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I know it is a very unpopular opinion on HN but I don't get KDE. Sure, all applications are super feature-packed, which is mostly a good thing (Konsole, Dolphin

I know it is a very unpopular opinion on HN but I don't get KDE. Sure, all applications are super feature-packed, which is mostly a good thing (Konsole, Dolphin, Okular are chef's kiss) but also has its downsides: e.g. that, last time I checked, you cannot have a simple dedicated calendar app like gnome-calendar (or macOS Calendar) but must open the outlook-heavy KOrganizer which comes with mail, contacts, etc. Not really what I want when I just quickly want to check my calendar. But this is just a small annoyance. What really bothered me though was the UI. All these lines! Everything has an outline. Every UI element has a heavily highlighted outline. It feels super dated and cluttered. But the last time I daily-drove it, I thought "Hey I embrace the KDE life style. I am finally on the right side of the Linux Desktop according to HN and Reddit. Whenever people sh*t on Gnome, one of the big arguments is that you cannot customize it. So I just customize it, make it mine, lets go!" Well surprisingly the other themes were almost all equally bad or caused inconsistencies. So I went further down the rabbit hole and installed Kvantum. I found a theme that I liked and happily used it for some time. Until I noticed that the theme altered the functionality of KMail. Namely, when tabbing away from KMail, it would select another Email. Super annoying when you want to keep an Email open in the background as a reference while e.g. doing something in your browser. I raised the issue with the Kvantum dev who redirected me to an issue with KDE. I don't remember all the details but it is an issue in KDE and for them it is a wontfix. So, for me I basically had a similar experience to others here with Gnome. I try to make it work for me until I hit a wall where the maintainers tell me that my use case is not supported by the desktop. So I went back to Gnome. And you know what. I like Gnome. It works for me. It looks nice and is functional. However I don't want or need to convert other happy KDE'ers which is also not the point of my little comment. I don't want to dunk on KDE. It does a lot of cool things, but I just cannot stand the UI. Isn't it great to have choice?

jcelerier 4y ago
> e.g. that, last time I checked, you cannot have a simple dedicated calendar app like gnome-calendar (or macOS Calendar) but must open the outlook-heavy KOrganizer which comes with mail, contacts, etc. Not really what I want when I just quickly want to check my calendar. But this is just a small annoyance. Kalendar doesn't cut it? https://apps.kde.org/kalendar/ https://apps.kde.org/kalendar/
- ruph123 4y ago
  That looks pretty nice. As far as I remember, the last time I used KDE, Kalendar would just open the Calendar view of KOrganizer.
RubyRidgeRandy 4y ago
I feel the same. The UI to me since plasma has seemed large and awkward whenever I tried it. The default theme is a bit outdated as well. Something with gnome or cinnamon just really does it for me, cinnamon especially.
kombine 4y ago
I usually shit on GNOME because KDE is technologically better. Qt is undoubtedly superior UI framework which is used far more outside KDE community unlike GTK. I feel that little issues KDE has here and there are mostly the result of it being a second choice in the most popular distros such as Ubuntu or Fedora, and that's another reason I like to shit on GNOME - I think it doesn't deserve to be the face of Linux.
- QUrprUd1nCeicw 4y ago
  "Shitting on GNOME" isn't going to solve anything. The people who made it the default in their distros already disagree with you and trash talking isn't going to change their mind. Everyone who's been around has heard all the common complaints before. Just saying "it's technologically better" doesn't even mean anything either. Technologically better at what? There's this myth that you seem to be bought into about how Qt and GTK are fighting against each other or are competing against each other when that's not true. They happily work together and borrow ideas from each other when it makes sense.
  - tjrDL6MjB2Zwwa 4y ago
    They have a right to express their opinion without needing said expression to have the goal of solving world hunger. ie, I can complain about the potholes in the street without being the one filling them in.
    - QUrprUd1nCeicw 4y ago
      That goes both ways my friend. Open source maintainers have a right to dismiss substance-free complaints without needing to prove P = NP. Complaining about potholes is a great analogy. Repeatedly bringing up the pothole problem at the local swing dancing meetup isn't going to solve anything. You need to actually send your complaints to the transportation office. If they've heard about a particular pothole before then you don't need to bring it up again and keep sending them the same complaints. They already know about it. When they can't fix everything in time then the problem is either bad planning or lack of budget, and louder complaining definitely won't do anything about that.

jcelerier 4y ago

> e.g. that, last time I checked, you cannot have a simple dedicated calendar app like gnome-calendar (or macOS Calendar) but must open the outlook-heavy KOrganizer which comes with mail, contacts, etc. Not really what I want when I just quickly want to check my calendar. But this is just a small annoyance. Kalendar doesn't cut it? https://apps.kde.org/kalendar/ https://apps.kde.org/kalendar/

ruph123 4y ago
That looks pretty nice. As far as I remember, the last time I used KDE, Kalendar would just open the Calendar view of KOrganizer.

RubyRidgeRandy 4y ago

I feel the same. The UI to me since plasma has seemed large and awkward whenever I tried it. The default theme is a bit outdated as well. Something with gnome or cinnamon just really does it for me, cinnamon especially.

kombine 4y ago

I usually shit on GNOME because KDE is technologically better. Qt is undoubtedly superior UI framework which is used far more outside KDE community unlike GTK. I feel that little issues KDE has here and there are mostly the result of it being a second choice in the most popular distros such as Ubuntu or Fedora, and that's another reason I like to shit on GNOME - I think it doesn't deserve to be the face of Linux.

QUrprUd1nCeicw 4y ago
"Shitting on GNOME" isn't going to solve anything. The people who made it the default in their distros already disagree with you and trash talking isn't going to change their mind. Everyone who's been around has heard all the common complaints before. Just saying "it's technologically better" doesn't even mean anything either. Technologically better at what? There's this myth that you seem to be bought into about how Qt and GTK are fighting against each other or are competing against each other when that's not true. They happily work together and borrow ideas from each other when it makes sense.
- tjrDL6MjB2Zwwa 4y ago
  They have a right to express their opinion without needing said expression to have the goal of solving world hunger. ie, I can complain about the potholes in the street without being the one filling them in.
  - QUrprUd1nCeicw 4y ago
    That goes both ways my friend. Open source maintainers have a right to dismiss substance-free complaints without needing to prove P = NP. Complaining about potholes is a great analogy. Repeatedly bringing up the pothole problem at the local swing dancing meetup isn't going to solve anything. You need to actually send your complaints to the transportation office. If they've heard about a particular pothole before then you don't need to bring it up again and keep sending them the same complaints. They already know about it. When they can't fix everything in time then the problem is either bad planning or lack of budget, and louder complaining definitely won't do anything about that.