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KDE wins

19d 59s ago by lemmy.dbzer0.com/u/thethunderwolf in linuxmemes from lemmy.dbzer0.com

Is it really most popular?

It's not more stable than plasma surely, at least when user does any customization.

Simplicity is questionable, unless simple means 'unlearn everything and do it our way'.

For a long time it was. KDE kind of exploded themselves back around version 4. GNOME made huge inroads while the KDE Dev team's got their shit sorted. Main DE to the flagship general user distribution etc. It's just a fact. And not gonna lie I still have fond memories of GNOME 2.

But the KDE team really put their time in and cooked. It isn't perfect. But the over all polish shows. Not to mention its been snowballing lately. I have my whole family on plasma 6 right now. It's familiar as it needs to be, stable and mostly intuitive. It's just so good. In fact my only gripe right now is a niche Wayland issue and not DE related.

I just randomly tried KDE recently and made the swap from Linux Mint to Kubuntu a week ago. Definitely agree on the polish factor, everything just feels great with KDE and I've been pretty happy

The recent evolution is great and I've been a happy KDE user for many years, but my oh my is NetworkManager bad. It's not good on all systems that use it under the hood, but I find it especially unintuitive and so outdated. The applet thing is fine (still suffers from weird behaviour from NM's core), but actual settings screen drives me crazy... The Bluetooth one should also receive some love, but it's decent. NM needs serious revision.

Yes. There's definitely some UX jank in there. I saw something the other day at least about a new unified UX framework to replace the multiple ones they have now. Which hopefully should lead to much more consistency across applications and hopefully some updates and rewrites that will be better.

Meh, plasma was stable enough by 4.4 (when I've switched from gnome 2), there were some problems, but gnome 3 released about that time wasn't any better. I'm not sure about popularity of gnome, it was repeated a lot but personally I've met one person to this day that used vanilla gnome 3/4/5/50 not representative of course but it's just weird that supposedly everyone is running it yet among the category of people that linux is most popular with it doesn't show.

Gnome lost a lot of popularity with Gnome shell, and for good reason. Gnome made the same mistake Microsoft did with Windows 8, which was also universally hated. By the same mistake I mean they changed EVERYTHING!

And unlike Windows, they didn't backtrack on it. Instead, they doubled down and said, "You'll use your computer our way, and you'll like it!"

IMO, the whole interface is a mess. It's designed as if it's supposed to be a tablet/moblie first DE, but the actual tablet/mobile features (like on-screen keyboard) are kind of crap. Everything about it seems to be designed with aesthetics first, functionality last.

they doubled down and said, "You'll use your computer our way, and you'll like it!"

I think that's a dumb way of looking at it, because you're not forced to use GNOME on Linux. Just because tiling window managers exist, or scrolling ones, and some even more specific ones (like gamescope, which doesn't even display multiple windows), doesn't mean they're trying to force you to use your computer their way.

Having diverse options is good, it doesn't lock you into doing things a specific way, it gives you more options of how things work. The only thing that sucks is that they made the change as an update, so previous users might be excluded, but even then it's opensource, the developers can (and should) change the software to fit their vision, and if you don't like it you can fork it (which people have done with gnome).

The whole "it's just one option and having lots of options is good" argument would make more sense if Gnome was a niche DE that you specifically have to look for and install if you want it.

But when it's the default DE for some of the biggest distros out there -- and especially when it's the default for some of the 'beginner-friendly' distros -- then that argument isn't quite as good. My biggest problem with that is the (pretty frequent) case of users new to Linux and deciding to try it out. So they pick one of the most popular 'beginner-friendly' distros ... it comes with Gnome by default ... the new user tries using it, and they have a hard time with it; it doesn't do the things they want it to, and it's difficult and complicated to work around those problems ... and then instead of coming to the conclusion that Gnome sucks and trying a different DE, they come to the conclusion that Linux sucks and go back to Windows/Mac ... because they don't know the difference between Gnome and Linux, and they may be unlikely to try multiple different flavors if the first one was 'bad'.

I don't have a problem with Gnome existing. In fact, I'm glad it does. I'm glad people who like it have the option to use it. I have a problem with it being the default DE of major distros, especially beginner-friendly distros. It's giving Linux as a whole a bad name.

That all sounds reasonably fair, but it seems like my point still stands, since nowhere do you actually put the blame with GNOME - it's the distros choosing it.

I'm also not sure if I'd agree with you in general, it might not be worth bothering too much with users who will immediately dismiss Linux because the distro they chose ships with a DE that has a slightly nonstandard workflow. That sounds like a person that refuses to try or research anything and will probably either make a nuisance of themselves or leave for other weird reasons anyways.

Thing is, a lot of good apps use gtk and so you have to put up with adwaita even if you don't normally run a Gnome desktop.

Likewise, if you're writing an application you have to handle gnome's nonstandard way of doing window decorations for it to run on gnome shell.

I would say that the technical details are a separate thing and I don't condone gnome forcing CSD in Wayland ;D

Though apps using GTK is another case of having choices, this time for the developers of individual apps.

What a surprise that a DE created by a Microsoft fan does the same mistakes than Microsoft.

Sure. But the first few releases unfortunately weren't. And you gotta be conscious of projecting your experiences onto others. I mean I sure do lol. Techy people don't mind experimenting and putting in a bit of work. But the normie's do. For nearly a decade Ubuntu and GNOME was what was recommended/used.

Oh sure, there's kubuntu which isn't their flagship or similarly supported. So you would run into edge cases and lack of polish on the distro side. There was so much inertia for a while most major distros flagship was GNOME out of the box. Even if KDE, Mate, Budgie, or Cinnamon were avalible from repos or community maintained forks. Your vanilla user was always going to go with the defaults.

I didn't like it and haven't touched gnome in years and Ubuntu even longer. But I'm definitely not a Normy.

Ah, right, Ubuntu uses gnome
I'm still stuck with unity in my head, because their gnome got modified to look that way - at least it was quite a few years ago, when I used it somewhere

I also thought, that currently KDE is more popular

It's picking up steam and could easily go that way. The GNOME team with their inflexibility is pushing many away. They even got pop to start their own DE. Because they were tired of writing addons that would break every few releases.

yea, gnome is "more popular". doesn't mean it's "better", just that it's the default environment for some of the most widely-used distributions.

yea, gnome is “more popular”. doesn’t mean it’s “better”, just that it’s the default environment for some of the most widely-used distributions.

But not SteamOS which has the numbers on its side. Not that Gnome is unpopular but Steam Deck single-handedly pulled in millions of users who at least occasionally switch from game mode to desktop mode (=Plasma) to install emulators and stuff.

I'm not sure there are more Steam OS installs than RHEL/SUSE/Ubuntu installs.

I’m not sure there are more Steam OS installs than RHEL/SUSE/Ubuntu installs.

Of course not, if you phrase it like that. According to your phrasing non-desktop container setups also count but they don't.

Distributions like Ubuntu also ship Plasma. The preconfigured disk image is called Kubuntu but that's still Ubuntu and counts as that in Steam's surveys which I consider the most reliable source of what actual GUI Linux users actually use.

Couple things there are many computer users that don't play games like for example me.

Enterprise Linux is not the same as a container and Gnome is flagship for all three of those enterprise flavors.

Couple things there are many computer users that don’t play games like for example me.

And in which credible statistic are those?

Enterprise Linux is not the same as a container

Of course not but you didn't specifically say desktop-only Ubuntu/... installs and Ubuntu is still very popular in containers that never see any desktop. Ubuntu also ships Plasma, flagship DE or not.

Gnome is more stable in my experience. The base Gnome without any extensions is rock solid and just works without a hitch. Problem is that it's bland as hell and not very practical. Most of the popular extensions to make the DE are also pretty solid and reliable, as gnome's extension API doesn't really allow them to break anything in any spectacular way. Plasma allows better and more powerful extensions, but they also tend to have a bigger effect on the DE's stability.

That said, I fucking hate how Gnome devs handle the extension API. Every update to Gnome disables all the extensions even if there's no breaking changes that would cause them to stop working. You gotta either manually edit their manifest files to trick Gnome into thinking they've been updated to the latest DE version, or you gotta wait for the devs to update. Every now and then they do release a breaking change that does break things too, and things get annoying. I used to maintain a relatively popular-ish, very simple Gnome extension. But eventually I got sick and abandoned because nobody's got time to deal with Gnome's extension API. I had to rewrite some basic shit for no good reason one too many times.

Ignore all the words. Gnome users live in an alternate reality.

and do it our way

Or don't do it at all because gnome can't do that.

Forget opinions, just look at the most popular distros, which one do they ship with by default?

I prefer Gnome's UX/UI, but I use KDE because they are faster to implement gaming related stuff.

I'm not sure which are the most popular distros. Mint, Fedora, some arch derivative of the day?

Ubuntu and Debian.

Agreed on debian general popularity but how many people install it on desktop/laptop? Ubuntu is hard to believe tbh, maybe ten years ago.

Really? I can't find a source that suggests anything other than Ubuntu.

What do you mean, the workflow for opening programs and arranging windows is the same as in Windows

It really isn't. Starting from only having a close button on every window, windows behaving differently, not having a panel with currently running programs, etc.

I mean yeah there are windows and you can interact with them, but that's where similarities end.

super/win+name+enter to open a program, super+arrow key to arrange or minimize, alt+tab to switch. Dragging windows to the edge is the same too

There is literally a panel with running programs, its just set to hide by default, kinda like when you set windows taskbar to auto hide

So it's really not the same workflow at all? Just this month I've explained to really smart people how to use corner tiling in windows and hotkeys, most people today don't even own a PC. For me, personally, the difference is negligible, for a lot of people it's really alien.

Idk what your mean, i literally use the exact same way to launch programms in win and gnome. Also counter anecdote, I installed ubuntu on my 65year old moms pc and she just straight up used it as well as windows. But whatever

Don't forget the OG KDE mascot Kandalf

But he's not that popular.

Yes we can!

Yes we kan!

We all know that the real MVP is Xenia

Did the Gnome people ever figure out how to put icons on the desktop yet?

There's an extension that lets you do that. Once a week it breaks and makes icons appear over other windows.

That sums up my experience with Ubuntu Gnome.

Icons on the desktop is a non-feature for most gnome users. Even my Windows desktop has been empty since XP released. If you really want desktop icons then using an extension for that should be fine, but it's silly to frame this as a failing of the "Gnome people" just because Gnome doesn't replicate the classic Windows desktop experience.

Icons on the desktop is a non-feature for most gnome users

Yeah because everyone who uses them is on KDE now.

Probably, yeah? I mean I'd hope they're not still using Gnome if desktop icons are their one wish in life...

Then why have a desktop? Why not just an app drawer or always ready terminal?

Seems like the worst of both worlds in terms of utilitarianism and aesthetics.

For all intents and purposes I don't have a desktop. It's just a wallpaper and canvas for the actual workflow. The app drawer is one keypress away, as is the terminal (and I prefer to have separate sessions for different tasks anyway). I usually see my desktop for about five seconds after bootup per day so there's not much reason to put anything else there. Think of it like the wallpaper or black background of a tiling window manager. I really don't get how this is such a crazy idea to some people. I've subconsciously used the exact same workflow since before Gnome even implemented it, just without explicit support from my desktop environment.

That's the beauty of KDE: you can make it pretty much anything you like and customize it: desktop icons or not, using the app menu or krunner, a mix of all, etc.

I think that's why it launches with the app menu open by default.

I have kde, but also don't use desktop icons

I have icons on my desktop, icons in my taskbar, and of course the menu. taskbar, always there, one click, boom! second tier apps, desktop, less used stuff, open menu.

I use KDE BTW

Whatever floats your boat. I'm using my keyboard probably 90% of the time and hitting super and typing in one to three letters followed by enter is the fastest way for me to navigate to pretty much anything including system settings and documents. Finding stuff on a desktop with more than a dozen icons is annoying to me. I move windows and switch focus with the standard keyboard shortcuts etc. It's a familiar workflow for tiling WM users and works that way out of the box, yet Gnome has been catching shit for it since v3. It used to be the disgruntled Gnome 2 userbase but nowadays it seems to be mostly people who don't use Gnome at all lol.

I love it, the three finger swipe gestures for laptops are golden too

Jesus it was pissing me off since 2017. I left Gnome in favor of KDE in 2019 You're telling me you still can't make a shortcut like a human being???

What's a desktop? Is that like a big dmenu or something?

XFCE: including it in the meme is bloat

I really don't want online accounts integration in my DE though. I must admit that I fail to see what good that could do.

I must admit that I fail to see what good that could do.

In theory the one place where you can enter your Nextcloud or whatever credentials and syncing for calendar, mails, file storage ect. happens automatically everywhere after confirming which services should connect.

It's not my personal must have feature but when it works, it's alright.

I belive nextcloud integration is there in KDE, but it don't have stuff like google account and such integrations(which is a plus for me)

The "Public" folder?

Both of them have this

Konklusion was right there.

I kame here to say this!

You're not only the one who kame according to those numbers.

On other news, KDE works, and Gnome doesnt; so that koncludes it for me

What

Huh?

You can't conclude without DE!

Amateurs

These are only the safe ones, you coward!

I like Gnome. I like KDE, too. I actually think they're both great, in their own ways, but I personally prefer Gnome.

I use KDE on desktop and Gnome with a bunch of extensions on laptop because it has good touchscreen support

I've only used KDE until recently because it's pretty familiar feeling after coming from windows, but my wife recently put gnome on her laptop and she loves it. I've used it a bit, and besides just being unfamiliar I do actually like it.

Well, you are wrong. You prefer KDE you just don't know it yet

It's such an eyesore tho

Yeah dont love how kiki the squirel looks like a child in a bikini wtf.

I see someone wants to run for president

No, they said they DON'T like it!

But could we see Konqi in a bikini. That feels more age appropriate.

@LetchLemon @MyVeryRealName who's konqi ?

The dragon

That's the mascot ambassador, a boy dragon with a headscarf and "K" horns antlers, but there's canonically an entire village valley of them, and they created Kiki.

Edit: changed terms to reflect official lore

So much more appropriate if they wore bikinis. Opposed to creating a human squirrel hybrid in their lab and slapping it in a 2 piece.

Here's some KDE lore.

https://community.kde.org/Konqi

Canonically, they hatch from eggs, but as usual for child-friendly characters, the genitalia question is not explored in the lore. Kiki is a robot representing an antropomorphic squirrel. In general, animal and robotic characters don't need to wear clothes to be considered "appropriate for all ages" as long as they don't have genitalia or sexualized antropomorphic features like boobs. However, the fact that Kiki, Konqi and Katie are canonically a boy and girls means they should not be sexualized, ever.

I don't think it's a good idea for a cyborg to go anywhere near water

In Kiki's case it seems she is canonically waterproof

*Konclusion

Mortal Kombat?

Kant you kome up with something kool

Are we sure that Gnome is the most popular? I would've expected KDE to be the most popular one, even not considering the mascots.

Gnome is the most popular DE for Fedora. Though KDE is popular enough to finally get Fedora to place it equally alongside their Gnome ISO. But I would bet Gnome has at least a slim lead ahead of all DEs.

TBF it's likely the most popular because it's the default not necessarily because it is better than KDE (or worse, they're both good just aimed at different people)

Today, which one you might choose has more to do with how you vibe with either one. So there is no "wrong" choice. But back in the early days, Gnome was the better DE. More polished and definitely more stable. I can remember the crashes and the total crash and burn of KDE from those days. That gave Gnome the leg up to becoming default for many distros.

These days. KDE Plasma is every bit as good as Gnome.

It's the most popular because it's Ubuntu's default which happens to still be the "default linux distro". Many GNOME users probably don't even know what GNOME or a DE in general is (and that's ok).

If you ask linux nerds, however, KDE generally seems more popular but that's probably because people who care about this sort of thing tend to value customization and KDE's philosophy more than GNOME's.

Source: I use KDE on Arch BTW, guess which category I fall on.

No way to get reliable numbers without telemetry but KDE's userbase is a lot louder for sure.

All three major enterprise distros use GNOME, none of them officially support KDE.

I think so too. GNOME famously doesn't prioritize customisation, which despite lots of angry complaints, still doesn't intend to change. That's because they already have a solid user base, a silent group that couldn't care less about customisation and gaming features, and mostly want it to "just work".

Think the Linux Torvalds type of person, using a workstation distro. Best thing GNOME can do is to minimize changes that break user's workflows and make sure the defaults are good.

The side effect is that they turn off their corporate machines after work and that's it for the day. They aren't going on forums to defend GNOME vs KDE arguments.

The steam deck might make KDE the most popular

With the fall of Ubuntu maybe yeah

This fanart looks problematic.

Why?

Because both characters look wildly like sexualized children.

Age

Yah, the only one that isn't creepy is the top left.

That's cause top left is official art.

Why did they pick this to put on the meme? 🤨

KDE got around to updating the theme Kpersonalizer.

Original for those who don't remember what it was like:

Jokes aside: I love KDE. Gnome is an idea that would work if you could actually do anything with it (maybe always adding extensions means they should you know make it functional).

Yep the design philosophy of "like it or fuck you" evokes Apple clearly enough. They've just cut it to the quick at this point.

ironic how the gooner one isnt the one with the foot

In case you're wondering, there are 31 explicit entries that has Konqi tag on e621.

I was going to mention that there's probably a lot of people who don't know what e621 is, but then I remembered what community I was in.

Heh. My Linux started with Ubuntu like many others. I appreciated GNOME.

Then I got confident enough to distro hop and with that cam DE hop. Can't deny KCD is just so much better for the kind of user I am.

It's just kinda nice having your computer do what you want it to do, ya know?

Mhm yeah Kingdom Come Deliverance sure is a nice game series.

lol. Yeeeeah. But I'm gonna leave that one. For Skalitz.

I'm feeling quite hungry

It's the gross stomach noise that does it for me. Like Henry shapeshifts his stomach directly against both eardrums.

I get it, bro. You're a bitch that can't even function on a meal every 48 hrs. Help yourself to this massive pot of available stew but stop at half full and refuse to eat more.

You know what? Maybe I like GNOME after all.

Stop yanking my pizzle

WTF is KCD?

KDE*

But if you'd like to learn more about our illegitimate Lord and Saviour, Henry, I'd be glad to talk. May I come in?

KDE Compulsion Disorder

Konqi nooooo 😭

Another reason why Linux fanboys are so silly.

It's just whether you grew up / are more comfortable using Windows or Mac.

I grew up on Mac OS. My first laptop was the classic translucent blue clamshell iBook running OS X Cheetah. So when I first tried Linux, I used Gnome.

I switched to Windows when I got into gaming. But then when I got a Steam Deck, I decided to finally make the change. So now I'm much more comfortable using KDE.

QED.

Idk how true that is, I grew up using exclusively macOS for 15 years, then I got my own pc with windows on it and used it for a few years before switching to Linux, KDE is easily my favorite

Grew up with windows, prefer gnome looks

It’s just whether you grew up / are more comfortable using Windows or Mac.

No, it's clearly about the amount of fan art the mascots of each ecosystem have. That is also why Overwatch is clearly the greatest game of all time.

For many of us, it was the Gnome Wars and the Devs staged their coup and took over. Because who needs to listen to your customers? You're a Dev and you know best right?

Gnome 2 was Da Bomba. Clean and fast with just enough user control to make you happy. I still miss Gnome2 some days. Then the War happened and we got Gnome3. And things spiralled into the hell that Gnome has become. I switched to KDE and I dabble in many other DEs for funsies. But never Gnome anymore.

These days, I think Cinnamon DE is about as close as you can get to Gnome2. But, even that is slowly evolving away as it must.

I grew up with Amiga and Windows and yet I prefer gnome.

I grew up on DOS with Volcov Commander and I prefer KDE

Do the results for foot_fetish apply to gnome?

"most popular"

"stable"

LOL

This must be about Gnome 2.8 when Gnome indeed was by far the most popular desktop environment on Linux.
And then Gnome 2.8 was deprecated and no longer maintained, and for years after Gnome Shell was complete and utter shit.
IMO it still is, because they have changed fundamentals like how virtual desktops work, that disrupt my workflow.

I agree Gnome is more elegant, but that's irrelevant when key fundamentals simply don't work anymore.

So to get the desktop I like to actually use, I use KDE instead.

Edit: Final release was 2.32 as u/esc correctly writes below.

Last version of gnome 2 was 2.32, I think, not 2.8.

You are right, I just remember it as using 2.8 for an extended period of time. But looking it up, 2.8 was a milestone from 2004, and 2.32 was the final release.

I switched to Linux as my main OS in 2005. So I probably started on 2.8.

Quick, someone make a mascot for KATE!

Also KDE supports window decorations under Wayland, and also a lot better IMHO.

Kate actually does have a mascot, Kate the Cyber Woodpecker

Wow, she actually looks cool!

Nice, but still no furry porn of her...

krita is right there, grab a pen

Hmmm... Don't tempt me.

Though it would be funny if I was responsible for applying Rule 35 to a second character...

I can also try my own shot at it, I'll see if I can draw something of her without getting distracted by other projects of mine. Haven't drawn anything furry/kemono related yet, but will get the cloaca treatment as I gave to the two bird VTubers (Nanashi Mumei, Dokibird) I have drawn.

Well, she's bird. I've seen too many Avali already to get freaked by a cloaca.

Meanwhile in chat...
jkh2rt;,,5,??

Why can't they just fuck?

wilbur and konqi?

yiff yiff hooray!!!

Why not Konclusion?

I definitely prefer MacOS-style desktop design, so I lean in favor of Gnome. I often use Ubuntu solely because their take on Gnome is super clean and attractive to me.

The dash. What the fuck? It would be a cool option, but I like the dock, and the extension for that doesn't work properly for me.

If you're gonna rip off MacOS then rip it off.

Maybe they have some kind of patent?

Yeah I think they're trying not to get sued for sure

We just made our KDE look like Mac. It's way more Maclike than Gnome, and actually pretty great!

Ubuntu just uses the extension though?

The dash to dock extension? That's my thinking too but dash to dock works like ass on my system, while Ubuntu's unity mods or whatever are rock solid. I dunno...

Gnome always wins on my computers

The GNOME workflow works for me. I tried KDE recently and found I kept trying to make it like GNOME and kept failing. I do miss OpenBox, though... I'm tempted to try some Quick Shell set up using labwc.

I used open box for a bit after crunchbang came out, it worked fine and was kinda cool but I still prefer an entire DE.

I'm sorry, that must be frustrating.

I guess I like KDE plasma now

Sad Katie noises.

Watching Gnome and KDE from Cinnamon 🍿😎

I wish I understood, what are those comments and characters and what do they have to do with kde or gnome?

Konqi is KDE's mascot

konqi is the green one and is the mascot of kde

kiki the cyber squirrel is the white one and is the mascot of kde's drawing app krita

the listing with numbers is how many entries with that tag there is, its from the ui of a fanart site that has a lot of nsfw

the joke is that kde is better because there is more nsfw of the mascots

Oh boy

Own configuration of window manager wins.

Lol, no, gvfs is love-hate. Especially with network drives.

I really wish they replaced KIO with something new or make it actually mount network shares similar to gvfs, this is ridiculous it’s still like that after all those years

If this is the same issue as what Elijah experienced on LTT’s most recent Linux Challenge video - the. I believe the KDE developers are (finally?) acting to fix this functionality.

I think what happened there is that the share is anonymously readable, but not writeable. So he could connect to smb://srv/share and it seemed to work, but what was actually needed is smb://user@srv/share - hard to diagnose the issue just from the video though.

It's one of the main reasons I decided not to use KDE for Linux trials at my workplace. KDE applications can use KIO with network shares and it's actually pretty great, but I/we can't stay strictly within the KDE ecosystem. GVFS is great because it provides a fallback, even for the terminal. KIO used to be able to do this too, through a GVFS compatibility layer, but development on that feature stopped.

So we're doing Cinnamon, all the Windows-like familiarity of KDE and some of the stuff from Gnome/GTK that are just better there. Hope they can reach their Wayland goals this year though, no fraction scaling is pretty bad for some laptops. On the other hand, those displays shouldn't exist in the first place...

It’s not that it’s complete dealbreaker. I manage network shares on my own via fstab and it’s fine, just not very user friendly.

Besides, what do you mean no fractional scaling? It’s supported since 6.0 and improved significantly since then with more improvements to come. Even Firefox now handles it very well (in my use). I have good time even with weird scaling factors like 180%, 155% etc

Besides, what do you mean no fractional scaling? It’s supported since 6.0 and improved significantly since then with more improvements to come. Even Firefox now handles it very well (in my use). I have good time even with weird scaling factors like 180%, 155% etc

Huh, you are right, I should check that out then, thank you! Most machines we have at work thankfully don't need it, but a while ago KDE and Gnome seemed to be the only ones implementing it in a workable way for those that do.

Gnome seems to have amnesia whenever using sftp. disconnect once? say goodbye to ALL of your bookmarked network folders even after reconnecting.

I love how you need to stretch out positives for gnome to have that many. "Uh... It's popular? And some of the applications have good names, I guess?"

Is this brainrot or am i just basic?

it's pornography

I....

Well....

Damn. Cannot argue with that logic ROFL

Are these real LLM character sheets???

what?

I actually kind of hate both.

KDE is an unopinionated Windows clone built of a shitty proprietary base. Stuff mostly works well though, I can’t deny that. It just looks and feels like crap.

GNOME development is stupid. They have a binding for every language you can imagine, but the widgets leave you up shit creek and Gnome thinks it’s smarter than you. Gnome looks pretty good, but after trying in earnest I don’t want to work with it.

It just looks and feels like crap.

But ... you can easily change how it looks?

Not really.

You’re still stuck with right aligned decorations, sandwich buttons on sidebars, no native toolbar widgets, etc.

You can do some light theming, but the overall way it works is the same.

It’s not sufficient.

You’re still stuck with right aligned decorations

Uh ... no you're not.

Here -- here's how you configure it to have all the decorations left-aligned if you want that for some reason. Took me all of 20 seconds:

sandwich buttons on sidebars

Not sure which sidebars you're talking about ... and not sure whether you're complaining about having the sandwich buttons there (and apparently not being able to get rid of them?) or if you're complaining that the sandwich buttons aren't somewhere else instead.

no native toolbar widgets

Again, not sure which toolbar you're talking about? Must be talking about some app's toolbar, right? Because if you want 'toolbar widgets' on the desktop, you could easily add an extra 'panel' at the top, call it a toolbar, and put various widgets in it.

You can do some light theming, but the overall way it works is the same.

Eh... I think you just haven't really gotten into it. You can do a lot to change how KDE works. Like ... crazy a lot. It's kind of (in)famous for being so customizable.

If you go into specifics about how you want it to work, I bet I can figure out a way to make it work like that.

no native toolbar widgets

I'm pretty sure he's talking about client-side decorations.

Never tell a Linux user you can't change something...

Proprietary base?

I think he is posting from 1999, objecting to the use of the Qt libraries under the GPL-incompatible QPL licence.

It's the best guess I have.

And indeed, KDE 1.0 didn't look all that good.

The mascot used to be way better though

Where's the 200 porn pictures of Kandalf

QT

What's your poison?

Currently I use KDE plasma but I’d like to migrate off.

I don't want my DE to have opinions. I just want it to do what I tell it to.

kde is unopinionated because youre meant to opinionate it yourself with your own opinion

KDE is unoppinionated because it’s designed to be a shitty Windows clone.

There isn’t any deep thought about how it feels.

nah theyve talked about their design

like the new WIP Ocean theme

there is deep thought

https://planet.kde.org/andres-betts-2026-05-31-what-even-is-ocean/

Is this what you’re referring to?

I’d not heard of this, and it actually sums up a lot of my issues. KDE just never felt thought out. Dolphin is basically unusable

KDE Plasma has never had a system like this to organize design around the UI. Because of this, designers haven’t really made a ton of inroads into the system and this limits users in the way that we can deliver design for them. In essence, we designers, were never organized enough to provide a proper, development-ready, graphic design that could be used for Plasma.

nah dolphin is peak

one of kdes best apps

No image album view, no column view, no file preview, and the tree view feels like it’s from 20 years ago.

It needs some love, and after using macOS Finder it’s just unusable.

image album view for folders is what the kdes Gwenview image viewer does

i came from macos and i think finder is barely usable dogshit

Finder has issues:

  • Apple abandoned 3rd party quick look plugins a while ago
  • remote connections suck
  • and it hides important things like ~/Library inconsistently (it’s not a dot file, why is it hidden?)
  • Apple added tags and forgot
  • .DS_Store

But Finder is by far the best file navigator on Windows, Linux, or Mac. You can’t honestly say it’s unusable dogshit. Cmd+G file jump is great, all the file key binds are good, solid view configurations that are all polished, inspectors, etc.

no way to get the file path of a file or directory

Alt+right click, copy as pathname

You can also right click the folder in the title bar.

I guess if I had to choose, I'd pick a sexualized girl wiþ a tail, þan a sexualized lizard wiþ human legs.

Where is þe "most popular" coming from? Is anyone able to measure þat? I also question þe implication þat Gnome is more stable; I use neiþer on desktop, but KDE on my wife's desktop is far more stable þan Gnome on my Linux phone. I wouldn't draw any conclusions from þat because... Linux phone. But still.

Hey, there's no need to be mean just because they have a þorn addiction

peak comment

Stop telling people what to do, completely unprompted even. Dick move.

Stop telling people what to do

I guess if I had to choose, I’d pick a sexualized girl wiþ a tail, þan a sexualized lizard wiþ human legs.

theyre both the kde ones

konqi the mascot of kde

kiki the mascot of krita (drawing app made by kde)