You must log in or # to comment.
KDE wins again
Often times when there was a big new update for GNOME, I’d try it out, decide I still don’t like the concept and go back to plasma.
I don’t get the appeal of that desktop. Even the tiniest changes need gnome-tweaks? Why isn’t that stuff part of the base settings? But ok. You can ungimp GNOME. The usage concept is baked into it. Fine. But why?
I mean there must be people who want this and nothing else, otherwise people wouldn’t use it.
I guess I’m one of the few people who matches gnome pretty well. I actually appreciate that the default is 90% of what I need, and don’t mind if the last 10% is maintained outside of the core project. Scope creep and all that.
My conspiracy theory is that it is pushed so much by Red Hat because they have optimized it to be as boring and distraction free as possible to increase productivity in an enterprise context. It is useless outside of that.
That’s what I like about it. I use my computer to use applications and it gets out of the way.
kde plasma does not get in your way, though
Not that I don’t understand this in general, I just find it harder to actually do normal computer stuff I do. No dock, very little info in the top taskbar. That’s why I said an enterprise context specifically. You’ll usually open an app or two and leave it at that, maybe occasionally switch desktops to go to your second of 2 apps. Anything more than that is actively a pain. And why not ALLOW changes that don’t rely on plugins? That’s what really gets me. Maybe the devs believe in the maximizing of space, but then just auto hide the dock by default like macOS or even just turn it off by default instead of not even including it? That’s the part that gets to me. And it is sure not using that lack of features to optimize responsiveness or lower storage size. It’s the most thicc DE out there.
Different strokes for different folks, I guess.
For me the info I want is behind the Super key. Show open apps? Super. Show the dock? Super. Search? Super. Mostly I use the dock for occasionally opening the Apps menu or the System Menu to connect something Bluetooth or change network settings. I agree it could go, but then any casual users might get lost looking at an entirely blank screen.
GNOME is very opinionated about the desktop design, which maybe explains the plugin situation, why they were the first(?) to drop X11 etc. And there’s always KDE, XFCE and others.
For me it kinda always went something like this:
“Hey can I have window labels on my taskbar? And maybe quicklaunch. Also can I type in paths in the file manager?”
KDE: “Sure no prob.”
GNOME: “You are an enemy of Christ.”
Because putting QoL improvements and having an effective workflow behind a bunch of plugins that break on the tiniest Gnome update is all part of the user experience I guess. I’ve given it several tries over the past 20 years or so, but each attempt eventually ended in utter disappointment.
I don’t believe you. Gnome 2 was pretty much universally loved (hence the existence of Cinnamon, which is a direct descendant), and people were pissed about the tablet-oriented Gnome 3. You’d know this if you used Gnome 20 years ago.
Well, my apologies for misremembering the exact Gnome 3 launch date. Turns out that was 15 years ago instead of 20. You caught me red-handed sir.
As KDE user, Gnome 2 was the best Gnome has ever been, (Cinnamon is a good offspring of it though). I used the carp out of it. I cried and drank myself to sleep for days after Gnome 3 replaced it.
I have even bigger hopes for COSMIC. If DE any can run a black sword through Gnome 3, it will be COSMIC.
GNOME used to be good until version 2. Then the developers went insane and all subsequent versions of GNOME feel like they’ve been designed by someone who has never worked in his life.
I didnt try KDE and only used GNOME and XFCE, but i guess it’s easy and clean side. I immediately get a hold of most applications, and everything feels polished without touching anything. And when i want to get something specific, i’m generally fine with complex tweakings, so the weird ways of finetuning it don’t really bother me.
I don’t really like to talk about it on here because people are very hostile towards GNOME and its users, but I used it (extensionless, tweakless) for about 4 years up until recently. Very comfy and efficient workflow in my opinion. I think a lot of people don’t take the time to understand how it works, they get frustrated and want their alt-tabbing and minimizing back. Either way I don’t really care. No emotional attachment to any DE, and I use neither GNOME nor Plasma right now.
I use neither GNOME nor Plasma right now.
What do you use currently? I’ve been using GNOME for a few years now, but I like to try new things (then switch back to GNOME, naturally.)
Currently using niri. It’s not easy to explain, but you could say it takes GNOME’s concept of infinite horizontal workspaces and applies it to individual windows.
That’s one I’ve been meaning to try out. Do you use Niri with Noctalia or some other Quick Shell implementation with it? I’ve been looking at Noctalia and DMS.
Yeah, I briefly tried out Noctalia, Caelestia and DMS and chose DMS. They all feel a bit too bloated for me, but on this PC I can’t be bothered to setup all the utilities manually. It has worked just fine but I can unfortunately feel the QT framework.
You don’t even have a reliable way to keep track of your disk usage anymore. That was the final drop for me when they removed “Other locations” where I could see how much space was left. The Disk Usage Analyzer app is a complete mess and don’t give an easy “you got 10 gigs left mate.” I had to resort to the terminal to get good accurate measures. Now I have a percentage in my taskbar in Plasma.
Honestly I really love KDE, but I’m stuck on Mint, so I have no choice but to settle for Cinnamon.
I use KDE, but Cinnamon is what Gnome should have been. Cinnamon has just enough customization to make a person happy but it’s not so overwhelming a KDE can be for beginners.
I do have high hopes for COSMIC after a few more iterations. They have something good cookin’ there.
Why stuck ?
It just works and I don’t want to jumble around anymore.
I put my finger under the mouse and it jitters automatically, makes it easy to get the mouse huge so I’m glad they’re thinking of users like me.
gnome was horrible to use, even simplest things that make life easier were missing. fucking TRAY ICONS so you can more easily access some running programs?!
made me feel like its system for bunch of elitist that can act snooty when scrubs like me cant handle their minimalist perfection.
Tray icons? You had to use Gnome Tweaks for the most basic things, like adjusting fonts.
i dont understand who likes to use gnome, its just plain awful and even if you customize it there is always a chance update breaks some crucial part of your ui
It’s somewhat decent on touch screens. I use it on an old convertible Lenovo. But on my main system i still prefer KDE.
Ehh, I loved Gnome with the bottom panel hidden and tiling manager installed via gnome shell extensions. KDE just feels like it hasn’t substantially changed in ~15 years and just feels dated and like a halfway attempt at recreating Aero. I’ve moved over to Cosmic and I yearn for my gnome days but it’s getting better with each release.
why change something if it works though?
i took a look at cosmic and it looks nice, maybe i’ll try it too at some point. How much do i need to think about stuff not working on it? I can play and run what I want on mint with steam and wine, is it the same with distros that use cosmic?
wait what this is a thing? brb
If Gnome ran a restaurant, the waiter chooses the meal for you, and tut their head if you try to deviate from it.
If KDE ran a restaurant, if you shake the menu it’ll grow exponentially in size until it fills the restaurant.If Gnome ran a restaurant, the waiter chooses the meal for you, and tut & shake their head if you try to deviate from it.
And if you want to add salt and pepper to your meal, there’s a convenient store across the street that sells salt and pepper shakers. No, the Gnome restaurant will not be providing them.
I’m a GNOME user and extensions are pretty easy to install. I use the wiggly extension for the mouse shake to grow thing, but unfortunately it has a maximum size of 256 which is plenty big enough to find it but you can’t shake it forever until it grows bigger than the screen. GNOME 0 KDE 1 🥲
And those extensions are easily borked due to some random update. Because reasons. Been there done that. Still waiting for my “Gnome Borked My Favorite Extension” tee shirt.
People hate on Gnome but I think it’s actually great UI. Lots of hardcore Linux users shit on the windows UI but insist that Windows 7 UI clones are somehow peak UX. Gnome is more similar to Mac, but I find even easier to use. The super key is money on Gnome.
Yeah I tried KDE for a while, people talked about how customisable it is that you can do anything. But I never found a way to recreate that super key experience.
The Gnome waiter just stares in shock and confusion when you mention that you have nut allergy
Are you implying GNOME is the ableist desktop environment? It might be even though it has lots of accessibility features.
The gnome type of restaurant is called prix fixe, and it very much exists.
That type of restaurant tends to be among the best in the world.
Which makes sense. If each day you offer one choice you can make that one really good.
But for someone who doesn’t like that specific food it doesn’t work. They’d prefer having different options.
Kind of similar with gnome and KDE.
The difference is, most people go to a restaurant to eat food, so the restaurant can get really good at making food that humans eat.
People use a computer system to do all kinds of things. It is a lot harder to make one choice that will please everybody.
Yes, and 99.9% of the meals you eat in your life will not be there. Because it is either prohibitively expensive and elitist gourmet BS. Or it is trivially easy to offer some choice when it is not elitist gourmet BS.
Even at a more mundane restaurant, only having one meal for each course to worry about drastically simplifies life for the entire back line, plus it makes life easier for the chef or whoever does the ordering as well.
Even low fixed price day-menu restaurants in my town offer some basic choice or variation. People have food limitations and preferences.
So then don’t go to a prix fixe restaurant or check the menu beforehand. There’s no need to be this bitchy about it.
But I do go there. And when I tell them I don’t eat mayonnaise due to health concers they understand and offer an accommodation. The waiter most definitely doesn’t berate me or scuff at me. Nor do they refuse my patronage.
I’ve been to a restaurant in Korea where you pay per person and they just serve you one main dish (you have no choice) and like 8 unlimited side dishes
It was about $5 and you had a choice of topping up or not. It was great, actually
I hate that that feature is enabled by default, wish it asked about accessibility features on first boot instead
In my case I love that it’s enabled by default. Would have never ocurred to me to turn it on, but love the sillynes of it.
Oh thank god they fixed this! Now I can actually use KDE now!
/j
It just broke my workflow that relies on large blurry cursor!!
I remember when this feature was added to MacOS, it must be like a decade ago now. It had the same thing where if you really put some elbow grease into the saking the cursor just got bigger and bigger but it was vector based so it never became pixilated. It was weirdly fun to do, and I often told friends to try it and all of them found it as fun as I did.
When i discovered it on my Hackintosh,i thought it was some GPU related Bug,and spent ages trying to fix it…
common KDE w
GNOME’s design philosophy is “we’ve determined that nobody needs this feature”.
KDE’s is “we’ve determined that nobody needs this feature… but it would be really cool, fuck it, we
ballcube”.Well who needs systrays anyways? While we’re at it, let’s remove theming support too! Surely nobody would miss that feature?
I really miss KDE. Sadly my experience with new major versions (5, 6) tends to be that plasma is unstable for daily use for at least a year or two. I’ll be back once things settle down a bit.
“It implements client-side decorations, or it gets the hose again!”
Plasma 6 has been nothing but great for me! Not a single crash ever since it released. It’s nothing like the beginning of Plasma 5
Sadly my problems are with buggy applications, and hdr (more of a monitor issue than plasma itself). I’m hoping these get patched as more people yell at bad wayland support and poorly implemented hdr.
Somehow, under GNOME things “just work”. Or at least it doesn’t take down the entire session.
fuck it, we
ballcubeThis is KDE we’re talking about, so it would definitely be “fuck it, we kube”.
Can there even be life without the lovely and amazing Kube? It would certainly not be worth living.
Klitoris
Kdefile
“we’ve determined that nobody needs this feature”
How? Trust me bro! Users hate features, they get all confused and stuff. That’s why nobody should ever choose anything, the OS should just be shit forever. We also get paid by Microsoft and IBM coincidentally.
We also get paid by Microsoft and IBM coincidentally.
Microsoft and IBM both donate to the Linux Foundation itself. They are both platinum members who regularly give them funds for all kinds of projects. This is really idiotic gotcha attempt.
A donation isn’t quite the same as pay (as in salary)! I’m thinking of Miguel de Icaza and Lennart Poettering, for example.
Is GNOME Microsoft’s controlled opposition?
Finally, I was having issues with the blurriness of the big pointer
The new update broke my login screen but god damn the big pointer is crisp.
I shake it 4 times a day for health and meditation purposes.
The massive cursor during shake is literally what sold two of my friends on Garuda getting them off Windows 😂 idk why I guess the wimsy factor is difficult to account for.
I have the pipes screensaver and space cadet pinball (I use Arch btw)
Wait until they find it you can make the windows wiggle when you shake them.
Well, my first thought was also “I need to try it” so they are not alone
The cube thing from compiz had a similar effect back in the earlier years of Ubuntu.
Compiz was insanely cool, it was better than anything we have today.
We shi have compiz today, you can still run it.
Thanks and yes I know.
But AFAIK it was mostly limited to Ubuntu Unity and XFCE for a long time, and support became shaky.
I actually looked it up just before, and it seems Mint has support for it, but looking at the emerald themes it looks nothing like it did back in the day where it was new and revolutionizing. Also I’m lazy, I don’t care to fiddle so much with my computer anymore.
Compiz was Da Bomba! But I still get my Cube and exploding windows in KDE
I use burn my windows and desktop cube with Gnome extensions. Kwin still supports many of these effects too. It’s fun to see people’s reaction.
Some of the effects have become mainstream. But there is no comparison to the real Compiz feel.
For instance the original Emerald windows dresser was amazing, and zooming with the scroll wheel combined with for instance the left win key was extremely useful. The smoothness and configurability of the cube was crazy cool.What is available today is hollow shells of what we had.
Yes I use wobbly windows in KDE, but Compiz is 100x > Plasma.Writing fire on the desktop and window animations like burn up on exit were also awesome.
KDE cube always feels like watching a b-movie version starwars. Nailed the wobbly windows though.
Compiz and cairo-dock is peak nostalgic linux for me. Tux surfing around the dock and all.
Oh boy I’m getting all nostalgic, it’s 20 years ago it came out now!
Yeah, Compiz and Emerald were the goat!
Yeah, I love just shaking the mouse when I’m bored or waiting for something to finish downloading.
Sometimes I jiggle the mouse just to see how big I can make it
Oh my gosh finally! I can enjoy the vector experience! I’ve always felt this was missing from KDE. I would show my friends all the benefits of Linux, but when I showed them by wasting approximately 1-2 minutes, you could embiggen your mouse cursor to absurd proportions, their eyes lit up unlike anything before. They wanted it the moment they knew the potential of infinite cursor sizing.
But I often made the amateur mistake of embiggening a few pixels too far and their delight would rapidly plunge into disappointment as they came to the realization that it was simply scaling up a raster render of the cursor in a lazy post-processed Easter egg.
They all leave the room in a huff, sending my attempts to reach out directly to voicemail, unanswered. But this. This will change everything. Thank you KDE. This is what we had all been waiting for.
Yeah, I’m sure the KDE Foundation spent this year’s entire budget on this, and it wasn’t just a fun little side project for one of the many volunteers who keep open source going.
Oh, I love KDE. It’s my daily and I have used about a dozen DEs over the past. I just wanted to have some fun with creative writing.
