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.
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.
> 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?
You keep the UIs separate. Dumbing down desktop UIs to mobile capabilities is just as bad of a design as it was when people tried to jam a desktop UI into mobile. You have to play to the strengths of the platform you are on, not limit each one based on the other. Yes, it's more work, but it's well worth it to have a product which is actually good.
Web designers have been having this same debate for 15 years - what many call "mobile-first design" is actually just worsening the experience of desktop users so that things look nicer on phones and the makers don't have to do double the design work.
It's not so much double the design work, it's double the code maintenance.
I'm of two minds on this. I agree with your complaint that "mobile first" (or just responsiveness in general) has tended to reduce the pleasantness of the Desktop experience. As a web application developer, the idea of having to maintain two separate codebases - one for mobile and one for desktop - is a big "no thank-you." So responsiveness tends to win on maintenance overhead.
> It's not so much double the design work, it's double the code maintenance.
Well, of course it is: Different UI, different UI code. If that's problem, the developers should not have both a mobile and a desktop app in the first place.
> has tended to reduce the pleasantness of the Desktop
understatement of the year :-) ... it often hampers functionality, significantly, and makes the experience rather painful.
> the makers don't have to do double the design work.
Attitudes like this sometimes make me regret going in to software engineering. I understand time may be of the essence in some instances, but I feel like software engineering has lost much of its craftsmanship, and it's now just gluing over-engineered and poorly designed shitware together. At least, in the Web Dev world -- maybe other subfields have faired better?
> but I feel like software engineering has lost much of its craftsmanship
It's not just software. I'm very pro-business / pro-capitalism but I will happily agree that an omnipresent business pressure is to reduce costs and get products and services to market rapidly.
My wife and I bought an antique store this year, and we're converting it into a small live theatre with a magic (stage magic) retail store up front. We are pouring our hearts and soul into this and are trying to bring a high degree of craftsmanship into the venture. We're taking queues from Walt Disney World and want you to feel like you've stepped into a completely different world when you step inside our doors.
Yet now that we're running out of money and things have taken way longer than we had estimated, we have to cut scope. We have to start thinking "What needs to be done today in order for us to open" vs "What can we defer and iterate on and do later?" What are the "nice to haves" and what are the "must haves."
That's business and you see enshitification in all industries. We can see this in everything from clothing to furniture to product packaging. The incentive is always to try and deliver things to market faster and cheaper and this necessitates making cuts. Craftsmanship is a luxury that we all pine for. And there are small mom & pop shops (us included) that try to deliver craftsmanship. But the market for high-cost products with high-craftsmanship is niche.
Software is largely targeting the mass market just like clothing and furniture - other examples where you've seen "high craftsmanship" in the past but these days we get mass produced disposable garbage. It's tempting to say "the good old days" but people had a lot less and that high-craftsmanship furniture was often passed down from one generation to another because it's not like people could typically afford that stuff. It was that people had to save, DIY more, own less and count on hand-me-downs.
> omnipresent business pressure is to reduce costs and get products and services to market rapidly.
Sure. In many instances, software is just a means to an end. Software is usually not the business itself. So, I understand there has to be balance at some point. In fact, I think it's dangerous to sometimes reinvent the wheel -- like rolling your own auth system. I rather go with a well tested and trusted solution.
> I bought an antique store
I'm jealous. I would love something like this.
Are/were you a developer? If yes, then I am curious about one thing. Does your work towards your store bring more or less fulfillment than your dev life? I went into the field hoping to find passion and to strive for some sense of glory that comes from craftsmanship, but I learned quickly there isn't much passion left and there is absolutely no glory. Though in my mind, programming does not equal software engineering. The people writing KDE are programmers. The person working for a company is a software engineer.
> We have to start thinking "What needs to be done today in order for us to open" vs "What can we defer and iterate on and do later?" What are the "nice to haves" and what are the "must haves."
I just had this conversation at work today lol.
> Software is largely targeting the mass market just like clothing and furniture - other examples where you've seen "high craftsmanship" in the past but these days we get mass produced disposable garbage. It's tempting to say "the good old days" but people had a lot less
You are absolutely correct. However, maybe I am just consumed by ignorance, but I think that is the world I want to live in, you know? I watched a YouTube video about a traditional Japanese swordsmith. He runs the only remaining school left in Japan. He follows the exact same process that has been used for something like over 700 years. He has a few apprentices, but nothing is written down. It's all passed down from generation to generation via hands-on work and word of mouth.
For software, that would be beyond unrealistic, but I think there is something utterly beautiful about getting lost in some kind of project and pouring 100% of oneself into their work. You know, to be apart of something much bigger than oneself?
I think about the KDE developers per the thread topic. KDE is likely highly useful and an act for charity for their fellow Linux users. KDE accomplishes what it sought to solve. However, most users will never know or understand what into making KDE, why some choices were made and not others, etc.. As long as KDE works, many users probably won't even think about KDE at all. If I were to install KDE right now, I could tell you if it works or not. I cannot tell you if KDE was written well just by using it, unless overt issues were present. I would truly have no idea about the quality without looking at the source code.
Though, I guess my fundamental point is that you are correct about everything you wrote. I do not disagree with any of it. I am in my early 30s, and I guess I am already jaded haha. This is what "work" and "life" are mostly about? This is how I provide value to society? I just push little plastic buttons on a device and the little electrons flowing through the device make the screen change colors. I went to college just for all this? Don't get me wrong, I love programming, but man, the "adult" or "business" world is just so utterly... fucking boring and unfulfilling haha. Do you know what I mean?
The moment the "mobile first" trend appeared, I knew it was wrong and we were certainly fucked for many things. Plenty of websites are just bad because of this nonsense. And since now most people don't even use a computer for their web browsing, most websites are bad for computer browsing by default.
The insanity of it is that many websites push their mobile apps to use them. So, you get shitty mobile sites that ask you to use their app on mobile and are bad on desktop because of the stupid development philosophy (including poor information density and oversized interface for big touch targets).
The whole point of the first iPhone web browser was that you could actually use most typical websites without any effort on their part and it was good enough.
Because of the display size and navigation effort required it wasn't the most confortable but the more time passes the more I believe that was kind of the point and almost a "feature" in itself.
We got there because people are glued to their phone, and sadly it's not even a good tool for efficient web browsing (it's useful for quick information gathering but that's it).
this reminds me of something i've observed. it seems like there is a general trend in software of doing things that look good (either in an ad or in a sprint review) rather than things that feel good to use. one example among many is nvidia's frame generation feature, which makes 60 fps look like 120 fps when you're watching somebody else play, but feel like 30 fps when you're the one playing.
Image and projection of that image is very important for most humans.
You just need to look at how some people dress in order to "look good" even though it often requires them to make some ridiculous compromises on confort.
They are probably planning on converging the two platforms together soon.
There are rumors of new macbooks having touch screens. You can imagine that with the Tahoe interface getting additional padding and looking more like iPadOS it's already planned that the future of computing will be hybrid devices.
I don't know how to feel about that. To me it sounds like an awful direction for the desktop experience on macOS, but on the other hand iPads are currently held back by iPadOS
Everyone will have different opinions on the matter. My Lenovo has a touch screen, but I hardly ever use it because I forget that it is there. Likewise, it is Wacom compatible and I was as far as picking up the stylus for it. Hardly ever use it. For the most part, I prefer to interact with computers via keyboard.
Different people like interacting with computers in different ways, unfortunately, this one size fits all philosophy that permeates the tech sector creates a lot of tension because those ways of interacting are not necessarily compatible with each other.
> Different people like interacting with computers in different ways, unfortunately, this one size fits all philosophy that permeates the tech sector creates a lot of tension because those ways of interacting are not necessarily compatible with each other.
A touchscreen doesn't detract if you don't use it though. I use my laptop's touchscreen/stylus pretty much exclusively for Japanese writing practice, the rest of the time it's just a regular laptop, but I'd be very sad to not have that feature when I need it.
This would normally be the case but many touchscreen drivers love to glitch out (specially lenovo's) and disabling them is almost impossible with windows updates constantly re-enabling things.
If not for that I would 100% agree it is a nice to have.
I don't know if it has been improved but I had one xps with touch screen, the lid was thicker, the screen had more glare, it was using more battery and there was a visible gray mesh, like a veil covering it if you looked close enough. One other possible annoyance is accidental touches, no chance of that if the screen doesn't have touch capability.
For me, it just feels like a huge waste of money for something I would never use; I assume the touch screen tech bumps the price up a bit. Of course, if you have even an occasional use for touchscreen on a laptop, your mileage is already varying.
Are you the type to be bothered by fingerprints on screens? I am that type, I have great reservations about a touchscreen laptop. Though, I cannot deny how awesome it would be, conceptually.
Right? It's blatantly obvious, but apparently a 3.5 trillion-dollar-market-cap corporation has apparently forgotten this simple concept. It's so disappointing how far Apple has fallen, in terms of usability of their software.
That seems like a pretty low bar, is there any window manager that doesn’t have that sort of basic configurability?
Linux window managers are mostly made by volunteers, so I’m not picky at all. But, locking the dock and taskbar in place, if anything, seems like extra work. Why would anybody do extra work to make their window manager worse?
Windows 11 has stupid unchangeable defaults that keep getting worse with each service pack. To survive in a Windows VM I run, the first thing I install is always a horrible hack to restore flexibility: [1].
GNOME. You have to install an extension to get a dock at all. Almost nobody runs vanilla GNOME because it's missing basic things. They refuse to have a system tray. I don't particularly like the system tray, but that doesn't change the fact that some apps continue to run the background when you quit them by closing the window. Up until recently, you had to install a system tray extension so you could properly quit programs like Steam. Finally, the GNOME developers added functionality where you can see background apps and close them, but it's hidden behind a few clicks. A clipboard manager is another one. KDE includes it by default. GNOME? There's an extension for that. And the problem with extensions is they always break every single time GNOME is updated.
You have to install an extension to get a dock at all.
No, there's an auto-hiding dock built-in. Pressing the Super key acts like better version of Apple's Expose feature: it shows the windows you have open, auto-opens the dock, and focuses the application launcher search bar so you can just start typing and launch an app.
You had to install a system tray extension
I'm sure you needed to at some point, but (as you mention), that's no longer the case: it's built in by default.
clipboard manager
If you mean clipboard history... That's true. Although macOS doesn't have a built-in clipboard history viewer either, and I never particularly missed having one. There are plenty of GNOME extensions with clipboard history if you want one.
Generally speaking I like GNOME much more than KDE, since GNOME's gesture support is much better than KDE's. I also personally dislike Windows-style infinitely-nesting-menu taskbars, which is what KDE uses, whereas GNOME is more macOS-like (although it has its own, IMO slightly cleaner style... And of course, it's much more modifiable than macOS).
> No, there's an auto-hiding dock built-in. Pressing the Super key acts like better version of Apple's Expose feature: it shows the windows you have open, auto-opens the dock, and focuses the application launcher search bar so you can just start typing and launch an app.
So, not a Dock.
People don't want their whole desktop to fly everywhere and zoom out when they just want to quickly switch or launch an application with the mouse. They just want to mouse over the bottom of their screen and click.
Same for launching an application via keyboard / doing a calculation / finding an emoji. People just want something akin to Spotlight (think uLauncher on Linux). Something lightweight that pops over and allows them to quickly do the thing, without a lot of visual clutter happening and then happening again in reverse.
> No, there's an auto-hiding dock built-in. Pressing the Super key acts like better version of Apple's Expose feature: it shows the windows you have open, auto-opens the dock, and focuses the application launcher search bar so you can just start typing and launch an app.
It either requires using a keyboard or moving your mouse to the opposite direction of where the dock appears.
They also hide menus under annoying hamburger menus meaning an extra click every time. And have huge fat window handles taking up space for no reason which you can't change. Probably nice if you have a touchscreen but I don't.
Ps gnome doesn't even have a clipboard manager? Wow I use this every day.
Nope, no clipboard manager. There’s a nice extension called pano with a bunch of ridiculous dependencies that’s loaded with features. The one built into KDE is good enough for me.
GNOME looks great, but it’s just so damn frustrating to use. It’s such a weird combination of attention to detail and a focus on usability while completely missing the mark in other areas. I don’t even mind the intended workflow. That’s fine. It’s the rough edges like the hamburger menus you mentioned, extra clicks, inability to change things I expect to be able to change, etc. You have to install gnome-tweaks just to change the font.
I wouldn’t even mind the extensions either if they didn’t break during every update. Best case scenario is you have to re-enable the extension, log out and log back in. Worst case is it doesn’t work anymore and now you’re missing important functionality that the developers couldn’t be bothered to include.
GNOME wasn't like this, I favoured GNOME during the whole Gtk+ vs Qt licensing wars, and even wrote an article to The C/C++ Users Journal as kind of advocacy for Gtkmm.
Eventually with their desired to push JavaScript all over the place, instead of improving Vala, the whole desktop redesign, and the issues that features standard in GNOME 1.0 are nowadays the extension mess you mention, made me don't care any longer.
For a while I moved into Unity, then XFCE, and then nothing, as my Linux usage now is constrained to headless (server/containers), or the consumer distributions of WebOS and Android.
However if I ever going back to having a Linux desktop, it will surely be a decision between everything else except GNOME.
The whole point of the extension system was to get the base install smaller and more minimized for people that don't need the feature -- I think that's an entirely fair tradeoff given how easy extension installs have been early on in gnome3.
> That seems like a pretty low bar, is there any window manager that doesn’t have that sort of basic configurability?
I heard rumours that Win 11 was makin' folks jump through hoops to move the taskbar anywhere other than left or right along the bottom. Personally, I ain't used Windows since Win 7; (The last really decent / tolerable Windows), and even back then I was already dual-booting with Linux.
People complain about that but I've been using Windows for 25+ years including working in tech almost exclusively on Windows desktops and laptops for 20+ years across about 10 companies and the amount of times I've seen a Windows taskbar be placed anywhere except at the bottom can be counted on one hand.
I'm fairly sure it's one of those features used by 0.0001% of the user base but probably 95% of those 200 000 users are techies so every forum is filled with their complaints :-)
The problem with that attitude is that while niche features might be used by a small percentage of the user base, for every feature its a different subset. If you remove all niche features you will end up with software that is worse for a large portion of your users.
This is the reason why telemetry has negative value in the hands of the average developer. You can make all kinds of logically sounding conclusions from it but they are still wrong.
That's the thing you need to keep mind when reading anything on HN.
Otherwise you would believe no one uses Windows (mostly because of taskbar thing) or Firefox is just unusable because it is unavoidable you constantly keep 1234 tabs open.
Yeah. More relevantly I suspect that more people move the taskbar accidentally than deliberately - more than once I've seen a relative have it on the left or the top and ask how to put it back.
KDE does have a convergent UI framework, though. It's called Kirigami, and I think several KDE apps use it to also get a mobile version. Perhaps it's more about doing things well and compatibly with the mobile presentation, just not "mobile first" (which often factually implies "and desktop never").
I develop a Qt app that needs a mobile version, though I've never done mobile development before. I use Qt for the desktop app specifically because a I'm a long time KDE user. What does convergent mean in this context? What would Kirigami bring to a potential Android application?
You get some nice predefined widgets to use with QML, but you also potentially have to build Maui/Kirigami against the platforms you deploy to, and it's a C++ & QML project with its own build platform.
Everything written in QML looks extremely out of place on the desktop, this is very much not an example of doing it well. You're right though that the infection has also reached KDE.
I wrote the block editor of my note-taking app[1] in QML, I hope this can show it's not QML that makes it a out of place - it's the care for aesthetics that developers put into the app. I also wrote a blog post on the subject if you're curious[2].
Settings modules (KCMs) have been gradually rewritten in QML since a while ago, I think. Do they look "extremely out of place" to you? I personally couldn't spot them out. Efforts have been spent making QtQuick controls look the same as their QtWidgets counterparts.
> 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.
I don't think anyone actually asks for this. The driving factor seems to be saving cost/effort by making only one design with extremely minor adjustments at best. It used to be that desktop was the main target now its mobile.
The consistency I want is between different applications on the same system but barely anyone cares about that - and many developers actively want their programs to stand out.
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.
Yes, companies were lazy and greedy even way back when. But there are a number of facts that come into play when it comes to UI being much shittier today:
1. Personal computers before the 21st century were really kind of shit. Let alone mobile devices.
2. Software was largely a product that people paid for. It even came in boxes.
3. Software vendors were usually in a highly competitive environment. They had to deliver value for money if they didn't want to get eaten alive.
This meant that the software had to both work on the limited resources of 1990s shitty computers—limited storage, limited speed, limited display colors and resolution, etc.—and be useful to the end user. So companies were kept a lot more honest in terms of UI design. Circumstances forced them to deliver functional, efficient UIs. These days, our computers are fairly powerful and companies are in the business of selling services (or eyeballs to advertisers) rather than software. The user-facing software itself is a loss leader, and if making it a shitty Electron app, or desktop-mobile "convergence", helps save development costs, companies will do it.
You probably mean tablets/touch input, not mobile. There was a time when things like iPad and Surface were going to dominate. iOS won that space with Android still limping along. Windows devices haven't managed to survive really and Surface seems to be retreating to laptop form. Frankly the SOC hardware universe seems to be a real technical challenge. Frankly, even Microsoft gave up trying to improve the phone hardware situation.
I think the small form factor of mobile is more relevant than touch, although touch is also a significant factor. App design is forced to change radically to be usable at all on tiny screens. Indeed, touch is a result of the tiny aspect of mobile.
Mobile form factor and touch inputs are pretty inseparable, and are so different from desktop + pointer. A lot of subtle pain points get missed because people tend to focus on one over the other. So many desktop patterns rely on hover interactions. Touch targets need to be big enough for beefy fingers (which will then cover the thing being touched). Gesture is considered normal on touch devices but not pointer ones. Reading distance differences between mobile devices and desktop ones impacts typography. And that’s just a few basic UX concerns all before you get into the weeds of WCAG and other accessibility standards.
> 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?
Which problem exactly? It works just fine. Just like there is no problem with well-designed websites that can work both on mobile and on desktop (like HN).
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.
They also look like a gripper widget: a small square that can be dragged around in order to move the item on which it appears, commonly used for for positioning toolbars or re-ordering list items. Because of this, they have added a bit of confusion to user interface conventions.
Modern monochrome line-art icons are an entirely separate trainwreck to be honest. They're incredibly difficult to parse and distinguish.
It very much feels like we've fallen into the same trap medieval handwriting did
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minim_(palaeography)#/media/Fi... -- building designs around what looks aesthetically uniform and cool rather than what is easy to parse and use.
Indeed. It's all fashion nowadays. It's a form of aestheticism which I believe is closely linked to religiousness.
There is a lot to develop but you can already observe than a lot of people have an approach to technology that isn't too far from the approach to "god" related things.
I must admit I don't understand this critique. I barely use a pointing device at all to navigate Gnome—mice included.
Supposing I did, the only hamburger menus I can think of contain lesser-important functions of each app, like seeing the version/build number, or certain settings. I'm not sure I want something like a "See hidden files" ticker occupying screen real estate forever when I could just set it once in an accessory menu.
I question whether these critiques would evaporate if, instead of the three horizontal bars, Gnome instead used a gear icon or something, and turned their contents into a pop-up window rather than a popover element.
Traditionally you'd put that in a menu still, just a horizontal one that displays the top version of the hierarchy. This allows you to skip one click, and doesn't significantly eat into the ample screen space.
Perhaps the biggest problem with the hamburger menu is that there is absolutely zero convention for what you put in there, or in which order. You don't know what you'll find in the menu unless you click it. With the old top menu, there were a set of conventions for this; roughly where specific options went, and in which order, and even which hotkeys you'd press to activate the menus. This means that even in an application you were completely unfamiliar with (even hideously complex ones such as an IDE or 3d modelling software), you could fairly easily navigate the application.
I like the hamburger menus, because they are usually one-level deep and contain very few items.
I cannot tell you how many times I want to go into an app's settings, and it takes longer than 20 seconds; some have it in File, some in Edit, others in random menus like "Tools". Further still, the damned menu item itself could be named Settings, Preferences, Options, whatever. Even further, looking at Gimp here, Preferences is one of 25 menu items that I need to scan through. This is not good UX, this is Stockholm Syndrome.
Contrast with Gnome apps: Hamburger -> Preferences, invariably, never takes longer than three seconds to find it.
Hamburger menu is a good solution for simple and small desktop apps but it's not a good choice to use it for anything complex.
There's this Pinta image editor that since its initial release offered standard menus - for years it looked nearly identical to Paint.NET on which is partially based. In January devs switched to GTK4/libadwaita; new 3.0 release replaced menus with combined hamburger menu which of course cannot be decoupled in any way and which make advanced editing annoying. There's more clicking to do anything unless you decide to learn all shortcuts. And this "learn shortcuts" is quite common answer to hamburger menu complains.
I just installed Pinta to check it out. That implementation is just bad, you are not supposed to just migrate your menu bar into submenus under the hamburger menu.
If I were to assist with their design, I would eliminate everything that already has a headerbar icon or an on-screen affordance; so most of Files, Edit, View, and Layers is taken care of.
The stuff that remains:
- Quit: superfluous, not present in Gnome apps
- View: borrow the Ephiphany (gnome-web) zoom controls, move Grid, Show/Hide, and Ruler units into a preferences dialog
- Add-ins: Move to a preferences dialog
- Window is useless, they have tabs
- Help can stay
So no surprise that the laziest implementation of a hamburger menu is not good.
It's kinda funny how Pinta changed while Paint.NET remains same with just minor tweaks to the interface. Luckily devs there never considered utilizing ribbon interface...
In the end I swapped from Pinta to Gimp and Krita because I couldn't stand that interface
Tbh, at this point I would pay for paint.NET on Linux.
Pinta is interesting, but the UI is terrible. Did we really have to remove the resize handles? They're there when adding shapes, but not when manipulating pixels/selection? Half the options I need being hidden in a hamburger menu isn't great either.
Gimp is gimp. I don't need Photoshop. And I don't want a Photoshop level of a learning curve.
Krita is interesting, but it seems to be aimed at drawing. I struggled to copy the color code from an image. By default my eyes are drawn to the massive advanced color selector on the right, but it's a trap. You actually need the tiny color selector in the top bar. It shouldn't be this hard.
I need a subset of image manipulation features in my work and each tool has a different one.
> Supposing I did, the only hamburger menus I can think of contain lesser-important functions of each app
gEdit places almost everything in the hamburger menu; opening and saving files have dedicated buttons but for example find/replace is behind the burger, as is "save as". It may not matter much if you use keyboard shortcuts (ctrl+f is pretty common for find and I never try to look for it in the menu) but one might still expect a GUI to allow its features to be easily accessed without the use of a keyboard. I don't think the mix of a few dedicated buttons and a single hamburger menu is necessarily good for discoverability either.
The Image Viewer puts file management and image rotating in the hamburger menu. Oddly enough, other image editing options are available in a separate editing mode that's accessed via its own dedicated button. Also, although file management features are behind the hamburger menu, for some reason image properties are behind a dedicated button.
In both cases the only reason the hamburger menus aren't more populated is because there just isn't that much functionality in either app to begin with.
Evince (the document viewer) also puts almost everything in the hamburger menu -- although in that case, if a traditional menu bar were used instead of the hamburger, most of its functions would probably only be split between "file" and "view" menus or something along those lines.
I'm not sure if those apps are still Gnome defaults but they're some of the examples of what I'd consider somewhat poorly considered use of the hamburger menu.
Outside of Gnome, the new UI in JetBrains IDEs has switched to hiding typical menu bar menus behind a hamburger menu button. I honestly don't understand that decision at all: the menus are still the same, they just require an additional click to access, and since the selection of available menus is only revealed after clicking the button, you can only start scanning for the menu you're looking for after the reveal. While separate from free software desktop design, the new UI in those IDEs is another example of what I would also consider mobile-influenced degradation of desktop UIs -- and a particularly weird one at that.
Hamburger menus are also useful for things that otherwise would be behind a right-click. I personally have not encountered a good replacement for right-click in touch UIs.
They are for rarely-used actions. The corollary is that frequently-used actions are surfaced directly in the header bar instead of buried in menus. This is almost universally good. I say "almost" because content creation applications have so many actions that a menu bar sometimes makes sense; I'm thinking in particular of Inkscape with three sides of the window occupied by icons and a bizarre hamburger icon in the bottom of the right panel for some reason.
I don't disagree, but I think that's another reason they exist beyond screen real estate on mobile. Context menus take no screen space, but they don't play nice with touch.
There are plenty of alternative paradigms on touch interfaces, both two finger tap (on capable devices) as well as side-swipe are used to bring up menus that are as contextful (or more) than the burger menu.
But it barely exists anymore. It was common in early Android, not anymore. I think the reason was bad discoverability... which is true. But not having the functionality is worse.
The GGP's comparison was KDE vs. macOS, so that's the most charitable interpretation I can think of.
The comparison also holds. With every major release macOS has become more like iOS and iPadOS much more so than iOS and iPadOS have become like macOS.
It's a shift I loathe, but Apple has a much harder time selling Macs to iDevice owners than the other way around. It's an understandable and maybe even unavoidable shift for Apple to make, much as it will drive a small number of die-hards elsewhere.
As someone who does not use Stage Manager, I don't find that the other ways macOS has become more like iOS were, to me, bad ways. The most notable changes I find were that the Settings app became far more organized and consistent, and the Control Center has tons of convenient shortcuts with a very high level of customization.
In fact, Control Center is currently less customizable than iOS because you've been able to fully rearrange the controls on iOS for an entire year now. If anything, it could stand to be more like iOS in that regard, though it's not a huge deal either way.
I don't particularly use widgets much either, but I never felt their inclusion was a net negative, they're just not as useful as other interfaces already available on macOS.
One thing I'll definitely cede though: having some "macOS" apps actually be iOS apps, like Home, is weird not just because the UI design is unusual but also because there's been no attempt to make standard desktop hotkeys work, not even Esc.
Good news, maybe: macOS 26's Control Center is much more like iOS in that way, and they've also added an API that will let third-party apps offer their own control center widgets.
Google. Microsoft. Apple. In the years where "mobile is cool" became a mantra, basically everybody fell for the trend. Several examples in this random blog post that talks about the topic:
You asking this means (maybe?) that you're too young to have used the abhorrent default start menu of Windows 8, but yeah, forcing down users' throats the result of tucking what essentially was a mobile design into a 32" desktop monitor was the pure definition of "stupid decisions driven by marketing".
And it was not only OSes, too much of the web got "infected" with these design trends that are only appropriate for small screens:
I'm old enough that the first computer I used was an IBM PC. Running PC DOS. Granted, I was very young and only remember it because of the little turtle in Logo. Then it was Apple IIs. Then Windows. I actually used Linux in the 90's. I remember Windows 8, but mainly because of the complainers. I was Linux full time by then anyway.
But I do happen to enjoy having extraneous menus hidden. Why are they cluttering my screen and workspace when I'm using keyboard shortcuts anyway? I want to see my actual work, not some menu I don't need and will never click on...
Using a mouse to click on a bunch of tiny menus littered all over the place is horrible for productivity and screams "boomer"...
Oh! then you've lived well through all these design fads of the last decades. Let me assure you, a bad designer is going to do a bad job whether you give them a desktop-first framework or not, that's the kind of desktop interfaces you might be thinking of. But a mobile-first framework will always render poor results on desktop, regardless (and in spite) of the skill and knowledge of the designer.
I cannot say this based on evidence, but I'll say anyways based on subjective common sense, that the Start Menu of Windows 95, 98, XP, and 7 were all immensely better than the Start ..."screen" thing of Windows 8.
It's not that mobile is "cool". I've had analytics data for many apps across different types of industries. Consistently, even on mainline web pages, traffic is dominated by mobile. The vast majority of people visit apps and pages on their phones.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The screenshot on the website has all sorts of optional bits enabled, and I would readily agree is not a good showcase.
The reason all those optional bits exist is because you'd be surprised who ends up using a terminal emulator in a general purpose desktop GUI used in many large IT deployments. E.g. a lot of folks who are used to PuTTy on Windows and want a little GUI for SSH connections, and for them this is the game changer.
The "try to show all the goods in your screenshot" mindset is really not a good one though, agree :)
That's better, but the toolbar/buttons could always be configured away. The real problem is the context menu. Has it been simplified or made configurable?
Out of interest, what do you use the context menu for in a terminal emulator so often that it bothers you? I can't even remember the last time I opened it.
I hide all UI and use only the context menu, 90% of the time to open a new tab, 5% of the time to split a tab, and 4% of the time to bring up the config dialog. 1% to open a new window, though I'm often doing Ctrl+Alt+T for that recently.
This is what I've done since SGI 4DWM Terminal (and ancient NT Command Prompt), and almost all other terminal emulators can be configured to do so. Konsole stands alone (to my knowledge) in its insistence on cruft all over the interface. The terminal widget itself seems fine.
To be clear, I don't mind obscure options, but they should live in the control panel. See my cousin comment for more details.
All these things have keyboard shortcuts If the context menu bothers you, it would seem worth it to use them for frequent actions. CTRL+Shift+T opens a new tab for instance. It's way more efficient anyway in an app that's so keyboard centric.
I don't find that context menu so bad to be honest. If you use it often you should know where things are anyway.
Overall I'm quite surprised at the hate Konsole receives in this HN thread. Removing the toolbars is two clicks away and only needs to be done once. Even the menu bar can be hidden. Such a konsole window would be just the terminal, no cruft, no UI elements. To me we are in the "some people will never be happy for no clear reasons" territory.
I've been using it for years I'm very happy with it. Its search feature is awesome, and its ability to have infinite scroll history is very nice too, it has decent performance.
The one terrible thing I have seen about konsole is that the toolbar buttons were highjacking the keyboard bindings in the terminal, but it was a bug, I think this is now fixed and a workaround was to remove the toolbar.
When I start typing I want to execute the new idea immediately. No other tabbed terminal (that I’ve used) prevents this besides konsole, simply because the context menu is (un)optimized to include the kitchen sink instead of the one item I want.
Folks trying to talk me into a new workflow can’t succeed because I’m multiplatform. Gnome terminal, iTerm2, Win Terminal, etc. konsole is the oddball and least used of the group. Partly because the context menu is a mess.
No, I mentioned that this is solved with a couple of clicks to do once if you are bothered by this. I see few reasons to complain really. One could prefer having different defaults (and I would, actually), but it's not like their are awful neither.
Had the toolbars been difficult or impossible to customize or remove, I wouldn't say, but here ulyou can make it look to your taste completely. The issue is a taste question and is a "meh" at best.
Yes, that's the downplaying part. Configuring bad default away doesn't make a user happy the bad default existed and required wasting time fixing it (of course it's not a couple of clicks, that's also downplaying, you'd have to first acquire the knowledge that it's possible (not all UIs can be customized) and how to do it (e.g., some DEs require installing some DE Shell Extension to be able to find the relevant config))
Defaults cannot always please every unique user. That's an impossible goal.
It's fine that impossibly picky users get to click through a few settings once to set their environment to their liking. I'm one myself sometimes.
I wonder if vocal people here who hate this minor (yes, I'll die on this hill) stuff so much took the time to even report this as an issue in KDE's bugtracker. Here's the link if it's not already done:
> Defaults cannot always please every unique user. That's an impossible goal.
You're just continuing in your quest to ignore the issue. Just set the goal at "most users", that's fine, you'll still need to defend this actual screen waste to make an argument, but you can't hide behind a generic "can't please everyone"
> hate
There is no hate, you've made it up to make your argument sound better.
> this minor (yes, I'll die on this hill)
No one is looking at, let alone fighing, you on this imaginary hill. The other commenter explicitly said it's not a big issue. I also agree it's minor. Stop bringing more straws for your scarecrow!
> took the time to even report this
To waste it on a repeat of this argument with ~0 chance of a win? Again, you've made up that hate, so there is no motivation in doing that, a more productive use of that time is to use a better terminal (or just configure it away), so that's usually what happens
Doesn't help when coming from a browser. Ctrl+Alt+T works without the Terminal in focus however. Ctrl+Shift+T needs me to click in the terminal first then go back to the keyboard. Waste of time.
I almost always switch windows with Alt+Tab, not with a mouse, so it fits very well for that flow. Understandable if it doesn't do the trick for you though.
I’m well aware of all these hotkeys. The issue is I’m using the mouse with my browser, scrolling clicking etc. Reading gives me an idea so I click on my terminal that’s always open. This is the best time to open a tab imho, and have been doing it for decades.
Thankfully there are a dozen terminals to choose from that don’t make konsole’s minor mistakes. (Although chances are they made others.)
I don't think it's super complex with a ton of options any more. Just installed cachyos(arch based) kde plasma and the right click menu looks like this https://i.imgur.com/S59wy2H.png so either they are configuring away a lot of the complexity or the updates to it have been slimming.
- Change encoding? I have never changed the encoding of my terminal, not once since first using a computer, circa 1982. UTF8-FTW.
- Adjust scrollback, on the context menu?
- If you hide the toolbar/menu I believe it adds the main menu to the context menu. And that is where the majority of the hundred options live. And at the end, where a Properties or Preferences entry should live.
- Last but not least, no "New Tab" entry, which is the thing I use it for 90% of the time.
double click the tab area and you get a new tab. ctrl-n gets you a new tab. i personally wouldn't ever use that feature.
I like the extra modes of copying since they all have unique uses and prevent editing in cases.
the encoding bit is odd yeah. adjust scrollback is not a common option i suppose.
it would be nice to configure the right click menu more but that's not an option i see in many apps so it's a wash. I use the menu so i don't have those options. it may even be configurable via a file somewhere in .config... i haven't tried or been bothered by the defaults enough to do so.
GUIs (and especially buttons) are most useful for things I do infrequently. Frequent tasks are better done by keyboard shortcuts or command line utilities anyway. The only places where I routinely click on label-less icons are in the menu bar/system tray and my browser's always-visible toolbar.
I guess both of those places are especially space constrained, which maybe makes it feel more worth it to me. And I also actively arrange all the items in both cases, choosing not just the arrangement but which will show at all. That means I know them basically as soon as I throw them down.
I wonder if it would be crazy to have the labels on shown-by-default buttons fade only after a certain number of clicks on them.
> I guess both of those places are especially space constrained, which maybe makes it feel more worth it to me.
See how easy it is to justify "the scourge"?
Also, this is exactly the same situation here - using a permanent toolbar on your main screen (not a submenu or some secondary settings screen where extra labels don't cost anything)
> crazy to have the labels on shown-by-default buttons fade only after a certain number of clicks on them.
Great idea, had the same, though an even better is to use frecency as a proxy for memory everywhere (and also apply it to various tips and keybinds etc) - if you've clicked the button 10 times, the label disappears, but if you haven't clicked in a year, it reappears (all configurable per button of course, OS-wide, there are some frequently use symbols like clipboard that you'll never forget due to use in other apps)
That's why I love KDE. You can have it just the way you like it. Not how someone else decided on.
I think a lot of people knock it just from looking at some screenshots of the default options. Not knowing everything is configurable. Think the taskbar (panel) is too thick? Just change it. Don't want that toolbar? No worries just turn it off. It's so good.
I was in that boat for years. It took forcing myself to switch due to GNOME breaking basic features before I realized just how great and customizable KDE is.
You can easily implement Windows or macOS UI layouts using it and it isn't terrible. I actually prefer KDE to either desktop.
> Is it really necessary to take up what could be used for 2+ extra lines of terminal output for a labeled Copy button?
It's not, which is why the context menu gives you an "Icons Only" option, along with "Text Only", "Text Alongside Icons" (default), and "Text Under Icons". You can also adjust the icon size, or remove the toolbar entirely.
I use the terminal too much for that. I use yakuake for a quick text based ai interface though. That way I can quickly go like "what's the difference between this and that in Spanish?" when I'm writing something.
I use yakuake for everything, I don't know what I would be missing out from a dedicated term: yakuake has tabs, and splits/tiling, so the entirety of my terminal needs are covered in one convenient and easily accessible place :-)
I have probably started using konsole because it was the default, but have since liked it a lot. I use tmux whenever I want to split windows, synchronize keystrokes and things like that but for all else, konsole works perfectly well.
I have set it up in a way that I don't see any clutter. You can hide whatever you don't want to see on the UI. All I see is the terminal and the tabs.
The killer feature is the 'monitor for silence' and 'monitor for activity'. Comes quite handy for long running background tasks that you want to monitor.
Hide the menu/toolbar. And 11 is too many as it is, see my comment elsewhere. Someone posted a screenshot of a new install with 16, but it still doesn't have the main menu disabled. Which adds it to the context menu.
I suspect overlooked and stalled pull requests are common in open-source. A small one of mine (to a popular project that is not KDE or GNOME) recently took half a year, and most of that time was spent waiting for reviewers and bikeshedding the docs. My condolences on the frustration.
For what it's worth, I'm not part of KDE's inner circle, yet the several PRs that I have submitted to them since I started using it (~2 years ago) have all been accepted. One was difficult to shepherd through the gauntlet of opinions, but was finally merged. So the process is not entirely impenetrable.
I disagree - I see stuff like this, and I wonder if anyone actually thinks about the UI, or it's just "features thrown at the wall." It takes me a long time to remove buttons, icons, etc. from KDE's default layout. They seem to take too much comfort in "everything is configurable" as a way to ignore sane defaults.
Not everyone wants or needs the customizability of KDE. But if you're a heavy desktop user, being able to tailor every aspect of your system to your specific preferences, is absolutely wonderful. Using my Mac for work has become excruciating since I switched to KDE for my Linux machines last year.
I'm heavy desktop user and I never want to tailor every aspect of my system to my specific preferences. I don't have any specific preferences. I have general preferences of any sane user and I want programs to have sane GUI which does not need additional setup. There's no good environment for me in Linux. KDE is too customizable, I installed it once, opened settings and immediately formatted my disk. GNOME is terrible with their tablet UI and miriad hidden keybindings, but at least it does not have billion options, so I'm using GNOME, but I'm not happy with it. All I want is something windows 95-like, but without any settings whatsoever. GNOME 2 was very good desktop back in the days, it's a pity they decided to ruin it.
I think it's pretty clear that there are both kinds of power users: the ones who take pride in being able to learn whatever defaults there are, and the ones who take pride in being able to customize the defaults to their preference.
I don't believe either group is any more right than the other: both sides have about equal amounts of good arguments and pointless posturing. A tabs-vs-spaces situation. Fortunately, in this case, we more often than not have a choice: computing environment GUIs are still pretty personal, so everyone can just use software that follows their expectations. The problem begins when a user from one side is somehow forced to use software following the other side's ideology - but that's a separate story, and arguably it's the "being forced" part that's the actual problem.
Personally, I'm very inconsistent in this regard. There are apps that I've been customizing for more than a decade and, quite honestly, I wouldn't know how to use them were my config to suddenly stop working (Emacs, ZSH, tmux). On the other hand, there are apps I've been using for a similarly long time, but never bothered to configure (other than possibly installing a bunch of plugins): Firefox and Vim come to mind.
There are also apps that I do customize, but either only once and never touch the config again (my window manager, Awesome), or ones that I customize but only to add an escape hatch (adding "Open this file in Emacs" to all JetBrains IDEs, for example).
So from my perspective, what's essential is to have a choice: both GNOME and KDE should exist, should enjoy similar popularity, and should each focus on their favored philosophy. Let those who want to work with defaults use software where a lot of effort went into providing sane defaults (it's ok if customizability suffers), and let those who want to customize use software where significant effort went into allowing customizability (it's ok if defaults are slightly insane).
> any sane user and I want programs to have sane GUI which does not need additional setup
In reality there is no such thing as a "sane user" using programs with "sane GUIs". Either someone already has a lot of preferences formed by their experiences using desktop OSes over the years, or they have started using desktop OSes recently and they barely have any expectations.
And because of that there is no such things as "sane user" using "sane GUIs". Your sanity is someone else's insanity.
Your screenshot shows a menu in which features, namely the menu bar, have quite explicitly been removed from the default layout because you are unlikely to use them. You are showing the second tier of a menu structure where they are available if you need them occasionally. If you happen to need them more often you can easily add them to the toolbar.
It's certainly possible, but to me it feels like a junk drawer without too much thought. In konsole, for example, it buries "use dark color scheme," which I'd assume is a fairly common option.
I'm not sure usability is moving in the right direction with KDE. Over the past years, more and more applications started to hide menus by default, sometimes adding hamburger menus instead.
There is also a "new way" (I believe QtQuick-based) for applications to create popups, which results in them not being separate windows anymore. System Settings makes prominent use of them for example and those popups just behave entirely different than one is used to. As far as I know it's not even possible to navigate these popups with the keyboard.
> 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.
KDE its Achilles heel is that every KDE application is like its own little fiefdom, compared to Gnome's top-down control of whatever the blessed application for a particular function is.
This is why a KDE desktop often feels incredibly disjointed to use. You can't develop muscle memory for conventions if there are no conventions.
> 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.
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?
I don't know if there is a "best" but I've been using OpenSUSE Leap 15.6 with KDE on my work, personal, and family machines for the last year or so. Even my non-technical (but technologically capable) spouse has been using and enjoying it over that time on their personal laptop.
For me the best KDE software integration is in openSUSE, also love their YaST graphical control center and BTRFS filesystem snappshoting integration with the package manager and the control center. Second best distro for me is Fedora KDE.
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.
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.
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.
> - There are dedicated UX teams whose sole focus is to improve UX.
They don't work like the UX teams of yesteryear.
In the early 2000s, companies did user studies. Put a potential user in front of the product, let them use it while the UX team observed. Ask questions to the user afterwards. Make changes, repeat.
But that kind of research is expensive, so it's thrown out to instead just collect tons of metrics that likely don't tell a whole story. They think "Users must love feature X because they keep clicking on it!" when the reality is that they're trying to find something else, but the label for X looks related to what they want.
I agree with all your points regarding the race to the bottom. I think that's why UIs hide so much information. Older interface designs are considered "confusing" or "cluttered" because there's so much there at a first glance, even if all the buttons elements are grouped by functionality.
> There are dedicated UX teams whose sole focus is to improve UX.
Imho, this is a big source of the problem.
Granted: there are some amazing UX designers and teams out there.
But my experience with UX teams has been that in most middle-market companies they're usually less that sort and more the {huge designer ego} + {management consulting political skillset} one.
And it's a tough problem to solve! Because ultimately you want someone who can argue very hard for their approach to improving UX (usually against opposition from others). But when someone's ego exceeds their skill, that leads to disaster.
And without a strong Jobs-esque "this sucks" arbiter over them, their changes make it to prod.
> We now have a plethora of UX logging and can see real time where users struggle.
No you can't. That telemetry gives you view into how users are experiencing the software is a myth because it doesn't include the actions users don't take and it doesn't include the reasons for actions taken.
This is an opinion stated as fact. Not every user is the same. That's why there are loads of apps with UIs that have different user modes, for power users, etc. KDE is most suitable for power users of Linux desktops, probably who use it as their daily driver. If you aren't in that category, you may not like it or may find it to be not worth the time investment in.
Not every user is the same, but it's absolutely valid to discuss whether broadly for most users constantly-churning UI is a net positive or net negative. I think your case, ie customizable UIs, is something of an edge case, and I do agree with you that expert versions of simple UIs can be a really positive move.
I dislike how people seem to recommend KDE for power users when GNOME is actually.. great?
I'm an old power user/dev and I used to absolutely love KDE 3 for its take on 90s OS UI, I went into v4 thinking it was a major downgrade (I used KDE 3 as far as the KDEMOD maintainers could push it) and it never got as good as the old v3 days. Somewhere by the end of the KDE 4 life, GNOME 3 formed into something kind of usable and I started noticing some advantages to it, even tried it for a while. Fast forward to now (including a few years where I rolled my own LXDE/XFCE hybrid setup, I was desperate lol) and now I pretty much only use GNOME. I consider it a fine DE for power users... or whatever use you have really. It's great on a notebook, it's great on a desktop and it's great even as an HTPC interface. You do have to wrestle with it for some advanced functionality (dealing with extension isn't always fun, digging into dconf isn't fun...) but the OOB defaults and basic functionality are actually the best there is, maybe even among all desktop OSes.
I mean, if Linus Torvalds out of all people uses it then it must be at least decent for more advanced users, right?
Now whenever I try KDE it feels like an uncomfortable car where every single adjustable thing needs to be tweaked for it to feel minimally usable, except many adjustments are finicky and leave you with a half assed solution. It won't resonate with me anymore...
There isn't only one kind of power user, and not every kind of power user will like KDE. I use GNOME almost daily, with KDE being my primary daily driver. I just really don't see how GNOME could ever said to be great for power users. There are so many ways you can tailer KDE to specific things you may find yourself doing heavily, that would be impossible with GNOME's UI. Being a power user and using GNOME, to me just means you're using the terminal for everything, which is totally valid.
Linus also may not even really be a power user. He says himself that he rarely writes code anymore, and primarily just sends emails and reviews code.
I didn't say KDE is the only option for power users, or that there aren't multiple types of power users with different use cases and individual preferences. I'm not sure what I'm gatekeeping.
Is it really gatekeeping to say that KDE is for power users? Setting it up in a way that really meshes with your use case and preferences is a process that you'll spend many hours or days of time on. That's not something that makes sense for grandma's computing workload.
> This is an opinion stated as fact. KDE is mostly for dads that like a mouse oriented Windows/mac like OS but with buttons to customize. Sway, exwm etc are for power users.
So you're saying that prefering a highly customizable GUI means you're be a power user, but instead you're a gasp dad? This isn't Reddit, buddy. Grow up.
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.
I prefer what Windows 11 has done with settings being a simple two panel window with categories on left and scrollable settings on the right, with a search/filter bar at top. As you drill deeper you have a breadcrumb at top allowing you to see the levels you are in and click to go back up. This also allows space for descriptions of what each setting does. It could even be improved by allowing users to pin commonly used settings.
This seems overall more simple and cohesive compared to the old Windows control panel with icons and nested settings being popups within popups within popups. It also allows easier scaling and viewing depending on DPI, screen size, resolution, etc.
Windows 11 settings are worse than they were prior to Windows 10. Before I could have multiple windows open for settings to monitor progress (like of windows updates) or check settings against each other. Now it's a monolithic interface that forces me to back out of something I'm looking at to look at something else, like a website that doesn't let me open multiple tabs to browse it. Terrible UX IMO.
As a developer who has worked on similar things, that interface can prevent a lot of trouble of the kind "What if the user edits a setting that updates something in another part of settings, which might also be open at the same time?" - or even the same settings screen opened multiple times. It is rare that such cases come up for users, but they can be very annoying and time-consuming to deal with. Perhaps that was the motivation.
I get it, but instead of putting effort into redesigning the whole interface to avoid this possibility, they could have put that effort into rendering the same UI in immediate mode and problem solved.
I actually think the real motive is that they wanted to move to a more unified mobile and tablet friendly UI code base, which centers more around full screen windows.
>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.
> 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).
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.
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).
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)
Well, once installed, Fedora Asahi is just standard Fedora ARM with some drivers and bootloader code. You can do anything you would do with a Fedora.
> (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)
If you are still hesitating, it's actually really easy to try : just run the command on the Asahi website and follow the instructions. The setup will resize your partition automatically and will not touch anything of your macOS install or your data. It's even easier than on PC where you have to boot the installation media and manage the partitionning yourself. IIRC, there isnt even the option to remove your macOS partition at any moment so you can't even lose your data by mistake.
The only prerequisite is having free space on your disk and everything else is automatic.
Also, uninstalling Asahi is as easy as going to macOS Disk Utility App, right click on the asahi partition, delete, and resize the macOS partition. After those three clicks, your Mac is now in the same state than before installing Asahi.
Hey, thanks a lot to you and everyone else who has been kind enough to share their inputs.
I did try Asahi after encouragement from you all. Installation was indeed smooth. I'd say as smooth as it gets (and I am including Mac auth screen and then SIP tweak in recovery CLI - I assume).
However, the UI/UX wasn't what I expected. I think I was looking for something like ElementaryOS (what I had mentioned and I know it might sound like a broken record), but I was looking for an out-of-the-box pleasing and "just works" UI. It wasn't that, sadly.
I first tried Fedora with GNOME, and it was really not good - even in functionality.
Then I wiped it clean and again installed - this time with KDE Plasma. Functionality was much better. But UX/UI left a lot to be desired. For example, the display was scaled to 170%, and I just couldn't bring it to the right size. 185% was closest. Then I had to change trackpad settings, et cetera. I'd assumed Mac hardware-specific DE/OS might come with some initial tweaks done already. I struggled a lot with shortcuts, and the general UI/UX wasn't feeling like home at all. I also think I am a lot biased, not only coming from Mac but stuck on something like Elementary.
Finally, I cleaned it up. Hopefully, there'd be more Asahi Remix distros. Again, thanks a lot to all of you!
Define Windows-like. Windows 11 is complete insanity and nearly unusable. Windows 2000/XP is more logical and boring (the good kind). In my opinion, yes KDE is "Windows-like", but based in an era before MS devs started self medicating on mushrooms and LSD.
KDE generally functions how you expect. For example, a bunch of FOSS hippies somehow managed to create a control panel (system settings in KDE parlance) that's easy to use and navigate, and Microsoft still haven't accomplished that despite trying for over 10 years at this point.
Also, I can dock my task bar to the side, like God intended.
> Also - can one access certain Mac folders in Asahi (e.g. ~/Pictures)? And is it even recommended, if it's possible (Security wise)?
You cannot access any of your Mac folders in Asahi. Your Mac partitions are invisible until you reboot into MacOS.
Some potential workarounds:
1. Use Syncthing to sync your Pictures folder on both operating systems to an external Mac. This of course duplicates the contents of the folder on your Mac/Asahi SSD, which is wasteful.
[Note: Dropbox does not work on Asahi Linux because it only barely works on x86 Linux and it has never worked on Arm Linux.]
2. Use an external USB or SD drive for files you want to share. Needs to be formatted in something both OSes can read/write (e.g. not APFS).
3. Use Paragon's $40 extFS which lets MacOS read and write to your Linux partition. Supposedly; I haven't tried it. This only solves half your problem: It gives MacOS access to your Linux files but not the reverse.
4. Make a brand new partition on your drive for shared files, and format it exFAT. MacOS can read/write exFAT natively and Linux can usually be made to do so, although I haven't tried it yet on Asahi. This seems to me like the most promising option if you don't want to depend on an external drive.
Yes, that's known as global application menu (not enabled by default). It's not the most discoverable feature, but it's working great once set up. (For reference, just add the widget to your panel and then make sure to restart plasma for it to take effect).
Yes, this was mandatory for me. It's the reason I switched from GNOME to KDE originally, GNOME broke the global menu bar.
You can recreate the layout almost perfectly. Don't try to theme it as macOS, just get the UI components in the right places using the widgets it comes with.
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.
Well, as they say, each one of us have our own perception but it never felt like a mac "clone" to it. It is imho an excellent mac inspired desktop that just tries to help the user of the computer and gets out of the way. Simple, elegant and really fast. This I am telling from almost a decade ago and based on quick tests over the years or screencasts.
I sometimes used to fantasise Apple ordering their UX folks to just adopt it pixel by pixel and stick to it.
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).
Customize KDE is easy:
- panels could be moved in several clicks
- add / remove widgets also could be done by mouse (and there are additional widgets that could be downloaded)
- themes and animations and configured in settings
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
> 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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> Coming from GNOME, I was pleasantly surprised that many GNOME extensions I would rely on had equivalent feature functionality built into KDE
Recently I changed distro along with DE and ho boy, my initial customization and polishing in KDE was way shorter to anything I did before in Gnome or Xfce. In order to have a "regular" desktop paradigm workflow there I had to get variety of extensions to revert back or patch up doubtful design, usability decisions.
The only place I was satisfied with Gnome was on laptop - there it surprisingly fit perfectly. Not the vanilla version of course because it still needed some extensions.
Looking across the years, I don't know what's the big masterplan of Gnome devs but it seems it's not building a desktop environment for users but some weird convergence solution that they probably aim at corporations. Not sure for what purpose tho. People here mentioned on a few occasions how hostile that team is against users, their suggestions and complains.
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.
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.
Another echo here. Xfce was my beloved desktop until Gtk 3 started transforming it with design elements that hate me. Plasma is my new home, and after some tweaks, I'm pretty happy with it.
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.
KDE won me over for the simple fact that it's highly configurable, and that configuration is all driven out of one UI tool. Gnome drove me nuts with molding it into the shape I wanted.
My only problem is it seems to be buggy still. I just tried it on Fedora 42, and I configured the panel to my liking. Now I cannot get the panel to auto hide or dodge windows, no matter what I try. sigh
I think the 'K-thing' was a big and helpful part of getting early volunteers onboard to build apps for KDE. They really seemed to enjoy rebuilding existing applications into a K-version.
So I guess you just have to live with it, but consider it a way to honor the original contributors who build all the K(DE)-versions of the common apps
I feel the exact same way about the dock. That's.one thing I like about Ubuntu, their dock just makes sense for me. It's on the left by default and always visible (which is how I like it). But of course you can have it auto-hide.
Fun fact about Linux "docks". The reason why they can't do the exact effect Apple uses to auto-scale their dock on mouseover is that Apple patented that particular effect.
> 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.
Extensibility can be nice, but the experience has a lot of friction. If you want something that isn't bog standard, you need to get or make an extension.
Making one is more work than what I can do from basic configuration settings in KDE. I want to spend my time on other projects. The marketplace suffers from the same problems as most marketplaces. Plenty of unmaintained extensions. No guarantees of quality. Now I need to do research on extensions instead of just changing a configuration setting.
The existence of extensions allows gnome devs to figure they don't have to support basic features because someone will make an extension for it.
Extension configurations don't live in the same place as standard configurations.
Well, I never wanted something standard so I always configured my desktop. My current GNOME desktop looks more like KDE than GNOME. I gave a try to KDE in 2014. It seems that it has been the wrong time to be there. I switched to GNOME Flashback (the one that looked like GNOME 2) and updated to 3 only when there has been the right extensions to make the desktop look like what I want it to be. Neither Apple nor Microsoft figured out what I want, so I use something else. Actually Microsoft have been closer to that with XP and 7 but it's Windows. I migrated to Linux in 2009.
The problem is that the extension experience can be really bad. There is no extension API; instead Extensions have (almost) full access to GNOME Shell's code.
This makes them incredibly powerful and flexible... but also fragile. Extensions can crash GNOME Shell/mutter. On Wayland that means your entire session goes down with GNOME Shell. Extensions can interfere with each other, and if you are an extension developer, you may need to update (or at least check) your extension every 6 months (GNOMEs release cycle).
Extension lives in the same memory space as the shell, so it’s up to the developer to restrict themselves to not touch internal API. Also, GNOME give you plenty of warning in the changelog (and the changes are usually small).
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.
The last time I used Gnome as my primary desktop (that was still in the Gnome 3 days) extensions broke at every update. I was still using Arch Linux at the time, so it was annoying because every ~6 months a few of my extensions would be broken for 1~2 weeks.
AFAIK Gnome extensions still doesn't have a stable API, so this issue is still present today.
I've used gnome for 7 years in Fedora. Often certain extensions stopped working betweenv after Fedora big upgrades (i.e. from 32 to 33). The JavaScript engine that runs extensions had many memory leaks bugs so I had to kill the gnome-shell process on a TTY session.
After 7 years I was fed up and switched to KDE and never looked back
I ran Linux for a time in the late aughts and came to prefer Gnome to KDE at the time because it just felt more polished. I switched to macOS for many years now, but recently started playing with Linux again on a Thinkpad I got a deal on. Modern Gnome feels unreasonably uncomfigurable without extra tooling, and even with it the options I want are difficult to make work correctly.
I want my window controls on the left, and I want global menu. This was pretty standard and reliable in Gnome ten-fifteen years ago but now both options barely work. What the heck happened. Both of these worked pretty flawlessly in Unity. I'm still pissed at Ubuntu for killing it.
Yes, changing distros to change DEs is simply nonsensical behavior. If one's distro doesn't support multiple DEs then it's probably time to reconsider if taking reddit's advice on the ArchLinux-spin of the quarter is actually a good idea.
Not sure what the point is, but "creating your own OS" by forking Debian / Ubuntu / Fedora / Arch and changing the wallpaper (only slightly hyperbolic) still seems to be somewhat popular. One of the best outcomes was RebeccaBlackOS, which ended up being an early testbed for Wayland on the desktop.
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.
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.
> Admittedly, this was maybe 5 years ago. Has that improved?
It may have, yes!
One of the ways we run the KDE community is that we have an annual process to elect community-wide goals, which then have their own leadership team, infra, budget, etc. The goals themselves are long-running, i.e. it's not one year and done, either.
In about 2020/21 one of the goals that won/was added was titled "Improve Consistency across the Board", which lead to e.g. a comprehensive update of the HIG, renewed efforts on the controls library, and many cleanup passes across the products to get them up to date and in line.
It's an ongoing process and I'm sure plenty of people can still point to a pet peeve or an ugly corner - we're happy to have discerning users with high expectations - but the general state of things should be much better than half a decade ago.
There's also a next-gen styling/theming system project called Union in the works along with a next-gen design system developed in collaboration to take things to the next level in a few years, but we're taking our time to get it really right instead of pulling a Liquid Glass (one lesson we've learned through the years is that clawing your way back from reputational damage is really hard, and compromising on release quality is never the way to go). You can see annual updates on this e.g. in the feeds from our flagship dev conference.
BTW, not sure if you were involved with this at all but I really appreciate all the work that's gone into making the Kirigami/Qt Quick KDE programs feel less janky. It's still not perfect (don't know if it ever will be unless Qt releases their AoT QML compiler as open source) but it's gotten MUCH better since the early KDE 6 releases.
The screenshot in the OP article show already quite a few issues. It takes a trained eye to be able to articulate a lot of the issues. I feel like Gmome is designed by professional designers but KDE mostly by developers. I do share the sentiment that Gnome is often too rigid, but the design is coherent, consistent and aesthetically well articulated. I use Hyprland with mostly Gnome apps (have considered Niri too!)
But I don't mean to trash KDE. Some people don't care about that padding or visual layering or whatever but do care about the extra options and features. At the end of the day, I'm just happy that we're on a platform where all these approaches have their space and people can chose and build commnities that grow tools that adapt to their own sensibilities and needs.
KDE is great, Gnome is great, free software is great. Mac and Windows are hell.
I have used essentially all of the Linux desktop environments over the course of decades and my impression is that GNOME attracts developers with a strong interest in "design" as a hobby. And apparently ones who take the whole, "Perfection is attained not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away," philosophy perhaps a little too rigidly.
KDE tends towards pragmatism, discoverability, and customization over simple and flashy. The developers don't assume their users are simpletons who will get confused and run away if they encounter a checkbox they don't understand. They understand that many of their users are advanced tech-enthusiast "power users" just like themselves.
OP is talking about stuff that has nothing to do with check boxes or "simpletons". They're talking about super basic stuff like padding things the same way for dynamic content. Consistent fonts. Etc.
Honestly, I'm not too fond of the screenshots in the OP's article either. I'd say it looks all fairly slapdash and too busy.
I will say that the permission editing is (as you can also see in the nav bar there) a few levels down digging into menus, and if you go into those kinds of corners of other systems the UIs often tend to start looking a bit more "developer-y". E.g. check the analogous bits of Android, and also MacOS has a few things like plist editor windows and such where you're suddenly well off the consumer track and into unloved form-shaped things. It's a bit like the backrooms.
But that's not meant as a defense or justification!
In fact blogs like this and lists of warts often help us. If you play fly on the wall in some of our channels (e.g. the promo ones), you will also often see people doing the legwork of parsing reviews and ticketizing criticisms. We try to listen quite actively because if someone dislikes a UI they're most often right.
The most important thing is that what's bad today can in fact be good tomorrow, especially if you don't get defensive about it.
KDE Plasma 6 looks absolutely gorgeous on my Kubuntu laptop with highdpi OLED display, and that's coming from a mainly-Mac-user :)
(this wasn't my main reason to switch from Gnome though, I just couldn't stand the random design decisions in each Gnome update anymore, and generally Gnome never really clicked with me the way KDE immediately did - which is also strange since Gnome is supposed to be the 'Mac desktop clone', while KDE is supposed to be the 'Windows desktop clone' heh)
I really dislike how people present KDE and Gnome as being "clones" of Windows and MacOS. GNOME specially is so distinct (be it for good and bad reasons) that it deserves to be considered it's own thing. I can't stand MacOS with all it's Macosisms that are ingrained since it's Macintosh days. GNOME being grown for PC usages has none of these issues. Window management is also a breeze and easy to pickup rather than a byzantine mess. The only thing they really share is a nice, sparse look & feel.
KDE does have a lot more similarities to Windows but saying it's a clone might put the wrong idea on peoples mind when they transition from Microsoft's system.
Back in the olden days, Microsoft and Apple did a lot of actual UI research, and for a resource-limited open source project there was no shame in piggybacking on those research results IMHO. But with the 'UX mafia' taking over big companies, nowadays it's reversed, the resource limited open source projects often have better usability.
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.
GNOME is pretty, but it’s not great when it comes to progressive disclosure – what you see is what you get; there’s no depth in which power user features can be found.
macOS is nearly the opposite in this regard. I wouldn’t mind giving it a facelift but doing it GNOME style would mean it losing much of what has kept many users on it.
The way for power using gnome is through extensions. But once you got used to the gnome philosophy, you find that you don’t have to fiddle with the UI that much.
Nice in theory, but my experience has been that extension devs burn out from having to update their extensions so often to keep them from breaking. There’s also some things that extensions can’t fix.
I don't know what falls under public and private API but across my GNOME installs over the years there are numerous extensions that've broken and been abandoned, which suggests that most of the things that people want to customize sit on the private side of the line.
The silly thing about Gnome extensions is that you have to configure them through a web browser rather than OS dialogs rendered with their own graphical toolkit.
Do you have any examples where power features aren't accessible? The OP used a wifi applet as an example of exposing information. I'm not sure if this isn't as common as I think it is - but what's wrong with typing `ip` into a terminal (that's always open anyway)? It's desktop agnostic, works even without a desktop. And then there's no need for an entire applet dedicated just to wifi for the rare occasion you need to lookup your MAC address.
> I'm not sure if this isn't as common as I think it is - but what's wrong with typing `ip` into a terminal (that's always open anyway)?
I'm a regular Linux user, but I wouldn't know how to get all the data from the Wi-Fi applet using the Command Line. GUI have the advantage of discoverability over CLI: with a GUI I get a bunch of useful info in a single place, with a CLI I first need to know that a data is available and then I need to look-up the right invocation to get this data.
UI also represents an opportunity for standardization, which is a powerful force for onboarding non-technical users and in time, turning them into power users. Standardized patterns illustrate to users that there's a method to the madness and that computers are finite, learnable systems and not seemingly arbitrary chaos or unintelligible techno-wizardry.
One small example is how holding down Option/Alt modifies behavior in various ways throughout macOS.
Often it functions as a “do this for everything” modifier. So for example, option-clicking the minimize traffic light minimizes all windows from the application the window belongs to, and option-clicking a disclosure triangle in a nested list expands or contracts all child nodes.
There’s tons of little things like that which might sound silly but become significant time and sanity savers after making a habit of using them.
> I'm not sure if this isn't as common as I think it is - but what's wrong with typing `ip` into a terminal
Well, for a start, `ip` isn't enough to give you anything. You'd need at least `ip a` or `ip r`, but then you'd have to already know that or go hunting in the manual (the `ip` help really is pretty bad). For something you might only need once a year (and will forget before you need it again!), having it in the GUI is very valuable.
Wow, just goes to show how different people's perception can be. To me Gnome is ugly, I really tried to like it but just could not. Didn't work too well for me also, but no way I'd describe Gnome as nice looking. KDE has been the only DE that does not give me that subliminal feeling of being grainy and crummy in the way that many people have associated with Linux UI since the beginning.
They already seem to vaguely echo gnome 3 look in macos. Huge titlebars with buttons, sidebar layouts in apps, transparent title bar, control center, etc., there's just a bunch of things that make you go 'huh'.
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.
I don't concern myself too much, the value of votes are zero anyway, and the value of people who down vote is zero as well as far as I'm concerned. I have never down voted anything another person has written, I just think it's base behaviour.
You have at least one insignificant person on your side. I similarly almost never downvote. But they disabled my voting ability because I upvoted too generously.
There are many cruel and pugnacious creatures here.
Indeed, it's best to remain indifferent, lest... behavioral modification ensue, and one become strange.
Not sure why you're getting downvoted as this is a valid opinion to have. IMO my list is MacOS Sonoma, Windows 7, Gnome 30+. While I like the ideas behind KDE, XFCE and the like, they are terribly ugly by today's standards.
I would recommend checking out Cosmic by System76. It's getting a beta very soon but I've been using the alpha and straight their git main for months now and it's very stable.
It looks amazing and feels super snappy, I have never had such a painless Linux desktop experience.
It even has a tiling window manager functionality built-in that was enough for me to sway away from i3/sway.
But it also just works like a normal desktop that a non-technical user can use with ease.
I'm actually super excited about this project. Out of curiosity, does the compositor they use have HDR support? It's one of the features I miss on Linux desktops.
> It's one of the features I miss on Linux desktops.
Not sure about Cosmic, but both Gnome and KDE support HDR these days. Hyprland does as well and I think support for it was also merged into Sway recently.
No it has not. Despite the praises it is getting here it still looks like the programmer art, which fits with a certain crowd, but if you are (like me) into the Gnome/Mac type of look - its still gives Windows XP vibes.
KDE defaults used to be pretty ugly, but it has gotten quite a bit better.
Still a little on the ugly side to me, but KDE is really what you make it. Quite literally everything about its UI and behavior is tweak able in settings (and unlike gnome, KDE provides a GUI for all of these settings...no hunting around in dconf).
I used to prefer macOS, and still do to an extent, but Tahoe does not give me hope and I'm using my Linux laptop more and more. UI inconsistencies bug me, but Tahoe is full of them, so if I'm going to have to deal with it either way, might as well go Linux.
Here is my Debian 12 / KDE setup. With the "Inter" font, macOS icons (whitesur) and a little theming (klassy) I quite like it. Running this on a 5K Apple display and everything is crisp.
Me too. I have used it in KDE 4 times when I was in high school, but it still seems to miss the design things. It is great for customization and functionality, but the design itself still seems off. This just is not looking good [0] and it is presented as a showcase here.
I had always the same feeling. KDE looks okay at first, but on a second look it would be somewhat ugly in a subtle way. That never changed for me in KDE, so I stopped looking at KDE some years ago. But maybe it is the time for another look!
Ubuntu's Gnome is ugly imo, but stock Gnome on Arch is incredibly nice. Of course I really only use a terminal and a browser but still, Gnome + Ghosty + Firefox on Arch is just great.
What's special about niri? Asking as a happy user of i3 for... I can't remember how long. It's one of the few pieces of software I don't have to think about, it just gets out of my way.
Actually, the only situations where I think about it is when I'm driving a mac or a win and the window management gets on my nerves, although I'm generally a pretty chill guy.
It's a scrolling window manager, so almost a completely different paradigm (that I find superior) to normal tiling WMs. Ironically the entire scrolling WM craze started with the PaperWM Gnome extension. I still use it, it's great.
i3 is really hard to move on from. Everything is the app and configuration you want since it doesn't have traditional "desktop" suite of apps, so by design it is literally built for your exact wants and needs. Same goes for fluxbox/openbox setups imo
>I just find it ugly vs Gnome or Mac. Inconsistent padding, font sizes, colors.
IDK mate, I care more about the utility than the looks since I spend my time using the DE, not hanging it on my wall to admire its artistic attention to detail.
Like I'm sure those inconsistencies exist, but am I the only one whose brain just filters them out like they just don't exist? Kind of like how your brain filters out your nose from your eyesight and you only become aware of it when you look for it.
And to me and my use case and formed habits, utility wise KDE >>> Gnome by a wide margin, though KDE still has some annoyances I wish they would tackle, but for a free product, I can't complain.
That kind of thing is very difficult for visually oriented folks to filter out. I’m in that crowd. No matter how many times I see a poorly laid out dialog, it remains almost as abrasive as the first time I saw it. It can become a major distraction, especially as someone who’s capable of writing code.
>That kind of thing is very difficult for visually oriented folks to filter out. I’m in that crowd.
I can empathize, but necessity has made me adaptable to all UXs at work. I wouldn't be able to put food on the table if I told my employer that their desktop environment that IT chose is not to my taste.
At home I can be more picky but I still went with KDE and XFCE because that's what fits me best.
I think there's some truth to this (utility is overall more important), but also some falsehood (looks matter too). Aesthetics affect your enthusiasm and therefore your productivity. This is why, for example, most people would rather work in a room with large glass windows overlooking a lake than in a room with a small window overlooking a factory even if they are functionally the same.
I agree with that. I really do not care about the inconsistencies - I did not even notice them until other people pointed them out. There are themes that look nice to me.
None of that really matters compared to usability and functionality. Most of the time I have one panel showing and everything else I can see is applications. The applications are a mix of things anyway.
Poor design can and does impact usability for a lot of users. If you care about the utility, you should care about e.g. wasted screen space with extraneous padding.
>you should care about e.g. wasted screen space with extraneous padding.
Where KDE is better than Gnome whose UI looks like its was designed for tablet use or 4K+ displays. So yeah, on that front I do care, which is why I prefer KDE.
Hahhaha, absolutely classic linux on HN post. Couldn't be better written satire.
Except that I guess you at least acknowledged it. Which non-abandonded OS/DE hasn't significantly changed in 5 years? I can't think of one. Maybe GNOME, but they were early movers and everyone hated them for that.
Looking at a screenshot from KDE home page, it really does not seem like anything has changed with it in terms of design polish that much. It doesn't even seem like it's moving in a direction that's any different. https://kde.org/announcements/plasma/6/6.4.0/fullscreen_with...
The most significant change for the whole look they could make is changing the system font, because that's the biggest and most visible thing, and the one they have looks amateurish and makes it feel slapdash, like it was an afterthought, just picking whatever default font there was and going "whatever", which kind of ends up being the vibe of the whole thing.
If you want to change the system font you can go right ahead. Don't knock it for it's default appearance because everything can be changed and skinned. Some people have made it look just like Windows, others just like macos.
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!
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.
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.
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.
The window management and dolphin for file management for one. KDE let's you easily pin windows on top, show on all desktops etc .. Dolphin gives you a nice multi tab, split pane file manager along with a terminal that follows you along.
On my work macbook - I can't install third-party software and the default window management is just not there. It has problems restoring windows to correct size when i switch external monitors... The experience just isn't as nice as KDE on my home laptop.
I had to install inputactions to get mac like touchpad gestures on my home kde set up but after that it just feels nicer and smoother than my office mac
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.
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.
If you use desktop environments more to their capacity, you'll start to appreciate more advanced features. Such as how apps can integrate with each other, etc.
Sure! One example is copy-paste, which doesn't always work as expected in Linux. Another is things in OS X, such as deep Spotlight integration with apps, and a unified scripting and automation language between apps.
> One example is copy-paste, which doesn't always work as expected in Linux.
Give example.
> Another is things in OS X, such as deep Spotlight integration with apps, and a unified scripting and automation language between apps.
I am sure KDE has it too.
One time I needed a shortcut for concat-ing 2 images, and I was able to get the son-of-a-bot Gemini to script me a .Desktop file + .sh script which added it as a context menu option to Dolphin. I didn't even know it was possible. I am sure even more automation should be possible with D-bus.
> You can also use links between most apps
Android has this, and I think it can cause borderline security risks. Anyway its' not as important these days when everything that could use a deep link from another app is a react app in browser anyway.
> And drag and drop files and stuff onto and between apps, etc.
I need it maybe 2 - 3 times a day. I can always use Paths and paste them in the file picker. Its never a deal breaker.
I'm talking about why hundreds of millions of people use desktop environments, not why you in particular should use a desktop environment. You are of course free to make your own choices.
macOS and Windows are both now laden with more marketing and advertisements than actual features. When you step onto GNOME or KDE nowadays, it really does feel like a breath of fresh air.
I reciprocate their comment; 5-10 years ago the cross-OS experience was pretty samey. Now I just feel deeply upset when a relative brings me their Mac/Windows machine asking to make the popups go away.
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.
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. :)
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
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.
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.
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 ;-)
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
(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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
At least on the version currently on Debian, systemsettings has a "primary" radio on the screen configuration panel that let you change it to whatever monitor you want, on whatever order you want.
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.
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
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.
Author here: I didn't unplug the display, I went to the settings and disabled the TV. I am not saying that I didn't do anything wrong, but I expected that disabling the TV would make the monitor the primary display and move the taskbar to it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
Is XFCE minimalistic? It feels to me like it's just a modern continuation of the desktops we had in the 90s and early 2000s. Instead of adding in a bunch of extra stuff and moving things around to keep people busy, they're just quietly making it a little better with every release.
The only desktops I've used since 2007 are XFCE and macOS, so I guess I don't know what I might be missing from KDE or MATE. But XFCE absolutely blows macOS out of the water, so at least I'm not missing anything from that alternative.
I've used kde for years, but earlier this year I decided to try xfce.
My goal was to have my own setup without "bloat" I never used. So my own task manager of choice, my search bar of choice, etc.
My initial impression of xfce was that it was much snappier than kde. My main gripe with xfce was the lack of wayland support.
A big personal issue; while my own custom setup was ok, I still had to maintain it, and I found myself trying to make xfce like kde. So might as well use kde I guess.
Another super specifc thing I missed was that its window manager didn't support defining horizontal gradients in the titlebar, so I couldn't rock a true windows classic theme. It could do vertical gradients, but that's not the same.
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.
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).
Even back in the day KDE pointed out that in real world use they were not as memory heavy because everything depended on the same toolkits that were shared. Meaning your startup memory use was higher, but once you launched the applications/tools you were going to use KDE used less. (this of course depended on which tools you ran, KDE assumed all KDE tools, run a non-kde application and it doesn't work)
I've been a consistent XFCE user for over a decade. I think of it the same way I think of my desk - I'm not proclaiming its the best in the world, all I can tell you is that its pretty stable, clean and utilitarian, and I'm consistently productive on top of it.
I'm concerned about the XFCE team's approach to Wayland, which is to say they are not making any commitments to make a stable release for it. I've already had to take my new Debian install back to X11 to get XFCE working. I know that Wayland is contentious and not developed with clear communication with many DE teams, but the drift here is concerning, and I am considering trying to find something XFCE-like with full Wayland support.
I’ve happily used KDE for years, but recently I switched to XFCE. My only real pain point with KDE was that the screensaver often refused to resume after the monitor turned off due to inactivity. To unlock it, I had to open a framebuffer terminal and manually kill kscreenlocker_greet before KDE would accept my password again, after a delay of ~10 seconds.
XFCE isn’t as polished as KDE, and I do miss some features, like KDE’s excellent network applet that shows detailed statistics. But overall, the experience has been good, and I really appreciate how quickly I can unlock the screen after a pause.
I also enjoy the wide variety of themes. KDE has plenty of impressive dark themes, but very few light ones, and most of those fail to clearly differentiate the active window’s title bar from inactive ones. XFCE does much better here.
(Some people point out that XFCE doesn’t work with Wayland. That’s not an issue for me. My time with Wayland was highly frustrating, primarily due to the unreliability of keyboard layout customization. After months of struggling, I went back to Xorg and good old xmodmap.)
Hello, I am the other person who liked Unity. Now that we have met, the prophecy is fulfilled.
Seriously though, the fact that macOS still doesn't have an option to fully extend the dock horizontally or vertically drives me nuts. If you auto hide the dock it loses half of its value, and if you don't hide the dock then you have dead gaps in the corners that serve no purpose.
Xfce was my long-term desktop until recently. I loved that it was lightweight, clean, and generally well thought-out.
It has become more memory-hungry since then, losing some of its early advantage. And with the move to Gtk 3, it has adopted UI patterns that constantly get in my way. (Client-side window decorations, for example.) I worked around those changes as best I could for several minor versions, but eventually gave up the fight and switched to KDE. Turns out Plasma slimmed down a bit while Xfce was gaining weight, and it lets me turn off the bells and whistles that I don't want.
I'm happy to once again have a desktop that I enjoy using. I do miss Xfce's Thunar, but KDE's Dolphin is mostly not bad.
I've used XFCE as my main DE for around 10 years, (I switched to MacOs a year ago), I think mostly depends on your workflow, for me the best thing was that it gets out your way, you have a simple menu to select apps, a taskbar, and that's about it. I tested Gnome and KDE a few times over the years and for me they are more bloated than what I needed for my workflow, but I agree they feel more cohesive and the aesthetics are nicer.
Me and probably a couple of other cave dwellers use Mate (someone must be, because it keeps getting maintained). It has a the Win 9x-era aesthetics and simplicity that I've not found anywhere else.
I've been using XFCE for the better part of two decades now (I still run into people upset about the changes XFCE made in 2003, i.e. 4.0), and I am perfectly satisfied. Though as the saying goes: what I don't know I don't know; so I may be missing out on a better experience, but at least I am content enough that I don't bother seeking it out.
Though, my monitors are also from 2010, so a lot of the visual problems people have with XFCE, I don't.
Desktop Environments always feel a bit clunky to me. A Window Manager like i3 or something is easier.
I get the idea of a desktop environment offering more consistency. But, my system feels very consistent. It is really easy, because there are only ~4 types of windows: Firefox, Evince, a terminal, or some ephemeral matplotlib graph.
I wouldn’t think of it as missing out on anything. You just become familiar with the ecosystem of mostly terminal utilities.
I run KDE Plasma on my laptop. KDE animations are too bloated and heavy for the Rock64, and there's way too many preferences to fiddle with to disable them all. If there was some kind of global "lightweight mode" checkbox in the plasma prefs, I might give it another try.
LxQT is fine. The main gripe I have with it is there's no sort of LxQT-meta package on ArchLinux which installs everything I actually need without a lot of fiddling. I spent a couple weeks just gradually figuring out things were missing that would make the environment a lot better. It would be nice if it just included things like oxygen icons and whatever. I understand lightweight, but they should have an "opinionated" lightweight option since I just want something that runs well on a SBC.
I used to run XFCE on an arm chromebook for a few years as my daily driver. Between the two, XFCE seemed much easier to install/customize. IDK about now, since that was before the latest release which uses latest GTK. I assume it is less lightweight now as a result of that change.
I recently switched from XFCE to KDE on wayland and I'm very satisfied with the switch. KDE is more stable, more customizable and at least as fast as XFCE. I don't notice significant resource usage from KDE either.
XFCE is fine. I used to use it and there is a lot to like.
It lacks tiling, and I use some KDE apps very heavily (Kate, Dolphin) so KDE integrates a bit better.
I have thought of giving XFCE another go and I do not think there is anything critical I would miss if I had a tiling window manager (which would have some advantages over KDE's tiling, I think), but I have KDE configured in a way that works for me so not very motivated to do it.
I used XFCE for more than a decade and it's my first choice when picking a DE. Two major issues tempted me to try KDE this year: the lack of Wayland support and the absolute asinine file picker/ chooser dialogue XFCE took from gnome, if I remember correctly. Having a file picker that marks the text of the file name, but when you start typing switches to the search bar drives me nuts. (Even when you just want to drop a downloaded file somewhere in a directory ... why would I want to search in these circumstances??)
I'm keeping an eye on XFCE and they plan to release Wayland support some time this autumn. Once this is somewhere near stable, I thin I will switch back again to XFCE.
I had fantastic results with lxqt some years on an HTPC. System used less resources and seemed more stable with Qt. Perhaps GTK is better these days, but at the time lxqt was a clear winner for that kind of scenario.
For a daily drive DE though, it may be too minimal?
I've used XFCE for a 2011 laptop, it was about as fast as LXDE but better polished. Windows was unusable there, and XFCE made the computer feel brand new. Only the modern websites that would still cause slowness, but the OS was great.
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.
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".
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
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.
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...
> Gnome looks nicer, is more coherent, and in my experience, absolutely rock solid.
In my recurring experiences, GNOME Settings's interaction with CUPS printing support is very far from rock solid -- as in, do yourself a favor and go around it straight to the command line tools.
> 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!
> I don't know why so many distros use Gnome by default.
There is a lot of history there. Back in the day, Linux and the open source BSDs had a plethora of different window managers and DEs. Everything from simple and old-fashioned MWM to the happy chaos of Enlightenment. By the late 90's KDE emerged from among all of this as a popular, if not dominant, choice. However, there was a serious problem. The Qt toolkit license was not GPL compatible. GNOME was founded, in part, as a true open source alternative to KDE.
Linux got big enough that the major distros felt the need to pick a standard DE. GNOME was solid by then, with no license issues by design, and there was a strong preference for GNOME among the open source thought leaders at the time. KDE had actually solved its license problem by then, but there were some strong feelings about the license controversy. So GNOME became the "standard."
But not really. SUSE, for instance, stuck with KDE.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
My Lunar Lake Zenbook has over 10 hours battery on Windows. Maybe Linux is ok, but I don't get the impression it's in the same category, much less ahead. But I don't use my laptop for much more than browsing and wsl2, and most of that is ssh.
I had a 2020 dell XPS 13 on which I installed Fedora. Battery life was an atrocious 4 hours at best, I tried out all the power management tools as well. Windows was much better. Not that I used it, I just kept it plugged in and running fedora. Still glad I returned the laptop eventually though.
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.
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.
Author here. The last time I used KDE was during the 4.x days. I remember trying multiple versions, from the earlier 4.0/4.2 days until something like 4.14. Even so, I kept getting crashes and instability.
I remember the one that finally made me stop using KDE altogether and migrate to Gnome 3 at the time was one crash that I would get frequently with Dolphin while randomly browsing fils (that would stop once I removed all Dolphin configuration files but go back after a few weeks).
I haven't ever really used KDE, and I'm quite sure that it's still not my desktop, but as someone who was aware of the trouble around 4.0, the view I had of the project was that those problems were long gone, and that most people using it today were pretty happy with it.
So I'm not sure whether it's try that that caused a bad reputation that sticks around to this day. (I have other reasons for not preferring it.)
> 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.
We all (not just KDE) learned that users don't read those. Worse, distro maintainers either don't read them or in their "we are on the latest" push will ignore them. KDE was pushed out to a lot of people who shouldn't have got it.
It is safe to say that many other projects have not done beta .0 releases like that because they don't want the same to happen to them - even though they really need beta testers. Of course few projects will admit that they learned the lesson from KDE.
> Worse, distro maintainers either don't read them or in their "we are on the latest" push will ignore them
Oh, this is so true. Ubuntu adopted Pulse Audio long before anyone (including Poettering) considered it stable. IIRC the readme even said something like "The sound system that breaks your audio"
I probably shouldn't complain though, since as a non-Ubuntu user, I get the benefits of all the Ubuntu users beta testing software for me.
> KDE was pushed out to a lot of people who shouldn't have got it.
Yeah, I remember that turmoil, and was really sad for all KDE devs.
> It is safe to say that many other projects have not done beta .0 releases...
This was a brave move by KDE back then, and still a brave move, but with proper communication, it can be done, I guess...
KDE developers and volunteers embody a great trove of wisdom about software development. I learnt how to make proper bug reporting from AmaroK project, and still use the same methodology, even with projects which do not enforce any style. It makes things much easier.
...and everyone needs beta testers. That's true.
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.
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!
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.
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.
Indeed, Gnome jettisoned everything for a touch-based interface, but is not actually usable as one. For example, there’s no video player that works well with touch even though at least three cosplay with large round buttons and no menus. Believe it or not, they require keyboards for essential functionality and taps are not recognized or broken.
Using phosh on a starlite btw. Web players work well however! No thanks to gnome.
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.
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....
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...?
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. =)
Excellent response, thank you. Ive finally understood the difference between "Desktop Environment" and "Windows Manager".
Calling this stuff "side-show" very much resonates with me. I set this stuff up once when I install i3wm on a new system, and it works well. The problem is when I want to do something that Id never foreseen, there I go into googling for the bash command I need, and that I find annoying.
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.
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.
I appreciate in KDE that it's an up to date traditional desktop environment. I learned computers with Windows 3.1, and that paradigm is still what feels the best to me, and KDE gives it in a nice looking, modern way, with a good bunch of quality of life features.
I think if you're curious, try it. Gnome as well, it's quite different. And if you're not, that's also perfectly okay, you are not missing anything crucial I think.
Yes basically, it's not the same dev yet sway is heavily inspired by i3 and works with i3 config files.
As you wrote i3 is x11-only and sway is wayland.
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...
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/), have you had a chance to give it a try?
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)_//¯
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.
How can we make this happen? I am a programmer but I am not in a good position to do this specific kind of programming myself. This seems tightly integrated to a lot of stuff I don't have a good understanding of. Is there a way to donate to specific features, could I do some crowdfunding to hire a dev to do this feature and if so who? Is there any way at all you can think of that I could effect this feature landing other than spending a few years learning this kind of development?
I can't quite promise yet that we will do this, but let's say there have been two recent developments that increase the probability by quite a lot:
- X11 is nearing EOL, and once we drop support for it this will get a lot less painful to do.
- If we want to switch to a virtual desktop / paging protocol that supports this we need to switch away from the current one, and it just so happens that in late 2024 a new protocol called ext-workspace made it into Wayland that is flexible enough to work for this purpose.
I'd say at this point the biggest problem is designing a UX for it that makes sense and doesn't confuse the hell out of people. If you want to contribute to e.g. that design discussion in our VDG working group that could be a good place to start.
> could I do some crowdfunding to hire a dev to do this feature and if so who?
No questions, just some rough edges to report; infinite clipboard history would be nice, notifications search/sorting would be nice, notifications panel gets slow with hundreds of notifications (from IRC bots) when dragging the scrollbar, notifications panel icons could be removable or made smaller or just have one per app.
Something I use a lot on xfce4 is the Alt-F11 shortcut (it toggles) that maximises a window over the bottom bar and removes the title bar.
In this way, with LibreOffice or say Inkscape I get the application menus at the top and the applications controls at the bottom of the screen. No hotspots - nothing pops up.
On Fedora's live KDE iso I can use the window control menu to supress the title bar on a maximised window and I can hide the bottom bar but its a faff requiring multiple steps.
Hey, since you're here, let me complain about an issue I found this morning. As I said in my blog post, my current setup involves my desktop being connected in the TV and monitor at the same time.
Right now I have the TV disabled, but if I go to the Display settings and enable it, the TV and monitor have a huge gap for some reason and KDE can't apply the configuration since it says that there should be no gap between the displays. I can of course fix this manually and apply, but if I disable and enable the TV again it seems that it forgots my layout and I need to setup everything from scratch again.
This will be a purely personal answer, as we don't really maintain any official list of favorites.
Myself and my family are running Fedora's KDE edition. The Fedora team has a long history of working very closely with the Plasma dev team, quite actively contributes upstream, and I haven't been disappointed. I'd vouch for this one from first-hand experience!
We also have a new project to produce a distro of our own in the works, called KDE Linux. That has recently had its first alpha release. It still has some real feature gaps and may not serve you well if one of the missing bits is something you require, but it's definitely worth looking into. It has a lot of next-gen ideas baked and some things we got to learn during the SteamOS effort, and think it has a place in the ecosystem.
In the dev community I generally see a lot of people running KDE on Arch, Debian and openSUSE as well.
My usage of KDE today is on the Steam Deck. I actually did take the time to set it up to look nice.
I have three observations to make.
1) There is a pain point in KDE involving windows on top of another fullscreen window. Specifically, the Live Captions app. This is a design problem that other OSes like Microsoft Windows doesn't suffer from. What happens is, if you leave the taskbar in place and want to have the captioner running over video and make the video fullscreen, you can't with KDE. I eventually figured out a hacky workaround in that if I turn auto-hide on for the taskbar, I can then alt-tab the Window and it'll stay on top. I did see some talk about this window behaviour. It's nuts that an accessibility feature needs the user to make the taskbar auto-hide first before it works. It would be nice if there could be a setting where it is "this window is on top of everything".
2) SteamOS as having a large device-specific installed base, I think there is value in the KDE team encouraging Valve to turn KDE from a snapshot to a rolling release as Fedora has done where KDE is rolling but the rest of the distro is a snapshot. Why this matters, is because when it comes to bug reports and the like, the KDE bot basically closes them because Valve's KDE is "unsupported" because they only seem to rebase once a year or two. I know they did move to 6.2 with 3.7, but I found 3.7 buggy and thought KDE looked worse and had worse scrolling performance (maybe setting conflicts from the 5.27 version?) so I just switched back to the 3.6 version with 5.27 where everything looks right and scrolling moved smoothly. I know they changed the kwin compositor a lot in the 6.x series, and I suspect there are regressions in it, so if it isn't rolling, people are stuck with a buggy compositor? That sucks.
3) Setting upgrades.. so with SteamOS, Valve was shipping the 5.2x series of KDE. Now 6.2, and the next rebase is probably going to be 6.x on Wayland instead of X11. So there's a lot of legacy cruft settings that carry on and I think they cause glitches. I always used to do clean install of Windows versions, and think it would be nice to be able to do that in KDE, but there's a lot of legacy cruft with various settings and conf files scattered in various random folders. At some point it really should be cleaned up.. one central folder for all settings.. no some settings are stored in a KDE4 folder, and others are stored in this other one KDE5 introduced, etc.
Thank you. After hearing about KDE Linux here on HN I'm now very interested in the project and its future.
Personally I've had an issue with KDE on Fedora several years ago, possibly due unstable Wayland, but I don't know real reason. Something in the graphic stack failed. So that was a reason for me asking about it.
KDE Neon was originally founded by devs who worked on Kubuntu previously, and some of that team has now moved on to KDE Linux.
The company stuff in the background doesn't really matter.
The team working on KDE Linux are motivated by addressing some structural challenges that always plagued KDE Neon from the concept of trying to graft more recent SW on top of the Ubuntu LTS base, plus some lessons learned from the SteamOS project's way of handling updates, and fully utilizing more recent Linux/systemd features.
It's sufficiently different that sticking with the Neon brand and swapping it out for that userbase would have been pretty disruptive, so they felt it was better to go with a distinct identity.
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.
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.
After reading your reply, I plugged the exact question of my text into an LLM and it answered my question perfectly. Your answer was in the context of commercial support which wasn't in the question or answer.
Well they're also famous for having an LTS version of Ubuntu as well (and coined the term), which I assumed you probably know with an LTS interest. But sorry I couldn't satisfy you!
The distinct advantage of a KDE LTS support release is that it would be distro agnostic. Benefits being that it delegates maintenance and security updates for an LTS version to KDE away from the distro maintainers, and as a plus this provides greater appearance of continutity from KDE to the public.
I think I got confused by your "release channels" bit in the original comment, because I thought you were asking for distros which ship and support the Plasma LTS release, but I guess you're asking more whether we have an LTS release?
We did in fact have versions marked as LTS in the Plasma 5.x generation, but the concept never quite worked that well practice (e.g. because distros generally shipped newer versions based on user demand and didn't really adopt the LTS releases, even for their own LTS distro releases, so the benefit calculation for them was different from your expectation) and we haven't kept them for the Plasma 6.x series. You can read some background here:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
Hrrm. 'Beauty' is in the eyes of the beholder. Regarding XP I can't stand its default look, which can only be called 'teletubbified' or 'Fisher-priced'. Switched back to classic Win2000 appearance it's more bearable, but the colors are still fugly.
The general handling is OK, though I tended to put the taskbar to the top.
I think it's possible to easily reach something ergonomic and unobtrusive with actual Plasma/KDE, without distracting Bling! Bling!, while still being easy on the eyes.
The keywords are 'Breeze'(light) for the widget style, window decorations, and icons.
If you'd take the time to go through the settings, there are several options to tone all animations, wobbling and such down. Not at one single place, but not more than a hand full or a dozen, either.
'Start menu'-> System -> System Settings -> Quick Settings
It's all available from there, or whereever Bizarrian reordered it to be in their menus ;->
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.
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.
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].
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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?
I explained more details in the previous blog post (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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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).
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
> 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)_/¯.
This is my personal blog and I can be as unbiased as I want, but saying that I am "proud of Linux" would be misguided at best. I could write one long blog post about all the issues I have using Linux desktop, but I can also write one for Windows and macOS, and from my personal perspective the issues I get in Windows and macOS are worse.
Fun fact, the OS that I am mostly experiencing hard crashes right now (at the point that my only option is to force turn off the system) is macOS, by far. I even know of one particular bug that always freeze the macOS UI (it is not a hard crash since everything still seems to work fine, it is just that I can't do any kind of input), and this is persistent across multiple macOS revisions. I dread now about that notification popup that trigger this bug because it is infuriating.
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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), but it is enough to enjoy the desktop experience and everything it offers.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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?
You keep the UIs separate. Dumbing down desktop UIs to mobile capabilities is just as bad of a design as it was when people tried to jam a desktop UI into mobile. You have to play to the strengths of the platform you are on, not limit each one based on the other. Yes, it's more work, but it's well worth it to have a product which is actually good.
Web designers have been having this same debate for 15 years - what many call "mobile-first design" is actually just worsening the experience of desktop users so that things look nicer on phones and the makers don't have to do double the design work.
It's not so much double the design work, it's double the code maintenance.
I'm of two minds on this. I agree with your complaint that "mobile first" (or just responsiveness in general) has tended to reduce the pleasantness of the Desktop experience. As a web application developer, the idea of having to maintain two separate codebases - one for mobile and one for desktop - is a big "no thank-you." So responsiveness tends to win on maintenance overhead.
> It's not so much double the design work, it's double the code maintenance.
Well, of course it is: Different UI, different UI code. If that's problem, the developers should not have both a mobile and a desktop app in the first place.
> has tended to reduce the pleasantness of the Desktop
understatement of the year :-) ... it often hampers functionality, significantly, and makes the experience rather painful.
> the makers don't have to do double the design work.
Attitudes like this sometimes make me regret going in to software engineering. I understand time may be of the essence in some instances, but I feel like software engineering has lost much of its craftsmanship, and it's now just gluing over-engineered and poorly designed shitware together. At least, in the Web Dev world -- maybe other subfields have faired better?
It gets even worse, when doing projects where you are basically glueing SaaS products together, the common trend in enterprise consulting.
https://xkcd.com/1988/
> but I feel like software engineering has lost much of its craftsmanship
It's not just software. I'm very pro-business / pro-capitalism but I will happily agree that an omnipresent business pressure is to reduce costs and get products and services to market rapidly.
My wife and I bought an antique store this year, and we're converting it into a small live theatre with a magic (stage magic) retail store up front. We are pouring our hearts and soul into this and are trying to bring a high degree of craftsmanship into the venture. We're taking queues from Walt Disney World and want you to feel like you've stepped into a completely different world when you step inside our doors.
Yet now that we're running out of money and things have taken way longer than we had estimated, we have to cut scope. We have to start thinking "What needs to be done today in order for us to open" vs "What can we defer and iterate on and do later?" What are the "nice to haves" and what are the "must haves."
That's business and you see enshitification in all industries. We can see this in everything from clothing to furniture to product packaging. The incentive is always to try and deliver things to market faster and cheaper and this necessitates making cuts. Craftsmanship is a luxury that we all pine for. And there are small mom & pop shops (us included) that try to deliver craftsmanship. But the market for high-cost products with high-craftsmanship is niche.
Software is largely targeting the mass market just like clothing and furniture - other examples where you've seen "high craftsmanship" in the past but these days we get mass produced disposable garbage. It's tempting to say "the good old days" but people had a lot less and that high-craftsmanship furniture was often passed down from one generation to another because it's not like people could typically afford that stuff. It was that people had to save, DIY more, own less and count on hand-me-downs.
> omnipresent business pressure is to reduce costs and get products and services to market rapidly.
Sure. In many instances, software is just a means to an end. Software is usually not the business itself. So, I understand there has to be balance at some point. In fact, I think it's dangerous to sometimes reinvent the wheel -- like rolling your own auth system. I rather go with a well tested and trusted solution.
> I bought an antique store
I'm jealous. I would love something like this.
Are/were you a developer? If yes, then I am curious about one thing. Does your work towards your store bring more or less fulfillment than your dev life? I went into the field hoping to find passion and to strive for some sense of glory that comes from craftsmanship, but I learned quickly there isn't much passion left and there is absolutely no glory. Though in my mind, programming does not equal software engineering. The people writing KDE are programmers. The person working for a company is a software engineer.
> We have to start thinking "What needs to be done today in order for us to open" vs "What can we defer and iterate on and do later?" What are the "nice to haves" and what are the "must haves."
I just had this conversation at work today lol.
> Software is largely targeting the mass market just like clothing and furniture - other examples where you've seen "high craftsmanship" in the past but these days we get mass produced disposable garbage. It's tempting to say "the good old days" but people had a lot less
You are absolutely correct. However, maybe I am just consumed by ignorance, but I think that is the world I want to live in, you know? I watched a YouTube video about a traditional Japanese swordsmith. He runs the only remaining school left in Japan. He follows the exact same process that has been used for something like over 700 years. He has a few apprentices, but nothing is written down. It's all passed down from generation to generation via hands-on work and word of mouth.
For software, that would be beyond unrealistic, but I think there is something utterly beautiful about getting lost in some kind of project and pouring 100% of oneself into their work. You know, to be apart of something much bigger than oneself?
I think about the KDE developers per the thread topic. KDE is likely highly useful and an act for charity for their fellow Linux users. KDE accomplishes what it sought to solve. However, most users will never know or understand what into making KDE, why some choices were made and not others, etc.. As long as KDE works, many users probably won't even think about KDE at all. If I were to install KDE right now, I could tell you if it works or not. I cannot tell you if KDE was written well just by using it, unless overt issues were present. I would truly have no idea about the quality without looking at the source code.
Though, I guess my fundamental point is that you are correct about everything you wrote. I do not disagree with any of it. I am in my early 30s, and I guess I am already jaded haha. This is what "work" and "life" are mostly about? This is how I provide value to society? I just push little plastic buttons on a device and the little electrons flowing through the device make the screen change colors. I went to college just for all this? Don't get me wrong, I love programming, but man, the "adult" or "business" world is just so utterly... fucking boring and unfulfilling haha. Do you know what I mean?
The moment the "mobile first" trend appeared, I knew it was wrong and we were certainly fucked for many things. Plenty of websites are just bad because of this nonsense. And since now most people don't even use a computer for their web browsing, most websites are bad for computer browsing by default.
The insanity of it is that many websites push their mobile apps to use them. So, you get shitty mobile sites that ask you to use their app on mobile and are bad on desktop because of the stupid development philosophy (including poor information density and oversized interface for big touch targets).
The whole point of the first iPhone web browser was that you could actually use most typical websites without any effort on their part and it was good enough. Because of the display size and navigation effort required it wasn't the most confortable but the more time passes the more I believe that was kind of the point and almost a "feature" in itself.
We got there because people are glued to their phone, and sadly it's not even a good tool for efficient web browsing (it's useful for quick information gathering but that's it).
this reminds me of something i've observed. it seems like there is a general trend in software of doing things that look good (either in an ad or in a sprint review) rather than things that feel good to use. one example among many is nvidia's frame generation feature, which makes 60 fps look like 120 fps when you're watching somebody else play, but feel like 30 fps when you're the one playing.
Image and projection of that image is very important for most humans. You just need to look at how some people dress in order to "look good" even though it often requires them to make some ridiculous compromises on confort.
They are probably planning on converging the two platforms together soon. There are rumors of new macbooks having touch screens. You can imagine that with the Tahoe interface getting additional padding and looking more like iPadOS it's already planned that the future of computing will be hybrid devices.
I don't know how to feel about that. To me it sounds like an awful direction for the desktop experience on macOS, but on the other hand iPads are currently held back by iPadOS
To be fair, a touchscreen is the one thing I miss moving from my thinkpad to my apple silicon macbook.
Everyone will have different opinions on the matter. My Lenovo has a touch screen, but I hardly ever use it because I forget that it is there. Likewise, it is Wacom compatible and I was as far as picking up the stylus for it. Hardly ever use it. For the most part, I prefer to interact with computers via keyboard.
Different people like interacting with computers in different ways, unfortunately, this one size fits all philosophy that permeates the tech sector creates a lot of tension because those ways of interacting are not necessarily compatible with each other.
> Different people like interacting with computers in different ways, unfortunately, this one size fits all philosophy that permeates the tech sector creates a lot of tension because those ways of interacting are not necessarily compatible with each other.
A touchscreen doesn't detract if you don't use it though. I use my laptop's touchscreen/stylus pretty much exclusively for Japanese writing practice, the rest of the time it's just a regular laptop, but I'd be very sad to not have that feature when I need it.
This would normally be the case but many touchscreen drivers love to glitch out (specially lenovo's) and disabling them is almost impossible with windows updates constantly re-enabling things.
If not for that I would 100% agree it is a nice to have.
I don't know if it has been improved but I had one xps with touch screen, the lid was thicker, the screen had more glare, it was using more battery and there was a visible gray mesh, like a veil covering it if you looked close enough. One other possible annoyance is accidental touches, no chance of that if the screen doesn't have touch capability.
I have an x86 tablet and the screen seems normal although touch
For me, it just feels like a huge waste of money for something I would never use; I assume the touch screen tech bumps the price up a bit. Of course, if you have even an occasional use for touchscreen on a laptop, your mileage is already varying.
>A touchscreen doesn't detract if you don't use it though.
in a perfect world. in the real world it's an added cost-to-repair, another driver stack to worry about, and a loss of nits/lumens for no good reason.
Are you the type to be bothered by fingerprints on screens? I am that type, I have great reservations about a touchscreen laptop. Though, I cannot deny how awesome it would be, conceptually.
I think there are finger sleeves that you can put on to avoid that.
A random example from Amazon (never tried it myself):
https://www.amazon.com/PXIRQ-Sleeves-Touchscreen-Sensitive-B...
Right? It's blatantly obvious, but apparently a 3.5 trillion-dollar-market-cap corporation has apparently forgotten this simple concept. It's so disappointing how far Apple has fallen, in terms of usability of their software.
At least Apple still allows the user to reposition the dock/taskbar.
That seems like a pretty low bar, is there any window manager that doesn’t have that sort of basic configurability?
Linux window managers are mostly made by volunteers, so I’m not picky at all. But, locking the dock and taskbar in place, if anything, seems like extra work. Why would anybody do extra work to make their window manager worse?
Windows 11 has stupid unchangeable defaults that keep getting worse with each service pack. To survive in a Windows VM I run, the first thing I install is always a horrible hack to restore flexibility: [1].
[1] https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher/wiki/All-features
GNOME. You have to install an extension to get a dock at all. Almost nobody runs vanilla GNOME because it's missing basic things. They refuse to have a system tray. I don't particularly like the system tray, but that doesn't change the fact that some apps continue to run the background when you quit them by closing the window. Up until recently, you had to install a system tray extension so you could properly quit programs like Steam. Finally, the GNOME developers added functionality where you can see background apps and close them, but it's hidden behind a few clicks. A clipboard manager is another one. KDE includes it by default. GNOME? There's an extension for that. And the problem with extensions is they always break every single time GNOME is updated.
This generally isn't my experience with GNOME.
You have to install an extension to get a dock at all.
No, there's an auto-hiding dock built-in. Pressing the Super key acts like better version of Apple's Expose feature: it shows the windows you have open, auto-opens the dock, and focuses the application launcher search bar so you can just start typing and launch an app.
You had to install a system tray extension
I'm sure you needed to at some point, but (as you mention), that's no longer the case: it's built in by default.
clipboard manager
If you mean clipboard history... That's true. Although macOS doesn't have a built-in clipboard history viewer either, and I never particularly missed having one. There are plenty of GNOME extensions with clipboard history if you want one.
Generally speaking I like GNOME much more than KDE, since GNOME's gesture support is much better than KDE's. I also personally dislike Windows-style infinitely-nesting-menu taskbars, which is what KDE uses, whereas GNOME is more macOS-like (although it has its own, IMO slightly cleaner style... And of course, it's much more modifiable than macOS).
> No, there's an auto-hiding dock built-in. Pressing the Super key acts like better version of Apple's Expose feature: it shows the windows you have open, auto-opens the dock, and focuses the application launcher search bar so you can just start typing and launch an app.
So, not a Dock.
People don't want their whole desktop to fly everywhere and zoom out when they just want to quickly switch or launch an application with the mouse. They just want to mouse over the bottom of their screen and click.
Same for launching an application via keyboard / doing a calculation / finding an emoji. People just want something akin to Spotlight (think uLauncher on Linux). Something lightweight that pops over and allows them to quickly do the thing, without a lot of visual clutter happening and then happening again in reverse.
> No, there's an auto-hiding dock built-in. Pressing the Super key acts like better version of Apple's Expose feature: it shows the windows you have open, auto-opens the dock, and focuses the application launcher search bar so you can just start typing and launch an app.
It either requires using a keyboard or moving your mouse to the opposite direction of where the dock appears.
bit unrelated, but the newest version of macOS (Tahoe) does now have a clipboard manager
They also hide menus under annoying hamburger menus meaning an extra click every time. And have huge fat window handles taking up space for no reason which you can't change. Probably nice if you have a touchscreen but I don't.
Ps gnome doesn't even have a clipboard manager? Wow I use this every day.
Nope, no clipboard manager. There’s a nice extension called pano with a bunch of ridiculous dependencies that’s loaded with features. The one built into KDE is good enough for me.
GNOME looks great, but it’s just so damn frustrating to use. It’s such a weird combination of attention to detail and a focus on usability while completely missing the mark in other areas. I don’t even mind the intended workflow. That’s fine. It’s the rough edges like the hamburger menus you mentioned, extra clicks, inability to change things I expect to be able to change, etc. You have to install gnome-tweaks just to change the font.
I wouldn’t even mind the extensions either if they didn’t break during every update. Best case scenario is you have to re-enable the extension, log out and log back in. Worst case is it doesn’t work anymore and now you’re missing important functionality that the developers couldn’t be bothered to include.
GNOME wasn't like this, I favoured GNOME during the whole Gtk+ vs Qt licensing wars, and even wrote an article to The C/C++ Users Journal as kind of advocacy for Gtkmm.
Eventually with their desired to push JavaScript all over the place, instead of improving Vala, the whole desktop redesign, and the issues that features standard in GNOME 1.0 are nowadays the extension mess you mention, made me don't care any longer.
For a while I moved into Unity, then XFCE, and then nothing, as my Linux usage now is constrained to headless (server/containers), or the consumer distributions of WebOS and Android.
However if I ever going back to having a Linux desktop, it will surely be a decision between everything else except GNOME.
The whole point of the extension system was to get the base install smaller and more minimized for people that don't need the feature -- I think that's an entirely fair tradeoff given how easy extension installs have been early on in gnome3.
I can’t speak for anyone else but I’m quite happy without a system tray.
Having everything behind the meta button works well IMHO.
> That seems like a pretty low bar, is there any window manager that doesn’t have that sort of basic configurability?
I heard rumours that Win 11 was makin' folks jump through hoops to move the taskbar anywhere other than left or right along the bottom. Personally, I ain't used Windows since Win 7; (The last really decent / tolerable Windows), and even back then I was already dual-booting with Linux.
Not jumping through hoops, you just can't put it at the sides anymore
Windows. Windows removed the task bar positioning feature in Windows 11.
People complain about that but I've been using Windows for 25+ years including working in tech almost exclusively on Windows desktops and laptops for 20+ years across about 10 companies and the amount of times I've seen a Windows taskbar be placed anywhere except at the bottom can be counted on one hand.
I'm fairly sure it's one of those features used by 0.0001% of the user base but probably 95% of those 200 000 users are techies so every forum is filled with their complaints :-)
The problem with that attitude is that while niche features might be used by a small percentage of the user base, for every feature its a different subset. If you remove all niche features you will end up with software that is worse for a large portion of your users.
This is the reason why telemetry has negative value in the hands of the average developer. You can make all kinds of logically sounding conclusions from it but they are still wrong.
That's the thing you need to keep mind when reading anything on HN. Otherwise you would believe no one uses Windows (mostly because of taskbar thing) or Firefox is just unusable because it is unavoidable you constantly keep 1234 tabs open.
Yeah. More relevantly I suspect that more people move the taskbar accidentally than deliberately - more than once I've seen a relative have it on the left or the top and ask how to put it back.
The taskbar can only go on the bottom in Windows 11 lol
"Guys, right now users can configure the positioning of the taskbar. We should remove it! Just hardcode it to the bottom!"
What's mad is how few people do it. You'd think on a 16:10 people would want to make the most of the 10.
KDE does have a convergent UI framework, though. It's called Kirigami, and I think several KDE apps use it to also get a mobile version. Perhaps it's more about doing things well and compatibly with the mobile presentation, just not "mobile first" (which often factually implies "and desktop never").
I develop a Qt app that needs a mobile version, though I've never done mobile development before. I use Qt for the desktop app specifically because a I'm a long time KDE user. What does convergent mean in this context? What would Kirigami bring to a potential Android application?
Thanks
He's talking about MauiKit, which is a superset of Kirigami.
https://mauikit.org/
You get some nice predefined widgets to use with QML, but you also potentially have to build Maui/Kirigami against the platforms you deploy to, and it's a C++ & QML project with its own build platform.
Is MauiKit still maintained, seeing even the main links on website don't work. Like MauiKit Documentation?
No idea, but I think the maintainers are available on IRC or whatever KDE is using for chat these days if you want to ask them.
Thank you
Everything written in QML looks extremely out of place on the desktop, this is very much not an example of doing it well. You're right though that the infection has also reached KDE.
I wrote the block editor of my note-taking app[1] in QML, I hope this can show it's not QML that makes it a out of place - it's the care for aesthetics that developers put into the app. I also wrote a blog post on the subject if you're curious[2].
[1] https://get-notes.com
[2] https://rubymamistvalove.com/block-editor
Settings modules (KCMs) have been gradually rewritten in QML since a while ago, I think. Do they look "extremely out of place" to you? I personally couldn't spot them out. Efforts have been spent making QtQuick controls look the same as their QtWidgets counterparts.
Ever heard of plasma mobile ? That’s your KDE on mobile.
And windows which is horrendous doesn’t have a mobile version, at least not something people know about.
You have an interesting theory but I think it doesn’t hold when you take these 2 facts into consideration.
> 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.
I don't think anyone actually asks for this. The driving factor seems to be saving cost/effort by making only one design with extremely minor adjustments at best. It used to be that desktop was the main target now its mobile.
The consistency I want is between different applications on the same system but barely anyone cares about that - and many developers actively want their programs to stand out.
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.
Yes, companies were lazy and greedy even way back when. But there are a number of facts that come into play when it comes to UI being much shittier today:
1. Personal computers before the 21st century were really kind of shit. Let alone mobile devices.
2. Software was largely a product that people paid for. It even came in boxes.
3. Software vendors were usually in a highly competitive environment. They had to deliver value for money if they didn't want to get eaten alive.
This meant that the software had to both work on the limited resources of 1990s shitty computers—limited storage, limited speed, limited display colors and resolution, etc.—and be useful to the end user. So companies were kept a lot more honest in terms of UI design. Circumstances forced them to deliver functional, efficient UIs. These days, our computers are fairly powerful and companies are in the business of selling services (or eyeballs to advertisers) rather than software. The user-facing software itself is a loss leader, and if making it a shitty Electron app, or desktop-mobile "convergence", helps save development costs, companies will do it.
You probably mean tablets/touch input, not mobile. There was a time when things like iPad and Surface were going to dominate. iOS won that space with Android still limping along. Windows devices haven't managed to survive really and Surface seems to be retreating to laptop form. Frankly the SOC hardware universe seems to be a real technical challenge. Frankly, even Microsoft gave up trying to improve the phone hardware situation.
I think the small form factor of mobile is more relevant than touch, although touch is also a significant factor. App design is forced to change radically to be usable at all on tiny screens. Indeed, touch is a result of the tiny aspect of mobile.
Mobile form factor and touch inputs are pretty inseparable, and are so different from desktop + pointer. A lot of subtle pain points get missed because people tend to focus on one over the other. So many desktop patterns rely on hover interactions. Touch targets need to be big enough for beefy fingers (which will then cover the thing being touched). Gesture is considered normal on touch devices but not pointer ones. Reading distance differences between mobile devices and desktop ones impacts typography. And that’s just a few basic UX concerns all before you get into the weeds of WCAG and other accessibility standards.
TL;DR - your designer needs a hug
> 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?
This is not an example from KDE, but you do convergence: https://videos.puri.sm/pureos/l5-convergence-purism.mp4
No, that's an example of the problem being discussed: mobile UI on a desktop.
Which problem exactly? It works just fine. Just like there is no problem with well-designed websites that can work both on mobile and on desktop (like HN).
> 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...
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.
>and a design that constantly makes trade-offs that benefit a touch-screen at the expense of keyboard-and-mouse users.
And this is true despite the fact that a vanishingly small number of users actually use a touchscreen with gnome.
They also look like a gripper widget: a small square that can be dragged around in order to move the item on which it appears, commonly used for for positioning toolbars or re-ordering list items. Because of this, they have added a bit of confusion to user interface conventions.
Just noticed Reddit uses an oddly placed hamburger menu icon to signify the action of clossing the navigation sidebar.
https://imgur.com/ZjBZhE1
Modern monochrome line-art icons are an entirely separate trainwreck to be honest. They're incredibly difficult to parse and distinguish.
It very much feels like we've fallen into the same trap medieval handwriting did https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minim_(palaeography)#/media/Fi... -- building designs around what looks aesthetically uniform and cool rather than what is easy to parse and use.
> They're incredibly difficult to parse and distinguish
And the fact that they are changed every couple of years, doesn't help either.
Indeed. It's all fashion nowadays. It's a form of aestheticism which I believe is closely linked to religiousness. There is a lot to develop but you can already observe than a lot of people have an approach to technology that isn't too far from the approach to "god" related things.
I must admit I don't understand this critique. I barely use a pointing device at all to navigate Gnome—mice included.
Supposing I did, the only hamburger menus I can think of contain lesser-important functions of each app, like seeing the version/build number, or certain settings. I'm not sure I want something like a "See hidden files" ticker occupying screen real estate forever when I could just set it once in an accessory menu.
I question whether these critiques would evaporate if, instead of the three horizontal bars, Gnome instead used a gear icon or something, and turned their contents into a pop-up window rather than a popover element.
Traditionally you'd put that in a menu still, just a horizontal one that displays the top version of the hierarchy. This allows you to skip one click, and doesn't significantly eat into the ample screen space.
Perhaps the biggest problem with the hamburger menu is that there is absolutely zero convention for what you put in there, or in which order. You don't know what you'll find in the menu unless you click it. With the old top menu, there were a set of conventions for this; roughly where specific options went, and in which order, and even which hotkeys you'd press to activate the menus. This means that even in an application you were completely unfamiliar with (even hideously complex ones such as an IDE or 3d modelling software), you could fairly easily navigate the application.
I like the hamburger menus, because they are usually one-level deep and contain very few items.
I cannot tell you how many times I want to go into an app's settings, and it takes longer than 20 seconds; some have it in File, some in Edit, others in random menus like "Tools". Further still, the damned menu item itself could be named Settings, Preferences, Options, whatever. Even further, looking at Gimp here, Preferences is one of 25 menu items that I need to scan through. This is not good UX, this is Stockholm Syndrome.
Contrast with Gnome apps: Hamburger -> Preferences, invariably, never takes longer than three seconds to find it.
Hamburger menu is a good solution for simple and small desktop apps but it's not a good choice to use it for anything complex.
There's this Pinta image editor that since its initial release offered standard menus - for years it looked nearly identical to Paint.NET on which is partially based. In January devs switched to GTK4/libadwaita; new 3.0 release replaced menus with combined hamburger menu which of course cannot be decoupled in any way and which make advanced editing annoying. There's more clicking to do anything unless you decide to learn all shortcuts. And this "learn shortcuts" is quite common answer to hamburger menu complains.
I just installed Pinta to check it out. That implementation is just bad, you are not supposed to just migrate your menu bar into submenus under the hamburger menu.
If I were to assist with their design, I would eliminate everything that already has a headerbar icon or an on-screen affordance; so most of Files, Edit, View, and Layers is taken care of.
The stuff that remains:
- Quit: superfluous, not present in Gnome apps
- View: borrow the Ephiphany (gnome-web) zoom controls, move Grid, Show/Hide, and Ruler units into a preferences dialog
- Add-ins: Move to a preferences dialog
- Window is useless, they have tabs
- Help can stay
So no surprise that the laziest implementation of a hamburger menu is not good.
It's kinda funny how Pinta changed while Paint.NET remains same with just minor tweaks to the interface. Luckily devs there never considered utilizing ribbon interface...
In the end I swapped from Pinta to Gimp and Krita because I couldn't stand that interface
Tbh, at this point I would pay for paint.NET on Linux.
Pinta is interesting, but the UI is terrible. Did we really have to remove the resize handles? They're there when adding shapes, but not when manipulating pixels/selection? Half the options I need being hidden in a hamburger menu isn't great either.
Gimp is gimp. I don't need Photoshop. And I don't want a Photoshop level of a learning curve.
Krita is interesting, but it seems to be aimed at drawing. I struggled to copy the color code from an image. By default my eyes are drawn to the massive advanced color selector on the right, but it's a trap. You actually need the tiny color selector in the top bar. It shouldn't be this hard.
I need a subset of image manipulation features in my work and each tool has a different one.
While Pinta uses (and abuses) GTK4, it has nothing to do with Gnome.
Inkscape is also a GTK app that follows Gnome guidelines, and every menu and tool is out in the open. No "hamburger" menus anywhere.
I was under the impression that Inkscape explicitly doesn't follow the gnome guidelines.
That's why every few months, there's a proposal to redesign it which trades usability for minimalism. Here's one I pulled from a random Google search:
https://gitlab.com/inkscape/ux/-/issues/236
https://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/Inkscape_invariants
They claim it's one of the cornerstones of their project. Who am I to argue.
Personally, I like how functional Inkscape's UI is AND how minimal Files is, for example..
> Supposing I did, the only hamburger menus I can think of contain lesser-important functions of each app
gEdit places almost everything in the hamburger menu; opening and saving files have dedicated buttons but for example find/replace is behind the burger, as is "save as". It may not matter much if you use keyboard shortcuts (ctrl+f is pretty common for find and I never try to look for it in the menu) but one might still expect a GUI to allow its features to be easily accessed without the use of a keyboard. I don't think the mix of a few dedicated buttons and a single hamburger menu is necessarily good for discoverability either.
The Image Viewer puts file management and image rotating in the hamburger menu. Oddly enough, other image editing options are available in a separate editing mode that's accessed via its own dedicated button. Also, although file management features are behind the hamburger menu, for some reason image properties are behind a dedicated button.
In both cases the only reason the hamburger menus aren't more populated is because there just isn't that much functionality in either app to begin with.
Evince (the document viewer) also puts almost everything in the hamburger menu -- although in that case, if a traditional menu bar were used instead of the hamburger, most of its functions would probably only be split between "file" and "view" menus or something along those lines.
I'm not sure if those apps are still Gnome defaults but they're some of the examples of what I'd consider somewhat poorly considered use of the hamburger menu.
Outside of Gnome, the new UI in JetBrains IDEs has switched to hiding typical menu bar menus behind a hamburger menu button. I honestly don't understand that decision at all: the menus are still the same, they just require an additional click to access, and since the selection of available menus is only revealed after clicking the button, you can only start scanning for the menu you're looking for after the reveal. While separate from free software desktop design, the new UI in those IDEs is another example of what I would also consider mobile-influenced degradation of desktop UIs -- and a particularly weird one at that.
Hamburger menus are also useful for things that otherwise would be behind a right-click. I personally have not encountered a good replacement for right-click in touch UIs.
That's rarely how they are used though, much more often they're used to replace the horizontal top menu bar.
They are for rarely-used actions. The corollary is that frequently-used actions are surfaced directly in the header bar instead of buried in menus. This is almost universally good. I say "almost" because content creation applications have so many actions that a menu bar sometimes makes sense; I'm thinking in particular of Inkscape with three sides of the window occupied by icons and a bizarre hamburger icon in the bottom of the right panel for some reason.
I don't disagree, but I think that's another reason they exist beyond screen real estate on mobile. Context menus take no screen space, but they don't play nice with touch.
There are plenty of alternative paradigms on touch interfaces, both two finger tap (on capable devices) as well as side-swipe are used to bring up menus that are as contextful (or more) than the burger menu.
"Long-tap" (tap and hold for a second) is another right-click alternative I've seen used to great effect on touch interfaces.
It works sometimes but it seems like drag me and it's really awkward when something can/should be both dragged or right clicked.
Touch and hold is fine as a right click.
But it barely exists anymore. It was common in early Android, not anymore. I think the reason was bad discoverability... which is true. But not having the functionality is worse.
Agreed!
KDE changed their design to include hamburger menu. Even KDE's Terminal have a "hamburger" menu.
The GGP's comparison was KDE vs. macOS, so that's the most charitable interpretation I can think of.
The comparison also holds. With every major release macOS has become more like iOS and iPadOS much more so than iOS and iPadOS have become like macOS.
It's a shift I loathe, but Apple has a much harder time selling Macs to iDevice owners than the other way around. It's an understandable and maybe even unavoidable shift for Apple to make, much as it will drive a small number of die-hards elsewhere.
As someone who does not use Stage Manager, I don't find that the other ways macOS has become more like iOS were, to me, bad ways. The most notable changes I find were that the Settings app became far more organized and consistent, and the Control Center has tons of convenient shortcuts with a very high level of customization.
In fact, Control Center is currently less customizable than iOS because you've been able to fully rearrange the controls on iOS for an entire year now. If anything, it could stand to be more like iOS in that regard, though it's not a huge deal either way.
I don't particularly use widgets much either, but I never felt their inclusion was a net negative, they're just not as useful as other interfaces already available on macOS.
One thing I'll definitely cede though: having some "macOS" apps actually be iOS apps, like Home, is weird not just because the UI design is unusual but also because there's been no attempt to make standard desktop hotkeys work, not even Esc.
Good news, maybe: macOS 26's Control Center is much more like iOS in that way, and they've also added an API that will let third-party apps offer their own control center widgets.
Google. Microsoft. Apple. In the years where "mobile is cool" became a mantra, basically everybody fell for the trend. Several examples in this random blog post that talks about the topic:
https://blog.prototypr.io/mobile-first-desktop-worst-f900909...
You asking this means (maybe?) that you're too young to have used the abhorrent default start menu of Windows 8, but yeah, forcing down users' throats the result of tucking what essentially was a mobile design into a 32" desktop monitor was the pure definition of "stupid decisions driven by marketing".
And it was not only OSes, too much of the web got "infected" with these design trends that are only appropriate for small screens:
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/content-dispersion/
I'm old enough that the first computer I used was an IBM PC. Running PC DOS. Granted, I was very young and only remember it because of the little turtle in Logo. Then it was Apple IIs. Then Windows. I actually used Linux in the 90's. I remember Windows 8, but mainly because of the complainers. I was Linux full time by then anyway.
But I do happen to enjoy having extraneous menus hidden. Why are they cluttering my screen and workspace when I'm using keyboard shortcuts anyway? I want to see my actual work, not some menu I don't need and will never click on...
Using a mouse to click on a bunch of tiny menus littered all over the place is horrible for productivity and screams "boomer"...
Oh! then you've lived well through all these design fads of the last decades. Let me assure you, a bad designer is going to do a bad job whether you give them a desktop-first framework or not, that's the kind of desktop interfaces you might be thinking of. But a mobile-first framework will always render poor results on desktop, regardless (and in spite) of the skill and knowledge of the designer.
I cannot say this based on evidence, but I'll say anyways based on subjective common sense, that the Start Menu of Windows 95, 98, XP, and 7 were all immensely better than the Start ..."screen" thing of Windows 8.
It's not that mobile is "cool". I've had analytics data for many apps across different types of industries. Consistently, even on mainline web pages, traffic is dominated by mobile. The vast majority of people visit apps and pages on their phones.
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.
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.
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.
This 100%. Just look at the screenshot on the KDE page for 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.
In Konsole's defense, this is the actual default appearance of a Konsole window when you launch it for the first time in the current stable release:
https://mero.ng/i/lWMWazUP.png
The screenshot on the website has all sorts of optional bits enabled, and I would readily agree is not a good showcase.
The reason all those optional bits exist is because you'd be surprised who ends up using a terminal emulator in a general purpose desktop GUI used in many large IT deployments. E.g. a lot of folks who are used to PuTTy on Windows and want a little GUI for SSH connections, and for them this is the game changer.
The "try to show all the goods in your screenshot" mindset is really not a good one though, agree :)
https://imgur.com/a/konsole-vs-ghostty-tR4Otmy
This is stock Konsole vs Ghostty. Notice Ghostty also has multiple tabs open. There is just so much waste in the Konsole UI.
Stock yes. Just hide the toolbar. I don't like that either. Turn off main toolbar and session toolbar.
That's better, but the toolbar/buttons could always be configured away. The real problem is the context menu. Has it been simplified or made configurable?
Out of interest, what do you use the context menu for in a terminal emulator so often that it bothers you? I can't even remember the last time I opened it.
I hide all UI and use only the context menu, 90% of the time to open a new tab, 5% of the time to split a tab, and 4% of the time to bring up the config dialog. 1% to open a new window, though I'm often doing Ctrl+Alt+T for that recently.
This is what I've done since SGI 4DWM Terminal (and ancient NT Command Prompt), and almost all other terminal emulators can be configured to do so. Konsole stands alone (to my knowledge) in its insistence on cruft all over the interface. The terminal widget itself seems fine.
To be clear, I don't mind obscure options, but they should live in the control panel. See my cousin comment for more details.
All these things have keyboard shortcuts If the context menu bothers you, it would seem worth it to use them for frequent actions. CTRL+Shift+T opens a new tab for instance. It's way more efficient anyway in an app that's so keyboard centric.
I don't find that context menu so bad to be honest. If you use it often you should know where things are anyway.
Overall I'm quite surprised at the hate Konsole receives in this HN thread. Removing the toolbars is two clicks away and only needs to be done once. Even the menu bar can be hidden. Such a konsole window would be just the terminal, no cruft, no UI elements. To me we are in the "some people will never be happy for no clear reasons" territory.
I've been using it for years I'm very happy with it. Its search feature is awesome, and its ability to have infinite scroll history is very nice too, it has decent performance.
The one terrible thing I have seen about konsole is that the toolbar buttons were highjacking the keyboard bindings in the terminal, but it was a bug, I think this is now fixed and a workaround was to remove the toolbar.
When I'm making a new tab, usually I'm coming from the browser or file-manager, so my hand is already on the mouse. Am clicking on the term anyway.
No other mainstream GUI term has these clutter issues. They are small issues to be sure, but unnecessary.
But surely you are going to use the keyboard once you have switched to the new tab? It's a terminal after all.
When I start typing I want to execute the new idea immediately. No other tabbed terminal (that I’ve used) prevents this besides konsole, simply because the context menu is (un)optimized to include the kitchen sink instead of the one item I want.
Folks trying to talk me into a new workflow can’t succeed because I’m multiplatform. Gnome terminal, iTerm2, Win Terminal, etc. konsole is the oddball and least used of the group. Partly because the context menu is a mess.
Fair enough. I usually switch to the terminal using alt+tab.
> To me we are in the "some people will never be happy for no clear reasons" territory.
That's because you ignore/downplay the very clear reason of space waste expressed in the conversation.
No, I mentioned that this is solved with a couple of clicks to do once if you are bothered by this. I see few reasons to complain really. One could prefer having different defaults (and I would, actually), but it's not like their are awful neither.
Had the toolbars been difficult or impossible to customize or remove, I wouldn't say, but here ulyou can make it look to your taste completely. The issue is a taste question and is a "meh" at best.
Yes, that's the downplaying part. Configuring bad default away doesn't make a user happy the bad default existed and required wasting time fixing it (of course it's not a couple of clicks, that's also downplaying, you'd have to first acquire the knowledge that it's possible (not all UIs can be customized) and how to do it (e.g., some DEs require installing some DE Shell Extension to be able to find the relevant config))
Defaults cannot always please every unique user. That's an impossible goal.
It's fine that impossibly picky users get to click through a few settings once to set their environment to their liking. I'm one myself sometimes.
I wonder if vocal people here who hate this minor (yes, I'll die on this hill) stuff so much took the time to even report this as an issue in KDE's bugtracker. Here's the link if it's not already done:
https://bugs.kde.org
> Defaults cannot always please every unique user. That's an impossible goal.
You're just continuing in your quest to ignore the issue. Just set the goal at "most users", that's fine, you'll still need to defend this actual screen waste to make an argument, but you can't hide behind a generic "can't please everyone"
> hate
There is no hate, you've made it up to make your argument sound better.
> this minor (yes, I'll die on this hill)
No one is looking at, let alone fighing, you on this imaginary hill. The other commenter explicitly said it's not a big issue. I also agree it's minor. Stop bringing more straws for your scarecrow!
> took the time to even report this
To waste it on a repeat of this argument with ~0 chance of a win? Again, you've made up that hate, so there is no motivation in doing that, a more productive use of that time is to use a better terminal (or just configure it away), so that's usually what happens
You can eliminate that 90% by Ctrl+Shift+T.
Doesn't help when coming from a browser. Ctrl+Alt+T works without the Terminal in focus however. Ctrl+Shift+T needs me to click in the terminal first then go back to the keyboard. Waste of time.
I almost always switch windows with Alt+Tab, not with a mouse, so it fits very well for that flow. Understandable if it doesn't do the trick for you though.
I’m well aware of all these hotkeys. The issue is I’m using the mouse with my browser, scrolling clicking etc. Reading gives me an idea so I click on my terminal that’s always open. This is the best time to open a tab imho, and have been doing it for decades.
Thankfully there are a dozen terminals to choose from that don’t make konsole’s minor mistakes. (Although chances are they made others.)
I don't think it's super complex with a ton of options any more. Just installed cachyos(arch based) kde plasma and the right click menu looks like this https://i.imgur.com/S59wy2H.png so either they are configuring away a lot of the complexity or the updates to it have been slimming.
- Four, no really four ways to copy...
- Change encoding? I have never changed the encoding of my terminal, not once since first using a computer, circa 1982. UTF8-FTW.
- Adjust scrollback, on the context menu?
- If you hide the toolbar/menu I believe it adds the main menu to the context menu. And that is where the majority of the hundred options live. And at the end, where a Properties or Preferences entry should live.
- Last but not least, no "New Tab" entry, which is the thing I use it for 90% of the time.
double click the tab area and you get a new tab. ctrl-n gets you a new tab. i personally wouldn't ever use that feature.
I like the extra modes of copying since they all have unique uses and prevent editing in cases.
the encoding bit is odd yeah. adjust scrollback is not a common option i suppose.
it would be nice to configure the right click menu more but that's not an option i see in many apps so it's a wash. I use the menu so i don't have those options. it may even be configurable via a file somewhere in .config... i haven't tried or been bothered by the defaults enough to do so.
I am mainly an urxvt user but actually use konsole once in a while specially for this kind of advanced feature
> Four, no really four ways to copy...
All of which are useful
> Change encoding? I have never changed the encoding of my terminal, not once since first using a computer, circa 1982.
Then you've never worked with Japanese. Which is fine, but a significant proportion of the world needs to.
> UTF8-FTW
Not for Japanese, sadly.
Neither useful for a very large majority of people. Yet you’ve decided we must avoid them every time we look at the context menu.
Also neglected the point elsewhere that obscure options are fine in control panels, auxiliary and submenus.
> So many KDE apps have this same problem. Giant labeled buttons taking up space from the actual content
Unlabeled buttons are a scourge, accursed and meaningless hieroglyphs
Unless you remember the meaning , of course, then suddenly the curse is lifted and you just don't waste space
Good thing KDE has a global setting to remove the labels!
GUIs (and especially buttons) are most useful for things I do infrequently. Frequent tasks are better done by keyboard shortcuts or command line utilities anyway. The only places where I routinely click on label-less icons are in the menu bar/system tray and my browser's always-visible toolbar.
I guess both of those places are especially space constrained, which maybe makes it feel more worth it to me. And I also actively arrange all the items in both cases, choosing not just the arrangement but which will show at all. That means I know them basically as soon as I throw them down.
I wonder if it would be crazy to have the labels on shown-by-default buttons fade only after a certain number of clicks on them.
> I guess both of those places are especially space constrained, which maybe makes it feel more worth it to me.
See how easy it is to justify "the scourge"? Also, this is exactly the same situation here - using a permanent toolbar on your main screen (not a submenu or some secondary settings screen where extra labels don't cost anything)
> crazy to have the labels on shown-by-default buttons fade only after a certain number of clicks on them.
Great idea, had the same, though an even better is to use frecency as a proxy for memory everywhere (and also apply it to various tips and keybinds etc) - if you've clicked the button 10 times, the label disappears, but if you haven't clicked in a year, it reappears (all configurable per button of course, OS-wide, there are some frequently use symbols like clipboard that you'll never forget due to use in other apps)
I do love that the floppy lives on in the Save icon.
That screenshot has all of the Konsole features enabled. You'd use one at a time if you use any at all.
> So many KDE apps have this same problem.
Right click any KDE app toolbar -> Text position -> Icons only
I also believe it's a setting in the System Settings.
That's why I love KDE. You can have it just the way you like it. Not how someone else decided on.
I think a lot of people knock it just from looking at some screenshots of the default options. Not knowing everything is configurable. Think the taskbar (panel) is too thick? Just change it. Don't want that toolbar? No worries just turn it off. It's so good.
I was in that boat for years. It took forcing myself to switch due to GNOME breaking basic features before I realized just how great and customizable KDE is.
You can easily implement Windows or macOS UI layouts using it and it isn't terrible. I actually prefer KDE to either desktop.
> That's why I love KDE. You can have it just the way you like it. Not how someone else decided on.
That is unfortunately less and less the case. Still better than most alternatives in that regard though.
The context menu is not configureable.
> Is it really necessary to take up what could be used for 2+ extra lines of terminal output for a labeled Copy button?
It's not, which is why the context menu gives you an "Icons Only" option, along with "Text Only", "Text Alongside Icons" (default), and "Text Under Icons". You can also adjust the icon size, or remove the toolbar entirely.
> This 100%. Just look at the screenshot on the KDE page for Konsole: https://apps.kde.org/konsole/
Oof. It looks like it’s trying to iTerm2 but, as the kids say, it’s not him.
I generally don’t use any “default” terminal regardless of OS or DE if I don’t have to. I’m full time on Ghostty these days and I adore it
It's very easy to customize and remove all the visual noise though.
Who needs konsole when you can have yakuake?
I use the terminal too much for that. I use yakuake for a quick text based ai interface though. That way I can quickly go like "what's the difference between this and that in Spanish?" when I'm writing something.
I use yakuake for everything, I don't know what I would be missing out from a dedicated term: yakuake has tabs, and splits/tiling, so the entirety of my terminal needs are covered in one convenient and easily accessible place :-)
Everyone who uses the terminal for more than one-off commands?
Why would you think that yakuake is limited to one-off commands?
It has tabs, and splits/tiling, it gets in and out of the way seamlessly. What would a dedicated terminal add to it?
Is your yakuake process running in a very time limited cgroup?
I use terminator as my terminal .. it allows to split windows which is somewhat implemented in console, but it doesn't work very well..
And this is why I find KDE annoying. Having to use GTK/GNOME apps for something as simple as a terminal.
Konsole has that feature too. https://itsfoss.com/konsole-terminal-tweaks/#4-split-the-ter...
Yes, but I don't like how this is implemented.
The default GNOME terminal doesn't do split windows, so it doesn't offer any advantage over KDE in that regard.
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/console/-/issues/103
There are a boatload of non-GTK or GNOME affiliated terminal emulators. I can recommend alacritty for instance.
I have probably started using konsole because it was the default, but have since liked it a lot. I use tmux whenever I want to split windows, synchronize keystrokes and things like that but for all else, konsole works perfectly well.
I have set it up in a way that I don't see any clutter. You can hide whatever you don't want to see on the UI. All I see is the terminal and the tabs.
The killer feature is the 'monitor for silence' and 'monitor for activity'. Comes quite handy for long running background tasks that you want to monitor.
> the context menu with hundreds of options can’t be simplified to my knowledge
What context menu is this about? When I right click into the terminal area, my context menu has a grand total of... 11 items.
Hide the menu/toolbar. And 11 is too many as it is, see my comment elsewhere. Someone posted a screenshot of a new install with 16, but it still doesn't have the main menu disabled. Which adds it to the context menu.
I suspect overlooked and stalled pull requests are common in open-source. A small one of mine (to a popular project that is not KDE or GNOME) recently took half a year, and most of that time was spent waiting for reviewers and bikeshedding the docs. My condolences on the frustration.
For what it's worth, I'm not part of KDE's inner circle, yet the several PRs that I have submitted to them since I started using it (~2 years ago) have all been accepted. One was difficult to shepherd through the gauntlet of opinions, but was finally merged. So the process is not entirely impenetrable.
Is that why they don't have alt selection?
I disagree - I see stuff like this, and I wonder if anyone actually thinks about the UI, or it's just "features thrown at the wall." It takes me a long time to remove buttons, icons, etc. from KDE's default layout. They seem to take too much comfort in "everything is configurable" as a way to ignore sane defaults.
https://discuss-cdn.kde.org/uploads/default/original/2X/b/ba...
Not everyone wants or needs the customizability of KDE. But if you're a heavy desktop user, being able to tailor every aspect of your system to your specific preferences, is absolutely wonderful. Using my Mac for work has become excruciating since I switched to KDE for my Linux machines last year.
I'm heavy desktop user and I never want to tailor every aspect of my system to my specific preferences. I don't have any specific preferences. I have general preferences of any sane user and I want programs to have sane GUI which does not need additional setup. There's no good environment for me in Linux. KDE is too customizable, I installed it once, opened settings and immediately formatted my disk. GNOME is terrible with their tablet UI and miriad hidden keybindings, but at least it does not have billion options, so I'm using GNOME, but I'm not happy with it. All I want is something windows 95-like, but without any settings whatsoever. GNOME 2 was very good desktop back in the days, it's a pity they decided to ruin it.
I think it's pretty clear that there are both kinds of power users: the ones who take pride in being able to learn whatever defaults there are, and the ones who take pride in being able to customize the defaults to their preference.
I don't believe either group is any more right than the other: both sides have about equal amounts of good arguments and pointless posturing. A tabs-vs-spaces situation. Fortunately, in this case, we more often than not have a choice: computing environment GUIs are still pretty personal, so everyone can just use software that follows their expectations. The problem begins when a user from one side is somehow forced to use software following the other side's ideology - but that's a separate story, and arguably it's the "being forced" part that's the actual problem.
Personally, I'm very inconsistent in this regard. There are apps that I've been customizing for more than a decade and, quite honestly, I wouldn't know how to use them were my config to suddenly stop working (Emacs, ZSH, tmux). On the other hand, there are apps I've been using for a similarly long time, but never bothered to configure (other than possibly installing a bunch of plugins): Firefox and Vim come to mind.
There are also apps that I do customize, but either only once and never touch the config again (my window manager, Awesome), or ones that I customize but only to add an escape hatch (adding "Open this file in Emacs" to all JetBrains IDEs, for example).
So from my perspective, what's essential is to have a choice: both GNOME and KDE should exist, should enjoy similar popularity, and should each focus on their favored philosophy. Let those who want to work with defaults use software where a lot of effort went into providing sane defaults (it's ok if customizability suffers), and let those who want to customize use software where significant effort went into allowing customizability (it's ok if defaults are slightly insane).
> any sane user and I want programs to have sane GUI which does not need additional setup
In reality there is no such thing as a "sane user" using programs with "sane GUIs". Either someone already has a lot of preferences formed by their experiences using desktop OSes over the years, or they have started using desktop OSes recently and they barely have any expectations.
And because of that there is no such things as "sane user" using "sane GUIs". Your sanity is someone else's insanity.
I do have strong preferences. But it just means that gnome is better for you and kde better for me :)
Your screenshot shows a menu in which features, namely the menu bar, have quite explicitly been removed from the default layout because you are unlikely to use them. You are showing the second tier of a menu structure where they are available if you need them occasionally. If you happen to need them more often you can easily add them to the toolbar.
It's certainly possible, but to me it feels like a junk drawer without too much thought. In konsole, for example, it buries "use dark color scheme," which I'd assume is a fairly common option.
Most people choose a theme for all the windows in the system settings.
I'm not sure usability is moving in the right direction with KDE. Over the past years, more and more applications started to hide menus by default, sometimes adding hamburger menus instead.
There is also a "new way" (I believe QtQuick-based) for applications to create popups, which results in them not being separate windows anymore. System Settings makes prominent use of them for example and those popups just behave entirely different than one is used to. As far as I know it's not even possible to navigate these popups with the keyboard.
> 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.
KDE its Achilles heel is that every KDE application is like its own little fiefdom, compared to Gnome's top-down control of whatever the blessed application for a particular function is.
This is why a KDE desktop often feels incredibly disjointed to use. You can't develop muscle memory for conventions if there are no conventions.
> 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.
18 years ago? Holy crap I feel old. I remember how disruptive the very stable 3 to completely unstable 4 was.
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?
KDE now has its own Linux distribution called KDE Linux!
https://kde.org/linux/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45204393
https://news.itsfoss.com/kde-linux-alpha/
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2025/09/kde-officially-release...
https://linuxiac.com/kde-linux-alpha-launches-with-immutable...
I don't know if there is a "best" but I've been using OpenSUSE Leap 15.6 with KDE on my work, personal, and family machines for the last year or so. Even my non-technical (but technologically capable) spouse has been using and enjoying it over that time on their personal laptop.
Whatever you do, don't use anything debian or ubuntu-derived, they have tons of bugs that aren't upstream. CachyOS and Fedora KDE are great options.
Use a rolling release so you get the latest KDE and not whatever Debian froze two years ago.
My choice has been Kubuntu. With all vestiges of snapd removed.
For me the best KDE software integration is in openSUSE, also love their YaST graphical control center and BTRFS filesystem snappshoting integration with the package manager and the control center. Second best distro for me is Fedora KDE.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I think it's perplexing that UX has generally gotten worse subsequent to multiple developments which you might expect would make UX better:
But despite this, UIs have consistently gotten worse over the past 10-20 years. I think there are a few possible culrpits. In concert, you have a UX which is constantly changing, and never really getting better, and often getting worse.> - There are dedicated UX teams whose sole focus is to improve UX.
They don't work like the UX teams of yesteryear.
In the early 2000s, companies did user studies. Put a potential user in front of the product, let them use it while the UX team observed. Ask questions to the user afterwards. Make changes, repeat.
But that kind of research is expensive, so it's thrown out to instead just collect tons of metrics that likely don't tell a whole story. They think "Users must love feature X because they keep clicking on it!" when the reality is that they're trying to find something else, but the label for X looks related to what they want.
I agree with all your points regarding the race to the bottom. I think that's why UIs hide so much information. Older interface designs are considered "confusing" or "cluttered" because there's so much there at a first glance, even if all the buttons elements are grouped by functionality.
> There are dedicated UX teams whose sole focus is to improve UX.
Imho, this is a big source of the problem.
Granted: there are some amazing UX designers and teams out there.
But my experience with UX teams has been that in most middle-market companies they're usually less that sort and more the {huge designer ego} + {management consulting political skillset} one.
And it's a tough problem to solve! Because ultimately you want someone who can argue very hard for their approach to improving UX (usually against opposition from others). But when someone's ego exceeds their skill, that leads to disaster.
And without a strong Jobs-esque "this sucks" arbiter over them, their changes make it to prod.
The builder vs maintainer mindset probably plays a role too.
Mature products need the maintainer mindset a lot more than the builder mindset.
It's hard enough to find devs who are good at maintainer-mode. I think it's even harder with other roles.
> We now have a plethora of UX logging and can see real time where users struggle.
No you can't. That telemetry gives you view into how users are experiencing the software is a myth because it doesn't include the actions users don't take and it doesn't include the reasons for actions taken.
This is an opinion stated as fact. Not every user is the same. That's why there are loads of apps with UIs that have different user modes, for power users, etc. KDE is most suitable for power users of Linux desktops, probably who use it as their daily driver. If you aren't in that category, you may not like it or may find it to be not worth the time investment in.
Not every user is the same, but it's absolutely valid to discuss whether broadly for most users constantly-churning UI is a net positive or net negative. I think your case, ie customizable UIs, is something of an edge case, and I do agree with you that expert versions of simple UIs can be a really positive move.
A Linux user is, and has always been, an edge case
I dislike how people seem to recommend KDE for power users when GNOME is actually.. great?
I'm an old power user/dev and I used to absolutely love KDE 3 for its take on 90s OS UI, I went into v4 thinking it was a major downgrade (I used KDE 3 as far as the KDEMOD maintainers could push it) and it never got as good as the old v3 days. Somewhere by the end of the KDE 4 life, GNOME 3 formed into something kind of usable and I started noticing some advantages to it, even tried it for a while. Fast forward to now (including a few years where I rolled my own LXDE/XFCE hybrid setup, I was desperate lol) and now I pretty much only use GNOME. I consider it a fine DE for power users... or whatever use you have really. It's great on a notebook, it's great on a desktop and it's great even as an HTPC interface. You do have to wrestle with it for some advanced functionality (dealing with extension isn't always fun, digging into dconf isn't fun...) but the OOB defaults and basic functionality are actually the best there is, maybe even among all desktop OSes.
I mean, if Linus Torvalds out of all people uses it then it must be at least decent for more advanced users, right?
Now whenever I try KDE it feels like an uncomfortable car where every single adjustable thing needs to be tweaked for it to feel minimally usable, except many adjustments are finicky and leave you with a half assed solution. It won't resonate with me anymore...
There isn't only one kind of power user, and not every kind of power user will like KDE. I use GNOME almost daily, with KDE being my primary daily driver. I just really don't see how GNOME could ever said to be great for power users. There are so many ways you can tailer KDE to specific things you may find yourself doing heavily, that would be impossible with GNOME's UI. Being a power user and using GNOME, to me just means you're using the terminal for everything, which is totally valid.
Linus also may not even really be a power user. He says himself that he rarely writes code anymore, and primarily just sends emails and reviews code.
This is an opinion stated as fact. KDE is mostly for dads that like a mouse oriented Windows/mac like OS but with buttons to customize.
Sway, exwm etc are for power users.
If you aren't in that category, you may not like it or may find it to be not worth the time investment in.
10/10 gatekeeping buddy.
I didn't say KDE is the only option for power users, or that there aren't multiple types of power users with different use cases and individual preferences. I'm not sure what I'm gatekeeping.
Is it really gatekeeping to say that KDE is for power users? Setting it up in a way that really meshes with your use case and preferences is a process that you'll spend many hours or days of time on. That's not something that makes sense for grandma's computing workload.
> This is an opinion stated as fact. KDE is mostly for dads that like a mouse oriented Windows/mac like OS but with buttons to customize. Sway, exwm etc are for power users.
So you're saying that prefering a highly customizable GUI means you're be a power user, but instead you're a gasp dad? This isn't Reddit, buddy. Grow up.
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.
Is this always the case?
I prefer what Windows 11 has done with settings being a simple two panel window with categories on left and scrollable settings on the right, with a search/filter bar at top. As you drill deeper you have a breadcrumb at top allowing you to see the levels you are in and click to go back up. This also allows space for descriptions of what each setting does. It could even be improved by allowing users to pin commonly used settings.
This seems overall more simple and cohesive compared to the old Windows control panel with icons and nested settings being popups within popups within popups. It also allows easier scaling and viewing depending on DPI, screen size, resolution, etc.
Windows 11 settings are worse than they were prior to Windows 10. Before I could have multiple windows open for settings to monitor progress (like of windows updates) or check settings against each other. Now it's a monolithic interface that forces me to back out of something I'm looking at to look at something else, like a website that doesn't let me open multiple tabs to browse it. Terrible UX IMO.
As a developer who has worked on similar things, that interface can prevent a lot of trouble of the kind "What if the user edits a setting that updates something in another part of settings, which might also be open at the same time?" - or even the same settings screen opened multiple times. It is rare that such cases come up for users, but they can be very annoying and time-consuming to deal with. Perhaps that was the motivation.
Making the developer experience easier at the expense of the user experience is the heart of the problem with modern software.
I get it, but instead of putting effort into redesigning the whole interface to avoid this possibility, they could have put that effort into rendering the same UI in immediate mode and problem solved.
I actually think the real motive is that they wanted to move to a more unified mobile and tablet friendly UI code base, which centers more around full screen windows.
>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.
Totally agree. To my design eye its so inconsistent that I can’t believe a professional designer has been involved.
> 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/
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.
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.
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.
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)
Well, once installed, Fedora Asahi is just standard Fedora ARM with some drivers and bootloader code. You can do anything you would do with a Fedora.
> (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)
If you are still hesitating, it's actually really easy to try : just run the command on the Asahi website and follow the instructions. The setup will resize your partition automatically and will not touch anything of your macOS install or your data. It's even easier than on PC where you have to boot the installation media and manage the partitionning yourself. IIRC, there isnt even the option to remove your macOS partition at any moment so you can't even lose your data by mistake.
The only prerequisite is having free space on your disk and everything else is automatic.
Also, uninstalling Asahi is as easy as going to macOS Disk Utility App, right click on the asahi partition, delete, and resize the macOS partition. After those three clicks, your Mac is now in the same state than before installing Asahi.
Hey, thanks a lot to you and everyone else who has been kind enough to share their inputs.
I did try Asahi after encouragement from you all. Installation was indeed smooth. I'd say as smooth as it gets (and I am including Mac auth screen and then SIP tweak in recovery CLI - I assume).
However, the UI/UX wasn't what I expected. I think I was looking for something like ElementaryOS (what I had mentioned and I know it might sound like a broken record), but I was looking for an out-of-the-box pleasing and "just works" UI. It wasn't that, sadly.
I first tried Fedora with GNOME, and it was really not good - even in functionality.
Then I wiped it clean and again installed - this time with KDE Plasma. Functionality was much better. But UX/UI left a lot to be desired. For example, the display was scaled to 170%, and I just couldn't bring it to the right size. 185% was closest. Then I had to change trackpad settings, et cetera. I'd assumed Mac hardware-specific DE/OS might come with some initial tweaks done already. I struggled a lot with shortcuts, and the general UI/UX wasn't feeling like home at all. I also think I am a lot biased, not only coming from Mac but stuck on something like Elementary.
Finally, I cleaned it up. Hopefully, there'd be more Asahi Remix distros. Again, thanks a lot to all of you!
Define Windows-like. Windows 11 is complete insanity and nearly unusable. Windows 2000/XP is more logical and boring (the good kind). In my opinion, yes KDE is "Windows-like", but based in an era before MS devs started self medicating on mushrooms and LSD.
KDE generally functions how you expect. For example, a bunch of FOSS hippies somehow managed to create a control panel (system settings in KDE parlance) that's easy to use and navigate, and Microsoft still haven't accomplished that despite trying for over 10 years at this point.
Also, I can dock my task bar to the side, like God intended.
> Also - can one access certain Mac folders in Asahi (e.g. ~/Pictures)? And is it even recommended, if it's possible (Security wise)?
You cannot access any of your Mac folders in Asahi. Your Mac partitions are invisible until you reboot into MacOS.
Some potential workarounds:
1. Use Syncthing to sync your Pictures folder on both operating systems to an external Mac. This of course duplicates the contents of the folder on your Mac/Asahi SSD, which is wasteful.
[Note: Dropbox does not work on Asahi Linux because it only barely works on x86 Linux and it has never worked on Arm Linux.]
2. Use an external USB or SD drive for files you want to share. Needs to be formatted in something both OSes can read/write (e.g. not APFS).
3. Use Paragon's $40 extFS which lets MacOS read and write to your Linux partition. Supposedly; I haven't tried it. This only solves half your problem: It gives MacOS access to your Linux files but not the reverse.
https://www.paragon-software.com/home/extfs-mac/
What's really needed is a way to mount APFS partitions from Linux, and I plan to DDG that as soon as I finish typing this...
UPDATE: APFS FUSE seems to be recommended, although it only provides read access to your APFS partition.
https://github.com/sgan81/apfs-fuse
4. Make a brand new partition on your drive for shared files, and format it exFAT. MacOS can read/write exFAT natively and Linux can usually be made to do so, although I haven't tried it yet on Asahi. This seems to me like the most promising option if you don't want to depend on an external drive.
UDF works for both OSes.
I have KDE configured with the same UI layout as macOS. Takes a few minutes to set up, but it's doable.
Is there a single menu bar at the top of the screen for all programs? I can't stand having multiple menu bars at the top of every window.
Yes, that's known as global application menu (not enabled by default). It's not the most discoverable feature, but it's working great once set up. (For reference, just add the widget to your panel and then make sure to restart plasma for it to take effect).
Yes, this was mandatory for me. It's the reason I switched from GNOME to KDE originally, GNOME broke the global menu bar.
You can recreate the layout almost perfectly. Don't try to theme it as macOS, just get the UI components in the right places using the widgets it comes with.
KDE has a global menu bar widget. Unfortunately not all applications work with it.
ElementaryOS is a Mac clone. You want a Mac-like setup instead of a Windows-like setup.
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.
Gorgeous, lightweight, easy on the eyes, gets out of the way. I cannot plug it enough.
Well, as they say, each one of us have our own perception but it never felt like a mac "clone" to it. It is imho an excellent mac inspired desktop that just tries to help the user of the computer and gets out of the way. Simple, elegant and really fast. This I am telling from almost a decade ago and based on quick tests over the years or screencasts.
I sometimes used to fantasise Apple ordering their UX folks to just adopt it pixel by pixel and stick to it.
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).
Customize KDE is easy: - panels could be moved in several clicks - add / remove widgets also could be done by mouse (and there are additional widgets that could be downloaded) - themes and animations and configured in settings
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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/
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.
Just checking the webiste, it feels great too. I don't know what it is, but I just like their straight forward style.
> 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".
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.
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.
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?
MacOS Tahoe's UI is comically bad.
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.
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
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?
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.
And yet people still complain about some inconsistencies in UI.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There are 4 (or 5?) volume control UIs in Windows 11.
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.
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?)
There's a hint of cat urine mixed in too.
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.
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.
Both DE have tools to make the UI toolkits to adapt to the DE, GTK with breeze theme and qt with libawaita theme
Sure but they look pretty bad.
There's two types of desktops: the ones people complain about, and the ones nobody uses.
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.
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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
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.
[dead]
Except I still can't buy a laptop with it at Media Markt, FNAC, or similar, depending on the country.
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.
I like it. It gives me confidence that a random software will surely work well on my kde desktop
> 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.
I don't. It often feels cringeworthy, childish and unprofessional.
I just like that the text editor has the same name as me :D
Hello, KDE's Advanced Text Editor /s
(just a text editor is KWrite)
KCry me a river.
Do you think this looks "nice and professional"? I don't.
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/thiagokokada/blog/main/pos...
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?
Also the fact that the setting exists at all is worthy of applause. People have to install Flatseal on other desktop environments.
I fail to see the issue in that screenshot
I wouldn't say it's pretty, and it's quite wasteful of space, but it's professional enough
Looks pretty clean to me.
Yeah it’s an utter mess of font sizes, inconsistent rules on placement and spacing.
Actually annoys me significantly.
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.
> Coming from GNOME, I was pleasantly surprised that many GNOME extensions I would rely on had equivalent feature functionality built into KDE
Recently I changed distro along with DE and ho boy, my initial customization and polishing in KDE was way shorter to anything I did before in Gnome or Xfce. In order to have a "regular" desktop paradigm workflow there I had to get variety of extensions to revert back or patch up doubtful design, usability decisions.
The only place I was satisfied with Gnome was on laptop - there it surprisingly fit perfectly. Not the vanilla version of course because it still needed some extensions.
Looking across the years, I don't know what's the big masterplan of Gnome devs but it seems it's not building a desktop environment for users but some weird convergence solution that they probably aim at corporations. Not sure for what purpose tho. People here mentioned on a few occasions how hostile that team is against users, their suggestions and complains.
KDE is my daily driver at home and work now, it really is fantastic!
One minor thing I love is how the old-school wobbly windows, desktop cube etc are still something you can toggle easily.
"old-school" ... I remember when they were the hot new thing...
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.
> 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.
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.
>silly loader window
I'm not sure what you mean, but if you're referring to the startup splash screen (which I also hate), you can just turn that off in system settings.
Another echo here. Xfce was my beloved desktop until Gtk 3 started transforming it with design elements that hate me. Plasma is my new home, and after some tweaks, I'm pretty happy with it.
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.
KDE won me over for the simple fact that it's highly configurable, and that configuration is all driven out of one UI tool. Gnome drove me nuts with molding it into the shape I wanted.
My only problem is it seems to be buggy still. I just tried it on Fedora 42, and I configured the panel to my liking. Now I cannot get the panel to auto hide or dodge windows, no matter what I try. sigh
I think the 'K-thing' was a big and helpful part of getting early volunteers onboard to build apps for KDE. They really seemed to enjoy rebuilding existing applications into a K-version.
So I guess you just have to live with it, but consider it a way to honor the original contributors who build all the K(DE)-versions of the common apps
I feel the exact same way about the dock. That's.one thing I like about Ubuntu, their dock just makes sense for me. It's on the left by default and always visible (which is how I like it). But of course you can have it auto-hide.
Fun fact about Linux "docks". The reason why they can't do the exact effect Apple uses to auto-scale their dock on mouseover is that Apple patented that particular effect.
> 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.
Extensibility can be nice, but the experience has a lot of friction. If you want something that isn't bog standard, you need to get or make an extension.
Making one is more work than what I can do from basic configuration settings in KDE. I want to spend my time on other projects. The marketplace suffers from the same problems as most marketplaces. Plenty of unmaintained extensions. No guarantees of quality. Now I need to do research on extensions instead of just changing a configuration setting.
The existence of extensions allows gnome devs to figure they don't have to support basic features because someone will make an extension for it.
Extension configurations don't live in the same place as standard configurations.
The experience is fragmented and has friction.
Well, I never wanted something standard so I always configured my desktop. My current GNOME desktop looks more like KDE than GNOME. I gave a try to KDE in 2014. It seems that it has been the wrong time to be there. I switched to GNOME Flashback (the one that looked like GNOME 2) and updated to 3 only when there has been the right extensions to make the desktop look like what I want it to be. Neither Apple nor Microsoft figured out what I want, so I use something else. Actually Microsoft have been closer to that with XP and 7 but it's Windows. I migrated to Linux in 2009.
The problem is that the extension experience can be really bad. There is no extension API; instead Extensions have (almost) full access to GNOME Shell's code.
This makes them incredibly powerful and flexible... but also fragile. Extensions can crash GNOME Shell/mutter. On Wayland that means your entire session goes down with GNOME Shell. Extensions can interfere with each other, and if you are an extension developer, you may need to update (or at least check) your extension every 6 months (GNOMEs release cycle).
Extension lives in the same memory space as the shell, so it’s up to the developer to restrict themselves to not touch internal API. Also, GNOME give you plenty of warning in the changelog (and the changes are usually small).
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.
The last time I used Gnome as my primary desktop (that was still in the Gnome 3 days) extensions broke at every update. I was still using Arch Linux at the time, so it was annoying because every ~6 months a few of my extensions would be broken for 1~2 weeks.
AFAIK Gnome extensions still doesn't have a stable API, so this issue is still present today.
I've used gnome for 7 years in Fedora. Often certain extensions stopped working betweenv after Fedora big upgrades (i.e. from 32 to 33). The JavaScript engine that runs extensions had many memory leaks bugs so I had to kill the gnome-shell process on a TTY session.
After 7 years I was fed up and switched to KDE and never looked back
They also make the core more complicated; what I have seen of Gnome internals is pretty messy imo.
There's no free lunch in software, every choice is some kind of compromise.
I ran Linux for a time in the late aughts and came to prefer Gnome to KDE at the time because it just felt more polished. I switched to macOS for many years now, but recently started playing with Linux again on a Thinkpad I got a deal on. Modern Gnome feels unreasonably uncomfigurable without extra tooling, and even with it the options I want are difficult to make work correctly.
I want my window controls on the left, and I want global menu. This was pretty standard and reliable in Gnome ten-fifteen years ago but now both options barely work. What the heck happened. Both of these worked pretty flawlessly in Unity. I'm still pissed at Ubuntu for killing it.
I also don’t like the branding and icons tbh but it brings a lot consistency in terms of overall experience.
When you say switched from gnome, is it on the same os?
Yes, changing distros to change DEs is simply nonsensical behavior. If one's distro doesn't support multiple DEs then it's probably time to reconsider if taking reddit's advice on the ArchLinux-spin of the quarter is actually a good idea.
> ArchLinux-spin of the quarter
What's the point of this? People should just use the real Arch Linux.
Not sure what the point is, but "creating your own OS" by forking Debian / Ubuntu / Fedora / Arch and changing the wallpaper (only slightly hyperbolic) still seems to be somewhat popular. One of the best outcomes was RebeccaBlackOS, which ended up being an early testbed for Wayland on the desktop.
Yes, debian. Although I had previously been using gnome on other distros, like ubuntu.
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.
> a nice swipe animation that pauses when you do on the touchpad.
For reference, these are referred to as "1:1 gestures"
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.
> Admittedly, this was maybe 5 years ago. Has that improved?
It may have, yes!
One of the ways we run the KDE community is that we have an annual process to elect community-wide goals, which then have their own leadership team, infra, budget, etc. The goals themselves are long-running, i.e. it's not one year and done, either.
In about 2020/21 one of the goals that won/was added was titled "Improve Consistency across the Board", which lead to e.g. a comprehensive update of the HIG, renewed efforts on the controls library, and many cleanup passes across the products to get them up to date and in line.
It's an ongoing process and I'm sure plenty of people can still point to a pet peeve or an ugly corner - we're happy to have discerning users with high expectations - but the general state of things should be much better than half a decade ago.
There's also a next-gen styling/theming system project called Union in the works along with a next-gen design system developed in collaboration to take things to the next level in a few years, but we're taking our time to get it really right instead of pulling a Liquid Glass (one lesson we've learned through the years is that clawing your way back from reputational damage is really hard, and compromising on release quality is never the way to go). You can see annual updates on this e.g. in the feeds from our flagship dev conference.
BTW, not sure if you were involved with this at all but I really appreciate all the work that's gone into making the Kirigami/Qt Quick KDE programs feel less janky. It's still not perfect (don't know if it ever will be unless Qt releases their AoT QML compiler as open source) but it's gotten MUCH better since the early KDE 6 releases.
The screenshot in the OP article show already quite a few issues. It takes a trained eye to be able to articulate a lot of the issues. I feel like Gmome is designed by professional designers but KDE mostly by developers. I do share the sentiment that Gnome is often too rigid, but the design is coherent, consistent and aesthetically well articulated. I use Hyprland with mostly Gnome apps (have considered Niri too!)
But I don't mean to trash KDE. Some people don't care about that padding or visual layering or whatever but do care about the extra options and features. At the end of the day, I'm just happy that we're on a platform where all these approaches have their space and people can chose and build commnities that grow tools that adapt to their own sensibilities and needs.
KDE is great, Gnome is great, free software is great. Mac and Windows are hell.
I have used essentially all of the Linux desktop environments over the course of decades and my impression is that GNOME attracts developers with a strong interest in "design" as a hobby. And apparently ones who take the whole, "Perfection is attained not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away," philosophy perhaps a little too rigidly.
KDE tends towards pragmatism, discoverability, and customization over simple and flashy. The developers don't assume their users are simpletons who will get confused and run away if they encounter a checkbox they don't understand. They understand that many of their users are advanced tech-enthusiast "power users" just like themselves.
OP is talking about stuff that has nothing to do with check boxes or "simpletons". They're talking about super basic stuff like padding things the same way for dynamic content. Consistent fonts. Etc.
Even non-simpletons can appreciate that.
Honestly, I'm not too fond of the screenshots in the OP's article either. I'd say it looks all fairly slapdash and too busy.
I will say that the permission editing is (as you can also see in the nav bar there) a few levels down digging into menus, and if you go into those kinds of corners of other systems the UIs often tend to start looking a bit more "developer-y". E.g. check the analogous bits of Android, and also MacOS has a few things like plist editor windows and such where you're suddenly well off the consumer track and into unloved form-shaped things. It's a bit like the backrooms.
But that's not meant as a defense or justification!
In fact blogs like this and lists of warts often help us. If you play fly on the wall in some of our channels (e.g. the promo ones), you will also often see people doing the legwork of parsing reviews and ticketizing criticisms. We try to listen quite actively because if someone dislikes a UI they're most often right.
The most important thing is that what's bad today can in fact be good tomorrow, especially if you don't get defensive about it.
> The most important thing is that what's bad today can in fact be good tomorrow, especially if you don't get defensive about it.
What a great way to put it. I wish software developers of every product would feel that way.
And also thank you for all the hard work, to you and the team!
I always wanted to thank someone involved with KDE, here's my chance: Thank you!
Likewise, I've been enjoying KDE both before and after the big bang redesign, jumped ship for a few years when nothing seemed to be working properly.
Very appreciated, thanks :)
KDE Plasma 6 looks absolutely gorgeous on my Kubuntu laptop with highdpi OLED display, and that's coming from a mainly-Mac-user :)
(this wasn't my main reason to switch from Gnome though, I just couldn't stand the random design decisions in each Gnome update anymore, and generally Gnome never really clicked with me the way KDE immediately did - which is also strange since Gnome is supposed to be the 'Mac desktop clone', while KDE is supposed to be the 'Windows desktop clone' heh)
I really dislike how people present KDE and Gnome as being "clones" of Windows and MacOS. GNOME specially is so distinct (be it for good and bad reasons) that it deserves to be considered it's own thing. I can't stand MacOS with all it's Macosisms that are ingrained since it's Macintosh days. GNOME being grown for PC usages has none of these issues. Window management is also a breeze and easy to pickup rather than a byzantine mess. The only thing they really share is a nice, sparse look & feel.
KDE does have a lot more similarities to Windows but saying it's a clone might put the wrong idea on peoples mind when they transition from Microsoft's system.
Back in the olden days, Microsoft and Apple did a lot of actual UI research, and for a resource-limited open source project there was no shame in piggybacking on those research results IMHO. But with the 'UX mafia' taking over big companies, nowadays it's reversed, the resource limited open source projects often have better usability.
> Inconsistent padding, font sizes, colors.
But enough about Mac OS Tahoe!
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.
GNOME is pretty, but it’s not great when it comes to progressive disclosure – what you see is what you get; there’s no depth in which power user features can be found.
macOS is nearly the opposite in this regard. I wouldn’t mind giving it a facelift but doing it GNOME style would mean it losing much of what has kept many users on it.
The way for power using gnome is through extensions. But once you got used to the gnome philosophy, you find that you don’t have to fiddle with the UI that much.
Nice in theory, but my experience has been that extension devs burn out from having to update their extensions so often to keep them from breaking. There’s also some things that extensions can’t fix.
Don’t use private API then. While the public API is not stable, there’s few changes there.
I don't know what falls under public and private API but across my GNOME installs over the years there are numerous extensions that've broken and been abandoned, which suggests that most of the things that people want to customize sit on the private side of the line.
The silly thing about Gnome extensions is that you have to configure them through a web browser rather than OS dialogs rendered with their own graphical toolkit.
That is untrue! There’s a CLI for loading them, and a settings api. The web thing is just one of the distribution channel.
Do you have any examples where power features aren't accessible? The OP used a wifi applet as an example of exposing information. I'm not sure if this isn't as common as I think it is - but what's wrong with typing `ip` into a terminal (that's always open anyway)? It's desktop agnostic, works even without a desktop. And then there's no need for an entire applet dedicated just to wifi for the rare occasion you need to lookup your MAC address.
> I'm not sure if this isn't as common as I think it is - but what's wrong with typing `ip` into a terminal (that's always open anyway)?
I'm a regular Linux user, but I wouldn't know how to get all the data from the Wi-Fi applet using the Command Line. GUI have the advantage of discoverability over CLI: with a GUI I get a bunch of useful info in a single place, with a CLI I first need to know that a data is available and then I need to look-up the right invocation to get this data.
UI also represents an opportunity for standardization, which is a powerful force for onboarding non-technical users and in time, turning them into power users. Standardized patterns illustrate to users that there's a method to the madness and that computers are finite, learnable systems and not seemingly arbitrary chaos or unintelligible techno-wizardry.
One small example is how holding down Option/Alt modifies behavior in various ways throughout macOS.
Often it functions as a “do this for everything” modifier. So for example, option-clicking the minimize traffic light minimizes all windows from the application the window belongs to, and option-clicking a disclosure triangle in a nested list expands or contracts all child nodes.
There’s tons of little things like that which might sound silly but become significant time and sanity savers after making a habit of using them.
> I'm not sure if this isn't as common as I think it is - but what's wrong with typing `ip` into a terminal
Well, for a start, `ip` isn't enough to give you anything. You'd need at least `ip a` or `ip r`, but then you'd have to already know that or go hunting in the manual (the `ip` help really is pretty bad). For something you might only need once a year (and will forget before you need it again!), having it in the GUI is very valuable.
Wow, just goes to show how different people's perception can be. To me Gnome is ugly, I really tried to like it but just could not. Didn't work too well for me also, but no way I'd describe Gnome as nice looking. KDE has been the only DE that does not give me that subliminal feeling of being grainy and crummy in the way that many people have associated with Linux UI since the beginning.
Please don't ever again suggest Apple to hire the GNOME team. That would be a very sad day.
Let them cook!
They already seem to vaguely echo gnome 3 look in macos. Huge titlebars with buttons, sidebar layouts in apps, transparent title bar, control center, etc., there's just a bunch of things that make you go 'huh'.
LetTim Cook!
Not sure if you're serious or missing an /s there ;)
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.
> I'm not surprised some losers here at HN down voted my comment.
You're sabotaging hard your own messaging with comments like this.
I don't concern myself too much, the value of votes are zero anyway, and the value of people who down vote is zero as well as far as I'm concerned. I have never down voted anything another person has written, I just think it's base behaviour.
You have at least one insignificant person on your side. I similarly almost never downvote. But they disabled my voting ability because I upvoted too generously.
There are many cruel and pugnacious creatures here.
Indeed, it's best to remain indifferent, lest... behavioral modification ensue, and one become strange.
Yeah, the first rule of HN is that you don't talk about downvotes/censoring.
That is entirely a matter of taste and familiarity
The date/time format for the clock in the panel should always be %A %F %R. Anything else is unusable.
Not sure why you're getting downvoted as this is a valid opinion to have. IMO my list is MacOS Sonoma, Windows 7, Gnome 30+. While I like the ideas behind KDE, XFCE and the like, they are terribly ugly by today's standards.
I would recommend checking out Cosmic by System76. It's getting a beta very soon but I've been using the alpha and straight their git main for months now and it's very stable.
It looks amazing and feels super snappy, I have never had such a painless Linux desktop experience. It even has a tiling window manager functionality built-in that was enough for me to sway away from i3/sway. But it also just works like a normal desktop that a non-technical user can use with ease.
https://bsky.app/profile/system76.bsky.social/post/3lylz3cfy...
I'm actually super excited about this project. Out of curiosity, does the compositor they use have HDR support? It's one of the features I miss on Linux desktops.
> It's one of the features I miss on Linux desktops.
Not sure about Cosmic, but both Gnome and KDE support HDR these days. Hyprland does as well and I think support for it was also merged into Sway recently.
No it has not. Despite the praises it is getting here it still looks like the programmer art, which fits with a certain crowd, but if you are (like me) into the Gnome/Mac type of look - its still gives Windows XP vibes.
KDE defaults used to be pretty ugly, but it has gotten quite a bit better.
Still a little on the ugly side to me, but KDE is really what you make it. Quite literally everything about its UI and behavior is tweak able in settings (and unlike gnome, KDE provides a GUI for all of these settings...no hunting around in dconf).
I used to prefer macOS, and still do to an extent, but Tahoe does not give me hope and I'm using my Linux laptop more and more. UI inconsistencies bug me, but Tahoe is full of them, so if I'm going to have to deal with it either way, might as well go Linux.
Here is my Debian 12 / KDE setup. With the "Inter" font, macOS icons (whitesur) and a little theming (klassy) I quite like it. Running this on a 5K Apple display and everything is crisp.
desktop: https://s3.whalesalad.com/images/hn/debian12.png
code setup: https://s3.whalesalad.com/images/hn/vscode2025.png
Those fonts look crisp! Is that 2x scaling? I've been considering converting a 27" Retina iMac to achieve something similar.
Yep - 200% scale, 5120x2880 res.
What's that load monitor you have in the bottom left?
Me too. I have used it in KDE 4 times when I was in high school, but it still seems to miss the design things. It is great for customization and functionality, but the design itself still seems off. This just is not looking good [0] and it is presented as a showcase here.
[0]https://raw.githubusercontent.com/thiagokokada/blog/main/pos...
>This just is not looking good [0] and it is presented as a showcase here.
I agree. Something looks off about it, but I can't put my finger on what. It's the empty space? The fonts? I don't know exactly.
For me it's the font. I know it serves a purpose but I simply dislike Noto Sans and to me that just makes KDE ugly to look at.
KDE as a whole feels "UI design made by programmers" no offense to programmers who do UI (and to KDE designers)
Can you explain explicitly what problems you have with the design in this screenshot?
I had always the same feeling. KDE looks okay at first, but on a second look it would be somewhat ugly in a subtle way. That never changed for me in KDE, so I stopped looking at KDE some years ago. But maybe it is the time for another look!
Ubuntu's Gnome is ugly imo, but stock Gnome on Arch is incredibly nice. Of course I really only use a terminal and a browser but still, Gnome + Ghosty + Firefox on Arch is just great.
One day, I'm going to try niri. I'm just too lazy to migrate my i3 setup right now :D
What's special about niri? Asking as a happy user of i3 for... I can't remember how long. It's one of the few pieces of software I don't have to think about, it just gets out of my way.
Actually, the only situations where I think about it is when I'm driving a mac or a win and the window management gets on my nerves, although I'm generally a pretty chill guy.
It's a scrolling window manager, so almost a completely different paradigm (that I find superior) to normal tiling WMs. Ironically the entire scrolling WM craze started with the PaperWM Gnome extension. I still use it, it's great.
i3 is really hard to move on from. Everything is the app and configuration you want since it doesn't have traditional "desktop" suite of apps, so by design it is literally built for your exact wants and needs. Same goes for fluxbox/openbox setups imo
>I just find it ugly vs Gnome or Mac. Inconsistent padding, font sizes, colors.
IDK mate, I care more about the utility than the looks since I spend my time using the DE, not hanging it on my wall to admire its artistic attention to detail.
Like I'm sure those inconsistencies exist, but am I the only one whose brain just filters them out like they just don't exist? Kind of like how your brain filters out your nose from your eyesight and you only become aware of it when you look for it.
And to me and my use case and formed habits, utility wise KDE >>> Gnome by a wide margin, though KDE still has some annoyances I wish they would tackle, but for a free product, I can't complain.
That kind of thing is very difficult for visually oriented folks to filter out. I’m in that crowd. No matter how many times I see a poorly laid out dialog, it remains almost as abrasive as the first time I saw it. It can become a major distraction, especially as someone who’s capable of writing code.
>That kind of thing is very difficult for visually oriented folks to filter out. I’m in that crowd.
I can empathize, but necessity has made me adaptable to all UXs at work. I wouldn't be able to put food on the table if I told my employer that their desktop environment that IT chose is not to my taste.
At home I can be more picky but I still went with KDE and XFCE because that's what fits me best.
I think there's some truth to this (utility is overall more important), but also some falsehood (looks matter too). Aesthetics affect your enthusiasm and therefore your productivity. This is why, for example, most people would rather work in a room with large glass windows overlooking a lake than in a room with a small window overlooking a factory even if they are functionally the same.
I agree with that. I really do not care about the inconsistencies - I did not even notice them until other people pointed them out. There are themes that look nice to me.
None of that really matters compared to usability and functionality. Most of the time I have one panel showing and everything else I can see is applications. The applications are a mix of things anyway.
"I don't care about this bad thing" isn't really a very good response to someone's "this is kinda bad" post, is it?
Obviously a lot of people don't care as much - KDE is a popular desktop!
>"I don't care about this bad thing" isn't really a very good response to someone's "this is kinda bad" post, is it?
I don't think you read my comment properly because that's not what I said.
Poor design can and does impact usability for a lot of users. If you care about the utility, you should care about e.g. wasted screen space with extraneous padding.
>you should care about e.g. wasted screen space with extraneous padding.
Where KDE is better than Gnome whose UI looks like its was designed for tablet use or 4K+ displays. So yeah, on that front I do care, which is why I prefer KDE.
> Admittedly, this was maybe 5 years ago.
Hahhaha, absolutely classic linux on HN post. Couldn't be better written satire.
Except that I guess you at least acknowledged it. Which non-abandonded OS/DE hasn't significantly changed in 5 years? I can't think of one. Maybe GNOME, but they were early movers and everyone hated them for that.
Looking at a screenshot from KDE home page, it really does not seem like anything has changed with it in terms of design polish that much. It doesn't even seem like it's moving in a direction that's any different. https://kde.org/announcements/plasma/6/6.4.0/fullscreen_with... The most significant change for the whole look they could make is changing the system font, because that's the biggest and most visible thing, and the one they have looks amateurish and makes it feel slapdash, like it was an afterthought, just picking whatever default font there was and going "whatever", which kind of ends up being the vibe of the whole thing.
So you don't like it, I'm so sorry. I think it's a cluttered terrible screenshot, and I think KDE looks more consistent than Win11 or macOS.
Nate's blog is full of detailed, significant, careful improvements to KDE's UX over the past few years.
If you want to change the system font you can go right ahead. Don't knock it for it's default appearance because everything can be changed and skinned. Some people have made it look just like Windows, others just like macos.
> Which non-abandonded OS/DE hasn't significantly changed in 5 years?
Followed by a classic HN comment: the question was about improvement, not change!
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!
Out of curiosity, what prevents you from or motivates you not to use Linux as a daily driver?
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.
Likely using a Mac.
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.
Yes it is too bad most Apple software has devolved into buggy messes or feels like a Playskool designed application and has extremely limited use.
> 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.
The window management and dolphin for file management for one. KDE let's you easily pin windows on top, show on all desktops etc .. Dolphin gives you a nice multi tab, split pane file manager along with a terminal that follows you along.
On my work macbook - I can't install third-party software and the default window management is just not there. It has problems restoring windows to correct size when i switch external monitors... The experience just isn't as nice as KDE on my home laptop.
I had to install inputactions to get mac like touchpad gestures on my home kde set up but after that it just feels nicer and smoother than my office mac
Long time ago, that was actually very easy on Mac, via SIMBL (https://github.com/albertz/simbl) and Afloat (https://github.com/rwu823/afloat) and you could hack around using FScriptAnywhereSIMBL (https://github.com/albertz/FScriptAnywhereSIMBL) or Pyjector (https://github.com/albertz/Pyjector).
But that doesn't work anymore since a while (I guess due to SIP).
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.
> 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).
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.
there's a great program called EarTrumpet on windows that lets you do that
If you use desktop environments more to their capacity, you'll start to appreciate more advanced features. Such as how apps can integrate with each other, etc.
> how apps can integrate with each other
Can you explain more about this?
Sure! One example is copy-paste, which doesn't always work as expected in Linux. Another is things in OS X, such as deep Spotlight integration with apps, and a unified scripting and automation language between apps.
You can also use links between most apps, documented here: https://github.com/bhagyas/app-urls
And drag and drop files and stuff onto and between apps, etc.
> One example is copy-paste, which doesn't always work as expected in Linux.
Give example.
> Another is things in OS X, such as deep Spotlight integration with apps, and a unified scripting and automation language between apps.
I am sure KDE has it too.
One time I needed a shortcut for concat-ing 2 images, and I was able to get the son-of-a-bot Gemini to script me a .Desktop file + .sh script which added it as a context menu option to Dolphin. I didn't even know it was possible. I am sure even more automation should be possible with D-bus.
> You can also use links between most apps
Android has this, and I think it can cause borderline security risks. Anyway its' not as important these days when everything that could use a deep link from another app is a react app in browser anyway.
> And drag and drop files and stuff onto and between apps, etc.
I need it maybe 2 - 3 times a day. I can always use Paths and paste them in the file picker. Its never a deal breaker.
I'm talking about why hundreds of millions of people use desktop environments, not why you in particular should use a desktop environment. You are of course free to make your own choices.
macOS and Windows are both now laden with more marketing and advertisements than actual features. When you step onto GNOME or KDE nowadays, it really does feel like a breath of fresh air.
I reciprocate their comment; 5-10 years ago the cross-OS experience was pretty samey. Now I just feel deeply upset when a relative brings me their Mac/Windows machine asking to make the popups go away.
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.
> 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. :)
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
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.
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.
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 ;-)
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
(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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
At least on the version currently on Debian, systemsettings has a "primary" radio on the screen configuration panel that let you change it to whatever monitor you want, on whatever order you want.
It selects the first screen just as a default.
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.
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
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.
Author here: I didn't unplug the display, I went to the settings and disabled the TV. I am not saying that I didn't do anything wrong, but I expected that disabling the TV would make the monitor the primary display and move the taskbar to it.
This is most likely a bug in KDE indeed. I misunderstood disabled in the setting with powering off.
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.
Then it's likely that plasma just crashed :')
It didn't, because I could create the taskbar manually by clicking with the right click in the desktop.
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.
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.
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.
Kate remembers your unsaved tabs so I use it as a notepad replacement on steroids.
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
> 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?
Sir, aesthetics are a pretty low priority in my miserable life.
Hi fellow Kate user. I agree.
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.
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
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.
Worth mentioning that despite the name, KDE Connect (or an alternate implementation) is available almost everywhere. You don't need to be running KDE.
True, but it "came from" KDE and is pretty deeply baked in.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
1 - https://github.com/peterfajdiga/karousel
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?
Is XFCE minimalistic? It feels to me like it's just a modern continuation of the desktops we had in the 90s and early 2000s. Instead of adding in a bunch of extra stuff and moving things around to keep people busy, they're just quietly making it a little better with every release.
The only desktops I've used since 2007 are XFCE and macOS, so I guess I don't know what I might be missing from KDE or MATE. But XFCE absolutely blows macOS out of the water, so at least I'm not missing anything from that alternative.
I've used kde for years, but earlier this year I decided to try xfce.
My goal was to have my own setup without "bloat" I never used. So my own task manager of choice, my search bar of choice, etc.
My initial impression of xfce was that it was much snappier than kde. My main gripe with xfce was the lack of wayland support.
A big personal issue; while my own custom setup was ok, I still had to maintain it, and I found myself trying to make xfce like kde. So might as well use kde I guess.
Another super specifc thing I missed was that its window manager didn't support defining horizontal gradients in the titlebar, so I couldn't rock a true windows classic theme. It could do vertical gradients, but that's not the same.
Now I'm back to using KDE.
I recommend that you try labwc. It's lean and supports Openbox themes.
I switched from X11 and LXDE to Sway and had a good experience. But Sway was my slippery slope to labwc.
https://github.com/labwc/labwc
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.
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).
Thanks for this work. I switched from xfce when I realised that KDE was nearly as lightweight.
That's genuinely awesome! You people rock! :-D
Yeah it legitimately trades blows with the lightweight desktops.
Thanks to your work, I have stopped DE switching and am very happy with KDE - may you folks always have this user focus!
Even back in the day KDE pointed out that in real world use they were not as memory heavy because everything depended on the same toolkits that were shared. Meaning your startup memory use was higher, but once you launched the applications/tools you were going to use KDE used less. (this of course depended on which tools you ran, KDE assumed all KDE tools, run a non-kde application and it doesn't work)
I've been a consistent XFCE user for over a decade. I think of it the same way I think of my desk - I'm not proclaiming its the best in the world, all I can tell you is that its pretty stable, clean and utilitarian, and I'm consistently productive on top of it.
I'm concerned about the XFCE team's approach to Wayland, which is to say they are not making any commitments to make a stable release for it. I've already had to take my new Debian install back to X11 to get XFCE working. I know that Wayland is contentious and not developed with clear communication with many DE teams, but the drift here is concerning, and I am considering trying to find something XFCE-like with full Wayland support.
I’ve happily used KDE for years, but recently I switched to XFCE. My only real pain point with KDE was that the screensaver often refused to resume after the monitor turned off due to inactivity. To unlock it, I had to open a framebuffer terminal and manually kill kscreenlocker_greet before KDE would accept my password again, after a delay of ~10 seconds.
XFCE isn’t as polished as KDE, and I do miss some features, like KDE’s excellent network applet that shows detailed statistics. But overall, the experience has been good, and I really appreciate how quickly I can unlock the screen after a pause.
I also enjoy the wide variety of themes. KDE has plenty of impressive dark themes, but very few light ones, and most of those fail to clearly differentiate the active window’s title bar from inactive ones. XFCE does much better here.
(Some people point out that XFCE doesn’t work with Wayland. That’s not an issue for me. My time with Wayland was highly frustrating, primarily due to the unreliability of keyboard layout customization. After months of struggling, I went back to Xorg and good old xmodmap.)
XFCE for me, when my netbook was still alive.
I actualy liked Ubuntu's Unity, and the move to GNOME did not made me an happy user.
As someone that used Gtkmm during the GNOME 1.0 days, the way current GNOME works and the overuse of JavaScript made me look elsewhere.
XFCE was good enough for me (I am old enough to have used twm), and looks rather nice.
Hello, I am the other person who liked Unity. Now that we have met, the prophecy is fulfilled.
Seriously though, the fact that macOS still doesn't have an option to fully extend the dock horizontally or vertically drives me nuts. If you auto hide the dock it loses half of its value, and if you don't hide the dock then you have dead gaps in the corners that serve no purpose.
Xfce was my long-term desktop until recently. I loved that it was lightweight, clean, and generally well thought-out.
It has become more memory-hungry since then, losing some of its early advantage. And with the move to Gtk 3, it has adopted UI patterns that constantly get in my way. (Client-side window decorations, for example.) I worked around those changes as best I could for several minor versions, but eventually gave up the fight and switched to KDE. Turns out Plasma slimmed down a bit while Xfce was gaining weight, and it lets me turn off the bells and whistles that I don't want.
I'm happy to once again have a desktop that I enjoy using. I do miss Xfce's Thunar, but KDE's Dolphin is mostly not bad.
I've used XFCE as my main DE for around 10 years, (I switched to MacOs a year ago), I think mostly depends on your workflow, for me the best thing was that it gets out your way, you have a simple menu to select apps, a taskbar, and that's about it. I tested Gnome and KDE a few times over the years and for me they are more bloated than what I needed for my workflow, but I agree they feel more cohesive and the aesthetics are nicer.
Me and probably a couple of other cave dwellers use Mate (someone must be, because it keeps getting maintained). It has a the Win 9x-era aesthetics and simplicity that I've not found anywhere else.
Yes, another MATE user here (UbuntuMATE). I like how efficient and boring it is. It's also very consistent.
But I'm worried we're being left behind with the shift to Wayland.
Maybe that is unfounded.
I've been using XFCE for the better part of two decades now (I still run into people upset about the changes XFCE made in 2003, i.e. 4.0), and I am perfectly satisfied. Though as the saying goes: what I don't know I don't know; so I may be missing out on a better experience, but at least I am content enough that I don't bother seeking it out.
Though, my monitors are also from 2010, so a lot of the visual problems people have with XFCE, I don't.
Desktop Environments always feel a bit clunky to me. A Window Manager like i3 or something is easier.
I get the idea of a desktop environment offering more consistency. But, my system feels very consistent. It is really easy, because there are only ~4 types of windows: Firefox, Evince, a terminal, or some ephemeral matplotlib graph.
I wouldn’t think of it as missing out on anything. You just become familiar with the ecosystem of mostly terminal utilities.
I have a Rock64 that runs LxQT.
I run KDE Plasma on my laptop. KDE animations are too bloated and heavy for the Rock64, and there's way too many preferences to fiddle with to disable them all. If there was some kind of global "lightweight mode" checkbox in the plasma prefs, I might give it another try.
LxQT is fine. The main gripe I have with it is there's no sort of LxQT-meta package on ArchLinux which installs everything I actually need without a lot of fiddling. I spent a couple weeks just gradually figuring out things were missing that would make the environment a lot better. It would be nice if it just included things like oxygen icons and whatever. I understand lightweight, but they should have an "opinionated" lightweight option since I just want something that runs well on a SBC.
I used to run XFCE on an arm chromebook for a few years as my daily driver. Between the two, XFCE seemed much easier to install/customize. IDK about now, since that was before the latest release which uses latest GTK. I assume it is less lightweight now as a result of that change.
I recently switched from XFCE to KDE on wayland and I'm very satisfied with the switch. KDE is more stable, more customizable and at least as fast as XFCE. I don't notice significant resource usage from KDE either.
I used to mostly use XFCE and moved to KDE as it supported high DPI screens better.
Yes, this is my only gripe with Xfce.
Everything is sooo small on my 16" notebook and when I zoom it gets blurry.
XFCE is fine. I used to use it and there is a lot to like.
It lacks tiling, and I use some KDE apps very heavily (Kate, Dolphin) so KDE integrates a bit better.
I have thought of giving XFCE another go and I do not think there is anything critical I would miss if I had a tiling window manager (which would have some advantages over KDE's tiling, I think), but I have KDE configured in a way that works for me so not very motivated to do it.
I use xfce because it is stable, simple and lightweight. Perhaps I don't know what I'm missing but I'm very happy with it.
I used XFCE for more than a decade and it's my first choice when picking a DE. Two major issues tempted me to try KDE this year: the lack of Wayland support and the absolute asinine file picker/ chooser dialogue XFCE took from gnome, if I remember correctly. Having a file picker that marks the text of the file name, but when you start typing switches to the search bar drives me nuts. (Even when you just want to drop a downloaded file somewhere in a directory ... why would I want to search in these circumstances??)
I'm keeping an eye on XFCE and they plan to release Wayland support some time this autumn. Once this is somewhere near stable, I thin I will switch back again to XFCE.
You lose the application integration I have with KDE when you use apps from the KDE suite or even QT apps.
I had fantastic results with lxqt some years on an HTPC. System used less resources and seemed more stable with Qt. Perhaps GTK is better these days, but at the time lxqt was a clear winner for that kind of scenario.
For a daily drive DE though, it may be too minimal?
I've used XFCE for a 2011 laptop, it was about as fast as LXDE but better polished. Windows was unusable there, and XFCE made the computer feel brand new. Only the modern websites that would still cause slowness, but the OS was great.
LXQt with kwin (for kwin's nice compositing effects.)
XFCE for virtual machines or low powered hardware
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.
labwc + Openbox theming
https://github.com/labwc/labwc
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".
Yes agreed. It's a very non descriptive name for such a key part of the DE.
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
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.
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...
> Gnome looks nicer, is more coherent, and in my experience, absolutely rock solid.
In my recurring experiences, GNOME Settings's interaction with CUPS printing support is very far from rock solid -- as in, do yourself a favor and go around it straight to the command line tools.
> 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!
> 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?
Notification centre has been there since 3.x era.
Though it's accessed by clicking the clock so perhaps it's not very intuitive.
If you mouse over a notification in GNOME Shell, it stays in your notification tray. It only disappears if you click the x in the top right corner...
> ALL the corporate distros (Red Hat, Suse, Ubuntu) only support Gnome
In terms of Ubuntu, they have a distro called Kubuntu, doesn't that count as supporting KDE?
> I don't know why so many distros use Gnome by default.
There is a lot of history there. Back in the day, Linux and the open source BSDs had a plethora of different window managers and DEs. Everything from simple and old-fashioned MWM to the happy chaos of Enlightenment. By the late 90's KDE emerged from among all of this as a popular, if not dominant, choice. However, there was a serious problem. The Qt toolkit license was not GPL compatible. GNOME was founded, in part, as a true open source alternative to KDE.
Linux got big enough that the major distros felt the need to pick a standard DE. GNOME was solid by then, with no license issues by design, and there was a strong preference for GNOME among the open source thought leaders at the time. KDE had actually solved its license problem by then, but there were some strong feelings about the license controversy. So GNOME became the "standard."
But not really. SUSE, for instance, stuck with KDE.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
My Lunar Lake Zenbook has over 10 hours battery on Windows. Maybe Linux is ok, but I don't get the impression it's in the same category, much less ahead. But I don't use my laptop for much more than browsing and wsl2, and most of that is ssh.
I had a 2020 dell XPS 13 on which I installed Fedora. Battery life was an atrocious 4 hours at best, I tried out all the power management tools as well. Windows was much better. Not that I used it, I just kept it plugged in and running fedora. Still glad I returned the laptop eventually though.
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.
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.
Author here. The last time I used KDE was during the 4.x days. I remember trying multiple versions, from the earlier 4.0/4.2 days until something like 4.14. Even so, I kept getting crashes and instability.
I remember the one that finally made me stop using KDE altogether and migrate to Gnome 3 at the time was one crash that I would get frequently with Dolphin while randomly browsing fils (that would stop once I removed all Dolphin configuration files but go back after a few weeks).
I haven't ever really used KDE, and I'm quite sure that it's still not my desktop, but as someone who was aware of the trouble around 4.0, the view I had of the project was that those problems were long gone, and that most people using it today were pretty happy with it.
So I'm not sure whether it's try that that caused a bad reputation that sticks around to this day. (I have other reasons for not preferring it.)
Even KDE1 and KDE2 were very good for their time.
> 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.
We all (not just KDE) learned that users don't read those. Worse, distro maintainers either don't read them or in their "we are on the latest" push will ignore them. KDE was pushed out to a lot of people who shouldn't have got it.
It is safe to say that many other projects have not done beta .0 releases like that because they don't want the same to happen to them - even though they really need beta testers. Of course few projects will admit that they learned the lesson from KDE.
> Worse, distro maintainers either don't read them or in their "we are on the latest" push will ignore them
Oh, this is so true. Ubuntu adopted Pulse Audio long before anyone (including Poettering) considered it stable. IIRC the readme even said something like "The sound system that breaks your audio"
I probably shouldn't complain though, since as a non-Ubuntu user, I get the benefits of all the Ubuntu users beta testing software for me.
> KDE was pushed out to a lot of people who shouldn't have got it.
Yeah, I remember that turmoil, and was really sad for all KDE devs.
> It is safe to say that many other projects have not done beta .0 releases...
This was a brave move by KDE back then, and still a brave move, but with proper communication, it can be done, I guess...
KDE developers and volunteers embody a great trove of wisdom about software development. I learnt how to make proper bug reporting from AmaroK project, and still use the same methodology, even with projects which do not enforce any style. It makes things much easier. ...and everyone needs beta testers. That's true.
Uhh... No? https://kde.org/announcements/4/4.0/
This is one of the places I have found the relevant note [0].
It states the following:
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
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!
I remember seeing similar things before release of 4.0 in the social media, the bird site and other places.
However I neither have the time, nor the desire to dig these places, yet alone logon to them.
Of course my mind may be lying to me, as well.
Anyway, these days are over and KDE is better than ever, so it’s only nitpicking over some trivia.
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.
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.
Indeed, Gnome jettisoned everything for a touch-based interface, but is not actually usable as one. For example, there’s no video player that works well with touch even though at least three cosplay with large round buttons and no menus. Believe it or not, they require keyboards for essential functionality and taps are not recognized or broken.
Using phosh on a starlite btw. Web players work well however! No thanks to gnome.
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.
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.
Thanks for the feedback!
We have an experiment for the "extended layout for tablet mode" bit parked somewhere, stay tuned.
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.
What tablets do you recommend?
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.
Are you using the standard Steam OS desktop mode, or installed a different linux distro with KDE?
Standard desktop mode.
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)
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.
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. =)
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.
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.
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.
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...?
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. =)
Excellent response, thank you. Ive finally understood the difference between "Desktop Environment" and "Windows Manager".
Calling this stuff "side-show" very much resonates with me. I set this stuff up once when I install i3wm on a new system, and it works well. The problem is when I want to do something that Id never foreseen, there I go into googling for the bash command I need, and that I find annoying.
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.
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.
I appreciate in KDE that it's an up to date traditional desktop environment. I learned computers with Windows 3.1, and that paradigm is still what feels the best to me, and KDE gives it in a nice looking, modern way, with a good bunch of quality of life features.
I think if you're curious, try it. Gnome as well, it's quite different. And if you're not, that's also perfectly okay, you are not missing anything crucial I think.
Thank you.
With KDE you get a lot more than just a window manager. And i3/sway have a very specific usecase and target audience.
By the way I've heard some people combine i3 with KDE, using i3 instead of KWin (which is its window manager component)
Id never heard of Sway. From the page, am I right in understanding that i3 is for X11 and Sway is for Wayland?
Yes basically, it's not the same dev yet sway is heavily inspired by i3 and works with i3 config files. As you wrote i3 is x11-only and sway is wayland.
Really the main reason KDE wins for me is the flawless fractional scaling support that no other distro comes even close to.
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...
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/), have you had a chance to give it a try?
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)_//¯
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.
Hi folks, author here. Happy to answer questions.
Plasma dev here, also happy to answer questions!
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=107302
How can we make this happen? I am a programmer but I am not in a good position to do this specific kind of programming myself. This seems tightly integrated to a lot of stuff I don't have a good understanding of. Is there a way to donate to specific features, could I do some crowdfunding to hire a dev to do this feature and if so who? Is there any way at all you can think of that I could effect this feature landing other than spending a few years learning this kind of development?
I can't quite promise yet that we will do this, but let's say there have been two recent developments that increase the probability by quite a lot:
- X11 is nearing EOL, and once we drop support for it this will get a lot less painful to do.
- If we want to switch to a virtual desktop / paging protocol that supports this we need to switch away from the current one, and it just so happens that in late 2024 a new protocol called ext-workspace made it into Wayland that is flexible enough to work for this purpose.
I'd say at this point the biggest problem is designing a UX for it that makes sense and doesn't confuse the hell out of people. If you want to contribute to e.g. that design discussion in our VDG working group that could be a good place to start.
> could I do some crowdfunding to hire a dev to do this feature and if so who?
Someone else has pledged a bounty:
https://discuss.kde.org/t/bug-fix-per-screen-virtual-desktop...
No questions, just some rough edges to report; infinite clipboard history would be nice, notifications search/sorting would be nice, notifications panel gets slow with hundreds of notifications (from IRC bots) when dragging the scrollbar, notifications panel icons could be removable or made smaller or just have one per app.
Thanks to all the KDE devs for their work.
Something I use a lot on xfce4 is the Alt-F11 shortcut (it toggles) that maximises a window over the bottom bar and removes the title bar.
In this way, with LibreOffice or say Inkscape I get the application menus at the top and the applications controls at the bottom of the screen. No hotspots - nothing pops up.
On Fedora's live KDE iso I can use the window control menu to supress the title bar on a maximised window and I can hide the bottom bar but its a faff requiring multiple steps.
Not the person you asked, but maybe open Issues somewhere for that?
Not sure how welcome feature requests and bugs non-standard use-cases issues are. Time is limited here too.
No questions, I just want to say thank you. Plasma is great and has sane defaults unlike Gnome.
Thanks!
Hey, since you're here, let me complain about an issue I found this morning. As I said in my blog post, my current setup involves my desktop being connected in the TV and monitor at the same time.
Right now I have the TV disabled, but if I go to the Display settings and enable it, the TV and monitor have a huge gap for some reason and KDE can't apply the configuration since it says that there should be no gap between the displays. I can of course fix this manually and apply, but if I disable and enable the TV again it seems that it forgots my layout and I need to setup everything from scratch again.
But anyway, thanks for the fantastic work!
Hello. What Linux distributives in your opinion have KDE as a first class desktop? With priority support for KDE, testing, driver compatibility etc.?
This will be a purely personal answer, as we don't really maintain any official list of favorites.
Myself and my family are running Fedora's KDE edition. The Fedora team has a long history of working very closely with the Plasma dev team, quite actively contributes upstream, and I haven't been disappointed. I'd vouch for this one from first-hand experience!
We also have a new project to produce a distro of our own in the works, called KDE Linux. That has recently had its first alpha release. It still has some real feature gaps and may not serve you well if one of the missing bits is something you require, but it's definitely worth looking into. It has a lot of next-gen ideas baked and some things we got to learn during the SteamOS effort, and think it has a place in the ecosystem.
In the dev community I generally see a lot of people running KDE on Arch, Debian and openSUSE as well.
My usage of KDE today is on the Steam Deck. I actually did take the time to set it up to look nice.
I have three observations to make.
1) There is a pain point in KDE involving windows on top of another fullscreen window. Specifically, the Live Captions app. This is a design problem that other OSes like Microsoft Windows doesn't suffer from. What happens is, if you leave the taskbar in place and want to have the captioner running over video and make the video fullscreen, you can't with KDE. I eventually figured out a hacky workaround in that if I turn auto-hide on for the taskbar, I can then alt-tab the Window and it'll stay on top. I did see some talk about this window behaviour. It's nuts that an accessibility feature needs the user to make the taskbar auto-hide first before it works. It would be nice if there could be a setting where it is "this window is on top of everything".
2) SteamOS as having a large device-specific installed base, I think there is value in the KDE team encouraging Valve to turn KDE from a snapshot to a rolling release as Fedora has done where KDE is rolling but the rest of the distro is a snapshot. Why this matters, is because when it comes to bug reports and the like, the KDE bot basically closes them because Valve's KDE is "unsupported" because they only seem to rebase once a year or two. I know they did move to 6.2 with 3.7, but I found 3.7 buggy and thought KDE looked worse and had worse scrolling performance (maybe setting conflicts from the 5.27 version?) so I just switched back to the 3.6 version with 5.27 where everything looks right and scrolling moved smoothly. I know they changed the kwin compositor a lot in the 6.x series, and I suspect there are regressions in it, so if it isn't rolling, people are stuck with a buggy compositor? That sucks.
3) Setting upgrades.. so with SteamOS, Valve was shipping the 5.2x series of KDE. Now 6.2, and the next rebase is probably going to be 6.x on Wayland instead of X11. So there's a lot of legacy cruft settings that carry on and I think they cause glitches. I always used to do clean install of Windows versions, and think it would be nice to be able to do that in KDE, but there's a lot of legacy cruft with various settings and conf files scattered in various random folders. At some point it really should be cleaned up.. one central folder for all settings.. no some settings are stored in a KDE4 folder, and others are stored in this other one KDE5 introduced, etc.
Thank you. After hearing about KDE Linux here on HN I'm now very interested in the project and its future.
Personally I've had an issue with KDE on Fedora several years ago, possibly due unstable Wayland, but I don't know real reason. Something in the graphic stack failed. So that was a reason for me asking about it.
What's the relation of KDE Linux with KDE Neon? The former was made by Blue System and the new one by Techpaladin or something like that?
KDE Neon was originally founded by devs who worked on Kubuntu previously, and some of that team has now moved on to KDE Linux.
The company stuff in the background doesn't really matter.
The team working on KDE Linux are motivated by addressing some structural challenges that always plagued KDE Neon from the concept of trying to graft more recent SW on top of the Ubuntu LTS base, plus some lessons learned from the SteamOS project's way of handling updates, and fully utilizing more recent Linux/systemd features.
It's sufficiently different that sticking with the Neon brand and swapping it out for that userbase would have been pretty disruptive, so they felt it was better to go with a distinct identity.
Are error messages, e.g. when trying to connect wifi, as expressive and case-complete?
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.
Piggybacking on the context of your network role, is there an initiative to fix temporarily unavailable sshfs mounts freezing Plasma and Dolphin?
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.
I like your workaround ideas, thank you.
What recommended long-term-support stable version release channels are available for Plasma?
edit: According to AI, LTS is not provided. Was my AI answer accurate, and if so is there consideration of an initiative to implement an LTS channel?
Canonical provides commercial support for Plasma on Ubuntu last time I checked :)
After reading your reply, I plugged the exact question of my text into an LLM and it answered my question perfectly. Your answer was in the context of commercial support which wasn't in the question or answer.
Well they're also famous for having an LTS version of Ubuntu as well (and coined the term), which I assumed you probably know with an LTS interest. But sorry I couldn't satisfy you!
The distinct advantage of a KDE LTS support release is that it would be distro agnostic. Benefits being that it delegates maintenance and security updates for an LTS version to KDE away from the distro maintainers, and as a plus this provides greater appearance of continutity from KDE to the public.
I think I got confused by your "release channels" bit in the original comment, because I thought you were asking for distros which ship and support the Plasma LTS release, but I guess you're asking more whether we have an LTS release?
We did in fact have versions marked as LTS in the Plasma 5.x generation, but the concept never quite worked that well practice (e.g. because distros generally shipped newer versions based on user demand and didn't really adopt the LTS releases, even for their own LTS distro releases, so the benefit calculation for them was different from your expectation) and we haven't kept them for the Plasma 6.x series. You can read some background here:
https://pointieststick.com/2025/05/01/notes-from-the-graz-pl...
It might come back some day in some form, but the discussion is ongoing.
Thanks for your detailed reply.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> make it behave very similarly to COSMIC
How does the auto-tiling compare to COSMIC? Does it support stacked tiling (ie tabs)?
It is not the same as COSMIC, but Krohnkite is very customizable and has like 9 tiling modes.
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.
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!
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.
IceWM hasn't changed in more than a decade. ;)
I think you might have got me. Never tried it, going to try it now.
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'.
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.
Hrrm. 'Beauty' is in the eyes of the beholder. Regarding XP I can't stand its default look, which can only be called 'teletubbified' or 'Fisher-priced'. Switched back to classic Win2000 appearance it's more bearable, but the colors are still fugly.
The general handling is OK, though I tended to put the taskbar to the top.
I think it's possible to easily reach something ergonomic and unobtrusive with actual Plasma/KDE, without distracting Bling! Bling!, while still being easy on the eyes.
The keywords are 'Breeze'(light) for the widget style, window decorations, and icons.
If you'd take the time to go through the settings, there are several options to tone all animations, wobbling and such down. Not at one single place, but not more than a hand full or a dozen, either.
'Start menu'-> System -> System Settings -> Quick Settings
It's all available from there, or whereever Bizarrian reordered it to be in their menus ;->
> uptime 22:57:54 up 94 days, 8:58, 1 user, load average: 0,22, 0,37, 0,41
Do this once, even if it takes time, and be done with it.
Instead of arranging with constant irritations.
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.
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.
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.
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/
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.
The Trinity Desktop Environment is still carrying the KDE 3.5 torch. The Q4OS Linux distribution (Debian based) provides it as a primary desktop.
There's also Exe GNU/Linux if you prefer a Devuan base:
https://exegnulinux.net/
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!)
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.
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.
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.
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.
I have been happy long time with the Moksha Desktop.
https://www.bodhilinux.com/moksha-desktop/
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.
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.
I vaguely remember that the shift to gnome was because of fear around QT licensing.
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.
> 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?
I explained more details in the previous blog post (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.
> 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!"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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).
Can you go into more detail on "weird Qt dependency hell"? Is this from a distro packager standpoint, or a user standpoint ?
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.
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.
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.
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).
Hm I must be doing something wrong... I'll change the theme, thank you.
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.
Hm no, I just run the default. It's good to know I did something wrong, I'll look into it. Thank you!
Why blur what's almost guaranteed to be RFC1918 private network info? My IP is 192.168.1.56, come and get me hackers.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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?
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.
The only reason I don't use KDE is because it takes too much RAM out of my PC (i work with 2gb ram)
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.
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.
FreeBSD will offer an option to install KDE in the base installer when 15.0 comes out soon.
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.
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).
There's no need to commit to either, you can install both alongside each other and pick one each time you log in.
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-comp...
> 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.
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.
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.
Except that it isn't consistent, I was trying to use Option+Click for the battery and nothing happens.
So you has lied in the article in order to proud of Linux, so typical
> 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)_/¯.
The main point of my comment goes to "proud of Linux" part.
This is my personal blog and I can be as unbiased as I want, but saying that I am "proud of Linux" would be misguided at best. I could write one long blog post about all the issues I have using Linux desktop, but I can also write one for Windows and macOS, and from my personal perspective the issues I get in Windows and macOS are worse.
Fun fact, the OS that I am mostly experiencing hard crashes right now (at the point that my only option is to force turn off the system) is macOS, by far. I even know of one particular bug that always freeze the macOS UI (it is not a hard crash since everything still seems to work fine, it is just that I can't do any kind of input), and this is persistent across multiple macOS revisions. I dread now about that notification popup that trigger this bug because it is infuriating.
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.
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Coming from GNOME, the big surprise was “no extensions needed.” Dock, tiling-ish, clipboard manager… all there out of the box.
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.
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.
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.
Why not Gnome? Been my trusty pal over a decade. Can't go wrong with either, but any reason you chose KDE instead?
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...).
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.
KDE is great. It's my daily driver.
I was using KDE, but with Debian 13 upgrade kwin crashes with every alt-tab. Had to switch to cinnamon.
I run Ryzen 3200G.
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".
Don't think so. The issue is probably with drivers. The crash does not happen when software rendering is used.
I have been using KDE as my primary desktop for 15 years. I love it, it's intuitive, polished and simple.
I miss good old KDE1/2 desktop :)
It would be hilariously fast nowadays and totally usable, all under like 64mb of RAM :)
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).
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.
KDE is excellent, but these days all you really need is a nice terminal and a browser.
Could someone relate KDE to PopOS or Ubuntu for me?
I've been on Ubuntu and PopOS for the last 15 years.
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.
KDE is awesome, ever since the plasma changes matured a few years ago its been excellent
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
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.
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.
> 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).
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.
switched to kde neon this year, sometimes I forget windows exists.
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.
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.
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 ;)
Would be nice if we could run KDE on MacOS
Jeeesh i said the same almost 20 years 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.
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?
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.
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.
It works fine, I've been playing it on Fedora since The Finals was released.
There is a specific Proton EAC runtime you might have to install. Check under Library -> Tools.
EAC works fine if the game has it enabled for Linux, which The Finals does (I play it).
Would you consider dual booting and spending more time with games that _do work_ on Linux?
I'm afraid I only play a small number of titles, and none of them are particularly stable on Linux.
I'm not going to change the type of gamer I am just for an OS.
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.
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.
kde is the best DE. only time I don't use it is in headless environments
> 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.
I like Xfce with Chicago95.
it has been my primary DE since plasma released.
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.
"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.
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.
Favorite? Or least unfavorite?
For a second I thought this was submitted by DHH and I was ready to grab some popcorn.
"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!
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), but it is enough to enjoy the desktop experience and everything it offers.
If they're that excited within a week, the come-down from dealing with occasional annoying bugs introduced with updates might leave a bruise.
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.
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.