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KDE dev here. From a developer perspective, something I really love with Plasma (the 'new' branding for KDE) is that it's really modular by design. Everything o

by ognarb 4y ago

KDE dev here. From a developer perspective, something I really love with Plasma (the 'new' branding for KDE) is that it's really modular by design. Everything on the screen is pluggable with a very simple api and can theoricaly be be swapped out or experimented with. This includes the widgets but also the visual effects. For example, Marco (a prominent Plasma hacker) just worked on a new basic tilling extension and with a public api that allows other to build more advanced tilling scripts: https://notmart.org/blog/2022/10/kwin-and-tiling/ https://notmart.org/blog/2022/10/kwin-and-tiling/ From an user point of view, I often try to not change too much default settings, but there are some really nice feature I enjoy. kde connect is particularly nice for the media player integration with my phone). Yakuake is a nice dropdown terminal. The wayland port is really smooth, there is a lot of features everywhere and I often make use of a big percentage. Oblivious if you are fine with GNOME, this is also fine. We have some different vision on how a open source desktop should look and behave but we do share a dream to someday be a good replacement for Windows for a large part of the population (not nerds).

aidenn0 4y ago
> From an user point of view, I often try to not change too much default settings, but there are some really nice feature I enjoy. kde connect is particularly nice for the media player integration with my phone). Yakuake is a nice dropdown terminal. The wayland port is really smooth, there is a lot of features everywhere and I often make use of a big percentage. The overwhelming majority of the people I know who use KDE also try to not change too much from the default settings, but the settings we change are all different. It's similar with the bells and whistles in Plasma; I probably use a single-digit percentage of them, but they are probably different set from what other users use. I am grateful for those who maintain these features, because I'm sure both that developing would be easier with fewer features and there is probably nobody who uses all of them.
Lex-2008 4y ago
To be fair, I believe KDE is already a better desktop than Windows explorer. My fave features are "Wobbly Windows" effect and "Animated Hue" wallpaper. But I'm a nerd, so my needs are likely different from majority of the population, I guess :)
- ryantgtg 4y ago
  Having tabs in the file explorer (and split view) puts the experience above windows. I could see normals loving those features.
  - vladvasiliu 4y ago
    I don't know if I'm a "normal", but I kinda hate this trend to stick everything in tabs. For example, I hate having to jump through hoops to disable tabs in Firefox. Which means using a janky extensions that usually is able to split the tab into a new window. Doesn't always work. I also have to go and manually tweak the browser chrome to hide the tab bar. The way I see it, tabs and whatnot are a window manager's job. I don't want to have several levels of window management, each being handled differently by a separate app. If you want to provide tabs, go ahead, but please don't force them on me and let me disable them. I'm OK with having to modify some obscure config file if you insist on removing preferences from your UI. Heck, if I could compile firefox with a special feature flag, that would still be better than the current situation. Also, FWIW, the latest win 11 22h2 update brought tabs to the windows explorer.
    - ryantgtg 4y ago
      > Also, FWIW, the latest win 11 22h2 update brought tabs to the windows explorer. Ah right, I remember reading that and noting that they always seem to playing catch up with KDE Plasma’s features. I doubt I have this update yes, but someday my work’s IT will thrust it upon us.
    - Lex-2008 4y ago
      What window manager are you using? And how many windows can you comfortably manage with it? On my current machine (KDE on 1366x768 screen), after 10 open windows their titles disappear, leaving only window icons. And "comfortable" number for me is even lower - no more than 5 windows on a single virtual desktop. But I'm a tab user, and would like to hear about other approaches.
      - 4y ago
alex3305 4y ago
Thanks for taking the time to respond. I'm mostly a Windows user and terminal Linux user, but at odd times I find myself on Linux desktop. I'm currently fine with Windows 10, but since I have my task bar at the top of my screen - for accessibility reasons - I don't want to update to Windows 11. So IMHO my Windows future is unsure, that's why I'm looking at alternatives whenever I can. I was just very curious and was hoping that someone like yourself responded to my question. You have peeked my interest and I will try and play with KDE in the near future. Thanks!
pxc 4y ago
> Yakuake is a nice dropdown terminal. This is one of the thing that (surprisingly, to me) I miss on other operating systems. Yakuake manages to be featureful, stay out of my way, and integrate perfectly with the default terminal emulator for my environment all at the same time. I'd come to take the availability of such a dropdown terminal for granted on Linux, but it turns out that most dropdown terminal solutions are quite clunky, slow, or not well integrated compared to good ol' Yakuake. If there are any Yakuake or Konsole contributors browsing the thread: thank you for your work!

by ognarb 4y ago

aidenn0 4y ago

> From an user point of view, I often try to not change too much default settings, but there are some really nice feature I enjoy. kde connect is particularly nice for the media player integration with my phone). Yakuake is a nice dropdown terminal. The wayland port is really smooth, there is a lot of features everywhere and I often make use of a big percentage. The overwhelming majority of the people I know who use KDE also try to not change too much from the default settings, but the settings we change are all different. It's similar with the bells and whistles in Plasma; I probably use a single-digit percentage of them, but they are probably different set from what other users use. I am grateful for those who maintain these features, because I'm sure both that developing would be easier with fewer features and there is probably nobody who uses all of them.

Lex-2008 4y ago

To be fair, I believe KDE is already a better desktop than Windows explorer. My fave features are "Wobbly Windows" effect and "Animated Hue" wallpaper. But I'm a nerd, so my needs are likely different from majority of the population, I guess :)

ryantgtg 4y ago
Having tabs in the file explorer (and split view) puts the experience above windows. I could see normals loving those features.
- vladvasiliu 4y ago
  I don't know if I'm a "normal", but I kinda hate this trend to stick everything in tabs. For example, I hate having to jump through hoops to disable tabs in Firefox. Which means using a janky extensions that usually is able to split the tab into a new window. Doesn't always work. I also have to go and manually tweak the browser chrome to hide the tab bar. The way I see it, tabs and whatnot are a window manager's job. I don't want to have several levels of window management, each being handled differently by a separate app. If you want to provide tabs, go ahead, but please don't force them on me and let me disable them. I'm OK with having to modify some obscure config file if you insist on removing preferences from your UI. Heck, if I could compile firefox with a special feature flag, that would still be better than the current situation. Also, FWIW, the latest win 11 22h2 update brought tabs to the windows explorer.
  - ryantgtg 4y ago
    > Also, FWIW, the latest win 11 22h2 update brought tabs to the windows explorer. Ah right, I remember reading that and noting that they always seem to playing catch up with KDE Plasma’s features. I doubt I have this update yes, but someday my work’s IT will thrust it upon us.
  - Lex-2008 4y ago
    What window manager are you using? And how many windows can you comfortably manage with it? On my current machine (KDE on 1366x768 screen), after 10 open windows their titles disappear, leaving only window icons. And "comfortable" number for me is even lower - no more than 5 windows on a single virtual desktop. But I'm a tab user, and would like to hear about other approaches.
    - 4y ago

alex3305 4y ago

Thanks for taking the time to respond. I'm mostly a Windows user and terminal Linux user, but at odd times I find myself on Linux desktop. I'm currently fine with Windows 10, but since I have my task bar at the top of my screen - for accessibility reasons - I don't want to update to Windows 11. So IMHO my Windows future is unsure, that's why I'm looking at alternatives whenever I can. I was just very curious and was hoping that someone like yourself responded to my question. You have peeked my interest and I will try and play with KDE in the near future. Thanks!

pxc 4y ago

> Yakuake is a nice dropdown terminal. This is one of the thing that (surprisingly, to me) I miss on other operating systems. Yakuake manages to be featureful, stay out of my way, and integrate perfectly with the default terminal emulator for my environment all at the same time. I'd come to take the availability of such a dropdown terminal for granted on Linux, but it turns out that most dropdown terminal solutions are quite clunky, slow, or not well integrated compared to good ol' Yakuake. If there are any Yakuake or Konsole contributors browsing the thread: thank you for your work!