5 ms·

That's not completely true. They are hated by some users, loved by some. For example, in general, I really like what gnome does. Desktop use is not something t

That's not completely true. They are hated by some users, loved by some. For example, in general, I really like what gnome does. Desktop use is not something that is useful outside starting other apps, so I like its simplicity and the fact that it gets out of the way. Default apps could use maybe a bit more features, but I generally don't find too much wrong with e.g. files. The only confusing thing for me is which hamburger to click when I want to create a new directory. So instead of guessing, I just right click the file list. One positive example in gnome is when you try to access e.g. smb:// shares in files and try to open a movie from the share... It works with no issues. But, kde with gazillion features does not support that. (Opinion) KDE is not more popular since it's buggy as hell. At least it was. But not only that, their visuals are a disaster. Believe what you will, but visual consistency and attention to detail is what gnome has. They are not perfect, so there are some issues as OP points out, but they are on a different level from kde. KDE looks like it was frankensteined, while gnome it looks like it was designed. Think just login process and sddm, how many time it blinks? KDE is proud to enable tinkering, and this is good - there are people that like to do that. Thinking back, this was when I was teenager. Now that I'm older, I want things well thought out, designed well that dont get in my way so I can do my work and not think about desktop. And this is gnome. What I hate about gnome is JavaScript and python focus for apps. And now, suddenly we need a stupid app for everything.

IshKebab 2y ago
> their visuals are a disaster. Believe what you will, but visual consistency and attention to detail is what gnome has. They are not perfect, so there are some issues as OP points out, but they are on a different level from kde. KDE looks like it was frankensteined, while gnome it looks like it was designed. Yeah I totally agree with that. KDE has terrible aesthetics and great usability, Gnome has great aesthetics and terrible usability. Random example: I've missed so many meetings because of Gnome's insane behaviour that touching a notification with your mouse even for one frame dismisses it. Combined with the grey-on-grey colour scheme that requires coding to change it's extremely easy to miss notifications. I ended up hand editing the theme CSS to make notifications orange, and setting Google Calendar to give me a notification every minute 3 times before every meeting. Insane. I need to switch to KDE.
- criticalfault 2y ago
  I would disagree that gnome has terrible usability. It has a very good one. Nobody's saying it is perfect, but I and many other people can use it without issues. KDE has more features, so maybe *some* things are a bit easier. But everything else is way worse. Including lack of certain apps like a decent VM manager. I feel sorry for kde, the community there is way friendlier and whatnot, but this Frankenstein approach is bad for serious use. Somebody defined a compromise like a solution which nobody is happy with and KDE feels exactly like that. People adjust how it looks and feels for that reason. They feel overly bureaucratic and and embodiment of this https://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/
  - IshKebab 2y ago
    Gnome has a VM manager? I mean I feel like that's such a niche tool that doesn't need to be part of the desktop environment, unlike for example WiFi settings which Gnome provides a very very basic interface for but most of the options are hidden in some other random app that isn't installed by default (nm-connection-editor - took me a while to figure that out!). (To be fair it's been so long since I used KDE I can't remember if its WiFi settings also has this issue.)
    - criticalfault 2y ago
      Yes, called gnome boxes. https://apps.gnome.org/Boxes/ https://apps.gnome.org/Boxes/ This was only an example. Boxes is no metric for anything, but having an app that works well in that Desktop is a good thing. There is nothing flike that or KDE. It's all for gnome. Point here being that KDE has a lack of apps. If talking about more generic apps, gnome has better Multimedia Tools, Firefox uses gtk to better integrate with gnome... The only thing/app kde has better is krita. Or is there something I'm missing that gnome doesn't do better? (Excluding files from this comparison) I'm just wondering who is then target audience for KDE? Only artists that use krita? Or teenagers that like to mod stuff? Regarding wifi, given only 'standard' use, you connect to wifi and that's it. Gnome offers a password entry and done. For advanced users I don't see an issue - they can figure it out (gnome connection editor has quite some advanced options). And also, I didn't use KDE on a real machine for a while.
p4bl0 2y ago
> KDE is not more popular since it's buggy as hell. At least it was. But not only that, their visuals are a disaster Could you give concrete examples of that? I've been using KDE daily for years and I really don't see what you're talking about for either of these two points (bugs and disaster visuals).
- criticalfault 2y ago
  Disaster visuals are icons in e.g. dolphin, sidebar and toolbar, but in different ways. Sidebar are only lines and I find that the overly simplistic shapes do not represent ideas well. Example: go back icon. Similar problems exist for toolbar icons. At some point I cannot conclude if the shape is a graphics glitch or an icon. These are the icons with some shape bottom right. Another example is sidebar consistency: recently I noticed there are 3 distinct looks in sidebars in KDE. The most modern one (kirigami I guess) looks almost the same as gnome (I think system settings have it in the last version), so here they are improving. Another example: their logo and Startup Animation. Buggy things: setup with 2 monitors, then 4k monitors, a bunch of this didn't work well, I opened several bugs for these things. I moved to gnome which didn't have these problems, so I'm not sure how this is behaving now. Changing something about plasmoids / taskbar used to crash my session, but don't remember wether I opened a bug for this. I like having it at the top, so moving it up would even be a problem. After the crash, it would be fine for a long time. Also generally reordering plasmoids on the taskbar itself would be buggy. As I said - this is how it used to be. Did not use it as a main desktop for a while, I would try to see what is new in a VM, but always got shocked how bad the design is. They are trying to improve it, but for something to make sense, radical changes are needed. For example, there were some really nice proposals for logo change for plasma 6 and nobody jumped on it. Like any other bureaucratic organization they decided not to do anything.
sunny_sigara 2y ago
Gnome is only popular because Ubuntu. Period.

IshKebab 2y ago

> their visuals are a disaster. Believe what you will, but visual consistency and attention to detail is what gnome has. They are not perfect, so there are some issues as OP points out, but they are on a different level from kde. KDE looks like it was frankensteined, while gnome it looks like it was designed. Yeah I totally agree with that. KDE has terrible aesthetics and great usability, Gnome has great aesthetics and terrible usability. Random example: I've missed so many meetings because of Gnome's insane behaviour that touching a notification with your mouse even for one frame dismisses it. Combined with the grey-on-grey colour scheme that requires coding to change it's extremely easy to miss notifications. I ended up hand editing the theme CSS to make notifications orange, and setting Google Calendar to give me a notification every minute 3 times before every meeting. Insane. I need to switch to KDE.

criticalfault 2y ago
I would disagree that gnome has terrible usability. It has a very good one. Nobody's saying it is perfect, but I and many other people can use it without issues. KDE has more features, so maybe *some* things are a bit easier. But everything else is way worse. Including lack of certain apps like a decent VM manager. I feel sorry for kde, the community there is way friendlier and whatnot, but this Frankenstein approach is bad for serious use. Somebody defined a compromise like a solution which nobody is happy with and KDE feels exactly like that. People adjust how it looks and feels for that reason. They feel overly bureaucratic and and embodiment of this https://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/
- IshKebab 2y ago
  Gnome has a VM manager? I mean I feel like that's such a niche tool that doesn't need to be part of the desktop environment, unlike for example WiFi settings which Gnome provides a very very basic interface for but most of the options are hidden in some other random app that isn't installed by default (nm-connection-editor - took me a while to figure that out!). (To be fair it's been so long since I used KDE I can't remember if its WiFi settings also has this issue.)
  - criticalfault 2y ago
    Yes, called gnome boxes. https://apps.gnome.org/Boxes/ https://apps.gnome.org/Boxes/ This was only an example. Boxes is no metric for anything, but having an app that works well in that Desktop is a good thing. There is nothing flike that or KDE. It's all for gnome. Point here being that KDE has a lack of apps. If talking about more generic apps, gnome has better Multimedia Tools, Firefox uses gtk to better integrate with gnome... The only thing/app kde has better is krita. Or is there something I'm missing that gnome doesn't do better? (Excluding files from this comparison) I'm just wondering who is then target audience for KDE? Only artists that use krita? Or teenagers that like to mod stuff? Regarding wifi, given only 'standard' use, you connect to wifi and that's it. Gnome offers a password entry and done. For advanced users I don't see an issue - they can figure it out (gnome connection editor has quite some advanced options). And also, I didn't use KDE on a real machine for a while.

p4bl0 2y ago

> KDE is not more popular since it's buggy as hell. At least it was. But not only that, their visuals are a disaster Could you give concrete examples of that? I've been using KDE daily for years and I really don't see what you're talking about for either of these two points (bugs and disaster visuals).

criticalfault 2y ago
Disaster visuals are icons in e.g. dolphin, sidebar and toolbar, but in different ways. Sidebar are only lines and I find that the overly simplistic shapes do not represent ideas well. Example: go back icon. Similar problems exist for toolbar icons. At some point I cannot conclude if the shape is a graphics glitch or an icon. These are the icons with some shape bottom right. Another example is sidebar consistency: recently I noticed there are 3 distinct looks in sidebars in KDE. The most modern one (kirigami I guess) looks almost the same as gnome (I think system settings have it in the last version), so here they are improving. Another example: their logo and Startup Animation. Buggy things: setup with 2 monitors, then 4k monitors, a bunch of this didn't work well, I opened several bugs for these things. I moved to gnome which didn't have these problems, so I'm not sure how this is behaving now. Changing something about plasmoids / taskbar used to crash my session, but don't remember wether I opened a bug for this. I like having it at the top, so moving it up would even be a problem. After the crash, it would be fine for a long time. Also generally reordering plasmoids on the taskbar itself would be buggy. As I said - this is how it used to be. Did not use it as a main desktop for a while, I would try to see what is new in a VM, but always got shocked how bad the design is. They are trying to improve it, but for something to make sense, radical changes are needed. For example, there were some really nice proposals for logo change for plasma 6 and nobody jumped on it. Like any other bureaucratic organization they decided not to do anything.

sunny_sigara 2y ago

Gnome is only popular because Ubuntu. Period.