8 ms·

>thumbnails in the file picker! Use a decent desktop environment, like Plasma :) Gnome's file picker is notoriously, offensively bad - to the point that it ma

by dTal 5y ago

>thumbnails in the file picker! Use a decent desktop environment, like Plasma :) Gnome's file picker is notoriously, offensively bad - to the point that it makes me completely lose trust that any thought has been put into the human factors of the rest of the system. Plasma, on the other hand, continues to surprise with its thoughtful and accommodating design choices. Life is too short, and brainpower too limited, to justify wasting either on frustrating software.

GekkePrutser 5y ago
I love KDE too. It's so configurable and just plain powerful. And looks great as well. I really felt so empowered when I left macOS for FreeBSD with KDE and I still do. I found I really hate opinionated software because usually I don't have the same opinions :)
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  Its like better windows! Sometimes pretty glitchy, but worth it for about 80%-90% problem free.
- fatboy93 5y ago
  How's FreeBsd on your hardware? I've been itching to try it on my ThinkPad, but with an infant and work, I'm not able to find the time to do so!
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    It's great for me. It runs for months as a daily driver without any issues. No crashes. In HiDPI also. However I run it on a desktop NUC with wired everything. I don't use WiFi, Bluetooth or Suspending. I'm not sure if the more laptop-related usescases will be ok. For example I had to turn off my bluetooth controller because it hangs the boot process. I think this is just a peculiarity of my particular controller though. Also I have one weird key repeat thing I still have to investigate :) But I think my Apple keyboard is just a bit funny.
belltaco 5y ago
>Life is too short, and brainpower too limited, to justify wasting either on frustrating software. This is exactly why I switched from Linux to Windows and never looked back.
- selfhifive 5y ago
  Unfortunately RAM is quite limited too. The idle windows memory consumption is horrifying.
  - lillecarl 5y ago
    I'm gonna go wild and crazy and assume you work with IT in some way since you're on HN. How on earth does idle RAM consumption matter to you when a GB of RAM is cheaper than a beer? I'm not a Windows fan, I don't let Windows control any hardware other than a GPU on any of my systems but i do run it in a VM for gaming. I just don't see the problem, more RAM usage could even be better for performance. It's a useless metric.
    - widespace_ 5y ago
      Where do you live where a beer costs 5€?
      - lillecarl 5y ago
        Sweden, a beer in a bar is at least 5€
  - macNchz 5y ago
    It's funny you have concerns with Windows using too much memory at idle, I actually have no idea how much memory my daily-driver Ubuntu install uses at baseline, but my #1 issue with desktop Linux is how badly it behaves when low on free memory. Windows and MacOS will at least warn/prompt you to kill programs. On Linux, by default....the mouse just stops moving and you can't do anything. You can fiddle with settings and install tools like earlyoom to mitigate it, but the default behavior is insanely bad for a desktop OS. Despite having 32GB of RAM I still run into it occasionally and it drives me nuts.
depressedpanda 5y ago
I can't stand KDE/Plasma for what many would consider a silly reason: I want Confirm/OK/Next actions to be in the lower right side of dialogs, and Cancel/Back in the lower left. I have a vague memory of this being configurable a long time ago (maybe KDE 3), but this setting disappearing in later versions. Is it possible to change this in later versions of KDE?
- dTal 5y ago
  I just fired up the Settings dialog, and they're already where you describe?
  - depressedpanda 5y ago
    https://docs.kde.org/stable5/en/okular/okular/configure.png https://docs.kde.org/stable5/en/okular/okular/configure.png This is how the dialogs looked the last time I looked. Are you saying that it's changed?
BrazzVuvuzela 5y ago
KWin is great, as are Dolphin, the 'System Settings' GUI, and many other KDE applications. But for the life of me I cannot understand the praise of Plasma. It crashes or otherwise breaks regularly for me (for instance, my autohiding panel will sometimes disappear completely, forcing me to kquitapp5/kstart5 plasmashell to get it back) Edit mode is a usability nightmare, I feel like I need to be super careful about where I move my mouse while using it because otherwise it does things I didn't intend with errant mouse hovers. And while it may not be the fault of plasmashell itself, many of the plasmoids are broken, janky, or generally just not very good. While I use KDE, I try to avoid all the plasma stuff as much as possible.
shatteredgate 5y ago
>to the point that it makes me completely lose trust that any thought has been put into the human factors of the rest of the system. This doesn't really make any sense. The issues with the file chooser are known, what's missing are design and development resources to do a redesign. The main problem is actually that the human design effort is being put into the rest of the system and not here; losing trust because of this is somewhat of a self-sabotage that you probably want to avoid.

by dTal 5y ago

GekkePrutser 5y ago

I love KDE too. It's so configurable and just plain powerful. And looks great as well. I really felt so empowered when I left macOS for FreeBSD with KDE and I still do. I found I really hate opinionated software because usually I don't have the same opinions :)

GhettoComputers 5y ago
Its like better windows! Sometimes pretty glitchy, but worth it for about 80%-90% problem free.
fatboy93 5y ago
How's FreeBsd on your hardware? I've been itching to try it on my ThinkPad, but with an infant and work, I'm not able to find the time to do so!
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  It's great for me. It runs for months as a daily driver without any issues. No crashes. In HiDPI also. However I run it on a desktop NUC with wired everything. I don't use WiFi, Bluetooth or Suspending. I'm not sure if the more laptop-related usescases will be ok. For example I had to turn off my bluetooth controller because it hangs the boot process. I think this is just a peculiarity of my particular controller though. Also I have one weird key repeat thing I still have to investigate :) But I think my Apple keyboard is just a bit funny.

belltaco 5y ago

>Life is too short, and brainpower too limited, to justify wasting either on frustrating software. This is exactly why I switched from Linux to Windows and never looked back.

selfhifive 5y ago
Unfortunately RAM is quite limited too. The idle windows memory consumption is horrifying.
- lillecarl 5y ago
  I'm gonna go wild and crazy and assume you work with IT in some way since you're on HN. How on earth does idle RAM consumption matter to you when a GB of RAM is cheaper than a beer? I'm not a Windows fan, I don't let Windows control any hardware other than a GPU on any of my systems but i do run it in a VM for gaming. I just don't see the problem, more RAM usage could even be better for performance. It's a useless metric.
  - widespace_ 5y ago
    Where do you live where a beer costs 5€?
    - lillecarl 5y ago
      Sweden, a beer in a bar is at least 5€
- macNchz 5y ago
  It's funny you have concerns with Windows using too much memory at idle, I actually have no idea how much memory my daily-driver Ubuntu install uses at baseline, but my #1 issue with desktop Linux is how badly it behaves when low on free memory. Windows and MacOS will at least warn/prompt you to kill programs. On Linux, by default....the mouse just stops moving and you can't do anything. You can fiddle with settings and install tools like earlyoom to mitigate it, but the default behavior is insanely bad for a desktop OS. Despite having 32GB of RAM I still run into it occasionally and it drives me nuts.

depressedpanda 5y ago

I can't stand KDE/Plasma for what many would consider a silly reason: I want Confirm/OK/Next actions to be in the lower right side of dialogs, and Cancel/Back in the lower left. I have a vague memory of this being configurable a long time ago (maybe KDE 3), but this setting disappearing in later versions. Is it possible to change this in later versions of KDE?

dTal 5y ago
I just fired up the Settings dialog, and they're already where you describe?
- depressedpanda 5y ago
  https://docs.kde.org/stable5/en/okular/okular/configure.png https://docs.kde.org/stable5/en/okular/okular/configure.png This is how the dialogs looked the last time I looked. Are you saying that it's changed?

BrazzVuvuzela 5y ago

KWin is great, as are Dolphin, the 'System Settings' GUI, and many other KDE applications. But for the life of me I cannot understand the praise of Plasma. It crashes or otherwise breaks regularly for me (for instance, my autohiding panel will sometimes disappear completely, forcing me to kquitapp5/kstart5 plasmashell to get it back) Edit mode is a usability nightmare, I feel like I need to be super careful about where I move my mouse while using it because otherwise it does things I didn't intend with errant mouse hovers. And while it may not be the fault of plasmashell itself, many of the plasmoids are broken, janky, or generally just not very good. While I use KDE, I try to avoid all the plasma stuff as much as possible.

shatteredgate 5y ago

>to the point that it makes me completely lose trust that any thought has been put into the human factors of the rest of the system. This doesn't really make any sense. The issues with the file chooser are known, what's missing are design and development resources to do a redesign. The main problem is actually that the human design effort is being put into the rest of the system and not here; losing trust because of this is somewhat of a self-sabotage that you probably want to avoid.