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KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

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Re: KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

#41

Post by gh-throw »

prewett wrote: post #37
gh-throw wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought they started going to hell when they had that botched too-early integration of (resource-sucking, to add insult to injury) PulseAudio, in... '08? '09? I remember it was back when Flash was still big, and opening Flash content on that Ubuntu release would, IIRC, crash X , reliably, because of PulseAudio, in addition to its general bugginess, lots of audio stuff that had "just worked" for years suddenly being…

PulseAudio was the last straw that pushed me to get a Mac. When I switched to Ubuntu, wifi worked, sleep (and more to the point, wake) on my T42 worked, and audio worked. Each release after that something would break, and but you couldn't really work around PulseAudio very well.

Yeah, I had no idea PA was even a thing (and I guess it kinda wasn't yet, which is part of why the release was so rough) so that was a rude surprise when my whole system just... broke, on upgrade, in a ton of ways that they had to have known about. Especially when it was over audio, which was the one part of Linux that hadn't given me any trouble whatsoever since like 2002. I still kinda hold a grudge against Ubuntu and PA over that (in the case of PA it's also because, I'm pretty sure between that and SystemD, Poettering and I have very different ideas of what an appropriate level of engineering design-quality is for fundamental system components, and what quality design looks like—in fact I'd say he's the main reason I've become more distant from Linux over the last ~decade)

Re: KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

#42

Post by pantalaimon »

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.

Gnome 2 got forked as Mate, you can still have that very same Desktop Experience in 2021, complete with Compiz.

Re: KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

#43

Post by prewett »

throwaway8581 wrote: post #34
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.

If I recall correctly it didn't have a dock. Everyone seems to have settled on the dock being the best paradigm for managing open apps, and launching favorites, for most users. You might disagree, but the ux people at Apple, Microsoft, Google, Gnome, and KDE seem to think it's the best approach for the vast majority of users.

Microsoft doesn't have a dock does it? It's not in my Windows 10 installation, which has this weird combo of Awesome Bar + lag and Start Menu. Unless maybe it's an option I'm not aware of (as I actively try to avoid time in Windows)

I don't really trust GNOME and KDE to have done actual UI research. Maybe Google did, but given the Android experience, I strongly doubt it.

So that leaves Apple as believing in the dock, Microsoft with their task bar thing they've had ever since Win95, and everyone else copying Apple. So it might be the settled approach, but "best" seems like it is really overselling it. It seems to me everyone beside Microsoft thinks that Apple's approach is good enough that they can't think of a better one. (Which is fine by me, I like the dock as long as it hides properly)

Re: KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

#44

Post by ip34162 »

prewett wrote: post #37
gh-throw wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought they started going to hell when they had that botched too-early integration of (resource-sucking, to add insult to injury) PulseAudio, in... '08? '09? I remember it was back when Flash was still big, and opening Flash content on that Ubuntu release would, IIRC, crash X , reliably, because of PulseAudio, in addition to its general bugginess, lots of audio stuff that had "just worked" for years suddenly being…

PulseAudio was the last straw that pushed me to get a Mac. When I switched to Ubuntu, wifi worked, sleep (and more to the point, wake) on my T42 worked, and audio worked. Each release after that something would break, and but you couldn't really work around PulseAudio very well.

PipeWire (from the guy behind Gstreamer) is coming. Seems like it won't be anything like PulseAudio. The future seems exciting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PipeWire

Re: KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

#45

Post by munchbunny »

inetknght wrote: post #26
munchbunny wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

I'm not so sure that we're saying different things. I didn't mean it as a compliment, more as an explanation. In general developers aren't good at designing UX (not their job), and in general developers are used to often byzantine UX, including falling back to terminal rituals, and both UI's feel (to me) like they're 80% of the way there and left that way because of the tacit understanding that there's always the terminal and text configs.

Re: KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

#46

Post by jp_sc »

lallysingh wrote: post #7

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

KDE activities are separated instances of all your desktops. So you can have a set of desktops with open applications, background images, etc. for "Work", and other for "Personal", for example.

Re: KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

#47

Post by bmn__ »

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…

> I think Elisa is the new KDE music player

Just installed it. Holy fuzzy fuckballs, what a punch in the gut. There are icons, but no buttons and menus. Can't figure out how to add a music file, so the program fails at its fundamental task. Disabled icons are not greyed out and have no tooltips. 20% of the space is taken away by some blue-green bar with a big honking picture of a CD. The separator widgets between the columns don't change the mouse cursor into a left-right double headed arrow.

What were they thinking? This can't possibly be HIG compliant. Is everyone at the helm asleep? This would never have passed as official project during era KDE 3.

Re: KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

#48

Post by ip34162 »

throwaway8581 wrote: post #34
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.

If I recall correctly it didn't have a dock. Everyone seems to have settled on the dock being the best paradigm for managing open apps, and launching favorites, for most users. You might disagree, but the ux people at Apple, Microsoft, Google, Gnome, and KDE seem to think it's the best approach for the vast majority of users.

Ubuntu MATE, which looks like GNOME 2, has option to enable dock.

https://ubuntu-mate.org/features/panel/

Linux Mint has a MATE flavor, so it too might have it.

Re: KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

#49

Post by ip34162 »

inetknght wrote: post #26
munchbunny wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

KDE recently improved it's interface.

https://kde.org/announcements/plasma/5/5.21.0/

If anyone want to try the latest KDE Plasma, KDE Neon has it on top of a stable Ubuntu LTS base.

https://neon.kde.org/

Re: KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

#50

Post by ip34162 »

macksd wrote: post #12
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…

My preferences aren't religious-strong, but I have enough of a preference that I installed KDE Plasma on Pop! OS instead of the Gnome-base default. And I've struggled to get the network manager working in KDE which has been a nuisance and never a problem on distros who ship KDE as the default - so there's at least some importance in a distro's default, even if others are available. I've been known to pull up a Gnome…

Try KDE Neon. It has the latest Plasma on top of stable Ubuntu LTS.

https://neon.kde.org/

Also KDE Connect is awesome for integration with android phones. It's available in non-KDE distros too. Available on Fdroid too.

https://kdeconnect.kde.org/

https://f-droid.org/packages/org.kde.kdeconnect_tp/

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