10 ms·

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 p

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.
    - ActionHank 1y ago
      Why are there 2 context menus, multiple places to change settings, and a file explorer that is somehow a worse experience to use than one they had in XP? All the while they develop and push a product that screenshots what you are doing so that AI can "assist" you. Not to mention pushing ads and news and free to play games. Maybe the margins or icons aren't what you'd prefer, but you're being intellectually dishonest pretending that there is any uniformity in their product let alone even a single iota of care or interest in the experience the user has with their product.
    - chupasaurus 1y ago
      There are 4 (or 5?) volume control UIs in Windows 11.
  - pxoe 1y ago
    Even Windows 11 is more refined and consistent in its design. (well, in the parts that are modern, which...shouldn't it be damning that even with those legacy parts it's still better designed?)
- islon 1y ago
  There's two types of desktops: the ones people complain about, and the ones nobody uses.
  - ninetyninenine 1y ago
    I can’t stand those smug one-liners — they flatten reality instead of reflecting it. Reality is... often-times the best things are often unused. And if these things were hypothetically used... there'd be significantly less complaints than the status quo.
- WD-42 1y ago
  KDE the desktop is consistent. The problem is the applications aren't. It's completely possible to run a GNOME desktop without a single QT app, it's near impossible to use KDE without any GTK apps. And there are so, so many great libadwaita apps coming out these days. So on KDE you still end up with an inconsistent mash up of toolkits and styles.
  - kelvinjps 1y ago
    Both DE have tools to make the UI toolkits to adapt to the DE, GTK with breeze theme and qt with libawaita theme
    - WD-42 1y ago
      Sure but they look pretty bad.
  - soraminazuki 1y ago
    That's completely backwards. KDE provides consistent styling and window controls across a wide range of toolkits. GNOME, on the other hand, is incapable of this, particularly on Wayland. It's sad because I really like the aesthetics and user experience of the GNOME desktop and its applications. However, the inconsistent user interface for non-GNOME applications is becoming a deal breaker as more of them transition to Wayland. These applications have no choice but to create their own title bars and other UI elements, resulting in a mishmash of different looks, controls, and fonts. Many of them don't even include shadows around the windows because they aren't sure if they should. As a result of all of this, many third party applications look hideous on GNOME. As much as I want to continue using GNOME, I'm increasingly drawn to KDE with each passing day due to this issue. I rely on applications like Kitty Terminal, mpv, and WINE. They all suffer from this issue on GNOME, but not on KDE. Ultimately, if I have to choose between a desktop environment and third-party applications, I will prioritize the applications. I think many others would do the same.
ActionHank 1y ago
It's solid, things are where you expect, beginners can use it with very little guidance, and experts can turn off whatever they don't want or need. Super solid, <3 for the KDE team and product.
betap 1y ago
You are absolutely right on KDE focusing on polish and bug fixes. Back in 2014(?) it was weird, confusing, and never seemed to work right for me. Now, it is my go-to Linux desktop environment.
notmyjob 1y ago
I feel like naming everything with a “K”, like how some families name all their kids with names that start with the same letter, is the real genius of KDE. Who doesn’t like those kinds of families.
- distances 1y ago
  > Who doesn’t like those kinds of families. You'll find those people also in these comments :) Can't please everyone, which is totally fair and expected.
- IshKebab 1y ago
  I don't. It often feels cringeworthy, childish and unprofessional.
  - intrikate 1y ago
    I just like that the text editor has the same name as me :D
    - chupasaurus 1y ago
      Hello, KDE's Advanced Text Editor /s (just a text editor is KWrite)
  - account42 1y ago
    KCry me a river.
- rishav_sharan 1y ago
  I like it. It gives me confidence that a random software will surely work well on my kde desktop
distances 1y ago
KDE usability really started improving when the Visual Design Group was launched during the KDE 5 cycle, spearheaded by Jens Reuterberg. There was a real cool atmosphere of designer-developer cooperation which quickly led to very sleek results that persist to this day. VDG tackled (and tackles) not only design for the desktop itself, but also for KDE applications that had never seen a designer's touch before. I've been long a KDE user, even through the 4.0 troubles, but also the first to admit that it used to look clunky. Looking at old screenshots is a quick reminder of how far this initiative has taken it.
- uncircle 1y ago
  VDG must be so busy that my #1 feature request for KDE, support for smart copy&paste in Konsole, has been stuck in bikeshedding hell for almost 5 years because the maintainer didn't want to merge an optional feature without the VDG go-ahead :( I love open source and have been running Linux since 1999, but my experience of contributing to both KDE and GNOME is your PRs never go anywhere unless you're part of the inner cabal of maintainers, otherwise any small bugfix or feature goes into bikeshedding mode, and it's the reason I don't contribute any more. That said, I run KDE now after two decades of GNOME. It's pretty good and has been looking good for a while now.
  - mixmastamyk 1y ago
    Konsole is my least favorite terminal because of all the klutter. Have to remove several buttons, and the context menu with hundreds of options can’t be simplified to my knowledge.
    - WD-42 1y ago
      This 100%. Just look at the screenshot on the KDE page for Konsole: https://apps.kde.org/konsole/ https://apps.kde.org/konsole/ What's up with the massive amount of chrome used for nothing except new tab/copy/paste buttons? Is it really necessary to take up what could be used for 2+ extra lines of terminal output for a labeled Copy button? Compare it to gnome console, or any other terminal really, and you will get far more terminal output for the size of the window, as it should be. And it's not just Konsole. So many KDE apps have this same problem. Giant labeled buttons taking up space from the actual content, for things you will never use or have well established keyboard shortcuts already.
everdrive 1y ago
Major changes aren't even _desirable_ in UI. People kind of emotionally enjoy novelty, however when it actually comes to using a computer consistency is superior to absolute excellence. Figuring out where settings and buttons are just because you ran software updates is a total waste of time on both ends; it wastes the user's time, and was a waste of time to develop. Maybe I'll switch from gnome to KDE this weekend, this looks promising.
- baq 1y ago
  Glad to know I'm not alone. As I grow older moving stuff around just to make it prettier doesn't do much except make me angry that 'they' changed things for no reason again.
- ethbr1 1y ago
  Any organization that doesn't have backpressure against UX breaking changes is vulnerable to this. The root cause is that UX folks almost never use a product as often as their users. So what's an "oh, left instead of right" minor change for them is anathema to someone with muscle memory. Ergo, IMHO, all breaking UX changes should be required to clear a high bar, with the default being status quo + tweaks.
  - everdrive 1y ago
    I think it's perplexing that UX has generally gotten worse subsequent to multiple developments which you might expect would make UX better: - We now have a plethora of UX logging and can see real time where users struggle. - There are dedicated UX teams whose sole focus is to improve UX. - More people are using technology than ever, and so we have a more representative sample of data to work with. But despite this, UIs have consistently gotten worse over the past 10-20 years. I think there are a few possible culrpits. - Mimicking mobile UIs, as eloquently called out here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45290812 - I suspect there is something of a race to the bottom WRT To UX teams; they're always designing around any pain point, which has a few knock-on effects: - There will _always_ be pain points, and so there will _always_ need to be UI changes. - Designing a product so that the bottom of the bell curve can use it well probably does make an objectively worse product. - There's nothing wrong with needing to learn a UI, and this "learning" could be mistaken as pain point. - UX teams can't exist if there aren't things to constantly change, which increases the UI churn. In concert, you have a UX which is constantly changing, and never really getting better, and often getting worse.
crossroadsguy 1y ago
To folks using Asahi Linux: I looked at some Asahi Linux videos and it always shows KDE and the interface is Windows like (or what I call Windows like). I never liked that and that is single biggest reason I never tried KDE. I know it's Linux and KDE and GNOME can pretty much made to look like each other (i.e their default look and feel). Is it trivial on Asahi Linux or needs a lot of tweaking? Something like what ElementaryOS would look like - look/feel/UX wise ElementaryOS has been my gold standard sine it released and the last I checked it still felt that way. But since anything other than what Asahi Linux installs and support by default, i.e. Fedora Remix, is neither recommended nor fares well on Mac so I don't think I can use ElementaryOS (which is essentially Ubuntu LTS) really. Even Asahi Linux team recommends KDE. Also - can one access certain Mac folders in Asahi (e.g. ~/Pictures)? And is it even recommended, if it's possible (Security wise)? (I have been exploring/searching on Asahi and I am gearing up to use it on my M1 MacBook Pro - will be using/trying Linux desktop after more than a decade)
- oblio 1y ago
  ElementaryOS is a Mac clone. You want a Mac-like setup instead of a Windows-like setup.
  - cosmic_cheese 1y ago
    Kinda. It’s more like an alternate universe GNOME that embraced OS X 10.9 Mavericks style UI design. It’s gorgeous and I wish more desktop environments would take cues from it but it’s only Mac-like superficially.
    - 28304283409234 1y ago
      Gorgeous, lightweight, easy on the eyes, gets out of the way. I cannot plug it enough.
  - 28304283409234 1y ago
    It may have started out that way but it definetly is no longer. It has some very nice features that Mac lacks (picture-in-picture for whatever part of the screen you want for example).
mrbluecoat 1y ago
I agree. ElementaryOS was showing similar promise but their latest major release was a step backwards, tripping over new whistles and bells instead of maintaining rock solid stability with their polished UI.
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago
  What happened with ElementaryOS ? I'm not in the loop, just check in every few months and last time I checked t was the most popular go-to Arch spin with batteries included. Is CachyOS better now?
  - esseph 1y ago
    Elementary isn't an arch spin, it's a Ubuntu derivative
    - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
      Am my bad, I was thinking of EndeavourOS the Arch based one.
DyslexicAtheist 1y ago
didn't it clearly say in the final paragraphs that, with KDE the taskbar is a mess. I for I, will continue to recommend Sway. /s
- UI_at_80x24 1y ago
  I'm a diehard i3/sway fan. IMHO the 'desktop environment' is supposed to get out of your way. I'll admit that sometimes having a widget that makes it "easier" to connect to random wifi, or bluetooth devices is handy; but that depends on your use-case. My hardware changes once every 5-10 years, and I never use bluetooth so these features are not helpful to me.
GuB-42 1y ago
KDE is, as its name implies, a desktop environment. And it hasn't been "infected" by the "mobile" virus. I often wondered why desktop UIs became so terrible somewhere in the 2010s and I don't want to attribute it to laziness, greed, etc... People have been lazy and greedy since people existed, there must have been something else. And I think that mobile is the answer. UI designers are facing a really hard problem, if not impossible. Most apps nowadays have desktop and mobile variants, and you want some consistency, as you don't want users to relearn everything when switching variants. But mobile platforms, with their small touchscreens are completely different from desktop platforms with their large screens, keyboards and mice. So what do you do? In addition to mobile, you often need to target the browser too, so: native desktop, native mobile, browser desktop, browser mobile. And then you add commercial consideration like cost, brand identity, and the idea that if you didn't change the UI, you didn't change anything. Commercial considerations have always been a thing, but the multiplication of platforms made it worse, prompting for the idea of running everything in a browser, and having the desktop inferface just being the mobile interface with extra stuff.
- guappa 1y ago
  But… I use kde on my tablet. There's a few programs that are designed with this use in mind. For example: alligator, angelfish, kasts. Dolphin works really well too.
- dismalaf 1y ago
  > KDE is, as its name implies, a desktop environment. And it hasn't been "infected" by the "mobile" virus. Who do you think has been "infected" by the "mobile" virus? KDE's only real competitor is way more keyboard focused than KDE...
  - marginalia_nu 1y ago
    I assume they're referring to Gnome. Despite primarily being aimed at desktop users, it's got hamburger menus everywhere[1], and a design that constantly makes trade-offs that benefit a touch-screen at the expense of keyboard-and-mouse users. [1] Hamburger menus are designed to make efficient use of a small vertical display where horizontal screen space is a limited commodity, which just is not the case at all for a large horizontal computer monitor. On a large horizontal display, they're a straight downgrade since you need to click the menu to see what's inside it, which makes action discovery harder. This click is also added to a lot of actions so they add more friction to almost all interactions.
earthnail 1y ago
I'm not a fan of Liquid Glass at all, but I just tried KDE again and it's certainly not there yet. Breeze has a ton of weird design decisions, rounded corners in things like list selections that don't work, and even basic understanding for padding and fonts still seems lacking in KDE. It feels exactly like the KDE website itself: https://kde.org/ https://kde.org/ That being said, KDE is very usable. I just wouldn't claim that it looks more professional than MacOS. I'd love for that to be the case but it just isn't.
- zeroc8 1y ago
  Just checking the webiste, it feels great too. I don't know what it is, but I just like their straight forward style.
- oblio 1y ago
  > but I just tried KDE again and it's certainly not there yet. I love KDE but t's getting close to being 30 years old. "Not there yet" can probably be completed with "and will never be there unless a major revolution happens and even in that case, it's possible the outcome of that revolution will take them farther, not closer, to that goal".
haolez 1y ago
Not my experience with recent Plasma. Tried to migrate to it last month, but small bugs here and there ruined my experience and I went back to Gnome. For example, there was this weird annoyance where moving the cursor to the top left edge of the screen and setting it to open the Overview, my cursor would "bounce" on the edge and the Overview would glitch in and out quickly. There were a lot of these rough edges.
ahoka 1y ago
Do you think this looks "nice and professional"? I don't. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/thiagokokada/blog/main/posts/2025-09-17/Screenshot_20250917_192302.png https://raw.githubusercontent.com/thiagokokada/blog/main/pos...
- guizadillas 1y ago
  I fail to see the issue in that screenshot
- metabagel 1y ago
  Looks pretty clean to me.
- Bolwin 1y ago
  I wouldn't say it's pretty, and it's quite wasteful of space, but it's professional enough
- topspin 1y ago
  I've never used KDE's flatpak UI, so this is the first time I've ever seen it. That said I understood that app instantly: what it's intended to do and how to use it. It's consistent with any other Plasma setting app I've ever used. What is the problem?
  - soraminazuki 1y ago
    Also the fact that the setting exists at all is worthy of applause. People have to install Flatseal on other desktop environments.
- timc3 1y ago
  Yeah it’s an utter mess of font sizes, inconsistent rules on placement and spacing. Actually annoys me significantly.
dandanua 1y ago
This was an inevitable outcome. KDE is developed for being used. MacOS is developed for being consumed. KDE is nice looking to me. MacOS previously had a huge advantage because of fonts rendering. It's probably still a bit better in this regard, but the difference shouldn't be that noticable today.
malthaus 1y ago
sorry, but while it definitely looks better than it did in the 90s, it's neither a professional level design nor better than mac os. and you don't need to be a designer to see it. those misleading hype statements are the reason why stuff like "this is the year of the linux desktop!" is a meme because anybody outside of your nerd/tech bubble will just look at you like you're insane.
- amlib 1y ago
  I would argue most people have a poor eye for design and would just use whats popular despite if it looks amazing or just cromulent enough for the job
MangoToupe 1y ago
I still think macosx has a higher degree of well-thought-out consistency. Just the ability to use readline/emacs keybindings throughout every textfield boosts productivity enormously. Yes, I'm sure you can enable this via kde/qt settings, but I'm fairly certain this conflicts with the PC-like keybindings, and there is no way to shift all qt/kde apps to use super as the primary command modifier throughout the entire environment. That's just one detail, but it shows a consistent eye towards the user that feels missing from kde. It feels like they aimed for "floss version of windows usability" and stopped there.
- steve-atx-7600 1y ago
  I can't understand why someone would use a desktop environment without readline/emacs (or equivalent - does not have to be the exact same key bindings) support if they have a choice and they know what those words mean. KDE had this around 2007 but in recent years it is missing.
- omgbear 1y ago
  Yeah, having all the defaults for system keybinds be on super is really nice. It feels like macosx lucked into this with their historical use of command as the modifier, but I also wish I could easily replicate. Instead I just go and remap a few line ctrl-a in KDE settings and otherwise try to live in emacs.
  - MangoToupe 1y ago
    "Lucked"? Is it not a choice to continue using PC keybindings? I would simply call this lack of attention to the user experience. Anyway, the first distro or desktop environment that figures out this problem will get a lifetime sponsorship from me. It's a huge productivity killer and remapping all apps, toolkits, etc, is untenable. Of note, Haiku os seems to have solved this issue permanently. It's a matter of will, really.
atoav 1y ago
My suspicion is that mobile vs desktop is to the most part a divide that aligns with a divide between consumer and producer. And treating customers as consumers allows you to turn general purpose computers into narrow purpose ones, where you can milk the customer for every little thing that allows them to do what they want. While this sucks from the perspective of the user, it is very much a way to grow a revenue when you are selling an Operating System as part of your products. I don't say you can't produce things on smart phones, it is just a more restricted environment with things dumbed down, partly for reasons of target demographic, partly for reasons of screen size. And thus the rise of mobile incentivizes companies ever so slightly to make the desktop more like their mobile counterpart. In this space open source operating systems (or desktop environments) can be totally uncompromising. They don't need to nudge you into spending money/attention in places that are not in your interest. They don't bolt everything down and pretend to know better than you. In short, they treat you like an adult (producer) and not like a child (consumer). And that is refreshing.
kylebenzle 1y ago
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topspin 1y ago
> For many years now KDE has focused on polish, bug fixing and "nice-to-have" improvements rather than major redesigns, and it paid off. It has. I believe this is a consequence of the 4.x debacle 18 years ago. KDE was doing great in the 3.x release, capturing a lot of users, and then everything went sideways with 4.x. They recovered: by the later releases of 4.x most of the problems were fixed and 4.x was entirely livable. The KDE developers learned a hard lesson and have been very conservative since then. Since the release of Plasma (5.x) in 2014, KDE hasn't self-inflicted any great regressions or misfeatures, and now there is 10+ years of "polish." It is very nice. I too have used the "Window Rules" mentioned in the blog post. Very useful for game development where you want certain windows to appear at precise locations on different displays every time, day after day, for years. KDE just gives you features like this, whereas this is considered unnecessary elsewhere.
- unstruktured 1y ago
  18 years ago? Holy crap I feel old. I remember how disruptive the very stable 3 to completely unstable 4 was.
  - Twirrim 1y ago
    I most remember the performance issues with 4. That went from silky smooth to staggering along on my machine at the time. Same thing happened with Gnome, but to a much lesser degree.
  - earthnail 1y ago
    I remember seeing tons of mockups for how KDE 4 should look like. One was absolutely stunning but I can’t find it anymore. I remember a mostly flat theme with the idea that an app’s settings could be on the backside of a window. The dock was also brilliantly made. Oh gosh I wish I could find those old designs again. Unfortunately they didn’t go for it and went with tons of silvery gradients instead.
  - koyote 1y ago
    So disruptive that I haven't tried KDE since. Articles like this one might encourage me to give it another go. Is there a distribution that's considered the 'best' for a KDE environment or will any do?
sunaookami 1y ago
>looks nicer, more professional, and more consistent than the latest macOS Just look at the first screenshot, everything is misaligned, no visual consistency. The second screenshot is even worse. It's really not better than macOS but still better than modern Windows and GNOME.
- timc3 1y ago
  Totally agree. To my design eye its so inconsistent that I can’t believe a professional designer has been involved.
MegaDeKay 1y ago
> For many years now KDE has focused on polish, bug fixing and "nice-to-have" improvements rather than major redesigns, and it paid off. Yes, and this process continues. There are still parts of the environment that need attention or cleanup, but by reading Nate's weekly blog posts [0], you can see that they chip away at cleaning this stuff up week after week after week. And it is all headed in the right direction vs. not (looking at you, Liquid Glass). [0] https://blogs.kde.org/categories/this-week-in-plasma/ https://blogs.kde.org/categories/this-week-in-plasma/
rtpg 1y ago
I really like KDE but it doesn't look nicer than the latest macOS by most tastes. I categorize KDE as the DE for people who enjoy using Windows more than macOS. Part of that involves just settings and functionality being more discoverable... which involves just throwing way more spurious stuff on the screen. And that makes it look less clean almost definitionally! But well. More usable for me when I want to find how to do something I do once every 3 months without having to memorize the keyboard command for it (looking at you, macOS finder dialog when I want to open a hidden folder)
JohnTHaller 1y ago
MacOS Tahoe's UI is comically bad.
wkat4242 1y ago
I love KDE too. I think macOS was never meant to be like that though. macOS is about opinionated design, where there's one way to do things and you have to go with the designers workflow philosophy or get frustrated. Gnome is a clear example too. The developers are always fighting users that want new configuration options. KDE is all about configurability. Changing things to the way you want them to be. It's got lots and lots of options. I was on macOS was daily driver for a long time. When I moved to it I was pretty aligned with Apple's workflow ideas and Linux desktops were messy crap (KDE 3 and 4 for example). But Apple changed their design over time and started rubbing me the wrong way more and more. Eventually I rediscovered KDE (5) and it was amazing to have my computer work the way I want it again.
hirvi74 1y ago
I absolutely love the new macOS look. I am not certain why everyone is dogging on it so much. Tahoe may end up being my favorite macOS in the last decade. What is so unprofessional about the new macOS?
- sirwhinesalot 1y ago
  If you can't see or don't mind the inconsistent sizings, if you don't mind the extreme wasting of space, if the "overlay" sidebars that sometimes overlap nothing like in Finder look acceptable to you, and if barely readable text on transparent bubbles is anything other than unnaceptable, then there's not really anything I can say that will change your mind.
mmgutz 1y ago
To be fair, "more consistent" if you only use KDE apps. Once you start adding other Linux apps, you end up with a motley crue of GTK 3, GTK 4, QT 5, QT 6, Electron apps with some dark, some light and everywhere in between. Consistency doesn't exist on any OS.
pjmlp 1y ago
Except I still can't buy a laptop with it at Media Markt, FNAC, or similar, depending on the country.
mikevm 1y ago
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account42 1y ago
I can't say I agree, rather than polish what they have been doing have been mostly usability and design regressions for me. Like take recent changes the monitor settings dialog for example: - It used to start with a reasonable size and layout, now it wants to start maximized for some reason and the part of the layout reserved for the monitor arrangement changes size depending on the connected/enabled monitors which pushes other controls around. - Changing the monitor layout now requires an additional click to enter an edit mode for no reason instead of being able to drag the monitors around directly. Meanwhile the it still doesn't remember settings when you disable and re-enable monitors and KWin/KDE itself still has tons of issues dealing with multiple monitors like moving windows around or opening windows on a turned off (but enabled in KDE) monitor instead of the one you are interacting with. And of course you can't script the whole mess with xrandr because KDE doesn't adjust the desktop in response to changes that don't go through its settings. Other areas have seen similar pointless changes that are at best things I need to manually undo or worse live it until I resort to manually patching things to work like they used to. Honestly considering more and more to move to a different DE after over a decade of using KDE.

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.
  - ActionHank 1y ago
    Why are there 2 context menus, multiple places to change settings, and a file explorer that is somehow a worse experience to use than one they had in XP? All the while they develop and push a product that screenshots what you are doing so that AI can "assist" you. Not to mention pushing ads and news and free to play games. Maybe the margins or icons aren't what you'd prefer, but you're being intellectually dishonest pretending that there is any uniformity in their product let alone even a single iota of care or interest in the experience the user has with their product.
  - chupasaurus 1y ago
    There are 4 (or 5?) volume control UIs in Windows 11.
- pxoe 1y ago
  Even Windows 11 is more refined and consistent in its design. (well, in the parts that are modern, which...shouldn't it be damning that even with those legacy parts it's still better designed?)
islon 1y ago
There's two types of desktops: the ones people complain about, and the ones nobody uses.
- ninetyninenine 1y ago
  I can’t stand those smug one-liners — they flatten reality instead of reflecting it. Reality is... often-times the best things are often unused. And if these things were hypothetically used... there'd be significantly less complaints than the status quo.
WD-42 1y ago
KDE the desktop is consistent. The problem is the applications aren't. It's completely possible to run a GNOME desktop without a single QT app, it's near impossible to use KDE without any GTK apps. And there are so, so many great libadwaita apps coming out these days. So on KDE you still end up with an inconsistent mash up of toolkits and styles.
- kelvinjps 1y ago
  Both DE have tools to make the UI toolkits to adapt to the DE, GTK with breeze theme and qt with libawaita theme
  - WD-42 1y ago
    Sure but they look pretty bad.
- soraminazuki 1y ago
  That's completely backwards. KDE provides consistent styling and window controls across a wide range of toolkits. GNOME, on the other hand, is incapable of this, particularly on Wayland. It's sad because I really like the aesthetics and user experience of the GNOME desktop and its applications. However, the inconsistent user interface for non-GNOME applications is becoming a deal breaker as more of them transition to Wayland. These applications have no choice but to create their own title bars and other UI elements, resulting in a mishmash of different looks, controls, and fonts. Many of them don't even include shadows around the windows because they aren't sure if they should. As a result of all of this, many third party applications look hideous on GNOME. As much as I want to continue using GNOME, I'm increasingly drawn to KDE with each passing day due to this issue. I rely on applications like Kitty Terminal, mpv, and WINE. They all suffer from this issue on GNOME, but not on KDE. Ultimately, if I have to choose between a desktop environment and third-party applications, I will prioritize the applications. I think many others would do the same.

ActionHank 1y ago

It's solid, things are where you expect, beginners can use it with very little guidance, and experts can turn off whatever they don't want or need. Super solid, <3 for the KDE team and product.

betap 1y ago

You are absolutely right on KDE focusing on polish and bug fixes. Back in 2014(?) it was weird, confusing, and never seemed to work right for me. Now, it is my go-to Linux desktop environment.

notmyjob 1y ago

I feel like naming everything with a “K”, like how some families name all their kids with names that start with the same letter, is the real genius of KDE. Who doesn’t like those kinds of families.

distances 1y ago
> Who doesn’t like those kinds of families. You'll find those people also in these comments :) Can't please everyone, which is totally fair and expected.
IshKebab 1y ago
I don't. It often feels cringeworthy, childish and unprofessional.
- intrikate 1y ago
  I just like that the text editor has the same name as me :D
  - chupasaurus 1y ago
    Hello, KDE's Advanced Text Editor /s (just a text editor is KWrite)
- account42 1y ago
  KCry me a river.
rishav_sharan 1y ago
I like it. It gives me confidence that a random software will surely work well on my kde desktop

distances 1y ago

KDE usability really started improving when the Visual Design Group was launched during the KDE 5 cycle, spearheaded by Jens Reuterberg. There was a real cool atmosphere of designer-developer cooperation which quickly led to very sleek results that persist to this day. VDG tackled (and tackles) not only design for the desktop itself, but also for KDE applications that had never seen a designer's touch before. I've been long a KDE user, even through the 4.0 troubles, but also the first to admit that it used to look clunky. Looking at old screenshots is a quick reminder of how far this initiative has taken it.

uncircle 1y ago
VDG must be so busy that my #1 feature request for KDE, support for smart copy&paste in Konsole, has been stuck in bikeshedding hell for almost 5 years because the maintainer didn't want to merge an optional feature without the VDG go-ahead :( I love open source and have been running Linux since 1999, but my experience of contributing to both KDE and GNOME is your PRs never go anywhere unless you're part of the inner cabal of maintainers, otherwise any small bugfix or feature goes into bikeshedding mode, and it's the reason I don't contribute any more. That said, I run KDE now after two decades of GNOME. It's pretty good and has been looking good for a while now.
- mixmastamyk 1y ago
  Konsole is my least favorite terminal because of all the klutter. Have to remove several buttons, and the context menu with hundreds of options can’t be simplified to my knowledge.
  - WD-42 1y ago
    This 100%. Just look at the screenshot on the KDE page for Konsole: https://apps.kde.org/konsole/ https://apps.kde.org/konsole/ What's up with the massive amount of chrome used for nothing except new tab/copy/paste buttons? Is it really necessary to take up what could be used for 2+ extra lines of terminal output for a labeled Copy button? Compare it to gnome console, or any other terminal really, and you will get far more terminal output for the size of the window, as it should be. And it's not just Konsole. So many KDE apps have this same problem. Giant labeled buttons taking up space from the actual content, for things you will never use or have well established keyboard shortcuts already.

everdrive 1y ago

Major changes aren't even _desirable_ in UI. People kind of emotionally enjoy novelty, however when it actually comes to using a computer consistency is superior to absolute excellence. Figuring out where settings and buttons are just because you ran software updates is a total waste of time on both ends; it wastes the user's time, and was a waste of time to develop. Maybe I'll switch from gnome to KDE this weekend, this looks promising.

baq 1y ago
Glad to know I'm not alone. As I grow older moving stuff around just to make it prettier doesn't do much except make me angry that 'they' changed things for no reason again.
ethbr1 1y ago
Any organization that doesn't have backpressure against UX breaking changes is vulnerable to this. The root cause is that UX folks almost never use a product as often as their users. So what's an "oh, left instead of right" minor change for them is anathema to someone with muscle memory. Ergo, IMHO, all breaking UX changes should be required to clear a high bar, with the default being status quo + tweaks.
- everdrive 1y ago
  I think it's perplexing that UX has generally gotten worse subsequent to multiple developments which you might expect would make UX better: - We now have a plethora of UX logging and can see real time where users struggle. - There are dedicated UX teams whose sole focus is to improve UX. - More people are using technology than ever, and so we have a more representative sample of data to work with. But despite this, UIs have consistently gotten worse over the past 10-20 years. I think there are a few possible culrpits. - Mimicking mobile UIs, as eloquently called out here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45290812 - I suspect there is something of a race to the bottom WRT To UX teams; they're always designing around any pain point, which has a few knock-on effects: - There will _always_ be pain points, and so there will _always_ need to be UI changes. - Designing a product so that the bottom of the bell curve can use it well probably does make an objectively worse product. - There's nothing wrong with needing to learn a UI, and this "learning" could be mistaken as pain point. - UX teams can't exist if there aren't things to constantly change, which increases the UI churn. In concert, you have a UX which is constantly changing, and never really getting better, and often getting worse.

crossroadsguy 1y ago

To folks using Asahi Linux: I looked at some Asahi Linux videos and it always shows KDE and the interface is Windows like (or what I call Windows like). I never liked that and that is single biggest reason I never tried KDE. I know it's Linux and KDE and GNOME can pretty much made to look like each other (i.e their default look and feel). Is it trivial on Asahi Linux or needs a lot of tweaking? Something like what ElementaryOS would look like - look/feel/UX wise ElementaryOS has been my gold standard sine it released and the last I checked it still felt that way. But since anything other than what Asahi Linux installs and support by default, i.e. Fedora Remix, is neither recommended nor fares well on Mac so I don't think I can use ElementaryOS (which is essentially Ubuntu LTS) really. Even Asahi Linux team recommends KDE. Also - can one access certain Mac folders in Asahi (e.g. ~/Pictures)? And is it even recommended, if it's possible (Security wise)? (I have been exploring/searching on Asahi and I am gearing up to use it on my M1 MacBook Pro - will be using/trying Linux desktop after more than a decade)

oblio 1y ago
ElementaryOS is a Mac clone. You want a Mac-like setup instead of a Windows-like setup.
- cosmic_cheese 1y ago
  Kinda. It’s more like an alternate universe GNOME that embraced OS X 10.9 Mavericks style UI design. It’s gorgeous and I wish more desktop environments would take cues from it but it’s only Mac-like superficially.
  - 28304283409234 1y ago
    Gorgeous, lightweight, easy on the eyes, gets out of the way. I cannot plug it enough.
- 28304283409234 1y ago
  It may have started out that way but it definetly is no longer. It has some very nice features that Mac lacks (picture-in-picture for whatever part of the screen you want for example).

mrbluecoat 1y ago

I agree. ElementaryOS was showing similar promise but their latest major release was a step backwards, tripping over new whistles and bells instead of maintaining rock solid stability with their polished UI.

FirmwareBurner 1y ago
What happened with ElementaryOS ? I'm not in the loop, just check in every few months and last time I checked t was the most popular go-to Arch spin with batteries included. Is CachyOS better now?
- esseph 1y ago
  Elementary isn't an arch spin, it's a Ubuntu derivative
  - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
    Am my bad, I was thinking of EndeavourOS the Arch based one.

DyslexicAtheist 1y ago

didn't it clearly say in the final paragraphs that, with KDE the taskbar is a mess. I for I, will continue to recommend Sway. /s

UI_at_80x24 1y ago
I'm a diehard i3/sway fan. IMHO the 'desktop environment' is supposed to get out of your way. I'll admit that sometimes having a widget that makes it "easier" to connect to random wifi, or bluetooth devices is handy; but that depends on your use-case. My hardware changes once every 5-10 years, and I never use bluetooth so these features are not helpful to me.

GuB-42 1y ago

KDE is, as its name implies, a desktop environment. And it hasn't been "infected" by the "mobile" virus. I often wondered why desktop UIs became so terrible somewhere in the 2010s and I don't want to attribute it to laziness, greed, etc... People have been lazy and greedy since people existed, there must have been something else. And I think that mobile is the answer. UI designers are facing a really hard problem, if not impossible. Most apps nowadays have desktop and mobile variants, and you want some consistency, as you don't want users to relearn everything when switching variants. But mobile platforms, with their small touchscreens are completely different from desktop platforms with their large screens, keyboards and mice. So what do you do? In addition to mobile, you often need to target the browser too, so: native desktop, native mobile, browser desktop, browser mobile. And then you add commercial consideration like cost, brand identity, and the idea that if you didn't change the UI, you didn't change anything. Commercial considerations have always been a thing, but the multiplication of platforms made it worse, prompting for the idea of running everything in a browser, and having the desktop inferface just being the mobile interface with extra stuff.

guappa 1y ago
But… I use kde on my tablet. There's a few programs that are designed with this use in mind. For example: alligator, angelfish, kasts. Dolphin works really well too.
dismalaf 1y ago
> KDE is, as its name implies, a desktop environment. And it hasn't been "infected" by the "mobile" virus. Who do you think has been "infected" by the "mobile" virus? KDE's only real competitor is way more keyboard focused than KDE...
- marginalia_nu 1y ago
  I assume they're referring to Gnome. Despite primarily being aimed at desktop users, it's got hamburger menus everywhere[1], and a design that constantly makes trade-offs that benefit a touch-screen at the expense of keyboard-and-mouse users. [1] Hamburger menus are designed to make efficient use of a small vertical display where horizontal screen space is a limited commodity, which just is not the case at all for a large horizontal computer monitor. On a large horizontal display, they're a straight downgrade since you need to click the menu to see what's inside it, which makes action discovery harder. This click is also added to a lot of actions so they add more friction to almost all interactions.

earthnail 1y ago

I'm not a fan of Liquid Glass at all, but I just tried KDE again and it's certainly not there yet. Breeze has a ton of weird design decisions, rounded corners in things like list selections that don't work, and even basic understanding for padding and fonts still seems lacking in KDE. It feels exactly like the KDE website itself: https://kde.org/ https://kde.org/ That being said, KDE is very usable. I just wouldn't claim that it looks more professional than MacOS. I'd love for that to be the case but it just isn't.

zeroc8 1y ago
Just checking the webiste, it feels great too. I don't know what it is, but I just like their straight forward style.
oblio 1y ago
> but I just tried KDE again and it's certainly not there yet. I love KDE but t's getting close to being 30 years old. "Not there yet" can probably be completed with "and will never be there unless a major revolution happens and even in that case, it's possible the outcome of that revolution will take them farther, not closer, to that goal".

haolez 1y ago

Not my experience with recent Plasma. Tried to migrate to it last month, but small bugs here and there ruined my experience and I went back to Gnome. For example, there was this weird annoyance where moving the cursor to the top left edge of the screen and setting it to open the Overview, my cursor would "bounce" on the edge and the Overview would glitch in and out quickly. There were a lot of these rough edges.

ahoka 1y ago

Do you think this looks "nice and professional"? I don't. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/thiagokokada/blog/main/posts/2025-09-17/Screenshot_20250917_192302.png https://raw.githubusercontent.com/thiagokokada/blog/main/pos...

guizadillas 1y ago
I fail to see the issue in that screenshot
metabagel 1y ago
Looks pretty clean to me.
Bolwin 1y ago
I wouldn't say it's pretty, and it's quite wasteful of space, but it's professional enough
topspin 1y ago
I've never used KDE's flatpak UI, so this is the first time I've ever seen it. That said I understood that app instantly: what it's intended to do and how to use it. It's consistent with any other Plasma setting app I've ever used. What is the problem?
- soraminazuki 1y ago
  Also the fact that the setting exists at all is worthy of applause. People have to install Flatseal on other desktop environments.
timc3 1y ago
Yeah it’s an utter mess of font sizes, inconsistent rules on placement and spacing. Actually annoys me significantly.

dandanua 1y ago

This was an inevitable outcome. KDE is developed for being used. MacOS is developed for being consumed. KDE is nice looking to me. MacOS previously had a huge advantage because of fonts rendering. It's probably still a bit better in this regard, but the difference shouldn't be that noticable today.

malthaus 1y ago

sorry, but while it definitely looks better than it did in the 90s, it's neither a professional level design nor better than mac os. and you don't need to be a designer to see it. those misleading hype statements are the reason why stuff like "this is the year of the linux desktop!" is a meme because anybody outside of your nerd/tech bubble will just look at you like you're insane.

amlib 1y ago
I would argue most people have a poor eye for design and would just use whats popular despite if it looks amazing or just cromulent enough for the job

MangoToupe 1y ago

I still think macosx has a higher degree of well-thought-out consistency. Just the ability to use readline/emacs keybindings throughout every textfield boosts productivity enormously. Yes, I'm sure you can enable this via kde/qt settings, but I'm fairly certain this conflicts with the PC-like keybindings, and there is no way to shift all qt/kde apps to use super as the primary command modifier throughout the entire environment. That's just one detail, but it shows a consistent eye towards the user that feels missing from kde. It feels like they aimed for "floss version of windows usability" and stopped there.

steve-atx-7600 1y ago
I can't understand why someone would use a desktop environment without readline/emacs (or equivalent - does not have to be the exact same key bindings) support if they have a choice and they know what those words mean. KDE had this around 2007 but in recent years it is missing.
omgbear 1y ago
Yeah, having all the defaults for system keybinds be on super is really nice. It feels like macosx lucked into this with their historical use of command as the modifier, but I also wish I could easily replicate. Instead I just go and remap a few line ctrl-a in KDE settings and otherwise try to live in emacs.
- MangoToupe 1y ago
  "Lucked"? Is it not a choice to continue using PC keybindings? I would simply call this lack of attention to the user experience. Anyway, the first distro or desktop environment that figures out this problem will get a lifetime sponsorship from me. It's a huge productivity killer and remapping all apps, toolkits, etc, is untenable. Of note, Haiku os seems to have solved this issue permanently. It's a matter of will, really.

atoav 1y ago

My suspicion is that mobile vs desktop is to the most part a divide that aligns with a divide between consumer and producer. And treating customers as consumers allows you to turn general purpose computers into narrow purpose ones, where you can milk the customer for every little thing that allows them to do what they want. While this sucks from the perspective of the user, it is very much a way to grow a revenue when you are selling an Operating System as part of your products. I don't say you can't produce things on smart phones, it is just a more restricted environment with things dumbed down, partly for reasons of target demographic, partly for reasons of screen size. And thus the rise of mobile incentivizes companies ever so slightly to make the desktop more like their mobile counterpart. In this space open source operating systems (or desktop environments) can be totally uncompromising. They don't need to nudge you into spending money/attention in places that are not in your interest. They don't bolt everything down and pretend to know better than you. In short, they treat you like an adult (producer) and not like a child (consumer). And that is refreshing.

kylebenzle 1y ago

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topspin 1y ago

> For many years now KDE has focused on polish, bug fixing and "nice-to-have" improvements rather than major redesigns, and it paid off. It has. I believe this is a consequence of the 4.x debacle 18 years ago. KDE was doing great in the 3.x release, capturing a lot of users, and then everything went sideways with 4.x. They recovered: by the later releases of 4.x most of the problems were fixed and 4.x was entirely livable. The KDE developers learned a hard lesson and have been very conservative since then. Since the release of Plasma (5.x) in 2014, KDE hasn't self-inflicted any great regressions or misfeatures, and now there is 10+ years of "polish." It is very nice. I too have used the "Window Rules" mentioned in the blog post. Very useful for game development where you want certain windows to appear at precise locations on different displays every time, day after day, for years. KDE just gives you features like this, whereas this is considered unnecessary elsewhere.

unstruktured 1y ago
18 years ago? Holy crap I feel old. I remember how disruptive the very stable 3 to completely unstable 4 was.
- Twirrim 1y ago
  I most remember the performance issues with 4. That went from silky smooth to staggering along on my machine at the time. Same thing happened with Gnome, but to a much lesser degree.
- earthnail 1y ago
  I remember seeing tons of mockups for how KDE 4 should look like. One was absolutely stunning but I can’t find it anymore. I remember a mostly flat theme with the idea that an app’s settings could be on the backside of a window. The dock was also brilliantly made. Oh gosh I wish I could find those old designs again. Unfortunately they didn’t go for it and went with tons of silvery gradients instead.
- koyote 1y ago
  So disruptive that I haven't tried KDE since. Articles like this one might encourage me to give it another go. Is there a distribution that's considered the 'best' for a KDE environment or will any do?

sunaookami 1y ago

>looks nicer, more professional, and more consistent than the latest macOS Just look at the first screenshot, everything is misaligned, no visual consistency. The second screenshot is even worse. It's really not better than macOS but still better than modern Windows and GNOME.

timc3 1y ago
Totally agree. To my design eye its so inconsistent that I can’t believe a professional designer has been involved.

MegaDeKay 1y ago

> For many years now KDE has focused on polish, bug fixing and "nice-to-have" improvements rather than major redesigns, and it paid off. Yes, and this process continues. There are still parts of the environment that need attention or cleanup, but by reading Nate's weekly blog posts [0], you can see that they chip away at cleaning this stuff up week after week after week. And it is all headed in the right direction vs. not (looking at you, Liquid Glass). [0] https://blogs.kde.org/categories/this-week-in-plasma/ https://blogs.kde.org/categories/this-week-in-plasma/

rtpg 1y ago

I really like KDE but it doesn't look nicer than the latest macOS by most tastes. I categorize KDE as the DE for people who enjoy using Windows more than macOS. Part of that involves just settings and functionality being more discoverable... which involves just throwing way more spurious stuff on the screen. And that makes it look less clean almost definitionally! But well. More usable for me when I want to find how to do something I do once every 3 months without having to memorize the keyboard command for it (looking at you, macOS finder dialog when I want to open a hidden folder)

JohnTHaller 1y ago

MacOS Tahoe's UI is comically bad.

wkat4242 1y ago

I love KDE too. I think macOS was never meant to be like that though. macOS is about opinionated design, where there's one way to do things and you have to go with the designers workflow philosophy or get frustrated. Gnome is a clear example too. The developers are always fighting users that want new configuration options. KDE is all about configurability. Changing things to the way you want them to be. It's got lots and lots of options. I was on macOS was daily driver for a long time. When I moved to it I was pretty aligned with Apple's workflow ideas and Linux desktops were messy crap (KDE 3 and 4 for example). But Apple changed their design over time and started rubbing me the wrong way more and more. Eventually I rediscovered KDE (5) and it was amazing to have my computer work the way I want it again.

hirvi74 1y ago

I absolutely love the new macOS look. I am not certain why everyone is dogging on it so much. Tahoe may end up being my favorite macOS in the last decade. What is so unprofessional about the new macOS?

sirwhinesalot 1y ago
If you can't see or don't mind the inconsistent sizings, if you don't mind the extreme wasting of space, if the "overlay" sidebars that sometimes overlap nothing like in Finder look acceptable to you, and if barely readable text on transparent bubbles is anything other than unnaceptable, then there's not really anything I can say that will change your mind.

mmgutz 1y ago

To be fair, "more consistent" if you only use KDE apps. Once you start adding other Linux apps, you end up with a motley crue of GTK 3, GTK 4, QT 5, QT 6, Electron apps with some dark, some light and everywhere in between. Consistency doesn't exist on any OS.

pjmlp 1y ago

Except I still can't buy a laptop with it at Media Markt, FNAC, or similar, depending on the country.

mikevm 1y ago

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account42 1y ago

I can't say I agree, rather than polish what they have been doing have been mostly usability and design regressions for me. Like take recent changes the monitor settings dialog for example: - It used to start with a reasonable size and layout, now it wants to start maximized for some reason and the part of the layout reserved for the monitor arrangement changes size depending on the connected/enabled monitors which pushes other controls around. - Changing the monitor layout now requires an additional click to enter an edit mode for no reason instead of being able to drag the monitors around directly. Meanwhile the it still doesn't remember settings when you disable and re-enable monitors and KWin/KDE itself still has tons of issues dealing with multiple monitors like moving windows around or opening windows on a turned off (but enabled in KDE) monitor instead of the one you are interacting with. And of course you can't script the whole mess with xrandr because KDE doesn't adjust the desktop in response to changes that don't go through its settings. Other areas have seen similar pointless changes that are at best things I need to manually undo or worse live it until I resort to manually patching things to work like they used to. Honestly considering more and more to move to a different DE after over a decade of using KDE.