Both KDE and GNOME are good when you compare it to anything Windows have today.
I personally prefer KDE because of much customization support. I have it working with many keyboard shortcuts. I would miss the settings panel in hyperland.
GNOME is simple and elegant. Showing only what is needed. I can really understand people liking it. I like but just miss some small details like the keyboard shortcuts thing and focusing etc. How GNOME works is different mindset which O just have not learned. But GNOME looks good and have everything covered.
Xfc and lxd just need some more love from the developers. There are very few of them so I completely understand. Money issue.
xfce rules
I went from GNOME on Ubuntu, to KDE on Manjaro, to XFCE on Manjaro, and finally i3 on Arch.
GNOME was sluggish and not customisable.
KDE had graphical glitches everywhere that made navigating interfaces annoying sometimesOn XFCE, I actually didn’t find that many issues. I just stopped using Manjaro and switched to i3 when doing so.
i also tried i3 at some point, it was pretty cool, but i prefer more “standard”/“no tweaking” approach, so xfce wins on that one. i did install KDE ob my second (framework) laptop, but i kinda hate it lol. Never tried “Gnome”
Eh, Gnome is fine. I like KDE, but I’d rather use my PC for the stuff I want to use it for rather than obsessively change some stuff so it looks better only to change it the next time I boot it again.
I also rsther use my pc for the stuff I want to use it for, with Plasma you dont need to theme and rice it for the sake of it, you can just use it as is, which is what i do, and i find Plasma to be more usable out of the box than Gnome I hate when people think you must theme Plasma and customize it, you can use it as is
You can, but for me there’s just too much to fiddle, and I can’t help tinkering with stuff.
as someone who’s done gtk and qt development, what the fuck are you talking about?
That these DEs are a bloat in modern Linux computers?
GTK is fine by me. Qt on the other hand, is BIG. And now with Qt6 out, and some older apps aren’t migrated to it yet, I have both Qt5 AND Qt6 installed on my computer. It’s a shitshow.
Oh that’s awesome! Did you use gObject I think it’s called? I’ve always been fascinated with the idea of object oriented C programming, but I’m not a developer and I never really got into it.
gObject
yah, tbh i kinda hated it at first but that was before I had to work on a cpp project.
Nah both Gnome and KDE are incredible and I say that as someone whos been using Linux since early 00s
It’s wild what an impact organizational politics can have on a codebase
Not wild to me. Code is written by people, people who engage in organizational politics. No “base” created by people, digital or otherwise, will be free of such influences.
If you don’t know:
Truly excellent GNOME slander. Who made this?
ShoutingIsFun seems to be the artist
I have no idea. I saved it ages ago and just post it whenever GNOME is mentioned.
ShoutingIsFun seems to be the artist
somone needs to replace gnome with windows 11 in that meme lmao.
Edit: it has been done:
KDE has almost perfect fractional scaling, that was the real chadfeature for me.
I agree with the general sentiment, though KDE’s apps do have some real performance issues.
Dolphin sometimes takes 2-5 seconds to open on my gaming PC, whereas Nautilus (Gnome Files) is usually done before I’ve even let go of the click.
Maybe that’s just preloading, but it makes a bloody enormous difference in everyday usage.
I prefer Plasma overall, though.
Dolphin sometimes takes 2-5 seconds to open on my gaming PC, whereas Nautilus (Gnome Files) is usually done before I’ve even let go of the click.
You might need to look into this more.
It opens instantly on my gaming desktop, Microsoft Surface 7 Pro, and ASUS ROG Strix
I just checked, it boots in .5 seconds on my Steam Deck. So yeah, there’s a problem somewhere 😅
It is easy to go fast if you have no features.
Hmm, Dolphin takes about 0.5 seconds on my laptop. Might be that worth debugging on your system, even if it is some bug that your specific system triggers.
Do you have a lot of files it might try to preview? I remember encountering similar loading times in my photos folder because it ties to load previews for every file.
Dolphin is the worst file manager, mostly because of how it doesn’t give you a file copy window but also because it’s just a shittier version of Nemo. Nemo is superior except that most of the time you can’t drag and drop files from a zip folder window into Nemo but only if you’re using KDE. Cinnamon is pretty much the only other DE I can stand and Nemo lets you drag and from from zip files all the time on Cinnamon but it’s otherwise worse than KDE.
I would love to give Nemo a try on my Surface running GNOME, but it unusable for touchscreen users
Use whatever floats your boat
I use Gnome because it works for me
I use Cinnamon but Gnome would be my second choice. I want to like Plasma, but every time I’ve used it there’s some glaring bug. Last I checked (few months back) font scaling caused fonts to look like absolute garbage. I found the bug online, tried all the “fixes”, no bueno.
I’m not going without scaling on a 14" 1080p screen.
Cinnamon and Gnome on the other hand: accessibility > large text. Easy. (Higher scaling factors can be found in font settings if needed).
I think it only works if you’re either an absolute KDE config file genius hacker or your distro’s repository has actually good default configs and setup. Installing KDE on arch always works well for me but every time I’ve tried it on Ubuntu I just get an unusable mess. One time I had it such that I had to retype my password all the fucking time to “unlock the keychain” and then the stupid update window would ALWAYS show up during the worst possible time with impeccable timing.
Same. I really wanted to like Plasma, it’s really nice looking. But it just never works right for me. Most recently, my PC would crash every time I woke it from sleep. And my cursor wouldn’t stay locked to one screen in-game. No issues at all with Cinnamon. Everything just worked out of the box. And there are plenty of themes and icons to dress it up a bit. I used Gnome 2 back in high school, so if I didn’t use Cinnamon I think I’d probably go with MATE since it’s a familiar feel.
No love for GNOME these days smh
I mean can you really blame people? The developers have kind of gone out of their way to try and piss off literally everyone. And any attempt at criticism is called bullying and shut down
GNOME has been going downhill since version 3. I used to be a diehard GNOME fan, but nowadays KDE is simply better in so many ways.
Agree. I used to love GNOME, but after GNOME 3.0 everything went to the shitter.
I simply migrated to KDE and I just like it.
I’ve found GNOME a pleasure to use. From my experience many folks that use Linux like to tinker with their computers. Even those new to Linux see a world of possibilities. GNOME doesn’t really embrace this tinkerer philosophy. They have an opinion on what at desktop manager should be and they’re constantly working towards that vision.
When I introduce GNOME to new people I explain to them some the project goals, design elements and how it’s intended to be used. Then I tell them that GNOME is opinionated on how things should behave and look, and if you try to force GNOME to be something it’s not you’ll probably end up using poorly documented or unsupported third-party extensions that break things. Generally the advice is, GNOME is great, but not for everyone, take the time to learn the GNOME way of doing things and if you don’t like it you’re better off switching to another desktop environment than trying to change GNOME.
I ran gnome for about a decade. I really didn’t like how a lot of bits and pieces of it worked so I went and found all of the plugins and religiously installed and updated them. Updates what happened, crab would break, I’d just have to deal.
At some point I tried KDE. And it literally did everything that I was doing to gnome through plugins out of the box.
I’m all about configurability but I’m also a pretty big fan of not having to fuck with it because it already does what I want out of the box.
If it’s not for everyone it should not be the default for many distributions, and other DEs should be recommended for beginners then.
I think the design philosophy of “you have to adapt to the software” is harmful. Software should adapt to you and disappear out of your way for common tasks. Something Gnome leadership fails to understand.I’ve been teaching Linux to a lot of high-school age kids this year. I picked Fedora Workstation for us to experiment with. It of course, uses GNOME. Like I mentioned in the above post I talked to them for 5-10 minutes about GNOME design and how it’s supposed to be used. One thing that surprised me is how much the younger generation found GNOME intuitive as soon as they learned to use the Super key. Many have spent more time on iOS than they have Windows. So some of the common pain points for us older folks, like not having a task bar, preferring each “App” to be full a screen and switching between them felt very natural for the kids. Very iOS like.
You can of course have your different opinion on if this is good or bad or if GNOME shouldn’t be the default on most distro.
Perhaps GNOME is a good default for distro because it’s similar to the interfaces young people are growing up with.
I hate Gnome because it doesn’t give you taskbar boxes to show all the open windows. There is a extension for this but it’s almost always out of date. How the fuck is anyone expected to get any work done like that? Pressing the “windows” key to show that tile view is a thing but I want to see what all is open without pressing a button first. It’s fine for watching youtube or playing games. And the ui looks really cool if you’re high off your ass, but that’s it.
Gnome extensions are nice since they can do lots of useful things. They can cause issues but if you need extensions to use gnome you probably should move to something like Cinnamon.
If you can get used to the workflow it is very nice.
I have no problem with using Gnome. It stays out of my way and Things Just Work for the most part as 99% of what I do is in a browser or a terminal anyway.
You know that sounds an awful lot like how windows GUI behaves. I only recently started daily driving and the amount of gui elements you can change is mind blowing.
Windows 11 copied some KDE and Gnome features but they did a half ass job so the desktop is just broken.
I like gome but it needs extensions for basic runctionality and you need to use terminal for basic functionality. I have it visually basically unmodified, no dock to dash or desktop but damn i need to go extra mile to add right click new file and functional window tiling.
I think you would be better off on a different desktop. The desktop works in a very specific way.
I like gnome but i will be replacing it with kde. But mostly cause gnome breaks ftp and vscode for some reason, not for the painful setup of gnome
I just realized that this desktop environment debate has slowed down a lot these last few years. I reckon it’s about time we heat it back up. I’ll get the popcorn!
Sounds like something a goddamn GNOME user would say 😠
Honestly as a newvomer to linux using both, they’re both fine. Both have their annoyances and stupidity but both are better than windows.
We’ll have to see if System 76’s Cosmic DE can stir up some tribalism again!
I know the hyprland Dev had some stuff to say that caused a mild shit storm. Nothing lasting though.
Are they still people giving a thing about that guys opinion? Hey is hating everything and evwrybody by no good reasons but pure gas lighting hatred
I’ve tried KDE on both Debian and Fedora. Neither have allowed me to do what I want to do: add a secondary storage device to my steam library. Whenever I try to, it just pops up a separate Dolphin window that doesn’t affect steam once a folder is selected (almost like it’s a separate process and not a child process of Steam).
The flatpak works, but 1. Ew; 2. It runs steam on Xwayland; 3. Being a debian nerd, I want to be as much of a <default package manager> purist as possible to make life easier down the road
I’ll switch once this is fixed, but I just gotta stick with Gnome until it is
add a secondary storage device to my steam library.
You mean have more than one steam library? That’s a steam setting. Nothing to do with KDE. Gnome, Debian or Fedora.
The flatpak works,
Oh. There’s your issue. Don’t run steam as a flatpak, there might be sandboxing issues.
EDIT: MF did you read the page you downloaded stuff from:
Note: To add a game library on another drive, first you need to grant the app access to it:
flatpak override --user --filesystem=/path/to/your/Steam/Library com.valvesoftware.SteamBuddy… Flatpak works, I know that. I do not want to use flatpak. It’s that Steam from the distro’s official repository, whether it’s on Debian or Fedora, doesn’t allow me to set up a library specifically on a different storage device than the OS’ and specifically only on KDE.
Well, I’m using KDE and I set up a library eight months ago and… yes there’s a bug. Just checked. Not entirely the same but related to this:
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/9797
There’s an official workaround mentioned there.
I guess KDE updated their portal protocol version some time in between and steam got doubly confused. Probably not a KDE bug, in particular because this kind of stuff is happening for many, many portal implementations.
And it’s not a dolphin window (with me) btw it’s a qt filepicker. Says “portal” at the end in the title, kde logo to the left.
I have like five libraries, I went ahead and just tried to add another one to see if it was a regression and unfortunately I can’t reproduce. Then again I’ve always been a KDE Arch user I don’t know if that has anything to do with it maybe I just missed this bug
I have the issue with debian also witj KDE, but I havent tried with Gnome, i did some searching and it seems to be a common issue among debian based distros
I also had the issue on a fresh Fedora install, it’s not just a Debian thing. I figured it was just the usual “debian packages are outdated, it’s breaking things again” but unfortunately it appears to be something to do with KDE and non-Arch
It’s hard to believe that KDE used to be considered one of the worst DEs around and now it’s like Gnome is getting worse while KDE is getting better and better.
What is happening to GNOME is truly one of the biggest fumbles in OSS. They could have just continued improving things, but instead choose the path of most resistance, refused to commit to any logical strategies for further improvement, and are now stuck in a loop of nothing getting done
Seems to be an organizational thing, at least some who try to work with- or are part of the Gnome Foundation mentioned this. Apparently KDE e.V. got a way more flexible structure with work groups, easier ways to propose changes etc. while Gnome gets awfully stuck with their panel/council structure (not sure which one is the right word in english).
When mentioning the problems with extensions (rather furiously since I just lost some work again and installed KDE) I was told both: Go on an create a PR, but also that “this was discussed and a panel decided against changing anything”. Obviously no one will waste dozens, if not hundreds of hours of their time even just creating a Proof-of-Concept for sth. like an extension API if some authority already decided that nothing is supposed to be done about it.
As long as your Gnome environment can’t gracefully crash without taking absolutely everything with it (like with KDE or other DEs) there’s no way in hell anyone should use Gnome on computers where actual work is being done, let alone something critical.
I always try KDE and after a while all the quirks and odd behaviors make me go back to GNOME. GNOME may not be easily themeable but it is predictable
That’s the good part. There’s plenty of choice, and it’s easy to swap
Exactly this. It always surprises me when people get bent out of shape because there is an option that they don’t like. Even worse when someone makes a choice they don’t like. “Who the fuck cares. Let them do their thing. be grateful you have a choice.”
Exactly. Its the best part of Linux. I like what Zorin did, they customized backend of GNOME to give you 4 choices of DE style.
Can I ask what quirks/off behavior you see (genuinely asking)?
Sometimes its a slight hang of a dialog box, like delay. Sometimes its a dialog getting stuck on top of other dialogs and it becomes unresponsive. Like it is above all other apps on screen.
And hard to describe minor stuff that just feels a bit off. Where as when I go back to GNOME it is smooth like a fully finished environment.
Maybe most people don’t notice stuff like that, but I’m the type of guy that friends call when they want to buy a used car. 500ft and I’m like nope, bad bearing on right side, transmission shudder at start off, worn bushing in steering…and others are like it drives great
Yup!
At least we have MATE: fork of Gnome 2.
Tried that last week.
God it feels so outdated.
Yes, it’s what I started on, but there are good reasons we don’t use it much anymore.Use Xfce if you want something traditional.
This.
I remember, when Unity first came out and Gnome was considering mockups for Gnome 3, so many people complaining and me thinking that, yeah, maybe these weren’t perfect but they so clearly contained improvements over Gnome 2.
It was an exciting time to be joining Linux because there seemed to be real desire to experiment with new work flows and UI ideas that improved the standard computing experience.
I feel like time’s kind of borne out my feelings, there.
I’m pretty sure that the vast majority of hate for KDE back in the day was because Qt started out with a non-Free Software license, not because it was bad in terms of quality.
KDE Plasma 4 was also really buggy when it first launched
That was it for me. I was actually a KDE user way back in the KDE 2 and 3 days. I found KDE 4 unusable. KDE 5 never won me over. But I have been using Plasma 6 on Wayland and am perfectly happy with it.
Yep, that’s what brought me over to XFCE for several years. Back at KDE again, though
I personally hated KDE because it was a buggy, unstable mess for a long time.
Are you referring to the fact that a lot of distributions shipped KDE 4 pre release code?
Yep. the Qt wars were real. And one needed to be careful about reveling your KDE use because you would get flamed with hatred.
Umm, KDE/Plasma shell is a fucking absolute disaster of a UX. It makes Windows look good. Gnome has major flaws in its software that make performance go to shit, but overall the architecture and design guidelines are superior and at least have a semblance of direction. Just open the preferences/settings on KDE and you see nothing but pure chaos.
I don’t know… Friday I installed Linux on my dad’s “new” Thinkpad T495.
I tried to go with Gnome. It’s supposed to be the user friendly one, right?
First thing I want to do is change the charging limit of the battery to 80%. It’s not impossible to replace the battery, but it would be nice to not blow it too fast.
After 20m of trying and failing I switched to KDE, where the whole thing was 3 clicks.
And even if I didn’t know how to do it, the systemsettings window has a search function that will get you the right option in a split second.
a single setting like that being a dealbreaker for a whole DE
seems a bit like an overreactionIt is definitely an overreaction.
The rational part was that I have to mantain his installation anyway. I have a lot of experience with KDE, and having seen trouble with GNOME from the get go, I ran back to the safe choice.
Cool, a setting that’ll have zero practical real world effects.
Of course I love other people telling me what I am or am not supposed to want out of my tech. That’s why I exclusively use Apple products. Oh wait, I actually don’t.
…
And BTW, this is in fact a shitty joke, because even iPhones and Pixels and Teslas actually let you set a charging limit.
They all do, but grab an iPhone and let that shit work, count the cycles and battery life remaining after 180 cycles. Every single iPhone I encounter with that turned on gas excessive battery life decreases. Meanwhile my shit shows 100%. Wait til you find out I build the Telematics Control Unit and Battery Control systems for a large manufacturer.
Just open the preferences/settings on KDE and you see nothing but pure chaos.
It looks fine to me. Everything is categorized nicely and you know where to find something you look for. I am not sure about GNOME Settings, because I have never used GNOME more than 30 minutes (because of annoyingly shitty UX), but it’s at least much better than what Windows does.
Gnome is made by designers, kde is made by devs.
Just came across this issue today. I need to install a font. The dir is not accessible through gnome Files. Actually, nothing but mmom ounted drives and my Home dir is. So if I to work in dirs outside my Home, I HAVE to use the terminal. Just to copy a font to a dir outside my Home.
Doesn’t gnome have a GUI available to install fonts? Pretty sure you just open a font file and you get the option to install, same as on KDE actually.
Still annoying that you can’t access the folder. Though, if it does show mounted drives, surely it also shows your root drive? From where you should be able to navigate anywhere you have access to.
Yeah I found out but the first three guides I found all use the c/p to font dir. However, you are correct - gnome and kde both have GUI apps to view and install fonts. But wasn’t aware since the guides I found didn’t talk about these apps.
So, ignorance on my part 😬
Nah, I think it’s simply a design choice made for gnome files. Been playing around with other file explorers that checks my requirements. The joy of freedom.
XDG
What?
theregister reader detected. Maybe even one of the editors!
Always fun that posts that shit on gnome get upvoted to the moon and ones that shit on KDE get downvoted to hell.
