KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017) • Hacker News Board

Re: KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

#21

Post by ud_0 » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 2:51 PM UTC

gameswithgo wrote: post #5

I'm curious is anyone else feels like I do about these things. I've used linux off and on over the years, various distros, various GUIs, sometimes KDE based, sometimes Gnome, sometimes others. I've never noticed any differences that seem substantive. It just seems like a random walk around the usual gui design space. Which I think makes sense as there isn't really a whole lot to do there. Is it just me? Do other peop…

I switched to Linux/Gnome from macOS about 3 years ago. From my perspective, they're both frustrating in different ways, but I would be okay using either one. Gnome is too simplistic and opinionated, KDE is too heavy and fragile (but I also don't have a lot of experience with it).

Overall, Desktop Linux works well enough for me to live with it. A few years earlier, that was not an option if you wanted to live a relatively normal computing life without missing out on too much or spending an inordinate amount of time on keeping your system alive.

Re: KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

#22

Post by _ZeD_ » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 2:53 PM UTC

Jonnax wrote: post #20

This is quite old. I think Amarok's Qt5 port didn't get finished, and I think Elisa is the new KDE music player: https://invent.kde.org/multimedia/elisa Also CD Burning? I think even in 2017 PCs and Laptops didn't come with CD drives. Personally, I like KDE for the small touches. Like the file browser having an integrated terminal that follows the directories you're browsing. If you want to see what the KDE's Design…

According to [1] there is a "new" amarok in alpha... but I fear that the steam has gone

[1] https://amarok.kde.org/en/node/890

Re: KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

#23

Post by jrm4 » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 3:14 PM UTC

gameswithgo wrote: post #5

I'm curious is anyone else feels like I do about these things. I've used linux off and on over the years, various distros, various GUIs, sometimes KDE based, sometimes Gnome, sometimes others. I've never noticed any differences that seem substantive. It just seems like a random walk around the usual gui design space. Which I think makes sense as there isn't really a whole lot to do there. Is it just me? Do other peop…

I'll go a step further and say that these projects end up being net harmful to the Linux space precisely because they're seeking a goal that the last 10-15 years has proven that they are not good at.

The goal is something like "a unified Mac-like system space," but as people here have correctly noted, I don't think its possible to bring a bunch of developers together to create a universally "nice" space unless one of them is named Steve Jobs.

What makes it worse is that we have these two large projects with a lot of good history behind them that nonetheless have not really done anything good (in terms of a unified experience, many of the individual apps are great) recently. They have a lot of the mindshare and very little to show for it.

Obviously, developers are free to run their projects how they wish, but my wish is that they'd wake up and realize they're not Apple; but there is something they could do that would actually be helpful. Not try to work on carving out their own space -- but the opposite -- try to figure out how to create modular parts of a workspace that really work well together and across WMs and platforms.

Until then, I'll do what I've been doing, which is Openbox plus the things I need and like. I see cool things in Gnome and KDE that I'd love to have, but then they bring the rest of their baggage that just gets in the way, so no.

Re: KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

#24

Post by danans » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 3:15 PM UTC

After years of trying to make either work like I want, I discovered tiling window managers like xmonad and i3 and I haven't looked back, as I've gained so much efficiency in my work tasks.

I still use a traditional desktop environment for most browser and app tasks, but even there I end up tiling or maximizing the windows using keyboard shortcuts. Dragging overlapping windows sucks and I never want to do it again.

Re: KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

#25

Post by space_ghost » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 3:22 PM UTC

lallysingh wrote: post #7

Does anyone know what KDE activities actually are? Is there a concrete description somewhere?

They're broadly similar to Workspaces, except you can also apply different panel and desktop configurations to each Activity. From KDE: "Activities are a super-set of Virtual Desktops. They don't replace Virtual Desktops -- in fact, each Activity can have its own set of Virtual Desktops if you choose. Instead, Activities are alternative desktops, each of which can have its own wallpaper, icons, and widgets."

Re: KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

#26

Post by inetknght » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 3:24 PM UTC

munchbunny wrote: post #18

gameswithgo wrote: post #5

I'm curious is anyone else feels like I do about these things. I've used linux off and on over the years, various distros, various GUIs, sometimes KDE based, sometimes Gnome, sometimes others. I've never noticed any differences that seem substantive. It just seems like a random walk around the usual gui design space. Which I think makes sense as there isn't really a whole lot to do there. Is it just me? Do other peop…

I've used both Gnome and KDE based UI's, and yeah, I don't feel strongly about the differences, but also I've never felt like either one was actually good . They both get the job done, but they both feel designed by developers for developers, on the assumption that anything you can't figure out in the UI you'll Google or open a terminal and text editor to deal with it. Compared to, say, the iPad 2 which felt clearly…

> * they both feel designed by developers for developers*

As a developer, I disagree.

KDE's interface is often broken and/or unintuitive for what I want to do. At least it usually provides the levers if they're hard to use or find.

Gnome's interface is almost always too simplified and doesn't present the powerful levers at all unless you go digging behind the scenes and hope that an update doesn't break some "private" implementation detail.

Re: KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

#27

Post by billfruit » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 3:32 PM UTC

Anyone think that ubuntu around 2011, final days of Gnome 2, really had perfected the desktop UI experience, before all the forays into wanton novelty for noveltys sake made it the confusing mess it became later?

To think that a linux distro had the almost ideal desktop UI realised and then squandered it all away, seems puzzling now.

Re: KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

#28

Post by bmn__ » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 3:36 PM UTC

danans wrote: post #24

After years of trying to make either work like I want, I discovered tiling window managers like xmonad and i3 and I haven't looked back, as I've gained so much efficiency in my work tasks. I still use a traditional desktop environment for most browser and app tasks, but even there I end up tiling or maximizing the windows using keyboard shortcuts. Dragging overlapping windows sucks and I never want to do it again.

Don't look back, look forward. You don't need to abandon KDE over the perceived lack of a single feature. It's simply not enabled by default because tiling is esoteric.

Run `systemsettings5 kcm_keys` → KWin and (re)assign keys to the window manager actions you need. If that's not sufficient, then run `systemsettings5 kwinscripts` → Get New Scripts… → filter "tiling".

Re: KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

#29

Post by d0mdo0ss » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 3:39 PM UTC

A few months ago I switched to gnome since it supports hidpi and fractional scaling, and it's snappy enough but somehow feels bloated in everyday use (ubuntu 20.04). I tried to switch back to xfce with a recent fix for fractional scaling, but it looked fuzzy on my screen no matter the resolution, so I had to abandon that for the time being. KDE was the default at my work and I've used it for many years, probably over a decade. The article says gnome is lighter, but that's not my impression, or maybe I'm missing something with gnome?

Re: KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

#30

Post by nycticorax » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 3:43 PM UTC

billfruit wrote: post #27

Anyone think that ubuntu around 2011, final days of Gnome 2, really had perfected the desktop UI experience, before all the forays into wanton novelty for noveltys sake made it the confusing mess it became later? To think that a linux distro had the almost ideal desktop UI realised and then squandered it all away, seems puzzling now.

This. One million times this.