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Not the same person, but I've recently switched from Windows 10 to Debian stable with KDE, so I can share my experience. It doesn't really sucks. Instead, I'm

by narag 3y ago

Not the same person, but I've recently switched from Windows 10 to Debian stable with KDE, so I can share my experience. It doesn't really sucks. Instead, I'm happy I have no longer to put up with the growing number of Windows annoyances. The balance is definitely positive. That said, there are a number of issues that I've found. Some of them are solvable via configuration, some of them are not. I'll omit a couple of bugs I submitted to KDE that they say are corrected in the new version. Unfortunately, it seems I'll have to wait a long time until that version is published and then reaches Debian stable. - KDE look and feel customization is badly scattered in multiple menus. Some options are not accessible and need to be changed in scripts written in a KDE-specific language. There are a couple of very bad UX in the last category. - Firefox, Thunderbird and other applications use completely different file dialogs with different conventions that I haven't found how to configure. Firefox is more difficult to configure than it seems. I started caring because it had tiny scrool bars. For some appearance configurations I had to look at Firefox source code. - My Behringer external sound interface doesn't work with the default software. It works with Jack, but I've been unable to configure JackD to start automatically, so I need to start it manually every time I reboot. Mitigated because I always hibernate. - Drag & drop works in a very weird fashion. When I drop something, a popup menu appears asking me if I want to copy, move or link the dragged item. There's no way to configure KDE to just move. I need to press shift before I start dragging and that conflicts with multiple selection... no way to move multiple files without the shitty menu. What I found sad was the response to users' request in forums. Some users volunteered solutions and they were told that they won't be included because the fixes needed to be included in some config dialog, documented, translated to all languages... and noone will have time to do all that. One thing that I had not thought about was the increasing complexity of code bases. I looked what I needed to compile a browser, not sure if it was Firefox or Chromium, 500 GB required. Firefox also needs Rust now. I'm worried that the OSS projects have no enough volunteers and the barrier-to-entry is high enough to discourage more people helping.

genpfault 3y ago
> Firefox, Thunderbird and other applications use completely different file dialogs with different conventions that I haven't found how to configure. That would be GTK.
wharvle 3y ago
> - Drag & drop works in a very weird fashion. When I drop something, a popup menu appears asking me if I want to copy, move or link the dragged item. There's no way to configure KDE to just move. I need to press shift before I start dragging and that conflicts with multiple selection... no way to move multiple files without the shitty menu. Years and years of Windows and Linux taught me to avoid drag & drop, mostly, except for dragging files around in file managers (and even then, some of the Linux ones…). I learned that it would, too often to be relied upon, do something I didn’t want, cause a program crash (Linux is especially bad about this), put the program in some weird broken state that falls short of crashing, or simply not work. It took years to un-learn this avoidance of that interaction, after switching to Mac. Now when I occasionally poke my head into Linux-land again, I don’t have that instinctive avoidance of d&d, and so I try it a lot more. Bugs and bad behavior abound. Anyone wants to see Linux desktop be bad at some things, go hard on drag & drop for a couple days, you’ll see it.
- narag 3y ago
  Windows is mostly OK now. My use case is just moving files from the incoming folder (desktop or downloads) into a few subfolders (for different projects) and later, inside a more specific points in the subdirectory tree. This workflow it's being terrible in Linux, worsened with the lack of a directory tree pane in the file manager. Dolphin mixes directories with files in the tree. That would seem to bring the same functionality, but no. I've tried to get used to one-click to open, but it opens the door to all kind of unwanted behaviour when combined with the D&D. I need to undust the Air to remember how it worked there. Sometimes I just want to make sure I'm only selecting one file and I can't. Anyway I haven't found the funcionality unstable. Just unwieldy.
Adverblessly 3y ago
> - Firefox, Thunderbird and other applications use completely different file dialogs See https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Firefox#XDG_Desktop_Portal_integration https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Firefox#XDG_Desktop_Portal_... for Firefox, you have to both install the relevant portal (e.g. xdg-desktop-portal-kde) and enable its use in Firefox (as the wiki page explains). While these instructions are for Arch, I assume something similar exists in Debian. > I started caring because it had tiny scrool bars. Does it have tiny scrollbars on Windows? I agree that they suck, though I've learned to live with it by now... > I looked what I needed to compile a browser, not sure if it was Firefox or Chromium, 500 GB required. Firefox also needs Rust now. Probably Chromium? I've compiled Firefox in the past and don't recall needing 500GB, though Rust was indeed required.
- narag 3y ago
  Thank you for the file pickers info, I'll try that. Does it have tiny scrollbars on Windows? I agree that they suck, though I've learned to live with it by now... Try these "about:config" settings: - widget.gtk.overlay-scrollbars.enabled -> false - widget.non-native-theme.gtk.scrollbar.round-thumb -> false - widget.non-native-theme.gtk.scrollbar.thumb-size -> 0.9 - widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.size.override -> 18 Then I wanted to match bars (and some menus) colors with my theme so I found these: - ui.themedScrollbar - ui.themedScrollbarInactive - ui.themedScrollbarThumb - ui.themedScrollbarThumbHover - ui.themedScrollbarThumbActive - ui.themedScrollbarThumbInactive - ui.menu Colors are in the usual HTML #rgb format.
makomk 3y ago
Whilst it's not that easy to discover you shouldn't have to be holding shift before you start dragging, it's generally only whether you're holding it down when dropping the items that matters in KDE from what I've seen.
- narag 3y ago
  It does not work for me. It's the first thing I tried, because it works this way in Windows for different devices... that is neither ideal, but still better than the crappy menu.

by narag 3y ago

genpfault 3y ago

> Firefox, Thunderbird and other applications use completely different file dialogs with different conventions that I haven't found how to configure. That would be GTK.

wharvle 3y ago

> - Drag & drop works in a very weird fashion. When I drop something, a popup menu appears asking me if I want to copy, move or link the dragged item. There's no way to configure KDE to just move. I need to press shift before I start dragging and that conflicts with multiple selection... no way to move multiple files without the shitty menu. Years and years of Windows and Linux taught me to avoid drag & drop, mostly, except for dragging files around in file managers (and even then, some of the Linux ones…). I learned that it would, too often to be relied upon, do something I didn’t want, cause a program crash (Linux is especially bad about this), put the program in some weird broken state that falls short of crashing, or simply not work. It took years to un-learn this avoidance of that interaction, after switching to Mac. Now when I occasionally poke my head into Linux-land again, I don’t have that instinctive avoidance of d&d, and so I try it a lot more. Bugs and bad behavior abound. Anyone wants to see Linux desktop be bad at some things, go hard on drag & drop for a couple days, you’ll see it.

narag 3y ago
Windows is mostly OK now. My use case is just moving files from the incoming folder (desktop or downloads) into a few subfolders (for different projects) and later, inside a more specific points in the subdirectory tree. This workflow it's being terrible in Linux, worsened with the lack of a directory tree pane in the file manager. Dolphin mixes directories with files in the tree. That would seem to bring the same functionality, but no. I've tried to get used to one-click to open, but it opens the door to all kind of unwanted behaviour when combined with the D&D. I need to undust the Air to remember how it worked there. Sometimes I just want to make sure I'm only selecting one file and I can't. Anyway I haven't found the funcionality unstable. Just unwieldy.

Adverblessly 3y ago

> - Firefox, Thunderbird and other applications use completely different file dialogs See https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Firefox#XDG_Desktop_Portal_integration https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Firefox#XDG_Desktop_Portal_... for Firefox, you have to both install the relevant portal (e.g. xdg-desktop-portal-kde) and enable its use in Firefox (as the wiki page explains). While these instructions are for Arch, I assume something similar exists in Debian. > I started caring because it had tiny scrool bars. Does it have tiny scrollbars on Windows? I agree that they suck, though I've learned to live with it by now... > I looked what I needed to compile a browser, not sure if it was Firefox or Chromium, 500 GB required. Firefox also needs Rust now. Probably Chromium? I've compiled Firefox in the past and don't recall needing 500GB, though Rust was indeed required.

narag 3y ago
Thank you for the file pickers info, I'll try that. Does it have tiny scrollbars on Windows? I agree that they suck, though I've learned to live with it by now... Try these "about:config" settings: - widget.gtk.overlay-scrollbars.enabled -> false - widget.non-native-theme.gtk.scrollbar.round-thumb -> false - widget.non-native-theme.gtk.scrollbar.thumb-size -> 0.9 - widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.size.override -> 18 Then I wanted to match bars (and some menus) colors with my theme so I found these: - ui.themedScrollbar - ui.themedScrollbarInactive - ui.themedScrollbarThumb - ui.themedScrollbarThumbHover - ui.themedScrollbarThumbActive - ui.themedScrollbarThumbInactive - ui.menu Colors are in the usual HTML #rgb format.

makomk 3y ago

Whilst it's not that easy to discover you shouldn't have to be holding shift before you start dragging, it's generally only whether you're holding it down when dropping the items that matters in KDE from what I've seen.

narag 3y ago
It does not work for me. It's the first thing I tried, because it works this way in Windows for different devices... that is neither ideal, but still better than the crappy menu.