For people who already tried both, what’s the reason you’re sticking with GNOME or KDE as your desktop environment?
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One adapts to me.
The other requires me to adapt to it.
The best thing about this comment is we all know which is which
KDE doesn’t adapt to you. You adapt KDE to yourself.
it lets me
The opinions of Gnome are not a match for mine.
KDE let’s me get really specific on the things I want to, and its well supported.
Just that simple for me!
I found KDE to be cleaner, they work extremely hard on making GTK apps look like native Qt apps for example. Or how tray Icons (which need a plug in on Gnome) look and behave. On KDE they feel native, Gnomes plugins make them look foreign.
So weirdly enough KDE is imho the cleaner of the two.
KDE just works. The few things I want to change I can. GNOME by default is further away from what I want and you have to get extensions that break with updates to change anything.
Gnome. Sublime flow, very polished. Simply works.
KDE can be OK but it is very overloaded on customization, not nearly as polished, and honestly I dislike that style it upholds. IMHO.
GNOME expects the user to adapt to the workflow its developers have in mind. It’s the desktop environment that should adapt to me, not the other way around.
Plus, I love customization and theming. But GTK app developers create angry websites where they try to shame me for it.
Before:
- Gnome 2 was great
- Gnome 3 was terrible
- KDE 4 was terrible
Today: KDE.
Why not Gnome:
- It’s missing basic features.
- General new users startup is:
- searching online to try and fix things
- 50% chance of it working.
- 50% chance of it not working because the fix doesn’t work on your version of gnome and having to find another fix
- Common recommendation for missing features (to use extensions) is a non-starter since the extensions break after every update, so every update you need to go back through the general new users startup steps above.
Why KDE:
- It has all the basic features by default, and a bunch of extra stuff.
- General new user process is:
- looking through settings and changing the 2-3 they care about
- looking through features, trying them out to see which ones you want to use, turning on/off the 2-3 you care about
- Never needing to look through or remember the other settings, because your computer is already set up for you.
Future:
- Gnome: more of the same, likely basic features missing until specific people are removed (could be 5-10 years, then another few years of catching up).
- KDE: Will continue making updates and consolidating similar features where it makes sense.
- Cosmic: Will continue sanding off rough edges and fill in last remaining missing features. Will probably surpass Gnome for 90% of user’s needs in a year. Will probably be trading blows with KDE in 3 years and will surpass them if KDE ever makes any missteps.
GNOME3 was designed by absolute morons who refuse to hear anything that doesn’t support their echo chamber.
KDE is like a swiss army knife and the best part about it is just using the knife.
Gnome always felt too basic and minimalist. KDE feels powerful and like I can do anything I want. On KDE I don’t ask myself “can i do this?”, I ask myself “how do I do this?”
KDE looks modern, has features I didnt even know I wanted. Whatever I can think of wanting it’s either already there or I make a post on the fourm and its there in a month.
When I had an issue with an update removing something that I liked. I made a post and KDE devs added a toggle so I could keep the functionality I had before. Even though it was a minor thing they could have told me not to worry.
GNOME. It’s clean, I like it, and I don’t feel the need to customize it.
I’ve stuck to KDE because it’s more customizable and the devs don’t try to actively remove features from updates. Gnome might be a cleaner experience, but I don’t want to have to search for alternatives when my favorite gnome extension gets unexpectedly killed by an update.
KDE appears to be much more stable in that regard in that they’re actively trying (Union) to make themes more resilient over time.
I’ve been running KDE now, almost exclusively, for almost 15 years. KDE works (by default) in a way similar to the way Windows XP worked in the late 90’s - late 2000’s. It felt familiar enough that I didn’t have to try and figure out most things that I wanted to do. The few things that didn’t work the way I wanted ( or felt they should) were easy enough to change. XFCE was similar (had a Windows 95-98 feel) but was not as configurable.
Gnome 2, I rather liked as it had a feel similar to Mac OS 8 from way back when I was in school, however I just never got along with Gnome 3. Everything felt… off. I can use it, Just don’t care for it. Same for most other DEs.
I started with gnome back when Linux was a very young project. Then they started removing options despite the protests of their users so I moved to kde, which added functionality constantly, much to the delight of their users.
And many years later, here we are.
I’m running Plasma at the moment. I actually prefer three look out Gnome and I think I would use it if my home computer was used for anything productive. It’s mainly used for gaming though and Gnomes main design doesn’t quite flow as well while gaming on a dual screen setup.
It’s just easier to be able to see the task bar and all open programs (and sys tray) on my second monitor all the time instead of having to go through a hot cornet or hitting the super button.
Sure, this could be fixed through the use of addons (like Ubuntu has by default for instance) but these tend to break on new versions of Gnome while Plasma just keep working.
My preferred setup while running Gnome was the stock adwaita theme, dag to panel, arc menu and whatever that sys tray addon was called.
If I could have the same look over in Plasma I’d be pretty happy tbh but I haven’t really made the effort since it just works the way it is and doesn’t look bad doing it either.
