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KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

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Re: KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

#71

Post by benttoothpaste »

gh-throw wrote: post #32
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.

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…

My introduction to PA was a bit funny. After the fateful Ubuntu upgrade the sound was there but it was also interspersed with regular periods of silence. In other words, it was pulsing. Since the cause of this behavior was called Pulse Audio I really thought this is intentional and not a bug...

Re: KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

#72

Post by o-__-o »

bscphil wrote: post #67
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.

One of the things I really like about modern KDE is that I'm able to recreate exactly that experience in an updated desktop environment with an excellent compositor. Only two differences in my case: 1. I've forgone the bottom bar entirely in favor of merging everything into an icon-only taskbar at the top. But it's still got all the same features as the traditional Gnome 2 desktop (including the iconic 4-panel worksp…

YUGE problem 3. KDE dynamically generates desktop configuration, making it extremely difficult to modify programatically. If I want to configure all of these settings by default (say on new user login), I have to parse the existing config and use those settings to extend my desktop.

D-bus may solve this but it is a headache

Example: https://github.com/ryanpcmcquen/linuxTweaks/blob/master/.kde...

Re: KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

#73

Post by throwaway8581 »

bscphil wrote: post #69
throwaway8581 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read my other comment in this thread. The Windows taskbar he almost the exact same behavior as the Mac OS dock.

Windows invented the taskbar, so far as I know, and their initial implementation only showed the icons: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/88/Windows_1_Bar... The macOS dock distinguishes itself aesthetically precisely by not being a taskbar with other functions and features. Every other taskbar implementation, even the ones that use icons (an approach that predates the Apple dock), sees it as important to n…

Yes but the Windows 7 taskbar became very similar in function to the Mac OS dock. The behavior in previous versions was different, showing each window as a separate entry and not merging the app switching and quick launch mechanisms.

It’s true the Windows taskbar also does other things. But that’s not really my point. Gnome 2 didn’t have a component that acted like a dock.

Re: KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

#74

Post by toyg »

garaetjjte wrote: post #59
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.

>To think that a linux distro had the almost ideal desktop UI realised and then squandered it all away, seems puzzling now. Hard to say how much truth is in this story, but there was some speculation that this was caused by Microsoft. They started to make some noise about Linux desktop infringing their patents, and while Novell (who was contributing to KDE) signed patent-sharing deal, neither Red Hat nor Canonical (b…

Considering how KDE largely kept chugging at the traditional metaphor, I find it hard to believe.

Re: KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

#75

Post by blackrock »

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.

Exactly. Modern Gnome interface on Ubuntu is complete junk.

Is my laptop a wannabe tablet or something?

I thought Windows 10 desktop was bad. But then, there’s Gnome that is worse.

Re: KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

#76

Post by fomine3 »

throwaway8581 wrote: post #52
prewett wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

The Windows task bar these days behaves almost exactly like the Mac OS dock and has since Windows 7. The main difference is if you click on an application with multiple windows open, it pops up a window selector (tip, ctrl+click to cycle through the windows instead) instead of whatever Mac OS does (some combo of bring up the main/latest-used window of the application). You can enable the Vista and earlier behavior—li…

Well. I believe Windows Taskbar is most sophisticated Dock implementation.

Re: KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

#77

Post by pjmlp »

kmarc wrote: post #8

I found it interesting that they compare CD burning software and a music player. In 2017 I am not sure how relevant these software were... I myself haven't used CDs for around 10 years now. And apart from my love of ncmpp, I would also suppose the majority of desktop users would listen to music from a streamer service. I'd rather had a look on the Settings / configuration dialogs, file pickers (as it's been mentioned…

Around here buying CDs is still quite common.

Strangely people like to keep around for years to come the music that they own.

Re: KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

#78

Post by SirLotsaLocks »

mustermannBB wrote: post #55
macksd wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My problem with KDE has essentially been the same now for years. To me, it feels too fragile.

I know exactly what you mean, my personal tolerance is higher so I don't care as much but I think everything being customizable also makes it less solid feeling.

Re: KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

#79

Post by Darmody »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #57
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.

I'm still on Unity, and will probably delay update for a long time because I just cause use Gnome 3. It's not for lack of trying, but it requires to many plugins to be just usable, and then they break, some features is missing in nautilus or other shit. I don't want to fight with my desktop manager. I have work to do.

I was in the same place as you but I broke my 16.04 and I was "forced" to upgrade.

Now I use Pop_OS with dash panel and it does the job. I use it on the bottom you can put it on the left side to imitate Unity. It's not the same but it's usable.

Now I can't recommend linux to anyone, though. I'm not going to explain everyone that they're going to install some extensions that may crash after an update if they want to be able to, let's say, see a bar with all your opened applications, which you can't do in Gnome.

Re: KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

#80

Post by Darmody »

bmn__ wrote: post #47
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…

Welcome to Plasma KDE. Visually bloated by default.

I always say everything looks like a quick sketch made after a brainstorm.

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