3 ms·

Hell yeah. KDE is the way. Never understood why all the distros pivoted to Gnome shell.

gh02t 2y ago
Gnome at least made sense for Red Hat/Fedora since they are the biggest sponsors of Gnome. I think another part of it was that the migration from KDE 3 to 4 was pretty rough, which also helped drive a lot of distros away from KDE and over to it. Ubuntu also had Unity and when they decided to give that up Gnome was more similar to Unity than KDE was, making it the obvious replacement. And don't forget the old licensing controversies over Qt, which were long settled by then but a lot of people still regarded Qt with suspicion.
- Rinzler89 2y ago
  >And don't forget the old licensing controversies over Qt, which were long settled by then but a lot of people still regarded Qt with suspicion. I think a lot of users today weren't even born when the QT controversy was happening yet they keep bringing it up like it's an active showstopper. I think this piece of lore keeps getting repeated so often everywhere, that people forget where it came from and assume it must be a current issue if people still keep bringing it up.
  - gh02t 2y ago
    Agreed, it hasn't been a real issue in what, decades? I've been using Linux for a really long time but even for me I think Qt had switched to GPL a couple years before I first used KDE (exact memory fuzzy). But I definitely recall people bringing it up and using it as a reason to avoid KDE even in the KDE4/Gnome 3 early days.
Rinzler89 2y ago
>Never understood why all the distros pivoted to Gnome shell AFAIK two reasons. For one, KDE 4 was considered horrible, making everyone switched to Gnome, and due to inertia, they stuck with in instead of going to KDE 5. And some users can be incredibly petty, stubborn and opinionated, just because they tried KDE 4 one time, hated it, and then keep bad mouthing it years later even though they haven't tried KDE 5 and their opinions are out of date, they'll still keep bragging how they tried KDE once and it was shit so nobody should bother with it according to them. Even on HN. All this bad publicity didn't help since other users took it as gospel. And two, the release cadence of Gnome versions was on a fixed calendar basis, meaning distros like Ubuntu and Fedora could plan their own releases to line up with that and always ship their newest distros with the newest Gnome, while KDE wasn't and would update the KDE Gear framework, QT and KDE release at totally different times unallied to any fixed dates, making sync planning for distro releases to ship with it very difficult. The KDE release cycle is more fitting for rolling releases. I heard they're planning to change this in the future and switch to a fixed cycle as well.
- bluGill 2y ago
  KDE4 was great. KDE 4.0 was terrible, but everyone ignored the developer advice to wait for 4.3 (which is when KDE 4 became great again) and the concluded all of KDE4 was bad even though it was just the first release.
  - raverbashing 2y ago
    As much as I'm a KDE fan, saying "developer advice" was to wait for 4.3 is very unhelpful (not to call it something else) It would have been much better if 4.3 was called 4.0 as it was supposed to be
    - Rinzler89 2y ago
      >As much as I'm a KDE fan, saying "developer advice" was to wait for 4.3 is very unhelpful (not to call it something else) At least they were honest and upfront about it that it's shit and it's gonna be fixed later. Gnome's response in such a case would have usually been "it's not a bug, you're just holding it wrong"[1]. [1] https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/3787 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/3787
      - raverbashing 2y ago
        Ouch, I think "holding it wrong" is an optimistic view, I would describe this as gaslighting really
    - bluGill 2y ago
      That isn't a good option - KDE needed to promise to other developers here is a base you should start working on and it won't get drastic changes. There is no good answer to this problem.
      - raverbashing 2y ago
        Yes The Linux kernel does this (or used to do at least) with odd version numbers. Or you could call it -dev, or -unstable version. Or call it 3.90-dev or something There are options.
e3a8 2y ago
I can't get my head around why Gnome doesn't have an option in settings to prevent laptop going to sleep when lid is closed. In KDE you can configure that and much more regarding laptop behavior when charging vs on battery. Why there is no option on Gnome to ungroup windows in dock/launcher without installing third-party extensions. On KDE it's one click. Not everybody likes to click 2-3 times to open desired window. Gnome's default image viewer can't even crop or resize photos. There is a ton things like this that make KDE far more usable out of the box than Gnome. The only thing that is better on Gnome is HiDPI handling. KDE works kind of OK with wayland on HiDPI screens but some apps have issues with very slow scrolling, e.g. SublimeText and LibreOffice apps
- leeoniya 2y ago
  > The only thing that is better on Gnome is HiDPI handling. KDE works kind of OK with wayland on HiDPI screens but some apps have issues with very slow scrolling, e.g. SublimeText and LibreOffice apps so that's what's been going on? is there a bug report i can monitor? is a fix coming?
shrimp_emoji 2y ago
The reason was sadly greed. KDE was LGPL and flirting with the idea of making money. GNOME was FOSS purist and GPL, making it a safer bet at the time. Then again, maybe Qt is so much better today than GTK because Trolltech is a company that makes money. (It's not even close; projects are fleeing GTK for Qt, and it's the reason why every GTK app is a toy compared to a Qt alternative, like Nautilus vs. Dolphin.)
- sho_hn 2y ago
  It was the other way around. It was GTK/Gnome with the LGPL licensing, while Qt's open source edition was initially GPL-only, before LGPL was added later on. LGPL means you can write closed source software against the open source toolkit, and yes I think it's fair to say this was a big driver for commercial adoption of GTK in the late 90s to early 00s as it seemed like the better ticket for "serious" closed source software on the Linux software. The irony is of course that today, far more "serious" software (e.g. your Autodesks, Mathematicas, Abletons, etc.) with Linux releases has been developed with Qt and little or perhaps none with GTK since that earlier wave (where maybe the most complex app was Acrobat PDF Reader).
  - shrimp_emoji 2y ago
    > far more "serious" software (e.g. your Autodesks, Mathematicas, Abletons, etc.) with Linux releases has been developed with Qt and little or perhaps none with GTK since that earlier wave (where maybe the most complex app was Acrobat PDF Reader). You have to use Qt if you want anything but trivial desktop software. D: If you've used modern GTK and Qt, it's obvious why.
DCKing 2y ago
In 2014, the Debian project cited accessibility [1] as a main reason to offer Gnome as the default desktop. Since that was over 9 years ago, a lot could have changed. However, observing that Gnome is generally the most well funded Linux desktop, and is sponsored by/the default for Red Hat Enterprise Linux [2] that has large incentives to meet government accessibility regulations, there's a good chance it is still ahead. [1]: https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/tasksel/-/commit/dce99f5f8d84e4c885e6beb4cc1bb5bb1d9ee6d7 https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/tasksel/-/commit/dce... (they cited systemd integration too, but that situation has probably changed a lot since then) [2]: It is also the default on other enterprise Linux vendors, such as Ubuntu (albeit customized) and even major KDE supporter SUSE uses Gnome Classic mode as the default for SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop
- NekkoDroid 2y ago
  There generally has been a major regression for both GNOME and KDE with regards to accessability with the switch to Wayland IIRC. Mostly due to the strict separation of apps and not being able to snoop eachothers windows by default. Tho there have been major works sponsored/supported by GNOME/STF to improve the entire accessibility stack used in the Linux userspace https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9psDfEFf9c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9psDfEFf9c

Gnome at least made sense for Red Hat/Fedora since they are the biggest sponsors of Gnome. I think another part of it was that the migration from KDE 3 to 4 was pretty rough, which also helped drive a lot of distros away from KDE and over to it. Ubuntu also had Unity and when they decided to give that up Gnome was more similar to Unity than KDE was, making it the obvious replacement. And don't forget the old licensing controversies over Qt, which were long settled by then but a lot of people still regarded Qt with suspicion.

Rinzler89 2y ago
>And don't forget the old licensing controversies over Qt, which were long settled by then but a lot of people still regarded Qt with suspicion. I think a lot of users today weren't even born when the QT controversy was happening yet they keep bringing it up like it's an active showstopper. I think this piece of lore keeps getting repeated so often everywhere, that people forget where it came from and assume it must be a current issue if people still keep bringing it up.
- gh02t 2y ago
  Agreed, it hasn't been a real issue in what, decades? I've been using Linux for a really long time but even for me I think Qt had switched to GPL a couple years before I first used KDE (exact memory fuzzy). But I definitely recall people bringing it up and using it as a reason to avoid KDE even in the KDE4/Gnome 3 early days.

Rinzler89 2y ago

>Never understood why all the distros pivoted to Gnome shell AFAIK two reasons. For one, KDE 4 was considered horrible, making everyone switched to Gnome, and due to inertia, they stuck with in instead of going to KDE 5. And some users can be incredibly petty, stubborn and opinionated, just because they tried KDE 4 one time, hated it, and then keep bad mouthing it years later even though they haven't tried KDE 5 and their opinions are out of date, they'll still keep bragging how they tried KDE once and it was shit so nobody should bother with it according to them. Even on HN. All this bad publicity didn't help since other users took it as gospel. And two, the release cadence of Gnome versions was on a fixed calendar basis, meaning distros like Ubuntu and Fedora could plan their own releases to line up with that and always ship their newest distros with the newest Gnome, while KDE wasn't and would update the KDE Gear framework, QT and KDE release at totally different times unallied to any fixed dates, making sync planning for distro releases to ship with it very difficult. The KDE release cycle is more fitting for rolling releases. I heard they're planning to change this in the future and switch to a fixed cycle as well.

bluGill 2y ago
KDE4 was great. KDE 4.0 was terrible, but everyone ignored the developer advice to wait for 4.3 (which is when KDE 4 became great again) and the concluded all of KDE4 was bad even though it was just the first release.
- raverbashing 2y ago
  As much as I'm a KDE fan, saying "developer advice" was to wait for 4.3 is very unhelpful (not to call it something else) It would have been much better if 4.3 was called 4.0 as it was supposed to be
  - Rinzler89 2y ago
    >As much as I'm a KDE fan, saying "developer advice" was to wait for 4.3 is very unhelpful (not to call it something else) At least they were honest and upfront about it that it's shit and it's gonna be fixed later. Gnome's response in such a case would have usually been "it's not a bug, you're just holding it wrong"[1]. [1] https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/3787 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/3787
    - raverbashing 2y ago
      Ouch, I think "holding it wrong" is an optimistic view, I would describe this as gaslighting really
  - bluGill 2y ago
    That isn't a good option - KDE needed to promise to other developers here is a base you should start working on and it won't get drastic changes. There is no good answer to this problem.
    - raverbashing 2y ago
      Yes The Linux kernel does this (or used to do at least) with odd version numbers. Or you could call it -dev, or -unstable version. Or call it 3.90-dev or something There are options.

e3a8 2y ago

I can't get my head around why Gnome doesn't have an option in settings to prevent laptop going to sleep when lid is closed. In KDE you can configure that and much more regarding laptop behavior when charging vs on battery. Why there is no option on Gnome to ungroup windows in dock/launcher without installing third-party extensions. On KDE it's one click. Not everybody likes to click 2-3 times to open desired window. Gnome's default image viewer can't even crop or resize photos. There is a ton things like this that make KDE far more usable out of the box than Gnome. The only thing that is better on Gnome is HiDPI handling. KDE works kind of OK with wayland on HiDPI screens but some apps have issues with very slow scrolling, e.g. SublimeText and LibreOffice apps

leeoniya 2y ago
> The only thing that is better on Gnome is HiDPI handling. KDE works kind of OK with wayland on HiDPI screens but some apps have issues with very slow scrolling, e.g. SublimeText and LibreOffice apps so that's what's been going on? is there a bug report i can monitor? is a fix coming?

shrimp_emoji 2y ago

The reason was sadly greed. KDE was LGPL and flirting with the idea of making money. GNOME was FOSS purist and GPL, making it a safer bet at the time. Then again, maybe Qt is so much better today than GTK because Trolltech is a company that makes money. (It's not even close; projects are fleeing GTK for Qt, and it's the reason why every GTK app is a toy compared to a Qt alternative, like Nautilus vs. Dolphin.)

sho_hn 2y ago
It was the other way around. It was GTK/Gnome with the LGPL licensing, while Qt's open source edition was initially GPL-only, before LGPL was added later on. LGPL means you can write closed source software against the open source toolkit, and yes I think it's fair to say this was a big driver for commercial adoption of GTK in the late 90s to early 00s as it seemed like the better ticket for "serious" closed source software on the Linux software. The irony is of course that today, far more "serious" software (e.g. your Autodesks, Mathematicas, Abletons, etc.) with Linux releases has been developed with Qt and little or perhaps none with GTK since that earlier wave (where maybe the most complex app was Acrobat PDF Reader).
- shrimp_emoji 2y ago
  > far more "serious" software (e.g. your Autodesks, Mathematicas, Abletons, etc.) with Linux releases has been developed with Qt and little or perhaps none with GTK since that earlier wave (where maybe the most complex app was Acrobat PDF Reader). You have to use Qt if you want anything but trivial desktop software. D: If you've used modern GTK and Qt, it's obvious why.

DCKing 2y ago

In 2014, the Debian project cited accessibility [1] as a main reason to offer Gnome as the default desktop. Since that was over 9 years ago, a lot could have changed. However, observing that Gnome is generally the most well funded Linux desktop, and is sponsored by/the default for Red Hat Enterprise Linux [2] that has large incentives to meet government accessibility regulations, there's a good chance it is still ahead. [1]: https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/tasksel/-/commit/dce99f5f8d84e4c885e6beb4cc1bb5bb1d9ee6d7 https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/tasksel/-/commit/dce... (they cited systemd integration too, but that situation has probably changed a lot since then) [2]: It is also the default on other enterprise Linux vendors, such as Ubuntu (albeit customized) and even major KDE supporter SUSE uses Gnome Classic mode as the default for SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop

NekkoDroid 2y ago
There generally has been a major regression for both GNOME and KDE with regards to accessability with the switch to Wayland IIRC. Mostly due to the strict separation of apps and not being able to snoop eachothers windows by default. Tho there have been major works sponsored/supported by GNOME/STF to improve the entire accessibility stack used in the Linux userspace https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9psDfEFf9c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9psDfEFf9c