6 ms·

KDE is a great platform, but most of the prominent distros ship with near-default style settings, which are ugly (just look at the 15.04 screenshots, linked fro

by flavor8 12y ago

KDE is a great platform, but most of the prominent distros ship with near-default style settings, which are ugly (just look at the 15.04 screenshots, linked from the article). It would be nice if an opinionated design team (similar to the elementary guys) shipped a KDE based distro which was meticulously styled out of the box.

reitanqild 12y ago
Mandrake, later Mandriva used to be close to perfect IMO. Today I guess OpenSUSE is the closest thing to what you describe.
- TallGuyShort 12y ago
  Mageia - forked from Mandriva - is still actively developed, I believe - but I haven't tried out KDE on it. I think my Fedora 20 install looked pretty slick out of the box, but I don't think very highly of my own taste :)
- baldfat 12y ago
  I feel that OpenSUSE has had the best KDE default settings and Kubuntu had the worst defaults.
bananaoomarang 12y ago
Plasma 5 is still a little janky, but this has been improved a lot, and should hopefully continue to improve (it has a much more consciously opinionated design team than 4 ever did). The Linux desktop space is a real mess at the moment, but KDE is the best of the bunch for general, modern computing.
- weland 12y ago
  KDE is a breath of fresh air in the current Linux desktop space. It gives you all the nice integrated tools that Gnome gives you while not trying to make you part of a Borg collective and actually (gasp!) listening to its user community. The artists in that community have some questionable taste (and I thought Keramik was ok, so yeah...) but, overall, the project has a very sane development approach. I'm a post-3.5 refugee in WindowMaker (and sometimes ratpoison) land, but I honestly think KDE is a big, big deal. It still values customization and still tries to place the user in control of his device, unlike the ahem other guys who seem to be following in Apple's very questionable footsteps.
  - m_mueller 12y ago
    Apple's reputation when it comes to customisation is not entirely deserved. What's true for iOS, isn't really for OSX. I'd say the gradient goes something like KDE > Windows > OSX > Gnome > Unity. When you go through OSX's system preferences there's quite a lot of options, plus there's tons of hidden ones accessible through the terminal and the very effective defaults system inherited from NeXT.
    - vacri 12y ago
      Unity at least has an excuse - it's stated goal is to have the same interface on mobile and desktop, and function well with both touch and mouse.
      - m_mueller 12y ago
        Windows seems to have the same goal since Sinofsky had its helm and so far I'm not convinced that this goal makes much sense for an OS.
    - weland 12y ago
      I'm thinking strictly about the customization of the UI, not of "everything else" in System Preferences (e.g. hardware, network and so on). You can set individual icons but you don't have icon themes per se, can't change the UI theme (and I distinctly remember there was an application that did that very well back on 10.4, and 10.5 broke it along with most other efforts), can't change titlebar buttons and so on. E.g. I very much prefer the NeXT arrangement (close button on the right, minimize button on the left), because I really have no use for Maximize on a 27" screen. Good luck with that. To their credit, though, Apple does at least think twice before pushing changes most of the time. Gnome's latest effort, with the client-side decorations, is maddening. Now every Gnome application has a thick titlebar that's also a toolbar, and every other application doesn't. They supposedly did that in order to save screen space - which could have just as well been done by reducing the thickness of that mammoth title bar Adwaita uses - but the effect seems to me to have been exactly opposite. Surely someone must have seen that the result is inconsistent on any system that runs a single application not included with Gnome -- say, for instance, Firefox! Or Chrome! Or Emacs! Or Thunderbird! Whatever. I certainly understand that Gnome developers have a vision for their UI, but the uncommunicative way in which they impose it is pretty unpopular among users (like myself) who moved away from Windows or Mac OS a long, long time ago because they wanted more control over their operating system (well, that and no BSODs, which was a common occurrence at the time when I left Windows behind. Did you know Mac users didn't even have preemptive multitasking then? God I feel like a dinosaur now. Get off my lawn.)
retroafroman 12y ago
You mean like happened with Gnome 3 and completely pissed off a large portion of the user base? I'm an advocate for sane defaults, but 'opinionated design' doesn't always nail the mark.
pbhjpbhj 12y ago
I think you actually want the default to be pretty vanilla. Opinionated design tends to polarise opinions which means put a lot of people off. KDE - especially now with the "get hot new stuff" interface - is very easy to mod and there are loads of style packs available. The sort who'll be attracted to a specific look are also more likely not to go with the default IMO. Personally I like my UI like my DE - out of the way.
- worklogin 12y ago
  Well if the vanilla is itself ugly and polarizing, perhaps it's best that a distro take the initiative to make it better. As long as KDE retains its flexibility to make the desktop how you like it, why not try to make it better by default? Disclosure: I've tried KDE several times, and have never stayed with it more than a few days, due to its wacky ratios of window and icon sizing, and bubbly appearance.
  - pbhjpbhj 12y ago
    https://www.kde.org/workspaces/plasmadesktop/screenshots/general-desktop.png https://www.kde.org/workspaces/plasmadesktop/screenshots/gen... - ugly and polarising? It's a bit "candy" or "fisher price" but as a friendly default I don't think it does so bad. http://kde-look.org/index.php?xcontentmode=17x18x19x20x21x75x81x89x102x103 http://kde-look.org/index.php?xcontentmode=17x18x19x20x21x75... gives an idea of the thinks that are popular for KDE desktop style, decoration, etc..

by flavor8 12y ago

reitanqild 12y ago

Mandrake, later Mandriva used to be close to perfect IMO. Today I guess OpenSUSE is the closest thing to what you describe.

TallGuyShort 12y ago
Mageia - forked from Mandriva - is still actively developed, I believe - but I haven't tried out KDE on it. I think my Fedora 20 install looked pretty slick out of the box, but I don't think very highly of my own taste :)
baldfat 12y ago
I feel that OpenSUSE has had the best KDE default settings and Kubuntu had the worst defaults.

bananaoomarang 12y ago

Plasma 5 is still a little janky, but this has been improved a lot, and should hopefully continue to improve (it has a much more consciously opinionated design team than 4 ever did). The Linux desktop space is a real mess at the moment, but KDE is the best of the bunch for general, modern computing.

weland 12y ago
KDE is a breath of fresh air in the current Linux desktop space. It gives you all the nice integrated tools that Gnome gives you while not trying to make you part of a Borg collective and actually (gasp!) listening to its user community. The artists in that community have some questionable taste (and I thought Keramik was ok, so yeah...) but, overall, the project has a very sane development approach. I'm a post-3.5 refugee in WindowMaker (and sometimes ratpoison) land, but I honestly think KDE is a big, big deal. It still values customization and still tries to place the user in control of his device, unlike the ahem other guys who seem to be following in Apple's very questionable footsteps.
- m_mueller 12y ago
  Apple's reputation when it comes to customisation is not entirely deserved. What's true for iOS, isn't really for OSX. I'd say the gradient goes something like KDE > Windows > OSX > Gnome > Unity. When you go through OSX's system preferences there's quite a lot of options, plus there's tons of hidden ones accessible through the terminal and the very effective defaults system inherited from NeXT.
  - vacri 12y ago
    Unity at least has an excuse - it's stated goal is to have the same interface on mobile and desktop, and function well with both touch and mouse.
    - m_mueller 12y ago
      Windows seems to have the same goal since Sinofsky had its helm and so far I'm not convinced that this goal makes much sense for an OS.
  - weland 12y ago
    I'm thinking strictly about the customization of the UI, not of "everything else" in System Preferences (e.g. hardware, network and so on). You can set individual icons but you don't have icon themes per se, can't change the UI theme (and I distinctly remember there was an application that did that very well back on 10.4, and 10.5 broke it along with most other efforts), can't change titlebar buttons and so on. E.g. I very much prefer the NeXT arrangement (close button on the right, minimize button on the left), because I really have no use for Maximize on a 27" screen. Good luck with that. To their credit, though, Apple does at least think twice before pushing changes most of the time. Gnome's latest effort, with the client-side decorations, is maddening. Now every Gnome application has a thick titlebar that's also a toolbar, and every other application doesn't. They supposedly did that in order to save screen space - which could have just as well been done by reducing the thickness of that mammoth title bar Adwaita uses - but the effect seems to me to have been exactly opposite. Surely someone must have seen that the result is inconsistent on any system that runs a single application not included with Gnome -- say, for instance, Firefox! Or Chrome! Or Emacs! Or Thunderbird! Whatever. I certainly understand that Gnome developers have a vision for their UI, but the uncommunicative way in which they impose it is pretty unpopular among users (like myself) who moved away from Windows or Mac OS a long, long time ago because they wanted more control over their operating system (well, that and no BSODs, which was a common occurrence at the time when I left Windows behind. Did you know Mac users didn't even have preemptive multitasking then? God I feel like a dinosaur now. Get off my lawn.)

retroafroman 12y ago

You mean like happened with Gnome 3 and completely pissed off a large portion of the user base? I'm an advocate for sane defaults, but 'opinionated design' doesn't always nail the mark.

pbhjpbhj 12y ago

I think you actually want the default to be pretty vanilla. Opinionated design tends to polarise opinions which means put a lot of people off. KDE - especially now with the "get hot new stuff" interface - is very easy to mod and there are loads of style packs available. The sort who'll be attracted to a specific look are also more likely not to go with the default IMO. Personally I like my UI like my DE - out of the way.

worklogin 12y ago
Well if the vanilla is itself ugly and polarizing, perhaps it's best that a distro take the initiative to make it better. As long as KDE retains its flexibility to make the desktop how you like it, why not try to make it better by default? Disclosure: I've tried KDE several times, and have never stayed with it more than a few days, due to its wacky ratios of window and icon sizing, and bubbly appearance.
- pbhjpbhj 12y ago
  https://www.kde.org/workspaces/plasmadesktop/screenshots/general-desktop.png https://www.kde.org/workspaces/plasmadesktop/screenshots/gen... - ugly and polarising? It's a bit "candy" or "fisher price" but as a friendly default I don't think it does so bad. http://kde-look.org/index.php?xcontentmode=17x18x19x20x21x75x81x89x102x103 http://kde-look.org/index.php?xcontentmode=17x18x19x20x21x75... gives an idea of the thinks that are popular for KDE desktop style, decoration, etc..