago
  That page looks kinda out dated, and "contains some ideas how to improve the Plasma notification system". So a lot of that is mocks and not real screenshots.
  - ognarb 6y ago
    Yes, this page is full of mockups created years ago.
- tylerjwilk00 6y ago
  Agreed. It occupies some weird uncanny valley of design that is hard to pin point.
- solarkraft 6y ago
  Absolutely. It feels like they're getting there (VDG is working on it and shown some results), but they're just a few years away. ... it has been feeling like that for the few years I've been following it.
curt15 6y ago
>KDE is so amazingly good that there is no excuse to keep using Gnome. IMO, one aspect where Gnome excels is its tight integration of alternative input methods. I remember it being controversial that Gnome blessed ibus over alternative engines, but as a result, setting up CJK input is simple and foolproof. Although I prefer KDE in every other way, I have never managed to get ibus working correctly in that environment.
- just_for_you 6y ago
  CJK input magically working easily and reliably in Gnome is the pretty much the only reason I use it over KDE. And setting it up doesn't require following a wiki, using the commandline and/or having to edit obscure config files or messing around with weird GUI settings apps. I have nothing against KDE by any means (I love it, and also really appreciate their initatives like KDEnlive, etc.), but I don't think I've ever gotten Japanese/Chinese input to work in it before. Maybe once, but then I gave up on finding a sane way to easily cycle between the different input types (eg, WinKey+Space).
  - CorrectHorseBat 6y ago
    I remember finding what worked was quite of a hassle in KDE, but once I chose fcitx over ibus I've had little issues with CJK input.
danmur 6y ago
I think that's very much personal preference. I tried KDE a few months ago and I couldn't stick with it; it is slower than Gnome in a lot of ways, it's (to my eyes) much more cluttered, and has lags at annoying places. For example, I tend to hit the windows key and start typing to launch things, but under KDE there's enough lag before the menu opens that it doesn't catch my first few keypresses.
- murrayb 6y ago
  This. I get periodically frustrated with Gnome and give KDE a go and always end up going back to Gnome within a couple of weeks. I want to like it, I want it to work but Gnome (on my setup) is more responsive and that is more important than all of the other deficiencies of Gnome.
- aidenn0 6y ago
  I'm on a 3 year old laptop, and I tried several times to get a keystroke to be dropped after I hit the windows key and I couldn't get it to happen. I use windows-key and start typing to launch things all the time, and after reading your comment at first I thought I might have developed a habit to pause, but nope. I wonder what the difference is. My biggest KDE gripe is that popups from the system-tray disappear if you move the cursor outside of them. Maybe pro gamers can manage to keep the cursor in every time, but for me I often take 2 or 3 tries to click on something.
  - ognarb 6y ago
    > My biggest KDE gripe is that popups from the system-tray disappear if you move the cursor outside of them. This looks like a bug or you changed the default setting, just to be sure in System Setting -> Window Management -> Window Behavior -> is the Window Activation Policy set to click to focus?
    - aidenn0 6y ago
      Ohhhhh. Of course I changed it to focus follows mouse because that's the One True Way(tm) of managing window focus. So I'm guessing that when the popup loses focus, it disappears. Thanks for solving that mystery. I'll ponder whether it's worth it to make the disappearing have a lag, conditional on the window activation policy.
dleslie 6y ago
KDE or MATE, really.
int_19h 6y ago
The default DE should be "sane and boring". I think the one that best fits this description at the moment is MATE.
scythe 6y ago
Elementary is also working on a way to default most apps to a better file picker: https://www.reddit.com/r/elementaryos/comments/gs86hj/thumbnails_when_using_the_open_file_dialog_box_i/ https://www.reddit.com/r/elementaryos/comments/gs86hj/thumbn... https://medium.com/elementaryos/a-new-native-file-chooser-196acf9b06f0 https://medium.com/elementaryos/a-new-native-file-chooser-19...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
alekq 6y ago
I was happy KDE user for very long time - first 3.x, then 4 (even with all those glitches and bugs at the very beginning). Then I had 7-8 years break off Linux and last year decided to install it on my new desktop machine. Went with Plasma first - did not go well. I simply cannot get comfortable with it and general look and feel is not working for me (I prefer defaults and I avoid much tweaking and any 3rd party customization). I settled on Cinnamon, but it was close tie with GNOME which was actually quite refreshing experience for me. So, to each his own, but I just do not see KDE as "the sanest" default.
- Yaggo 6y ago
  3.x/4.x was the golden age for KDE. I never felt home with Plasma.
swiley 6y ago
I've never understood why so many distros make gnome the default DE. There are much better and friendly ones, some of them forks and some written from scratch.

Shared404 6y ago

> there is no excuse to keep using Gnome. Don't know that I agree there. I actually really like GNOME's workflow on laptop, especially with Pop OS's extensions.

heavyset_go 6y ago

I disliked KDE 3 & 4, however KDE 5 is great. Plasma Desktop is impressive and pleasant to use.

k_sze 6y ago
Yep. I’ve been a long time GNOME user and I switched to KDE Plasma when I upgraded from Ubuntu 18.04 to 20.04. I don’t think I’m looking back.
kdtsh 6y ago
In the early-2000s like many other people I was attracted to the Crystal[1] theme/icon pack, but it did not take long for it to start looking tacky to me. I feel like KDE never really abandoned this kind of look-and-feel until Plasma was released, which is very clean and pleasant. It has discarded cartoon-ish icons and has sharper lines and colours which are nicer to look at. I am a big fan! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everaldo_Coelho#Crystal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everaldo_Coelho#Crystal

eznzt 6y ago

My personal opinion is that KDE is less polished, more bloated (in terms of features and options), and slower than GNOME.

jdright 6y ago
Did you try it recently? That was also the stigma of KDE 4.x. 5 is snappy and bloated is probably the wrong word to featureful. I just can't stand gnome exactly due to the opposite: bare bones, missing features, lack of integration and mainly lack of standardized ux.
- Zardoz84 6y ago
  Add that Gnome it's painful slow and uses more resources that KDE.
heavyset_go 6y ago
Plasma Desktop uses about the same amount of resources as XFCE.
O_H_E 6y ago
> more bloated (in terms of features and options) that might be subjectively correct to a lot of people, but I find that they are usually set to sane defaults and a lot is disabled by default. Also, I would like to emphasis that the choice of disto kinda matters here as they sometimes change defaults.
just_for_you 6y ago
I think this may have been true in the past, but KDE 5 is nowhere near as bloated as KDE once was. (And they've also made huge strides in consistency and a sane UI experience.) I've tested comparing Gnome/KDE on old hardware (eg, 2 GB of RAM and CPUs built for power conservation), and subjectively I found KDE to be a lot snappier (Gnome Shell always choked for me when hitting Activities) and, after a few hours of uptime, found it used less memory than Gnome. On the same box, it even gave Xfce a run for its money, which was surprising. Although, when it comes to peddling Linux to other people, I'm hesistant to install KDE for anyone because it's a bit too configurable. I'm always afraid of getting asked for help because of someone accidentally messed up their UI and losing their taskbar or something like that. KDE's came a long way in recent years, but that "you can configure everything" core will always probably be there. And on the flip-side, if I install Gnome, people often find it outlandish and barebones...

JeremyNT 6y ago

> KDE is so amazingly good that there is no excuse to keep using Gnome. I have nothing against KDE, but come on. Many of us really do prefer GNOME despite its perceived deficiencies. This is just a matter of personal preference.

jdright 6y ago
Nothing against options, but having distros with a default on Gnome just seems wrong, defaults are supposed to be good and complete.
- Kalq 6y ago
  Wish somebody would tell that to the Emacs maintainers.
ziftface 6y ago
I'll never understand this. It's like people who swear by xfce. Both are borderline unusable to me, but gnome certainly isn't in that category, despite its bugs.
- alekq 6y ago
  Which feature(s) exactly do you miss on XFCE that makes it unusable in comparision to GNOME?
  - ziftface 6y ago
    Didn't mean to pick on xfce, I haven't used it in a couple years to be fair. But when I did, it just didn't fit my workflow that well. For example, I'm used to pressing command+space and getting system-wide search for all files and apps. This is basically the default behavior on gnome, I just needed to remap the shortcut. I also often move desktops and the "activities" view makes that really simple.
- koolba 6y ago
  Xfce is stable, lightning fast, and best of all, its users never have to learn a new interface layout every other year.

young_unixer 6y ago

I find KDE to be pretty ugly. For instance, margins and paddings seem to be all over the place [1]. At least Gnome gets that part right. [1] https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Notifications https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Notifications

heavyset_go 6y ago
If you don't like the defaults, there are thousands of 3rd party themes that are directly listed and installable from KDE's theme preference pane.
- pseudalopex 6y ago
  Do any of them solve the problem?
  - gsich 6y ago
    No.
O_H_E 6y ago
That page looks kinda out dated, and "contains some ideas how to improve the Plasma notification system". So a lot of that is mocks and not real screenshots.
- ognarb 6y ago
  Yes, this page is full of mockups created years ago.
tylerjwilk00 6y ago
Agreed. It occupies some weird uncanny valley of design that is hard to pin point.
solarkraft 6y ago
Absolutely. It feels like they're getting there (VDG is working on it and shown some results), but they're just a few years away. ... it has been feeling like that for the few years I've been following it.

curt15 6y ago

>KDE is so amazingly good that there is no excuse to keep using Gnome. IMO, one aspect where Gnome excels is its tight integration of alternative input methods. I remember it being controversial that Gnome blessed ibus over alternative engines, but as a result, setting up CJK input is simple and foolproof. Although I prefer KDE in every other way, I have never managed to get ibus working correctly in that environment.

just_for_you 6y ago
CJK input magically working easily and reliably in Gnome is the pretty much the only reason I use it over KDE. And setting it up doesn't require following a wiki, using the commandline and/or having to edit obscure config files or messing around with weird GUI settings apps. I have nothing against KDE by any means (I love it, and also really appreciate their initatives like KDEnlive, etc.), but I don't think I've ever gotten Japanese/Chinese input to work in it before. Maybe once, but then I gave up on finding a sane way to easily cycle between the different input types (eg, WinKey+Space).
- CorrectHorseBat 6y ago
  I remember finding what worked was quite of a hassle in KDE, but once I chose fcitx over ibus I've had little issues with CJK input.

danmur 6y ago

I think that's very much personal preference. I tried KDE a few months ago and I couldn't stick with it; it is slower than Gnome in a lot of ways, it's (to my eyes) much more cluttered, and has lags at annoying places. For example, I tend to hit the windows key and start typing to launch things, but under KDE there's enough lag before the menu opens that it doesn't catch my first few keypresses.

murrayb 6y ago
This. I get periodically frustrated with Gnome and give KDE a go and always end up going back to Gnome within a couple of weeks. I want to like it, I want it to work but Gnome (on my setup) is more responsive and that is more important than all of the other deficiencies of Gnome.
aidenn0 6y ago
I'm on a 3 year old laptop, and I tried several times to get a keystroke to be dropped after I hit the windows key and I couldn't get it to happen. I use windows-key and start typing to launch things all the time, and after reading your comment at first I thought I might have developed a habit to pause, but nope. I wonder what the difference is. My biggest KDE gripe is that popups from the system-tray disappear if you move the cursor outside of them. Maybe pro gamers can manage to keep the cursor in every time, but for me I often take 2 or 3 tries to click on something.
- ognarb 6y ago
  > My biggest KDE gripe is that popups from the system-tray disappear if you move the cursor outside of them. This looks like a bug or you changed the default setting, just to be sure in System Setting -> Window Management -> Window Behavior -> is the Window Activation Policy set to click to focus?
  - aidenn0 6y ago
    Ohhhhh. Of course I changed it to focus follows mouse because that's the One True Way(tm) of managing window focus. So I'm guessing that when the popup loses focus, it disappears. Thanks for solving that mystery. I'll ponder whether it's worth it to make the disappearing have a lag, conditional on the window activation policy.

dleslie 6y ago

KDE or MATE, really.

int_19h 6y ago

The default DE should be "sane and boring". I think the one that best fits this description at the moment is MATE.

scythe 6y ago

Elementary is also working on a way to default most apps to a better file picker: https://www.reddit.com/r/elementaryos/comments/gs86hj/thumbnails_when_using_the_open_file_dialog_box_i/ https://www.reddit.com/r/elementaryos/comments/gs86hj/thumbn... https://medium.com/elementaryos/a-new-native-file-chooser-196acf9b06f0 https://medium.com/elementaryos/a-new-native-file-chooser-19...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

alekq 6y ago

I was happy KDE user for very long time - first 3.x, then 4 (even with all those glitches and bugs at the very beginning). Then I had 7-8 years break off Linux and last year decided to install it on my new desktop machine. Went with Plasma first - did not go well. I simply cannot get comfortable with it and general look and feel is not working for me (I prefer defaults and I avoid much tweaking and any 3rd party customization). I settled on Cinnamon, but it was close tie with GNOME which was actually quite refreshing experience for me. So, to each his own, but I just do not see KDE as "the sanest" default.

Yaggo 6y ago
3.x/4.x was the golden age for KDE. I never felt home with Plasma.

swiley 6y ago

I've never understood why so many distros make gnome the default DE. There are much better and friendly ones, some of them forks and some written from scratch.