Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

ocsmag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 85 posts

Re: KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

#31

Post by tetraca »

mikece wrote: post #10

Is it really still an either/or choice between KDE and Gnome? I'm not a Linux expert but I thought there were more options than just these two. The article seems like it presents a false dichotomy.

Besides KDE and GNOME (and some GNOME forks like Cinnamon), none of the other choices are particularly close to a decent full desktop experience. They are generally either limited in nature or require you to be one of those people that likes to dig around for hours cobbling together scripts and adjusting the minutiae of scattered, poorly documented config files exactly to their specification. I have certainly done all those things, but of all the people I know nobody else actually wants to basically fight with their machine like that. They would rather want a useful suite of easily discoverable applications that they can use right now, and a couple ways to personalize their machine in a cosmetic manner.

Re: KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

#32

Post by gh-throw »

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 fiddly and broken, and absurd levels of memory & processor cycle use for PA (I'm not sure whether PulseAudio ever got those under control, or we just started using faster computers so no-one cares about the audio subsystem sucking up tens of MB of memory while idle, anymore).

Flash was still big enough that there's no possible way they didn't know they were crashing with it. Zero chance no-one at Canonical had tried it, and discovered the problem. Released it anyway.

Re: KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

#33

Post by ptsneves »

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 disagree. Gnome3 for me is perfect. I think tastes are tastes but gnome 3 gives me the function as well aesthetics.

The zoom out functionality to show all windows open is essential given i have a lot of windows open at the same time. Alt-tab icons are a huge cognitive load.

Re: KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

#34

Post by throwaway8581 »

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.

Re: KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

#35

Post by johannes1234321 »

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…

It depends a bit on what you do and use. If you primarily use a terminal, Firefox and thunderbird there isn't much of a difference between those. Yeah, taskbar etc look a bit different but not much.

If you switch between KDE and Gnome apps (kedit vs gnome-edit, kmail vs gnome evolution, KDE dolphin vs. Gnome nautilus, kmines vs. Gnome mines game ...) you see more of the differences in App Design principles.

Re: KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

#36

Post by troyvit »

lallysingh wrote: post #7

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

KDE Activities are a little bit like virtual desktops. If you set up 4 virtual desktops you can tab between them and keep specific stuff on each desktop. With Activities you hit a command key and you get a new set of desktops. It's almost like logging into a new, empty session but you can switch back to a previous activity easily.

I used to use the same laptop at work as at home, so I added a Home activity. When I was done with work I'd hit [windows key] tab and work would disappear from my desktop and all my home stuff would be there.

Re: KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

#37

Post by prewett »

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…

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.

Re: KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

#38

Post by ip34162 »

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.

Ubuntu MATE has the GNOME 2 look. Linux Mint has a mate flavor too I think.

Re: KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

#39

Post by danans »

bmn__ wrote: post #28
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".

> Don't look back, look forward. You don't need to abandon KDE over the perceived lack of a single feature.

It's not a single feature, tiling window managers are an entirely different paradigm that fit my programming workflows so much better. The constraints they impose are actually a good thing for me.

I did say that I use a traditional desktop environment for tasks that are not driven by a text-based environment, although in a way that completely hides all desktop environment provided screen widgets, rendering the differences between KDE, Gnome, XFCE, etc moot. I handle window switching with things like Alt-Tab, which pretty much work the same in every environment.

At some point if I switch to KDE, I'll definitely pick up your suggestions though!

Re: KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

#40

Post by rodelrod »

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 agree that was a local maximum, but I'd say peak Linux-on-Desktop was Ubuntu 16.04 with Unity 7. I'm hoping that Gnome 3 + Pop Shell will take us to the next peak, but except for the awesome tiling we're still below the 2 previous maximums in the "everything-just-works" department.
Post reply on HN