After 2y on Linux I can say with full confidence that switching from GNOME to KDE (for me) is a bigger barrier than switching from Windows to Linux ever was.
I’ve tried a lot to like KDE but I just can’t. I usually see people discussing distros but I feel like picking the right DE makes much bigger impact. I’m yet to try Hyprland though.
Considering the fact that I’m itching to get Steam Frame and VR on GNOME will likely be broken indefinitely, idk what to do.
The choice for me was something that did well in gaming. Features like good VRR support made the voice of KDE plasma the only option. I’m not bothered about the KDE UI. It is nice, and similar to windows, so ready enough to get along with.
I am monitoring Cosmic. Once it has HDR and solid VRR, etc I may try it out.
I don’t care at all about DE, as long as it is not gnome. I run vanilla kde with minimal configuration. I tried many DEs through the years, tiling wm and so on. Now I just want something that works and that I don’t worry about. But gnome, I don’t get it. I did try it a couple years ago and my colleagues at work use it, it feels like it is hindering me. I don’t like how the application switcher works, the software launcher and so on. When I use it it feels to me I’m fighting the UI in order to do very simple things.
I feel the same way with KDE as you do with GNOME which is interesting to me because one would think that when I’m used to Windows UI the KDE would just click with me but it’s actually annoying as hell to use to me.
I need a good DE for launching apps and switching tasks. As a mouse user I found Gnome poor in launching apps. Huge mouse movements needed, and hard to lay out the launcher apps as I need them compared to Plasma. Id consider Gnome if I found a suitable replacement launcher. It would need favourites, category navigation and search.
Gnome is where the heart is for me! It’s just so customizable, the extension framework is such a cool concept. And yes, I know, KDE has a lot of bells and whistles, and I think think that’s why I dislike it. It’s cluttered, Gnome is simple. I like the polish and the smoothness, KDE is nice for people who want more but I’m happy with less. Thanks for coming to my TED talk!
I use kde for my main desktop. Although I will probably switch to a window manager when I get the time to learn it.
I tried gnome once because I thought it was better for laptops (I used asahi for a little while on my macbook) Although I quickly changed to kde because I could not live with the horrible window tiling (only half and half no quarters) I realise now you can probably fix this with extentions but I didn’t get around to it.
Something like 4 out of 10 important for me, but 10 out of 10 if I share a computer. I keep xfce4 on my computers because I like some of the utilities that come with it by default and I’m not the only person in my home who logs in. The default setup is close to what my people expect and it can be modified easily enough.
That being typed, I use a window manager after spending years adding custom shortcuts to an increasingly modified xfce setup to match my day-to-day use patterns. I got tired of dealing with stacking windows and wanted to try a setup that tiles the windows instead. It made sense at that time to try out a window manager that came closer to what I was looking for. I still use xfce4 if I want to run an x-11 type of environment for some reason, but I’m using sway for my personal day-to-day environment. I’m willing to use KDE or GNOME if that’s what is installed by default, but I’m working against muscle memory when I do so.
What DE you like is very much dependant on your work flow and how well you can adjust to changes.
Personally, I love KDE Plasma. It’s the right amount of “bling”, bells, whistles, aestetic and settings for me. Gnome feels way to “simple” and XFCE feels reliable but old.
For me, the DE is often more important than the base underneath, but I do like my rolling release. :)
Very critical. GNOME and KDE have two very different UX paradigms.
Usually people used to Windows opt for KDE, and Mac or older Ubuntu users opt for GNOME.
The thing is though, a golden standard DE can easily be setup to act as both. XFCE is so customizable that I’ve seen both DE types setup as UNIX like or Windows like workflow.
I’m not sure if KDE or GNOME can do the same because I’m pretty sure they focus on a target audience.
What are your issues with KDE exactly? I always hated GNOME’s lack of standard window buttons and handling multiple windows in a Mac like fashion. Also the app menu which gives me flashbacks of ChromeOS.
I prefer KDE. It works well out of the box and offers a good amount of customization. I tried gnome for a bit and didn’t like it.
What I like about Linux is that it’s easy to switch between DE. Just try out a few ones until you find something you like. I can recommend looking into Cinnamon (the DE of Mint).
Interesting, I feel like it is not easy at all to switch between DEs. Going from KDE to Gnome? Better rip out KDE first before you install Gnome, no way to keep them both. I really want to try more DEs but for me it feels like work to figure out how to do it without breaking anything existing.
I’ve had both installed on my machine without issues. Jumped back and forth until I decided Gnome wasn’t for me.
Generically speaking, nothing should break.
But if you want to just try out different environments without making any changes, I’d lean toward a VM for testing.
For me it’s pretty important because I want my computer to feel good to use, so I’ll spend quite a lot of time making sure everything’s set up the way I like it. In terms of GNOME vs KDE, I’m definitely a KDE person. Not that I hate GNOME or think there’s anything wrong with other people using it, I just don’t get along with it personally. For me it feels like there’s too much stuff in GNOME that should be part of the core DE that relies on extensions, which tend to break with updates so there’s always something that’s not quite working.
I only use one extention “Dash to Dock” and I had no issue of it breaking from Fedora 38 to now Fedora 43.
On the contrary, I had to use so many widgets and addons on KDE to get a somewhat passable experience that it took me over 5h of customising and still felt not enough… also no “Latte Dock” on KDE 6 :(
^ All part of the fun of KDE.
So much to fiddle with.
And never perfect.
Even from a development side, not just user configuration side. They mend something and break something else. Many perfect features, but never at the same time.
Yeah I do miss Latte Dock. I’ve managed to get my docks pretty much back to where I had them using Panel Colorizer though.
I haven’t seen this one yet, looks definitely nicer than what you can do with the dock by default
I’ve also tried Gnome very briefly before going back to KDE. I never went deep enough to try extensions, as I’d also agree that most of that stuff should be built in to the DE, and I was annoyed by it missing these features that KDE just had out of the box. Hearing that extensions exist kinda reminds me of what I’ve heard about MacOS, where features that have existed on Windows for over a decade and Linux for years still require third party applications.
Back in the X11 days, I actively avoided GNOME, because Cinnamon, KDE and XFCE were so much better. I had so many issues with the design philosophy, that using GNOME felt impossible.
However, when Wayland started having some support in GNOME, I got very curious and gave it a try. Then, I also bought my first touch screen laptop, and simply had to try GNOME with it. Turns out, GNOME wasn’t that bad, as long as you’re not trying to tweak every little thing about it. If you’re a tweaker, KDE is definitely the way to go. If not, GNOME might be tolerable or even good.
I’ve done so much tweaking already, that I don’t really have that itch any more. Sure, some things like custom keyboard shortcuts have to be just right, but that’s why you have GNOME Tweaks and the dconf Editor.
i’ve tried gnome, cinnamon, hyprland, lxqt and whatnot… but everything i have settles on KDE
Super important. I do also choose a DE first and look for a distro that supports it out of the box second.
This being said, while I think Gnome looks amazing, it’s whole UX is killing me. I tried it over and over again, because it looks so beautyful. But it always starts to frustrate and annoy me.
I was ling term Cinnamon user and recently switched to KDE Plasma. Luckily, as Linux users we have a choice.
I honestly think DE is one of the main reasons people don’t switch from windows.
They just want to use what’s comfortable. The large majority of people would be fine with Linux alternatives, but they don’t want to deal with the different designs.
The slight difference in looks isn’t what’s stopping people.
After helping hundreds of people over the years switch to Linux. The single most common factor literally is looks.
Doesn’t matter if something works exactly the same if it looks even slightly different. People get angry and stubborn and refuse.
It’s basically the only thing that is ever the same between helping any two people. From the most willing to learn to most unwilling.
The moment something looks different it’s like people go stupid.
I think it’s true for most people. I’m thinking of people like my mom and dad. My dad bought a whole new computer instead of just using Linux mint.
He considered it, but just bought a whole new computer after he was worried about a scam he almost fell for.
About 0.00001% of my worth as a human being. Wait till you venture out of the DE world and into the WM world. i3, BSPWM, Openbox. Go even farther and try Wayland with Sway, Hyprland, Niri, MangoWC. Make your own bars. Configure your own keybindings. Cuss a lot. Pull your hair out. Feel the pain. When you come out the other side you’ll wonder why you ever bothered with so much bloat to begin with. And all of a sudden you might know some CSS and json.
Don’t forget Wayfire; my windows are like my legs after trying Linux for the first time: wobbly.
Every decade since 1999 (the year of the Linux desktop—for me) I spend a few weeks trying out all the hot new shit in terms of desktop environments. I’ll switch to Gnome for a few days, get disappointed at how much I miss from KDE, and then try one of the newer ones like Cosmic. Then I’ll play with the latest versions of the classics (xfce) and marvel that they still make you configure everything in a single file or they still lack basic shit that normal people want like a clipboard manager.
All the actually useful or just plain really, really nice/handy stuff is built into KDE Plasma. I’ve been using so many of those features for so long, I can’t fathom having to go back to a world without say, being able to navigate the filesystems on all my other PCs via
ssh://(and other KIO workers).I remember when KDE 2.0 came out and it added support for kioslaves (now called KIO Workers) and it completely changed how I viewed desktops. That was in the year 2000. How is it that literally nothing else (not other FOSS desktops nor Windows or Macs) has implemented the same feature?
It’s not just the file manager, either. I can access
ssh://(or any other KIO worker) from any file dialog! The closest thing is shared drives in Windows but even that isn’t nearly as flexible or feature rich (or efficient, haha).Then there’s the clipboard manager (klipper), Activities, and a control panel that lets you customize everything to extreme degrees. It even supports fractional scaling and has supported that since forever. I remember when they introduced that feature over a decade ago and it still blows my mind to this day just how forward thinking the devs were.
Monitors since forever have had a different X DPI than the Y DPI. Yet only the KDE devs bothered to both query the monitor’s DDC info to figure that out and set it correctly when the desktop starts.
There’s other features that drive me nuts when I don’t have them! For example, the ability to disable global shortcuts on specific windows. So if I’ve got a remote desktop open to my work I can send Super-. (Win-.) and that’ll open the Windows emoji picker in the remote desktop instead of the KDE one (locally). And it will remember this setting for that application!
I can make any window I want stay above others temporarily to take notes, enter values into the calculator, or just turn any window into something like a HUD (you can control any window’s transparency on the fly!).
It even supports window tiling! A feature most people aren’t aware of. Like, if you’re already running KDE, why bother with a tiling window manager? You’ve already got it (though the keyboard shortcuts to manage the tiling layout in real time are lacking).
TL;DR: KDE Plasma is the best desktop in existence across all platforms and this is easy to prove with empircal evidence.
This comment made me go down the kio rabbit hole, how does I not know this exists? I can’t wait to try some of these, even if I was using some without realising (like smb://). Browsing a filesystem through SSH or using audiocd:/ to rip a disc in the format I want… sounds almost too good to be true. KDE never stops getting better.
You didn’t know for it’s a tale that only the kde sith would tell you. Gnome forbids such knowledge from spreading.
For example, the ability to disable global shortcuts on specific windows. So if I’ve got a remote desktop open to my work I can send Super-. (Win-.) and that’ll open the Windows emoji picker in the remote desktop instead of the KDE one (locally). And it will remember this setting for that application!
I did not know this! I’ll look into this and no longer will it piss me off when I tap Super in a VM to open the menu, and have to dismiss my local menu first.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg of cool and useful stuff you can do with KDE Plasma (and Kwin).
Another tip: Did you know that KRunner (Alt-Space) can do unit conversions? Type Alt-Space and
10cmor something like that and it’ll give you that value in inches.Another: You can bind shortcuts to mouse buttons like Ctrl-Alt-Right (click) And Ctrl-Alt-Left to say, switch desktops right/left.
You can type Ctrl-i in Dolphin to filter files. So if you’re looking at your enormous downloads directory and you want to see all the .png files you can type Ctrl-i,
pngand it’ll only show you files withpngin their name.KDE’s “get hot new stuff” framework works with Dolphin “actions” (context menu file handlers) so you can go into the settings—>Context Menu and click on “Download New Services” to browse tons of free scripts/tools that let you do things like file conversions, write disk images to USB drives, get checksums, etc.
I actually made a personal script that converts videos to looping .webp files (or just sets WebP files to loop forever). So I can right click on a .WebP, .webm, .mp4, etc and it’ll run ffmpeg on it in the background.
Another: You can bind shortcuts to mouse buttons like Ctrl-Alt-Right (click) And Ctrl-Alt-Left to say, switch desktops right/left.
OK, how the hell do you do this? Because I have Ctrl+left click and Ctrl+right click set on my Mac to switch left/right between spaces/desktops, and cannot for the life of me work our how to replicate that in Linux.
The downside of KDE is the millions of options and features. It can get in the way and makes it a little harder to learn.
That said. KDE is pretty great and currently my favorite.
Yeah, a lot comes down to how comfortable the user is messing with things.
KDE starts off looking simple, then start to feel super complicated, and then goes back to seeming very straightforward - all depending on a user.
