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KDE is now my favorite desktop

• donkeylazy456 1y ago
  it has been my primary DE since plasma released.
• Gud 1y ago
  I’ve been a long term XFCE used(20 years) and although KDE was my first love, I stopped using it at v3? When it became a total resource hog. I’ll give it a try on my next laptop.
• netbioserror 1y ago
  I like KDE, but every time I use it as a daily driver, I again run into all of those little issues that make it frustrating over time. Little breakages, weird Qt dependency hell, the works. I came to Mint because Cinnamon really has been built with being bomb-proof as the highest priority. The details are sweated, and the feature set is lean, so they can really focus on quality.
  • rtaylorgarlock 1y ago
    Maybe it's because I'm such a latecomer, but I've truly enjoyed using KDE on a mostly-daily basis over the last ~9mo. I haven't extended it or really stretched (e.g. with multi-monitor setup), but I also haven't had to diag any issues or fix anything. Just left it vanilla and did other things.
  • abhinavk 1y ago
    I can turn off other features and work around them but the most annoying yet harmless is the flicker when you switch to an inactive app. The title bar and the window contents change their color at different frames. It requires ditching Breeze and using other theme engines/decorations altogether. I currently use niri but Plasma has always been my go-to/backup DE. I always have it installed in case someone else has to use my PC. [1]: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=433569 https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=433569
  • bayindirh 1y ago
    KDE is a complicated piece of software and packaging it is hard sometimes, but I'm using KDE on Debian since Debian 4, and the team handled all process phenomenally. One of the tricks Debian team does is they first compile the old KDE with newer libraries, then migrate KDE itself, like Intel's Tick Tock. This gives both a performant and issue-free experience as far as I can tell. Note: I run Debian Testing on my Desktop systems. Servers always run stable.
  • BoredPositron 1y ago
    I feel the same and the more I use the integrated apps the more I see the bad margins, thin fonts and general ux quirks. It's compact and the information density is high but it has so much noise that it just feels uncomfortable to use. I have the opposite problem with gnome. Just give me a modern version of the win2k gui or fluxbox. sic
  • cosmic_cheese 1y ago
    Some might say it feels dated, but for me Cinnamon gives more of an impression that the whole thing has been thought through. It has a better grip on various aspects of design like its use of whitespace, control alignment, and typography too. Don’t get me wrong, KDE is a nice desktop in many ways, but it would benefit considerably from attention of a professional UI designer.
  • tsimionescu 1y ago
    Last time I experimented with Linux desktop (maybe two years ago?) I had one silly annoyance with KDE on Fedora. I was running this on a laptop with a regular track pad. I was surprised to find out that tap to click was not enabled by default, I had to click the physical button to mimic a mouse click. Not a big deal I thought - I logged in, went to settings, and found a configuration to enable the behavior I wanted - great. However, this behavior was only enabled for my user. Every time I wanted to log in, the login screen would use the default behavior in KDE, since my user preferences weren't applied until I actually logged in, of course. I know, of course, that it's an extremely minor thing, but it felt quite representative. It also reminded me that Linux is stuck in this bygone age where it's expected for a computer to be a multi-user system, so of course they can't have a "privileged" user account other than root (and god forbid you'd think of using root as your normal every day user).
  • E39M5S62 1y ago
    Can you go into more detail on "weird Qt dependency hell"? Is this from a distro packager standpoint, or a user standpoint ?
• gmueckl 1y ago
  KDE has been phenomenal since the days of KDE 3.5.x. I wish that I could use it more than I'm able to (limited selection of desktop environments at work etc.). The KDE 4.0 release has given the project an unfortunate lasting bad reputation that stuck around despite the fact that it was really just a single bad release that got fixed very quickly.
  • bayindirh 1y ago
    > The KDE 4.0 release has given the project an unfortunate lasting bad reputation... True, but frankly, KDE team repeatedly said that 4.0 to 4.2 is considered beta, and not production ready. I'm also coming from 3.5.x days, and just waited for KDE to mature a little before jumping 4.x bandwagon, and I'm still on KDE. Maybe, we, the users shall read the announcements with a keener eye.
    • vanviegen 1y ago
      Uhh... No? https://kde.org/announcements/4/4.0/ https://kde.org/announcements/4/4.0/
      • bayindirh 1y ago
        This is one of the places I have found the relevant note [0]. It states the following: Some of the more obvious issues are listed below. If these issues are important to you, you should stay with KDE 3.5 (KDE 3.5.10 was released in August 2008) until KDE 4.2 is released (scheduled for release in January 2009) when most of these issues are scheduled to be resolved. It is possible that distributions will work around some of these issues before distributing to users. Also, IIRC, KDE developers were openly saying that releases from 4.0 to 4.2 will be buggy, and things will stabilize in 4.2 and beyond. [0]: https://community.kde.org/Schedules/Is_KDE_4.1_for_you%3F https://community.kde.org/Schedules/Is_KDE_4.1_for_you%3F
        • vanviegen 1y ago
          That's about 4.1. I think the developers either underestimated the amount of bugs an average user would run in to on the 4.0 release, or forgot to tell those responsible for communication about their concerns. The release caused a shit storm, hence the more careful expectation management around the 4.1 release. That being said: I've been using KDE since the 1.x days, with only a short Ubuntu Unity-intermezzo around the 4.0 release. Most of that time, it's been great!
• kokada 1y ago
  Hi folks, author here. Happy to answer questions.
  • sho_hn 1y ago
    Plasma dev here, also happy to answer questions!
    • a3w 1y ago
      Are error messages, e.g. when trying to connect wifi, as expressive and case-complete?
      • sho_hn 1y ago
        Honestly, this one I'm not sure about as I haven't worked on the connectivity UIs myself. I know we have backends to NetworkManager and ConnMan, and generally I would assume we pass through errors they generate and perhaps try to augment them, but I'm not personally aware of the SOTA on WiFi error reporting and how we stack up. I'm sure if you're missing anything useful diagnostics-wise it's worth a FREQ though. A lot of us also do travel with our laptop to numerous FOSS events all over the place and encounter sub-par networks left and right, after all.
        • The_President 1y ago
          Piggybacking on the context of your network role, is there an initiative to fix temporarily unavailable sshfs mounts freezing Plasma and Dolphin?
          • reitanuki 1y ago
            Side-note: Depending on what you're after, you can navigate to `sftp://` (and `fish://`) URLs in Dolphin & most KDE (Qt?) applications directly, you don't need to use a sshfs mount, and this way it doesn't stall (or screw up system sleep, which is another problem I have with sshfs mounts). Somehow or another, if you open a file in Dolphin on one of these network addresses in a non-KDE application, it seems to pass it through using a FUSE filesystem, which does work somewhat but not 100% in my experience (I don't really know how this works or remember when it falls down). The terminal view in Dolphin also `cd`s to this virtual directory. Of course, if you really really wanted the sshfs mount for some reason, then this workaround doesn't help you.
• _davide_ 1y ago
  I have been using kde for 15+ years, except 4.0, which was painful, everything has been mostly a smooth experience. > However, KDE considered my TV the primary desktop and put the task bar only in that monitor, and even disabling the TV didn't add the task bar to my monitor. You can order the screens however you want; the first one will be considered primary.
  • kokada 1y ago
    Yes, but I assumed that disabling the TV would set the monitor as the primary desktop and added the taskbar to it, but it didn't. Now I may have done something wrong, but I was just reporting my experience.
    • _davide_ 1y ago
      Then it's likely that plasma just crashed :')
      • kokada 1y ago
        It didn't, because I could create the taskbar manually by clicking with the right click in the desktop.
    • tux3 1y ago
      It remembers the screens to try to keep your settings if you disconnect and reconnect external screens, but in this case that was not very helpful I always want the taskbar on every screen personally. I think that'd be a friendlier default, but since it's KDE it's at least not too hard to change, and everything is configurable down to fine details
    • graemep 1y ago
      It should do that. If I unplug my external monitor the panel moves to the laptop, and it even turns it on if its been disabled.
    • bombela 1y ago
      If unplugging the display cable works though. It's most likely the TV pretending to be still on. I have a LG TV C1 that behaves like that. While my computer monitors do not have this issue. The TV even has a dual personality. It doesn't appear to report the same informations via EBID when powered off vs powered on. I also have a MS Windows 10 connected to this same TV, and if I make the mistake of powering up or wake from sleep Windows before turning on the TV, then the NVIDIA GPU setup some broken resolution. And only a reboot fixes it. So my guess is it's the TV presenting itself with different EBID when off vs powered on. And also somehow presenting itself as active on the HDMI line no matter if off or on. Changing the TV inputs also doesn't tell KDE that the display was turned off. I haven't debugged any of it. These are just my observations.
• explorigin 1y ago
  I've been using my steamdeck as my personal computer for more than a year now. It's desktop mode is a polished KDE experience that anyone could use.
  • hasperdi 1y ago
    Are you using the standard Steam OS desktop mode, or installed a different linux distro with KDE?
    • explorigin 1y ago
      Standard desktop mode.
• blenderob 1y ago
  XFCE or LXDE anyone? Honest question - If you use XFCE or LXDE or similar minimalistic DEs, are you happy with the choice? or do you feel somethings are missing that are available in KDE, MATE and the likes?
  • kachapopopow 1y ago
    pixelation in fonts, apps sometimes just not working, input latency, unpleasant to look at, brightness controls, notifications, could probably write out an entire 2500 word essay.
  • gbin 1y ago
    You lose the application integration I have with KDE when you use apps from the KDE suite or even QT apps.
  • vanviegen 1y ago
    Back when the lightweight desktops were popping up, KDE was considered pretty memory heavy. Thing is, KDE hasn't really kept up with growing RAM sizes as well as Windows has. ;-) So unless you're trying to run a Linux desktop on a potato, I'd say KDE should now be considered pretty lightweight.
    • sho_hn 1y ago
      We also did a lot of intentional action to get the resource usage down in the Plasma 5 generation and timeframe. E.g. the machine we optimized for during at least one or two Plasma dev meetings I remember was the original Pine64 Pinebook, which was a very under-powered device. We had a stack of them to hand to devs. Intentionally as a "if we can get it to fly there, it'll fly anywhere". So it's not just that we haven't gotten worse, we also did get legitimately better in later releases compared to some of our porkier ones (which also did exist).
      • OscarCunningham 1y ago
        Thanks for this work. I switched from xfce when I realised that KDE was nearly as lightweight.
• Chance-Device 1y ago
  I’ve been using KDE as my personal daily driver for a few years now. At work I have to use MacOS, and it feels like a serious downgrade. Just about everything is easier and more intuitive on KDE. It’s the single best desktop I’ve ever used.
  • criddell 1y ago
    > it feels like a serious downgrade What kinds of things are you talking about? These days I feel like all of the major desktop environments are good enough. 95% of what I do with them is launch applications and move or resize windows and that’s easy enough on all of them.
    • ajuc 1y ago
      One thing I missed the most from KDE was changing the volume by mouse wheel on the sound volume icon in tray. And in general mouse wheel interactions on tray. On windows you have to click the icon before you can interact with it. IIRC on Mac too.
      • vladvasiliu 1y ago
        > On windows you have to click the icon before you can interact with it Not anymore! This changed in some win11 update I can't remember, but I recall celebrating this improvement. However, this being windows, of course it's half-assed. This works with the mouse wheel but not by scrolling the touchpad (as of up-to-date 24h2).
      • Crestwave 1y ago
        KDE has a lot of really nice little things, like how you can mute specific apps with a single click just like muting browser tabs. I've used a variety of environments extensively (Windows, macOS, KDE, GNOME, Xfce, i3, dwm, you name it) and this is basically the one feature I find myself regularly missing from another environment.
      • efilife 1y ago
        there's a great program called EarTrumpet on windows that lets you do that
• SirFatty 1y ago
  "After using KDE for about a week I can say that this is the first time that I really enjoy a desktop environment on Linux, after all those years." Wow! (about) A whole week!
  • kokada 1y ago
    I admit that one week is not enough to see possible issues like reported by @netbiosterror in another thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45289071 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45289071), but it is enough to enjoy the desktop experience and everything it offers.
  • The_President 1y ago
    If they're that excited within a week, the come-down from dealing with occasional annoying bugs introduced with updates might leave a bruise.
    • kokada 1y ago
      Author here: to be clear, I am using KDE back and forth since I bought a Steam Deck 3 years ago, and before that I used KDE daily during the 4.x days (so I am familiar with KDE bugs actually). I am using it in my main machine now for almost 2 weeks, and this is the period of time that this blog post refers too.
      • The_President 1y ago
        I'll be clear I'm not trying to be antagonistic or speak out of line - I think it's a great DE and I use it daily. It's 90% there and everyone's experience will be different based on the large deployment scape.
• kachapopopow 1y ago
  switched to kde neon this year, sometimes I forget windows exists.
• bovermyer 1y ago
  I have tried to use Linux for my gaming PC, but I always run into issues. The Finals refused to run, for example. So, I gave up and just use Windows for gaming. Sigh.
  • komali2 1y ago
    I got Finals working on an i3 nvidia system basically by doing nothing more than installing Steam and then installing The Finals and playing through proton. What issues did you run into?
    • coldpie 1y ago
      According to the game's Steam store page, it uses Easy Anti-Cheat, which generally does not work in Proton. Pretty common problem for people who want to play modern online games. I'm surprised you say it works for you.
      • esseph 1y ago
        It works fine, I've been playing it on Fedora since The Finals was released.
      • zamalek 1y ago
        EAC works fine if the game has it enabled for Linux, which The Finals does (I play it).
      • pelotron 1y ago
        There is a specific Proton EAC runtime you might have to install. Check under Library -> Tools.
      • connicpu 1y ago
        EAC has an option for Linux/Proton support, but it has to be explicitly enabled by the developer. I believe it ships a Linux binary that runs alongside the game, poking into the wine environment. EAC works just fine in proton with Halo Infinite, for example.
  • 1y ago
• yellow_lead 1y ago
  I haven't run into many issues with KDE, and I really like some of the "built-in" KDE apps. For instance, KDE Connect is amazing, despite some bugs, it usually works very well. I also use KWrite and Konsole daily.
  • bayindirh 1y ago
    Try installing kio-audiocd and popping in an Audio CD. This is a one weird trick which will leave you amazed. :D Edit: Why someone downvotes the most innovative CD ripping solution on the planet is beyond me. =)
    • ahartmetz 1y ago
      Spoiler: the CD tracks appear as MP3, Ogg Vorbis, maybe Opus? (it's a very old feature) files. Copying one of these virtual files starts the encoding process.
      • bayindirh 1y ago
        It presents WAV, MP3, OGG, FLAC, CDA & CDDB folders. Copying a folder starts encoding on the fly. KIO also talks with CDDB info providers, so the files come reasonably tagged. Encoding and tagging can be configured in System Settings directly. In short, it's neat.
• rs_rs_rs_rs_rs 1y ago
  I agree, very happy KDE user, wish I was able to use it on my mac too(no, Asahi does work good enough for me).
• actinium226 1y ago
  > Even compared with macOS in my MacBook Pro M2 Pro (that is of course comparing Apples and Bananas), Missed opportunity for "comparing apples and penguins!"
• nelblu 1y ago
  During my college days (2000~2004) KDE (I think it was Fedora/RH 8) was hands down my favourite desktop. After that when I joined the corporate world, I lost touch with Linux. Few years ago (thanks to a ton of dark patterns in Windows), I moved back to Linux. This time I chose Linux Mint with Cinnamon / XFCE. When Linux Mint (officially) starts supporting KDE, I would love to try it again. Until then I am really rooting for YOU KDE developers, I have really fond memory of your tools (especially Konqueror browser/file manager it was way ahead of its times then!)
  • antalis 1y ago
    You may have to wait some time as Mint 19 (2018) actually removed KDE support.
• sylens 1y ago
  I hadn't really kept up with the development of KDE until I got a Steam Deck and booted into desktop mode. Once there, I was quite surprised to find a really performant, attractive, easy-to-use desktop environment. My previous KDE experience was probably a decade prior to that and I didn't really enjoy it that much, so it was a refreshing experience. Now it is definitely my preferred Linux desktop environment as well.
  • swinglock 1y ago
    I had the same experience. I only remembered KDE being the the ugly, sluggish, buggy one that reminds me of Windows but cheaper. That must have been two decades ago now. I've never considered looking at it again. But then I got it pre-installed with the Deck, had issues with my computer, plugged it in to the monitor as a backup, and I like it.
• purplehat_ 1y ago
  I’ve been afraid to switch from GNOME to KDE because of what I’ve heard about instability on Wayland as well as Qt being more unstable than GTK. Are these concerns overstated? Should I bite the bullet and switch? I’m on Debian but considering switching to Fedora.
  • kokada 1y ago
    Author here: using KDE6 with Wayland. Didn't note any instability, and it was the only desktop environment that I saw to handle HiDPI for X11 applications (except for Hyrpland, but this was clearly using a hack).
  • lupusreal 1y ago
    There's no need to commit to either, you can install both alongside each other and pick one each time you log in.
  • pabs3 1y ago
    KDE is more stable than GNOME, because gnome-shell kills all apps when it dies due to GPU driver bugs or whatever. Qt/KDE has some more crash resilience going on. Not as good as Arcan, but I've never had my session go away since recent KDE6 versions. https://arcan-fe.com/2017/12/24/crash-resilient-wayland-compositing/ https://arcan-fe.com/2017/12/24/crash-resilient-wayland-comp...
• christophilus 1y ago
  I just find it ugly vs Gnome or Mac. Inconsistent padding, font sizes, colors. Admittedly, this was maybe 5 years ago. Has that improved? These days, I daily drive Niri and love it. I love the workflow of a scrolling WM. I love that I can configure it via a single text file in the standard configuration directory, I love how lightweight it is. It’s just about perfect for me.
  • dmd 1y ago
    > Inconsistent padding, font sizes, colors. But enough about Mac OS Tahoe!
    • carlosjobim 1y ago
      Gnome has been the best looking desktop for about 5 years now, with OS X in second place. KDE and Windows (after 7) are so far below that they're a category of their own. Apple should at once hire the people who are responsible for Gnome's UI, because they've got it figured out. Even better, put back together the Nokia N9 GUI team.
      • flohofwoe 1y ago
        Not sure if you're serious or missing an /s there ;)
        • carlosjobim 1y ago
          I honestly think so, but I'm not surprised some losers here at HN down voted my comment. There's many things to not like with Gnome, but they've got the user interface figured out. Contrast is correct both in light mode and dark mode. Readability is excellent. Margins and paddings are consistent across the board. Buttons, checkboxes and other gizmos look exactly as they should, with subtle shadows and 3D effects. Border radiuses are consistent and not to large. Icons are not great, but that's the same on all desktop environments now. OS X had great icons, but that age is over. And since they have all the important basics correct, it is trivial to fix any short comings in the UI. The team deserves praise for what they've achieved.
• mcdonje 1y ago
  Just switched over from gnome. Overall, I'm happy. Gnome is configurable, but in a way that isn't really well integrated. It seems buggy to me, but I think it's because my preferences aren't standard. For instance, I like having my dock on the left, and I like top bar stuff to be in the dock, so the dock is the only thing that can take up screen space, and I like the dock to disappear when I'm not using it. Simple, right? Can't do it in the regular configuration. Can do part of it in tweaks, which is a separate configuration app, but then some of it requires extensions. So, that's 3 places to go to What's it called when hiding complexity makes it more complex? So, that gets me there, but then the dock fails to hide half the time on zoom calls. And when I unlock the screen, I can see the empty space where the top bar used to be for a quick flash before the full sized app window goes back to where I left it. So far, I don't have those issues with KDE. I don't like the annoying and krappy branding with the launcher icon and more than half the apps having a K in the name, but you can change the launcher icon and use whatever apps you want.
  • kccqzy 1y ago
    > Can do part of it in tweaks, which is a separate configuration app, but then some of it requires extensions. I'm not sure why you think requiring extensions is a bad idea. I have tried out at least 20 GNOME extensions (and kept maybe a third), and I appreciate the flexible underlying architecture to allow extensions to flourish. With extensions, the same GNOME can have Windows XP style taskbars or Mac-style docks or i3-style tiling or anything in between. Certainly it would be a more refined experience if the core developers took care of every single possible customization users could want under the sun, but at some point it's more effective to outsource that to other developers. Either that or you end up with Apple-style highly uncustomizable experience designed by a UX designer, which is not what I want. Extensions are a pragmatic choice.
    • cosmic_cheese 1y ago
      Supporting extensions is great, but it needs to be done properly. GNOME doesn’t provide a proper extension API which forces devs to muck with GNOME internals, which makes extensions much more flakey than they need to be and causes them to break every other GNOME release.
• timw4mail 1y ago
  KDE has been my preferred desktop environment since I started playing with linux sometime in the KDE 3 days. I'm glad the wobbly windows desktop effect has stuck around too: absolutely unnecessary, but it's silly and fun. My biggest complaint has nothing to do with KDE itself, but the fact that GTK apps are so ugly by default. QT apps look fine in GTK desktop environments though. (At least KDE has easy built-in settings for handling GTK theming these days...I remember it being more of an issue a while back)
• incomingpain 1y ago
  Plasma 6 has come up a few times recently as pretty awesome. I havent touched it since Plasma 4 eons ago. I'm pretty happy with budgie though. But I think I will have to give KDE a try some day.
• abhishekpathak 1y ago
  As an outsider, it is impressive to see the incremental, "chipping away at problems piecemeal" approach KDE has been taking since their Plasma release a decade ago. Slow, steady and intentional. To think that almost all of this is volunteer work makes it so much more heartwarming.
• alabhyajindal 1y ago
  Love KDE. Can others share their experience of using the same desktop environment across distributions? Is there a difference? I have only used KDE on Fedora and it's great but getting the itch to try out something new. Void Linux maybe.
  • OscarCunningham 1y ago
    I've tried KDE in Debian and NixOS, and the experience is exactly the same. In many ways the choice of distro is much less impactful than the choice of desktop environment.
  • E39M5S62 1y ago
    I run KDE on Void - both on my workstation and my ARM laptop. It runs perfectly on both. The only thing I've noticed that you'll 'lose' on Void is the 'Applications View' in System Monitor; that's only because it relies on systemd functionality that Void doesn't have because of runit.
• whitehexagon 1y ago
  I've had Asahi installed on my M1 since I bought it, but only just switched to it as my main development workhorse (upgrading to Asahi Fedora remix 42). I have to say I am really impressed with KDE, and the large selection of decent applications. I'm new to linux desktop, but I already hope that nothing changes, because to me it already seems complete. The best part of the experience is feeling like I own my computer again.
  • giancarlostoro 1y ago
    KDE has always been like this since KDE 4 they have a consistent app UI so if you just install from the hundreds of KDE based apps you will feel like it was a hand crafted OS. KDE is more consistent than Windows is these days. On Windows you see several decades of UI in core system components.
  • tripplyons 1y ago
    I wish Asahi worked on my M3. It is a great effort, and sadly, they don't have enough resources to focus on the newer chips yet.
• t_mann 1y ago
  Not just the Plasma desktop, there is a lot of KDE software that works well even outside of the KDE desktop, and some of it is really excellent. I find Kate to be a criminally underrated editor for example. It never comes up in VSCode vs vim/... discussions, but I think it's an excellent VSCode replacement if you're looking for something more familiar. Currently my favorite editor hands down.
  • kokada 1y ago
    Author here. I was surprised that Kate supports LSP now. I will not stop using my neovim setup but I definitely found it good for quickly editing small amounts of text.
    • noisy_boy 1y ago
      Kate remembers your unsaved tabs so I use it as a notepad replacement on steroids.
  • npteljes 1y ago
    Yes, I totally agree! The first such tool was KDEConnect for me, I used its xfce compatible fork back in the day, and it was like magic, connecting my phone to the PC in such a native feeling way. And the Kate editor is my latest discovery. I used it in a throwaway KDE environment because it's the default editor and I was surprised how nice it actually is.
  • never_inline 1y ago
    1. Okular - PDF viewer with lots of annotation and accessibility features 2. Dolphin - file manager with advanced features 3. Spectacle - most advanced screenshot tool I have seen
    • account42 1y ago
      > Spectacle - most advanced screenshot tool I have seen You mean the one screenshot tool that couldn't capture windows with their title bar and border but without shadows for almost a decade?
• whafro 1y ago
  Haven't been a Linux daily driver in years, but I love that KDE continues to have such an impact. Reminder that its built-in browser Konqueror debuted the KHTML rendering engine circa ~1999, which was then forked to become WebKit, and now (including all subsequent forks) powers something approaching 90% of web views globally. Pretty amazing!
  • MarsIronPI 1y ago
    Out of curiosity, what prevents you from or motivates you not to use Linux as a daily driver?
    • sedatk 1y ago
      Likely using a Mac.
    • BrandoElFollito 1y ago
      Not OP but Windows 11 "just works" compared with Linux on a laptop. For context, I've been using Linux since 1994, including some tiny contribution to the then kernel. I also administered tons of Linux boxes professionally and personally. With this said, I am trying every 15 months or so to start Ubuntu on my laptop and see how I could live with it in my world of Outlook, zScaler and Zoom. So far I cannot and I would love to be proven wrong.
• ajuc 1y ago
  KDE 3.5 was the best Linux Desktop by far. Then they messed up with 4.0. Good to know it's back at the top.
  • rbc 1y ago
    The Trinity Desktop Environment is still carrying the KDE 3.5 torch. The Q4OS Linux distribution (Debian based) provides it as a primary desktop.
    • UncleSlacky 1y ago
      There's also Exe GNU/Linux if you prefer a Devuan base: https://exegnulinux.net/ https://exegnulinux.net/
• moondev 1y ago
  For a second I thought this was submitted by DHH and I was ready to grab some popcorn.
• wzdd 1y ago
  Just incidental (KDE is indeed great), but in case anyone is wondering, you can see similar wifi information on macOS by holding option while clicking the icon in the menu bar.
  • kokada 1y ago
    Author here: yes, I knew about this, but the fact that I don't remember exactly which key I need to hold shows why I hate this approach from macOS where "advanced" features are hidden behind shortcuts.
• barrkel 1y ago
  I've used Linux laptops for work since 2013. I finally switched to Linux on the desktop earlier this year, after getting a laptop and experiencing Windows 11. The laptop isn't running Linux yet, I'm not confident the battery lifetime story is great. But, I settled on KDE as well. Gnome just wasn't configurable enough. There were a number of rough edges that I couldn't find a setting in Gnome to fix, so I switched over. I'm running zfs on root, so I can have snapshots (every 5 minutes) and incremental backups to my NAS, also running zfs. Using zfsbootmenu. Which was interesting to set up, I learned a lot more about UEFI, framebuffer drivers, kexec kernel handoffs etc. than I ever expected to.
  • vladvasiliu 1y ago
    > The laptop isn't running Linux yet, I'm not confident the battery lifetime story is great. Depending on the laptop, you may be surprised. My HP EliteBooks (800 g8 series, AMD and Intel) are an absolutely better experience on Linux than Windows, it's not even close. I'm thinking specifically about sleep, of all things. The other day, my 2020 845g8 (amd) laptop crapped out during sleep while on windows, but was not actually dead, since it was hot to the point that it heated a different laptop which was lying underneath (a 14" mbp, so a pretty chunky piece of metal). I had to forcefully power it off. I was under the impression that some windows or driver update had fixed this, but apparently not. This never happened on linux, ever, which is my main os for this particular machine since day one and I never turn off the laptop, only reboot it for a kernel update. The Intel one is fairly reliable on Windows, but it did crash a few times (garbled screen). Battery life on the Intel model is better under linux (around +25%). On the Amd I can't comment, since I rarely use it on windows, and basically never on battery. At the office I have a 27" 5k screen which I have to use at 200%. Windows is basically always a blurry mess for some reason, although it recognizes the correct resolution. The only way to be sure to have sharp output is by booting it up with the screen attached. Which then goes to hell when the screen shuts off (think going to the toilet). Wayland on Linux (sway / arch) just works and is always sharp. I also can basically not connect my sony bluetooth headphones when running Windows. They connect instantly with LDAC under linux.
    • barrkel 1y ago
• sirwhinesalot 1y ago
  We now live in a world where KDE looks nicer, more professional, and more consistent than the latest macOS. I don't know how that happened, and KDE isn't even particularly nice looking, but here we are. For many years now KDE has focused on polish, bug fixing and "nice-to-have" improvements rather than major redesigns, and it paid off.
  • whatevaa 1y ago
    And yet people still complain about some inconsistencies in UI.
    • ActionHank 1y ago
      These people should be forced to use the hair-covered-gum-on-the-floor style UI experience that Windows has become and then perhaps they get to have an opinion.
      • swader999 1y ago
        There's a hint of cat urine mixed in too.
      • izacus 1y ago
        I find KDE still worse than both Windows 11 and macOS. Sorry, but the UI is just such a mash of margins, borders and icons that it looks downright janky in a way that even Win11 doesn't.
        • secalex 1y ago
          Um, Windows 11 still hasn’t moved all the necessary utilities and administrative panels over to the windowing toolkit Microsoft introduced in 2012, and MacOS 26(??) is… hideous.
        • sirwhinesalot 1y ago
          Which parts of Windows 11? Because there are still double digit different context menus in there, on recently developed built-in applications (introduced in 8 onwards). KDE is 1000x more consistent than that and has been that way for a long time now. It still has weirdly inconsistent margins in places but compared to the disaster that is the jumble of different UIs in Windows that's nothing. macOS before Tahoe, sure, but now? Have you looked at the screenshots where people layered different fullscreen apps on top of each other and the rounded corners look like a stack of cards because they're all different? It's a complete disaster. You could power all those fancy new AI datacenters with Steve's spinning skeleton.
• nartho 1y ago
  I realized I really like tiling better than floating windows and I like to manage them with keyboard mainly. Hyprland has been very good for that. Everything fits neatly, I can switch desktops and I don't have to move windows around
• iberator 1y ago
  I miss good old KDE1/2 desktop :) It would be hilariously fast nowadays and totally usable, all under like 64mb of RAM :)
• whalesalad 1y ago
  > For example, the network applet gives lots of information that in other operational systems are either not available or difficult to access. On macOS use option-click on the Wifi indicator in the top bar to get a "debug" version of the menu, with all the same data.
  • kokada 1y ago
    Author here: yes, I know about this, but the reason I don't remember the exactly button to press and I always alternate between then until I get what I want is why I hate this approach from macOS.
    • earthnail 1y ago
      It's always the option key that gives you more options. As silly as it sounds, that's the logic behind it, and it's consistently implemented.
      • kokada 1y ago
        Except that it isn't consistent, I was trying to use Option+Click for the battery and nothing happens.
    • thedumbname 1y ago
      So you has lied in the article in order to proud of Linux, so typical
      • kokada 1y ago
        > the network applet gives lots of information that in other operational systems are either not available or difficult to access. This macOS functionality goes to the "difficult to access" part. The only reason I know that this feature exist (but again, I never remember which key to press) is because I actually had issues with my last MacBook and Wi-Fi and had to search how to get this information. But if you feel better, sure, I was "lying" for internet cookie points ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
• pessimizer 1y ago
  I've been feeling guilty for not switching to KDE for years now, because I hate fiddling with desktops. I like the defaults to be boring, and basically to be Windows XP. KDE always struck me as annoying, but 1) MATE is bad and buggy, Caja most of all; and 2) as a Redhat and a Gnome hater, I really have no right to still be using it. Is there an easy way to get the Windows XP/Gnome 2 experience out of KDE? It would be magic if there were a Debian package called "I don't care about my desktop, it takes me months to change the wallpaper from the default." I do not care about beauty, I only care about stability (i.e. my desktop from 30 years ago.) If I could get WinXP out of XFCE, I would switch to that, but my attempts have been disappointing ergonomically. All of the webcruft and sparkle in Cinnamon is also very offputting, although I've been happy to recommend it to others who don't have the same irritation triggers as me.
  • thyristan 1y ago
    IceWM hasn't changed in more than a decade. ;)
    • pessimizer 1y ago
      I think you might have got me. Never tried it, going to try it now.
    • LargoLasskhyfv 1y ago
      If you mean the general way of using it, and stability, yes. But it is not stale, there have been a few releases in the last years, last one only about a month ago. One new feature they introduced was 'tabbed windows'.
      • thyristan 1y ago
        That's what I meant. There are no breaking changes. My config works the same as back then. I can use new features, but nothing forces me to use them, no "designer" decides I have to work differently after this update.
  • LargoLasskhyfv 1y ago
• NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
  Favorite? Or least unfavorite?
• CuriouslyC 1y ago
  KDE is going to take over the world. It already took over the browser world (yay konqueror), with the SteamDeck leading the way it's going to take over the consumer peripheral world as well.
• Zak 1y ago
  I've been a happy KDE user for years, but I recently discovered that Gnome is surprisingly good on a tablet. KDE is usable, but feels about as touch-native as Windows does. Gnome is easily as good a tablet experience as an iPad. There's only one fly in the ointment: Gnome's onscreen keyboard is both terrible and difficult to replace.
  • sho_hn 1y ago
    Maybe of interest: One of our recently-elected community-wide goals is to improve the Input story, and we started a new on-screen keyboard project called Plasma Keyboard in context of that. It's a bit experimental and a very early effort, but maybe something promising for you to track in some way.
    • Zak 1y ago
      I'll try it out. I have both Gnome and KDE on my tablet, but haven't taken much time to try to customize KDE to be a good tablet experience.
    • Zak 1y ago
      Much better than the Gnome OSK despite signs that it's early (I got some transparent flickering over the panel). I'd like it to have more punctuation and special characters available as long presses on letters, and for it to have a terminal mode with arrows, tab, ctrl, etc.... This comment was typed on plasma-keyboard.
      • sho_hn 1y ago
        Thanks for the feedback! We have an experiment for the "extended layout for tablet mode" bit parked somewhere, stay tuned.
  • ksymph 1y ago
    GNOME on touchscreens is in a weird place -- everything it needs to be perfect is right there. But there are a handful of pain points and weird bugs that make me think none of the developers are actually using it on a touch device. The OSK is the worst offender. I still prefer it over KDE on my 2-in-1/convertible laptop, though. Despite the jank it also irons out a lot of the pain points that more traditional desktops have with touch, and is clearly made with it in mind, even when the execution is iffy.
• vid 1y ago
  KDE is not just more configurable, they pack incredible innovation, like KDE Connect. Not to mention their semantic desktop ideas, which have been watered down post Nepomuk, nearly 20 years later still ahead of its time. It's the best of open source and user choice to have this international and often quite different source of new ideas and abilities.
  • extraduder_ire 1y ago
    Worth mentioning that despite the name, KDE Connect (or an alternate implementation) is available almost everywhere. You don't need to be running KDE.
    • vid 1y ago
      True, but it "came from" KDE and is pretty deeply baked in.
      • fgonzag 1y ago
        He means that it's an amazing utility and everybody should try it, no matter their desktop or operating system (available in windows, linux, and osx)
        • extraduder_ire 1y ago
          Yes. And Android/iOS.
• ThePyCoder 1y ago
  KDE has been crazy good for me. It's a very complete package, it has a quick launcher that's good, a good screenshot tool and very very nice window management features. When combined with libinput gestures, you can get macOS style three finger swipe between desktops. And not just a swap, but a nice swipe animation that pauses when you do on the touchpad. On a laptop, this is such a big timesaver. Its bottom bar icon handling is very good, customising is easy, and the settings panel is very clear. Everything is just so polished. Then there is kde connect as well, it integrates so effertlessly. Kde is truly a software powerhouse, well done.
  • yonatan8070 1y ago
    > a nice swipe animation that pauses when you do on the touchpad. For reference, these are referred to as "1:1 gestures"
• slicktux 1y ago
  I use KDE but I setup my desktop with two panels…the default launcher panel on the bottom and I add an extra panel atop with the clock and icons for applications I use the most.
• flkiwi 1y ago
  I tend to prefer gnome's simplicity and its desktop metaphor, though I'm a niri guy now. But KDE is excellent. It's fast, pretty, customizable, and enjoyable to use. My gripe with it is that the sheer number of options and their constant presence in the UI does not play nicely with my gently spectrum brain. It's not even that I can't resist the urge to fiddle--I can, no problem--but that the presence of all the options causes anxiety. (There are also a few, to my eye, inelegant spacing quirks, but nothing I can't ignore.) Having said that, it's a marginal difference. KDE is on my kid's computer and I use that from time to time without imploding in a ball of emotional-intellectual panic.
  • sho_hn 1y ago
    I have to say "the computer UI you can use without imploding in a ball of emotional-intellectual panic" is probably the best front of the box quote I've run across in a while ;-)
• sombragris 1y ago
  I have been a KDE user since KDE 1.x in Red Hat Linux 6.2, back in 2000, and used KDE almost exclusively for my Linux desktop since KDE 2.2. Right now using Plasma 6.4.5. In all that time, I was quite disappointed to see major distro after major distro (and even Sun Microsystems back in the day) choose GNOME over KDE/Plasma as their default desktops. How could they choose GNOME when KDE/Plasma is/was (in my very subjective opinion) way better? Go figure. Still until today, and with the exception of Steam Desktop, it's disappointing to see that Plasma is not the default/preferred desktop environment in (almost?) all major distros. So, it's really refreshing to see posts like these. I like when someone finally "gets it" and realizes the advantages and potential Plasma offers. In case you can't use Plasma, I'd recommend (in no particular order) LXQt, Cinnamon, MATE or XFCe as adequate options. But if you haven't, try Plasma, and customize it to your heart's content. More often than not, you'll end up liking it quite a bit.
  • dec0dedab0de 1y ago
    I vaguely remember that the shift to gnome was because of fear around QT licensing.
• kirito1337 1y ago
  The only reason I don't use KDE is because it takes too much RAM out of my PC (i work with 2gb ram)
• innis226 1y ago
  I've used dwm forever, switched to kde and realized i’d been maintaining my desktop more than using it. Drivers worked, screens behaved, no audio/mic hickups.
• kevinfiol 1y ago
  Add me to the list of people happy with KDE. I tried every desktop environment under the sun over the past fifteen years. I even wrote off KDE foolishly many years ago simply because I thought it looked gaudy. After Plasma 6 dropped, I decided to try it, and it quickly became my favorite Linux experience. Coming from GNOME, I was pleasantly surprised that many GNOME extensions I would rely on had equivalent feature functionality built into KDE (things like a Dock, Clipboard Manager, KWin Scripts, Tiling/Fancy Zones, animation configuration). I can pretty much echo everything said by the blog author here. (EDIT: Not to mention that so many of my GNOME extensions would break in between upgrades, or crash regularly, meanwhile KDE has been rock solid for me these past 9 months). I still think GNOME is slightly prettier, but KDE is infinitely more usable for me.
  • ktpsns 1y ago
    This is exactly also my story. Was a long term XFCE user (this was long before lxde became popular) because Gnome/KDE felt too heavy for my old computers. These days, KDE still has the silly loader window (no other DM has it) but oh boy the features you get once it is running are outstanding. This is not only plasma, but all the applications are top-notch quality. Just to name a few: Krita, Kate, the office suite.
    • yjftsjthsd-h 1y ago
      > Was a long term XFCE user (this was long before lxde became popular) because Gnome/KDE felt too heavy for my old computers. Apparently, recent KDE versions are actually one of the lightest resource DEs available, which has been great.
      • baobun 1y ago
        IME[0], that's only true for the X11 session, which is snappy, while the Wayland flavor feels sluggish and uses more CPU. Some distros are switching to Wayland by default so might be worth trying both and see what runs best on your machine. [0]: Possibly hardware-related? Older Intel mobile 4c here.
    • 1y ago
• bjoli 1y ago
  I would have been a very satisfied Aeon user had it not been for battling gnome. If you look at my comment history, I have described the issues I have had. After about 7 months I used KDE on a friend's computer and switched the same day. I think the best thing is that I don't have to install anything to make it work like I want, and as such there are no incompatible plugins that leaves me with a broken desktop functionality for a week or two every time there is a new release. That is an annoyance, but the most annoying things are all the small things that just don't work. Focus issues. Multiple screen issues. Date format issues.
• canterburry 1y ago
  Could someone relate KDE to PopOS or Ubuntu for me? I've been on Ubuntu and PopOS for the last 15 years.
  • lionkor 1y ago
    Ubuntu and PopOS are linux distributions, KDE is a desktop environment that you can find/install in lots of distributions, such as kubuntu for example.
• lionkor 1y ago
  I was super happy with KDE, until I found that i3 has a better paradigm for what I want. I tried Gnome on Fedora for a while now on my laptop; i don't mind it but KDE beats it in usability.
• stavros 1y ago
  I really like KDE and use it as my daily driver, but I'm really peeved that the "close" button isn't at the very top right of a maximised window. Instead, I have to hit the top right (extremely easy) and then go a bit down and to the left to actually hit the button. For all its crap, Windows really got that right since 95.
  • nulld3v 1y ago
    Are you using a non-default theme or are you using custom KWin scripts (e.g. to enable "window gaps")? Both my laptop & desktop run near-default KDE and moving the mouse to the top-right + clicking always closes the maximized window.
    • stavros 1y ago
      Hm no, I just run the default. It's good to know I did something wrong, I'll look into it. Thank you!
  • distances 1y ago
    For me the far top right pixel is still close button, and closes the window. Could it depend on the used theme? I'm using the default Breeze (with Classic colors though which I find just so good).
    • stavros 1y ago
      Hm I must be doing something wrong... I'll change the theme, thank you.
• Beijinger 1y ago
  I have been happy long time with the Moksha Desktop. https://www.bodhilinux.com/moksha-desktop/ https://www.bodhilinux.com/moksha-desktop/
• wraptile 1y ago
  KDE is truly incredible these days. I'm running Plasma 6 + Karousel[1] for scrolling window management and some custom kwin scripts for incredible maximalist experience. It does everything and does it beautifully https://i.postimg.cc/nznZwg44/Screenshot-20250918-213910.png https://i.postimg.cc/nznZwg44/Screenshot-20250918-213910.png 1 - https://github.com/peterfajdiga/karousel https://github.com/peterfajdiga/karousel
• askonomm 1y ago
  Really the main reason KDE wins for me is the flawless fractional scaling support that no other distro comes even close to.
• wiether 1y ago
  The main reason it took me so long to use Linux as my main OS on desktop was because Gnome is the default DE on the Debian based distros I tried. The day I discovered KDE is the day I switched to Linux as my main OS on desktop. It works, it's functional, it's a bit _nerdy_... Exactly what I want in a DE. Meanwhile, Gnome always felt like a low-cost version of MacOS. I'm glad we have options so everyone can find what they are looking for! I'm just mad at myself for not finding out about KDE before. It's 100% on me.
• Tade0 1y ago
  I returned to Linux when Microsoft started aggressively pushing Windows 11 and phasing out 10. I admit I previously had only a vague idea about KDE's existence - mostly through my know-it-all friend claiming that the Windows Vista/7 look was inspired by it. Anyway, I installed it as GNOME is not to my taste and indeed it was the Windows experience without the Windows issues, save for some weirdness like e.g. Open In Terminal taking its sweet time to actually open. Initially I was missing HDR, but Plasma 6 supports it and both Chromium and Firefox (though the latter in developer edition only and behind a flag at that) appear to have shipped their implementations, though I haven't managed to get it to work yet - the important part is that there's no indefinite delivery timeline any more.
• adamkf 1y ago
  I see these posts a lot, but this really does not match my experience. I find I run into many more bugs in kde than in gnome or other desktop environments. This bug made kde absolutely unusable for me: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=365255 https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=365255 (I think this bug is still present in X11, but I've moved on to Wayland.) The other bug I run into constantly is that "exposé" sometimes makes all the windows invisible. The only fix is logging out and logging in again. I've seen this across a number of different distros. Gnome is mostly boring and just works for me.
  • nzeid 1y ago
    I wanted to use Wayland but with both NVIDIA and AMD I would get this abnoxious display bug that would make all my open windows black, so I'm stuck with X11. For whatever reason this doesn't happen with Wayland+Intel.
    • TheCoelacanth 1y ago
      I used to have this problem with NVIDIA, but I don't think I've seen it since upgrading to the latest major version or two (41/42) of Fedora. That bug might have been fixed in recent versions of drivers/Wayland/desktop environments.
  • rick_dalton 1y ago
    I have the same problem with KDE, which is why is use gnome. I've tried a lot of the mainstream KDE distros like KDE neon, kubuntu and Fedora KDE and a few times I've had it break within a day of installing. Most of the time SDDM was at fault. I should switch it out but I can't be bothered, especially with gnome working flawlessly.
• trevithick 1y ago
  Why blur what's almost guaranteed to be RFC1918 private network info? My IP is 192.168.1.56, come and get me hackers.
• hsnewman 1y ago
  I have been using KDE as my primary desktop for 15 years. I love it, it's intuitive, polished and simple.
• tlamponi 1y ago
  FWIW, the few non-techie people in my life that I care enough to administer their notebooks and provide support all run KDE on Debian happily. While I had some reservations about acceptance when I made the switch from Windows 7, it turned out that it was one of my better choices of my life, and resulted in much less work for me compared to what Windows caused for me previously. And GNOME just did not work out well for most of these people and the workflows they are used to.
• jamala1 1y ago
  I like Xfce with Chicago95.
• brokegrammer 1y ago
  KDE has a ton of bugs that I don't like, but it's the DE that I always choose when using desktop Linux because it treats you like an adult. The ability to customize it is unparalleled unless you're building your own DE with a tiling window manager or something. One killer feature is KDE Connect. Saves me from having to grab my phone when I need to copy an SMS OTP code. It's similar to Phone Link on Windows, minus the privacy violations.
  • foresto 1y ago
    > KDE has a ton of bugs that I don't like, I have yet to use a desktop environment that doesn't come with annoying bugs. KDE offers so much utility and gets in my way so little, though, that fixing a couple of bugs myself has been very much worthwhile. I guess that makes it not exactly free-as-in-beer in my case. Still a great value. :)
  • patrick41638265 1y ago
    Absolutely agree on the KDE Connect part, but can you share a few examples of the "ton of" bugs you don't like? As a long time user myself, with nothing really coming to my mind as outright bugs, I am genuinely interested
    • brokegrammer 1y ago
      One bug that comes to mind is when you edit your profile in Konsole and click Apply, then close Konsole, the setting is lost. But if you click Ok instead of Apply, the setting is saved. However, sometimes the setting is saved when you click Apply. I think this bug has been around for years now. Nothing major, but there are small annoyances like this that diminish my experience as a user. Still the best DE anyway.
      • deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
• jmclnx 1y ago
  Funny thing is, I showed KDE to a Windows user a few months ago. She loved it, she stuck with windows for now due to "change and all". But I am sure I could move her over to Linux once Windows does something real bad to her. She is no the fence now, but I do nor what to end up as permanent tech-support :) FWKW, if I am ever forced into Wayland, right now I would use KDE.
  • Sunspark 1y ago
    Be careful. Not only are you at risk of being the permanent tech support guy, but if something goes wrong somewhere, sometime, it's your fault because you endorsed the product.
• packetlost 1y ago
  I've recently switched to a Windows 95-themed LXQT desktop (Chicago95) and have been having a pretty good experience. KDE is cool too. I used GNOME3 for years but tbh it's sorta just ok. Functional, polished, and slow.
• IshKebab 1y ago
  I agree. Significatly better than Gnome. I don't know why so many distros use Gnome by default. The only thing I can think is that it looks a bit nicer. They definitely have better artists.
  • dismalaf 1y ago
    More distros support Gnome by default because ALL the corporate distros (Red Hat, Suse, Ubuntu) only support Gnome. For better or worse, these corporations also develop Gnome. KDE is less popular because of the license situation of Qt and drama with the commercial entity that does a lot of KDE development. Gnome looks nicer, is more coherent, and in my experience, absolutely rock solid. Everything works out of the box. Trackpad gestures, touch, touch gestures, multi monitor support, HDR now; everything you could think of. Gnome also is opinionated, whereas KDE still feels like the ghost of Windows XP combined with random things Linux nerds claim to want...
    • IshKebab 1y ago
      > KDE is less popular because of the license situation of Qt Qt is LGPL and has been for literally decades. LGPL is fine. > and drama with the commercial entity that does a lot of KDE development. Kdab? I have no idea what you're talking about here. > Everything works out of the box. Trackpad gestures, touch, touch gestures, multi monitor support, HDR now; everything you could think of. Hasn't been my experience, and also "everything" is simply a lot less than KDE. For example most of the network settings are not available - you have to use some third party app that isn't installed by default (`nm-connection-edit` or something). Notifications are also awful in Gnome. They are the same colour as the background so difficult to notice (I had to end up editing some random CSS to fix this), and they disappear if you just mouse-over them. No history. I missed so many meetings. I'll give you that Gnome looks nicer. KDE has improved a lot but it still has some amateur looking parts. But it's just so incomplete!
      • everybodyknows 1y ago
        > Notifications are also awful in Gnome. > ... they disappear if you just mouse-over them. No history. Spot on. Wonder if it's any better in latest versions?
• ttfvjktesd 1y ago
  > By the way, the crop and blur from that screenshot above .... I just want to mention that blurring secret information is not secure. Use black bars instead.
• veidr 1y ago
  KDE has been the best overall desktop computing experience available on any platform for a few years now. Even later versions of KDE Plasma 5 smoked macOS, GNOME, and Windows. I'm sad because I am stuck with the requirement that all my computers can be accessed via remote desktop (e.g. RDP) in addition to SSH. And I also have to have 3-4 monitors per machine, so I can only use Wayland. Thus, I am stuck with GNOME on Linux, because no other desktop environment (including KDE) yet has functional remote desktop on Wayland. (Where by functional, I mean equivalent to Windows/macOS where you can log into the same session that may or may not be already running locally.) I know only 1-2% of users have my problems (^_^) but I just mention them in the hopes that KDE will keep developing krdp and make it work well enough to compete with GNOME and Windows on that axis...
  • MrResearcher 1y ago
    Could you please describe your remote access software stack in more details? What software/versions did you find more useful? Can you connect e.g. from Windows to Linux and vice versa? Or from Android to Linux? I believe, KDEConnect was specifically designed to address this (https://kdeconnect.kde.org/ https://kdeconnect.kde.org/), have you had a chance to give it a try?
    • veidr 1y ago
      Right now I believe GNOME is literally the only Linux desktop environment in the world that can: 1.) Enable RDP connections to Wayland sessions, whether they are already running locally, or not (i.e., start a new session if none exist when logging in remotely) 2.) Set that up via SSH, for a remote machine that has no display and anyway is remote so you cannot physically log into it (still very fiddly, but possible) My requirement is just that every system be remotely accessible via both GUI and CLI. So, RDP (or, theoretically, VNC over SSH would be OK) and SSH. In the old X11 days, all major Linux distributions met this bar. XRDP worked most everywhere. But Wayland is a very different story. The only Linux distribution that has Remote Desktop working on Wayland is Ubuttnu 25.04 ("working" per the above, not some "log into the GUI first locally, and then share your desktop" — that almost works in KDE but the experience is very buggy). The previous editions of Ubuttnu with GNOME almost worked, but logging in remotely would kill any GUI sessions already running locally. I can still achieve this using X11, so I do. But that doesn't work for my own personal workstation, because I have too many modern (4K or better) monitors for X11 to reliably work. So I need Wayland to drive my actual, physical monitors — and therefore am stuck with GNOME, because I really do need occasional remote access to the entire machine. I connected to RDP sessions from Linux, macOS, and Windows. (And actually, iPadOS — using Microsoft's app which used to be named "Remote Desktop" but then they bizarrely renamed it "Windows" — leaving me in the rather ludicrous position of saying "I make a remote desktop connection from my Apple iPad to my Arch Linux workstation, using Windows from Microsoft..." ¯\\_(ಠ_ಠ)_//¯
• dgan 1y ago
  I dont get the hype. Installed it at my Framework laptop, instead the usual xfce. Imho, it tries hard to be too smart, and second guess my intentions. Basic stuff like alt f4 doesn't work for some reason. I just couldn't bother to learn another desktop environment, so here goes xfce again
  • encom 1y ago
    Alt+F4 is bound to "close window" by default, so I don't know why that didn't work for you. Something I really enjoy with KDE is I can reconfigure practically all keyboard shortcuts. I use meta+(numpad+/-) to change volume.
  • kokada 1y ago
    > Basic stuff like alt f4 doesn't work for some reason. Author here: this definitely works fine for me (I am assuming you want Alt+F4 to close the current focused window).
  • mixmastamyk 1y ago
    FW did have a keyboard bug early on that affected function keys. Had to pass a param to the kernel to work around. Not sure it is still an issue on recent kernels, and haven’t thought of it in a year or two.
• boredatoms 1y ago
  KDE is awesome, ever since the plasma changes matured a few years ago its been excellent
• nmlt 1y ago
  I can agree to that, KDE is very good. Sadly my hardware has some persistent issues on Linux. Also, while ScreenTime on MacOS is very unpolished, at least it exists. I do not think something similar exists for Linux or KDE.
• assimpleaspossi 1y ago
  FreeBSD will offer an option to install KDE in the base installer when 15.0 comes out soon.
• 0x1ceb00da 1y ago
  Last time I used kubuntu ~5-6 years ago and it was pretty buggy. Has that improved? I'm on pop os and would probably just apt install to try it out. Is the kde version on pop os lts buggy?
  • bityard 1y ago
    I can't speak to Kubuntu or Pop OS, but KDE itself is much improved these days. I don't have a high tolerance for a desktop that gets in the way of my daily work, but I switched to KDE on Debian back when 12 was in testing and it's been 99.9% great ever since.
  • npteljes 1y ago
    I'm on KDE for the last 2-3 years on multiple machines, and I can't say I spotted any KDE bugs. My system is debian testing + KDE though (and I tried it on Manjaro as well). Sometimes it's not the DE, but the distro they come in. Kubuntu reviews bemoaned regressions, for example - some kubuntus worked well, and the next ones didn't.
• eth0up 1y ago
  I always wanted to use KDE but found a dependency hell kind of situation. I am a bit compulsive with keeping a tidy system, and with KDE there's so much that if uninstalled, drags the whole of KDE with it. Every time I give it another chance, usually on a new install, I find the same, that a bunch of applications, sometimes conflicting, cannot be removed. Mate was my favorite for many years, but it seems neglected now. Therefore I stick with xfce, which my primary complaint for is having an arbitrary, unmodifiable grid arrangement for desktop icons, which I find very irritating. I think, but can't recall with certainty, network-manager (or network-dictator) is one example of an application that can't be uninstalled without taking the whole KDE with it. Edit: at the predictable risk of being silently stoned to death as happens every time I criticize Network-Manager, which I will always despise from here to Elysium, I love wicd. Please bring it back.
  • kokada 1y ago
    Author here: I didn't tested but it seems in NixOS you can exclude any of the included applications using the `environment.plasma6.excludePackages` option. I am not sure if this breaks anything though, and of course, this doesn't help if you don't already use NixOS.
    • eth0up 1y ago
      Much appreciated for taking the time to leave this reply. NixOS has been on my list for while. In the void for now, and inclined to stay ;)
• 0x000xca0xfe 1y ago
  KDE is great! After Windows 7 I jumped to various Linux distros but the desktop UX/stability always felt like a downgrade until I ended up with Manjaro+KDE. It just works and gives me peace of mind. Once I was on a long-distance train and worked on my laptop when some businesswoman sat next to me. She also had a laptop but became visibly enraged over time. Turns out she was fighting with Windows 11 network settings, constant virus scanner popups, cloud sync problems in her office suite and whatnot. This was when I realized how much superior the Linux desktop experience already is.
  • mirzap 1y ago
    I tried it multiple times and never felt it was as good as people claimed it to be. Not sure if anything changed lately, but from the screenshots, I get the same vibe. Used Ubuntu for the last 15y, but now tried Arch (omarchy) with hyprland (I never heard about hyprland before), and that one felt natural for me. Had some issues (same as on Ubuntu), but resolved them (Nvidia card). Super happy now, I barely use my Mac now.
• lacoolj 1y ago
  Why not Gnome? Been my trusty pal over a decade. Can't go wrong with either, but any reason you chose KDE instead?
  • kokada 1y ago
    Because I had a good experience with KDE on SteamOS. This whole system is setup as a SteamOS-like experience using Jovian-NixOS (I wrote about it here: https://kokada.dev/blog/from-gaming-rig-to-personal-computer-my-journey-with-nixos-and-jovian https://kokada.dev/blog/from-gaming-rig-to-personal-computer...). Still, as far I remember SteamOS is still on KDE5 and uses X11, while I am using KDE6 on Wayland. So not exactly the same.
• Ninjinka 1y ago
  Just experienced KDE for the first time myself, and sent this in Slack a couple weeks ago: hadn't used linux in a desktop environment since college, but installed KDE Plasma on my old laptop today. It's so good might be enough to finally make me take the time to at least dual boot my desktop
• didibus 1y ago
  I love KDE, I wish it was the more common and popular Linux desktop over Gnome. It's really usable and efficient, works great. If it wasn't for Mac laptops insane battery life, performance, quality of build and trackpad, and amazing wake/sleep handling. I'd be on a Linux laptop using KDE.
• tarruda 1y ago
  I have recently replaced COSMIC by KDE + Krohnkite on the newly released Debian 13. After some tweaking of the key bindings, I managed to make it behave very similarly to COSMIC.
  • t_mann 1y ago
    > make it behave very similarly to COSMIC How does the auto-tiling compare to COSMIC? Does it support stacked tiling (ie tabs)?
    • tarruda 1y ago
      It is not the same as COSMIC, but Krohnkite is very customizable and has like 9 tiling modes.
• noisy_boy 1y ago
  I came back to KDE on Fedora after sticking with Pop!_OS for quite a while and boy am I happy with the move. A lovely and seamless experience. KDE team if you are reading this, please keep up the incremental and pragmatic improvements and fingers crossed, don't mess this up.
• lxe 1y ago
  KDE's Dolphin is an incredible file manager in terms of usability and speed. I held this sentiment 10 years ago, and now recently rediscovering it, my opinion hasn't changed. I love that KDE is filling a niche that Gnome has left. I love Gnome too and their direction is valid as well, but I think it's UX philosophy has contributed to KDE's popularity.
• MrVitaliy 1y ago
  KDE is excellent, but these days all you really need is a nice terminal and a browser.
• shmerl 1y ago
  KDE is great. It's my daily driver.
• lysace 1y ago
  It's been a decade since I last tried it. Before that, a lot more regularly, starting in the late 90s. I always ended up writing it off as an unimaginative Microsoft Windows clone that primarily focused on adding more settings/buttons. This makes me want to try it for the 8th time or so.
• yangosoft 1y ago
  I've been using it daily since I installed Corel Linux, which included KDE 1. Even during the difficult transition from KDE 3 to KDE 4. I really like it. Complete customization and control. A few months ago, I added some basic features to Gwenview; for the first time, I was able to give back to the community.
• puika 1y ago
  I love the KDE ecosystem except for one very specific bug in kdeconnect in Linux where media of any kind in chrome, firefox, etc. are stopped after being paused for a while, so i have to refresh pages constantly, and pray the previous timestamp was preserved. Apart from that, the DE and configuration options are miles away from windows 11 to be honest, and will probably go the KVM+passthrough route when I upgrade my desktop to keep Windows for CAD work, etc. Even Windows' Explorer is egregiously clunky nowadays and will break features like previews on its own and hang all the time.
• kmarc 1y ago
  Not surprised. I also switched from sway. After half a year I'm still not as fast as with sway, but getting there. Things that were hacky with sway and macos (external monitor, screen share, Bluetooth, vpn) just work out of the box. But yeah, it's not as pretty as gnome or macos.
• porridgeraisin 1y ago
  I like KDE, just not the defaults which I think are horrific. I had my fair share of ricing linux in general, and have done my rounds through all kinds of window manager and desktop environments and theming engines and desktop effects. Unfortunately, what I found was once you added plugins and themes and this and that, there was too many breaking changes when considering the whole UI system. This is not really a technical fault of KDE devs themselves, but it turned into something akin to managing a node.js project. Yes I know it you use less plugins it's better, but I want both: plugins as well as pixel perfect consistency. I found similar issues in gnome, where it's even worse since the DE itself pushes tons of breaking changes. Note that I consider even a settings menu reorg as a breaking change. I finally settled on XFCE, where for years now, nothing has changed. Not even one pixel. The menus are the same, the search results come in the same order so I have muscle memory like "<text> arrowkey arrowkey enter". That's my expectation from a DE. I basically have the entire desktop byheart. And this culture seems to extend to the plugins as well, for example the various xfce4-panel plugins I use have all been pixel-perfect equal for years now. My themes and what not have never broken on me either. Windows up until 10 also had similar properties, I had a crap ton of plugins with rainmeter, 10k+ LOC AHK scripts, etc, and nothing ever broke. I also like that the shared library disease isn't that high in XFCE-land, in KDE installing something needed too many common k-* packages. I understand KDE gives a whole suite of apps so it might be necessary, but this also meant that I cannot use KDE apps even the ones I liked, on another DE without also getting... kwallet or something iirc. The thing I miss the most from KDE is wobbly windows. I would kill for that feature, but unfortunately, I don't think I would tolerate breaking changes for that feature.
• unlimit 1y ago
  I was using KDE, but with Debian 13 upgrade kwin crashes with every alt-tab. Had to switch to cinnamon. I run Ryzen 3200G.
  • foresto 1y ago
    Is it possible that you installed a non-stock task switcher (which handles Alt+Tab) back when you were using Debian 12, and it's not compatible with Plasma 6? That happened to me. The fix was simply to replace my old alternative task switcher with a current one. In case you don't like the stock one, there's a simple and clean one in the store called "Aqua medium icons".
    • unlimit 1y ago
      Don't think so. The issue is probably with drivers. The crash does not happen when software rendering is used.
• zem 1y ago
  I'm in the apparently small demographic that wants both a full fledged desktop environment and automatic tiling. kde used to support swapping out the window manager for xmonad but something in the upgrade from kde5 to kde6 broke that, and I ended up just switching to cosmic.
• antonyh 1y ago
  I run with XFCE for work to drive a mix of GTK and KDE apps. Personally I find the base system is slower, but the apps themselves are better than the GNOME alternatives in terms of functionality and visual appeal. XFCE > KDE > GNOME > MacOS For my Steam machine, it's all KDE and works beautifully.
• flux3125 1y ago
  I always "wanted" to switch to KDE for good, but I never managed to because of instability issues and random crashes, but this was ~6 years ago. Today I use it as my daily driver and I'm immensely satisfied. I've been using it for a few months now (since March according to my pacman.log) and haven't had a single problem. Kudos to the developers for the amazing work!
• zuInnp 1y ago
  I got a 5 year old Lenovo Thinkcentre for free and tried multiple desktops. The only desktop that had great scaling at a 4k screen was KDE. Gnome was okay with 1x or 2x scaling, but 1.3x ... big nope. Did not work out, performance was very bad. With the end of Windows 10 support, I installed KDE Neon on my parents computers. Works fine, they can use it. Even on the Surface Pro 5 touchscreen, KDE works great. In the past I was using Gnome (or Ubuntu's Unity) and never was a fan of KDE, but right now (especially because of the great 4k scaling), I really like it.
• sohrob 1y ago
  I used to tinker with a bunch of different Linux desktop environments and had a hard time deciding on which one to standardize on because there is something to love about all of them. I suffered from major analysis paralysis as a result. In the end, I went with KDE Plasma across all of my devices because it's the most well-rounded and allows for customization without too much fuss. Fedora's Kinoite is perhaps the best KDE Plasma edition out there in my view.
• yyyk 1y ago
  I like KDE (definitely better than Gnome), but their Wayland migration in KDE6 removed features that could still be implemented. e.g. I get why they don't want custom lockscreen programs now, but running custom scripts on lock/unlock was removed. That's rather unfortunate.
  • wkat4242 1y ago
    Yeah I'm still on X11 and I use this to set the screen sleep to 10 seconds. And back to never sleep when I unlock it again.
• geniium 1y ago
  Jeeesh i said the same almost 20 years ago
• makz 1y ago
  I’m a Linux user since 2001, I saterted with KDE 2.2 or something. I stopped using it in favor of Gnome, XFCE and recently fluxbox over the years. A few days ago I decided to give it a try again and I have to say I’m impressed. KDE has reached a level of sophistication I had never seen before in any other Linux desktop environment. For me the experience is almost on par with macOS and slightly above windows.
• Daunk 1y ago
  I've tried to run KDE Plasma for years, but it's just so unstable and buggy (I also think it looks bad, but that doesn't really matter). I recently had a friend that said "KDE Plasma is great now, give it a go!" so I did, and instantly broke it by installing a theme via the official themes manager, and I had lots of smaller issues, like the Steam notifications appear above the taskbar and the Steam Friends List being slow to open. I told my friend and he said "Oh, that's KDE Plasma and not just Linux being weird?" and he ended up switching desktop, realizing so many minor issues was due to KDE Plasma.
  • never_inline 1y ago
    It's super responsive with keybindings and all convenience features I can hardly be bothered by these aesthetic issues like some icons appearing 69 picometers too left OR looking ugly.
• ekjhgkejhgk 1y ago
  I have a terribly uninformed question. Ive been using i3wm ever since I learned it exists. Ive always had old machines and used to run Lubuntu, and at some point moved to i3wm. Its super fast and light which is what I care about the most. I dont feel like Im missing anything, but then again a lot of people dont know theyre missing things which they cant imagine (before cars if youd ask people what they wanted, they wouldve said faster horses, etc etc). So: What am I missing by using i3wm instead of for example Gnome or KDE? I dont care about pretty and shiny and animations. What else? Surely the whole holabalooba cant all be about pretty drawings and animations...? (Sure, I probably would be able to find out by myself by trying these things but... since my starting point is the belief that Im not missing something, why would I be looking at these things...?
  • cogman10 1y ago
    KDE and gnome have nice point and click interfaces that are pretty natural. If you feel at home in a terminal then you aren't missing much. However, if you want a nice GUI to configure your bluetooth headphones or network without having to know the various bluez commands then kde is nice to use.
    • ekjhgkejhgk 1y ago
      Thank you. Yeah bluetooth headphones are a pain. When I used to use them I had memorized how to do it from bluetoothctl, though Ive since forgotten because I havent used bluetooth in a long time anyway.
  • dualogy 1y ago
    I used i3 for a few years before switching to KDE 1 or 2 years ago. For me choosing a full Desktop Environment over just-a-window-manager is about getting all the basics already co-installed with it: a default file explorer, default calculator, default terminal other than xterm, especially a default network-manager GUI, a sys-tray already populated with volume / screen / power / bluetooth / mounted-devices / clipboard / clock & date, a launcher, a system-wide config GUI ... without a DE, every single one of these is a manual install (plus researching the best choices and verifying & comparing their quality live) and/or numerous configuration files in diverse places, googling their syntax / incantations ... since all this stuff is "side-show stuff" (ie not my code editor, browser, email client, office suite), I nowadays appreciate batteries-included when setting up a new machine, reducing overall time-to-code-editing. But the endless custom-tweaking back then was good fun back in its own right. =)
• sharts 1y ago
  Would be nice if we could run KDE on MacOS
• 0x10ca1h0st 1y ago
  KDE is great but for someone who wants to truly develop their desktop manager, Hyprland has been really exciting to work with. I was using KDE Plasma for the longest time until discovering Hyprland.
• UncleOxidant 1y ago
  It's been years since I used KDE. I do recall that it had this cool feature where if you logged out and/or restarted the machine, when your desktop came back up the terminal (konsole) had the same tabs open to the same directories you were working in before. Haven't seen anything like that in Gnome world.
• theLegionWithin 1y ago
  kde is the best DE. only time I don't use it is in headless environments
• __aru 1y ago
  I moved from Gnome to KDE around 2 years ago. I just got tired of Gnome extensions breaking all the time, Gnome not being customizable, no support for AppIndicators, etc. In my opinion, Gnome's UI feels more visually polished than KDE, but that polish doesn't matter when functionality takes a back seat to it. One extremely minor complaint I have about KDE is that I wish they'd rename "Dolphin" to something like "KFiles".
  • wkat4242 1y ago
    Yes agreed. It's a very non descriptive name for such a key part of the DE.
• tannhaeuser 1y ago
  > I am now using KDE as the desktop environment for my gaming rig Any particular benefits for gaming? Wouldn't it make more sense to use whatever SteamOS and derivatives use? I'm guessing for gaming you'll want a launcher app, wine/proton config and troubleshooter apps, chat apps, apps with game controller support, and the like?
  • kokada 1y ago
    I explained more details in the previous blog post (https://kokada.dev/blog/from-gaming-rig-to-personal-computer-my-journey-with-nixos-and-jovian/ https://kokada.dev/blog/from-gaming-rig-to-personal-computer...), but my current setup replicates a SteamOS experience in NixOS using the Jovian-NixOS project. So basically the same thing, the system boots in gaming mode by default and I can switch to the KDE based desktop by select "Switch to Desktop" in Steam's Big Picture mode. So no, I am not using KDE for gaming itself (keep in mind that it is possible, the games runs well under KDE too), I am using KDE in my gaming rig (that is, my desktop that is focused in gaming), but for gaming itself I generally use Steam's Big Picture mode.
• aussieguy1234 1y ago
  "I actually can't find much difference between KDE and my Sway setup to be honest" Can windows be arranged as tabs, i3/sway style? This is my favourite layout at the moment. I disabled tabs in my browsers, since they are redundant if my window manager provides the tabs.
  • kokada 1y ago
    I meant performance wise. Of course using day to day usage is really different between the two, but for things like opening applications and etc. I can't find much difference between Sway and KDE except for the animations.
• kristianp 1y ago
  One thing I'm happy with in KDE is that the main menu is still a thing. At least there is an option in many apps, such as the file manager, Dolphin, to show the menu. Unlike Gnome which is very inconsistent about hamburger menus and open buttons, KDE just sticks to the old-fashioned menu bar. In this it is like MacOS, (although if you don't use a Mac you mightn't be aware of the universality of the main menu, because screenshots of apps often don't include the menu)[1]. [1] e.g. see the screenshots at https://zed.dev/ https://zed.dev/
• 0dayz 1y ago
  KDE is amazing but one annoying issue is that not every ux is equal. To be fair, mac OS x is the worst or most miserable once you venture into the areas that are either more advanced or obscure. Windows there wins, only sysadmin tools tend to be painful to use.
• eviks 1y ago
  > stealing up the focus. However KDE has this "Window Rules" Cool feature, but can it block focus stealing only for slowly starting apps if you've switched to another app before the slow main window appears?
• RobertEva 1y ago
  Coming from GNOME, the big surprise was “no extensions needed.” Dock, tiling-ish, clipboard manager… all there out of the box.
• smittywerben 1y ago
  I avoided KDE after first experiencing several bad dates with Gnome. Skipped straight to xfce or a tiling wm. Years later, decided to try KDE again because someone made an arch linux joke about it. I don't remember the joke, but it screamed "I use arch btw". That's when I realized KDE and I had something going on. In fact, my Gnome-fearing worldview was reinforced just last month by my construction of samba/s3/sftp windows NTFS-LFS FUSE netshare vpn on my Proxmox server to solve this issue of multiple desktop environments for the last and final time. Compatibility with everything? No issue. I achieved a monumental 2kb/s transfer speed, slower than the modem speeds I experienced in my childhood on dial-up. My 2kb/s supercomputer environment was remarkably consistent across all protocols. Thanks to the Gnome community, I was glad to hear that the speeds I was getting were apparently a major improvement since the last release. Surprisingly, nobody has provided me with any file access architecture memes from the thriving Arch Linux PDP-11 community. Needless to say, having the choice of a desktop environment is great. And KDE is just happy I showed up with a cool ride. edit: less neg
• bigpeopleareold 1y ago
  Used KDE for years now. It is stable and just works. It's not important enough, but I wish there was a function like in macOS that switches between applications fully on Alt-Tab, where all windows would show (I have it half-way there, "show one icon per application" in System Settings). macOS's function I think reflects old Classic macOS functionality.
• psychoslave 1y ago
  Haha, remember me my first experience with Linux through Knopix, runnable from CD. :D Currently gnome provide my favorite UX, but I might have a look back.
• throwaway58670 1y ago
  I continue to be dumbfounded by programmer articles (and project pages for that matter) that would benefit immensely from leading with screenshots and videos but instead bury or omit them, opting for "a thousand words" that fail to deliver. You're writing about desktop environments. Show pics.
  • kokada 1y ago
    Author here: maybe find another review from a site that is more interesting for you then? Not everything in the internet is for everyone, and this is also true for life. This is my blog, those are my own rules, otherwise I would never get any blog post published.
    • fragmede 1y ago
      Reader here: maybe listen to reader feedback? If your goal is to write into the ether to generate training data for LLMs, then by all means, continue! As a human, I'm trying to communicate ideas and thoughts to people. When people don't understand what I'm trying to transmit to them, I adjust my transmissions to better and more. effectively communicate with them.
      • kokada 1y ago
        My goal is really... Nothing, I guess? I write things that I found interesting. If you look at the submission I wasn't even the person that did it, someone else found it and posted it here. My blog is not for other humans, it is mostly for me. Sometimes other humans find it interesting and that is fine, but they're almost never the target. If my objective was to have popular blog posts read by other humans, yes, I would definitely take the feedback by heart (even if the way OP worded is unnecessarily passive aggressive). But no, it is not, and this is why I said what I said (that not everything is for everyone).
  • antalis 1y ago
    I don't think that the author could have conveyed the same thing with less text and more images and videos. I agree that many project pages (all those about an app with a GUI) could use a screenshot though.
• 12ian34 1y ago
  this is one of the most unsubstantiated claims and blog posts I've ever seen. How something can be presented as a "favorite desktop" with this little justification, and a heavy focus on a few features which provide such little value to most of the population, is absurd to me. This is not a useful feature comparison for 99.999999% of people. However, it seems to have sparked some good discussion here so I guess that is valuable!
  • mvdtnz 1y ago
    Are you under the impression that every person who expresses an opinion is obligated to justify it to some arbitrary bar? They are not. This person likes kde and presented some reasons why. That's it. Don't overthink it.
    • 12ian34 1y ago
      I agree - I am overthinking it a bit. Kudos to the poster for publishing something and it getting to front page. I suppose where my trouble comes from is that my bar is different. However, indeed, one bar isn't necessarily better than another.
      • kokada 1y ago
        Author here: I like to think my blog kind like my personal space. I didn't expect this particular post to become as popular to be honest (it is the most popular blog post from my blog right now, and I think I wrote way more interesting pieces in the past), but here it is. But yes, if I was going to write a full intricate review I would probably get exhausted and never post anything. Instead, I just wanted to highlight a few of the things that I found good (and yes, they're good from MY point of view), and I am glad this was enough to generate a good discussion.
• ldng 1y ago
  Kind of fascinating to see that "KDE is now my favorite desktop" is getting ~780 pts while "Gnome 49 Release" announce has a grand total of ... 9 pts. So few actually really care about Gnome it's depressing to see. And seeing the release is appalling, I mean... "Totem’s aging GTK 3 base" replace by Showtime "Evince’s older GTK 3 foundation" What's to understand ? That GTK 4 needs YET AGAIN a full rewrite as porting from GTK 3 is too hard and old ? All that to impose a touch design that the majority of desktop apps devs DON'T want to follow ? Gnome project lost itself and keep digging. Mate is decaying, I can't believe I'm writing this but KDE might be my next desktop.
• jlpcsl 1y ago
  Same here for the last couple of years. KDE Plasma is by far the best computer desktop environment and getting even better fast. Complete opposite to closed corporate desktops on Windows and macOS which are quite bad these days and getting even worse. Corporate desktop ensittification is in full swing for years now. I am so glad for the wonderful KDE Plasma desktop (and GNU/Linux oprating system in general), which still respects my basic human rights like freedom, privacy and does not try to push that Annoying Idiocy down my throat. Thanks a bunch to all free software developers for making all this possible.
• jrepinc 1y ago
  Absolutely my favourite too. KDE Plasma is the best all around desktop environment. Very flexible and customizable so you can tune it to emulate any other desktop environment, or just make it into something completely of your own. Also packed with features and nice little thoughtful things no other desktop has. Absolutely love the powerful window management features (although i still miss some tiling features and I miss tabbed windows ala BeOS). Activities features to separate environment for work [projects] and home is also nice and would love to see it extended and supported in more applications. Despite all these powerful features and configurability it is still one of the most light-weight desktop environments, very efficient. And the KDE community is also one of the most if not the most friendly I have encountered. Great job and thanks to all.
• BrenBarn 1y ago
  When I finally switched fully to Linux a few years ago I decided to go with Kubuntu and overall I've been satisfied. It's customizable so I can make it look and feel pretty similar to Win98 (always my goal :-) and works pretty smoothly. There are occasional hiccups but I had problems with Windows too. It's pretty amazing how full-featured KDE is.
• xYLS63 1y ago
  I want to like kde, I really do. I've tried running it on my main beefy PC for a few years now and it's always so much slower (like UX of random things like opening windows and moving things around). On vm's it's just horrible and has known issues I recently gave up on kde and went back to Ubuntu/gnome and damn it's nice Just to stress how much I want to like kde, I've contributed quite a bit to kde open source apps. The polish of kde vs gnome is noticeably missing but the performance is what kills me the most. I've tried it on multiple devices and I was determined to make it work but after years I'm going away for it for a few years