When saying it deserves “all” the criticism, I might have been hyperbolic
I agree with most of what you said.
The keep it simple philosophy I agree with, but there are a few UI decisions, a few missing features I couldn’t wrap my head around. They tend to be rectified in the end because it’s common sense, but it takes a very long time and it can be frustrating. I’m sorry my memory is shit so I only remember the sentiment and don’t have specifics. I do have one recent example, I needed to change a very simple shortcut. The system doesn’t allow it and it feels arbitrary.
Extensions are really great. Some are absolute gems, and they tend to work perfectly. But the fact some are almost mandatory to have sane default is an issue. Especially when you have multiple devices.
I don’t think most people want a useless popup telling you the program has launched (or the window is activated, what is it again?), popup which once clicked won’t even open said program.
The extensions graveyard is hard to see though. I had recently a good one that wouldn’t be ported to latest gnome, killing my linux tablet workflow.
and can anyone tell me what the app menu with icons in seemingly random order is for?
I’ve used KDE for 4 years and mostly liked it, but I had tons of issues, and very few with Gnome.
KDE users I know your experience might be different but I’m telling you how it went for me. Gnome, while imperfect in this regard, has been much better. I tried Plasma 6 when it came out and it was pretty much the same for me, but I will give it another try at one point.
I remember looking at some point, and Gnome had roughly 4x the number of developers that KDE had. If you want the best (most stable, most well tested, most feature full, etc.) programs, you basically have to use some Gnome programs. That was one of the deciding factors that pushed me to go with Gnome. If I was going to have to use Gnome programs anyhow, and they worked best with Gnome, then I thought I should use Gnome. My experience was that Gnome programs don’t really play well with KDE, but that KDE programs generally work OK on Gnome.
I really like the customizability of KDE, but I like many of the defaults of Gnome. Unfortunately, if you don’t like some of Gnome’s defaults, it’s real pain in the ass to change them. Personally, even though I liked a lot of Gnome’s defaults, I absolutely hated some other ones. If it weren’t for extensions there’s no way at all I could use it. Luckily, some of the biggest misfeatures are so widely recognized that there are dozens of extensions to choose from to fix them. OTOH KDE’s customizability led to some issues too. I remember having some weird interactions between things because settings A, B and C don’t necessarily work well together. But, at least those settings are built into the desktop environment, and you’re not relying on some random dude’s hobby project for a critical system setting.
At the moment, I’m pretty happy with Gnome, and most days it just gets out of my way and lets me do what I want to do. That’s something I never ever got with Windows. It was always a pain in my ass. And, it’s something that was only ever 90% true with OSX. Great defaults, but that last 10% is a real pain in the ass. Gnome’s extensions let me get much closer to 100%. I have to admit though, that I do dread the day that I have to upgrade it and all the extensions break.
You seem to have a really balanced point of view and that’s good. I wanted to like KDE but on the other hand it reads as windows 2000 to my eyes and it bothers me. I did like some things about the interface but overall it felt too busy for me. I hadn’t tried it in years until the recent plasma update and people raving about it and its customizability convinced me to give it another shot. One of the first things I did was try to customize the top bar and task bar to be cleaner. It crashed several times very quickly. That’s a really bad first impression. The bugs I experienced immediately were as many as I’d seen in years of GNOME experience.
In a perfect world though, yes, GNOME would be more customizable, particularly the overview mode. I do not like it at all. On the other hand, it’s not so bad I wouldn’t just live with it if I didn’t have other options. I do though. To launch any app not common enough to put on my dock, I use ulauncher. It’s not the best but it usually works well as an alfred-style launcher app.
I hated macs until OSX and since then I’ve hated windows more. Just mentioning because I’m sure someone will read what I’ve written and think I’m a Mac guy. Which was true for a bit but I’ve grown to dislike macs a lot as well. Their OS is still better than windows though!
Out of curiosity: why is it you don’t like the overview? That’s one of my favorite aspects of Gnome, and the first thing I tried to replicate in KDE
Edit: I do customize it a bit with extensions though. For example when I start typing and the search bar is immediately focused. And a few other things, like middle click to close windows
What I dislike about the overview is that it takes over the whole screen and also feels a little sluggish. I like the ulauncher loads really quickly and on top of the current UI, blocking virtually nothing from view. Also I like having a few bells and whistles that ulauncher has, like the ability to type a quick math problem and it functions like a basic calculator.
Indeed I see how the “take over the whole screen” could be annoying.
It does simple math as well though! As for the sluggishness I don’t notice it. You can speed up animations with “Just perfection”, but again an extra extension (although this one is very well maintained)
The second to last time last time I tried it, when I had all the trouble with crashing, it was in a vm. I think it was on fedora. It was a pretty current version at the time. Maybe 6 months ago. Then a few days ago I installed it as an alternate DE on the current version of pop os. I had some bizarre scaling issues. Didn’t check the version that time. Got frustrated and immediately uninstalled it.
When saying it deserves “all” the criticism, I might have been hyperbolic
I agree with most of what you said.
The keep it simple philosophy I agree with, but there are a few UI decisions, a few missing features I couldn’t wrap my head around. They tend to be rectified in the end because it’s common sense, but it takes a very long time and it can be frustrating. I’m sorry my memory is shit so I only remember the sentiment and don’t have specifics. I do have one recent example, I needed to change a very simple shortcut. The system doesn’t allow it and it feels arbitrary.
Extensions are really great. Some are absolute gems, and they tend to work perfectly. But the fact some are almost mandatory to have sane default is an issue. Especially when you have multiple devices. I don’t think most people want a useless popup telling you the program has launched (or the window is activated, what is it again?), popup which once clicked won’t even open said program. The extensions graveyard is hard to see though. I had recently a good one that wouldn’t be ported to latest gnome, killing my linux tablet workflow. and can anyone tell me what the app menu with icons in seemingly random order is for?
I’ve used KDE for 4 years and mostly liked it, but I had tons of issues, and very few with Gnome.
KDE users I know your experience might be different but I’m telling you how it went for me. Gnome, while imperfect in this regard, has been much better. I tried Plasma 6 when it came out and it was pretty much the same for me, but I will give it another try at one point.
I remember looking at some point, and Gnome had roughly 4x the number of developers that KDE had. If you want the best (most stable, most well tested, most feature full, etc.) programs, you basically have to use some Gnome programs. That was one of the deciding factors that pushed me to go with Gnome. If I was going to have to use Gnome programs anyhow, and they worked best with Gnome, then I thought I should use Gnome. My experience was that Gnome programs don’t really play well with KDE, but that KDE programs generally work OK on Gnome.
I really like the customizability of KDE, but I like many of the defaults of Gnome. Unfortunately, if you don’t like some of Gnome’s defaults, it’s real pain in the ass to change them. Personally, even though I liked a lot of Gnome’s defaults, I absolutely hated some other ones. If it weren’t for extensions there’s no way at all I could use it. Luckily, some of the biggest misfeatures are so widely recognized that there are dozens of extensions to choose from to fix them. OTOH KDE’s customizability led to some issues too. I remember having some weird interactions between things because settings A, B and C don’t necessarily work well together. But, at least those settings are built into the desktop environment, and you’re not relying on some random dude’s hobby project for a critical system setting.
At the moment, I’m pretty happy with Gnome, and most days it just gets out of my way and lets me do what I want to do. That’s something I never ever got with Windows. It was always a pain in my ass. And, it’s something that was only ever 90% true with OSX. Great defaults, but that last 10% is a real pain in the ass. Gnome’s extensions let me get much closer to 100%. I have to admit though, that I do dread the day that I have to upgrade it and all the extensions break.
You seem to have a really balanced point of view and that’s good. I wanted to like KDE but on the other hand it reads as windows 2000 to my eyes and it bothers me. I did like some things about the interface but overall it felt too busy for me. I hadn’t tried it in years until the recent plasma update and people raving about it and its customizability convinced me to give it another shot. One of the first things I did was try to customize the top bar and task bar to be cleaner. It crashed several times very quickly. That’s a really bad first impression. The bugs I experienced immediately were as many as I’d seen in years of GNOME experience.
In a perfect world though, yes, GNOME would be more customizable, particularly the overview mode. I do not like it at all. On the other hand, it’s not so bad I wouldn’t just live with it if I didn’t have other options. I do though. To launch any app not common enough to put on my dock, I use ulauncher. It’s not the best but it usually works well as an alfred-style launcher app.
I hated macs until OSX and since then I’ve hated windows more. Just mentioning because I’m sure someone will read what I’ve written and think I’m a Mac guy. Which was true for a bit but I’ve grown to dislike macs a lot as well. Their OS is still better than windows though!
Out of curiosity: why is it you don’t like the overview? That’s one of my favorite aspects of Gnome, and the first thing I tried to replicate in KDE
Edit: I do customize it a bit with extensions though. For example when I start typing and the search bar is immediately focused. And a few other things, like middle click to close windows
What I dislike about the overview is that it takes over the whole screen and also feels a little sluggish. I like the ulauncher loads really quickly and on top of the current UI, blocking virtually nothing from view. Also I like having a few bells and whistles that ulauncher has, like the ability to type a quick math problem and it functions like a basic calculator.
Indeed I see how the “take over the whole screen” could be annoying.
It does simple math as well though! As for the sluggishness I don’t notice it. You can speed up animations with “Just perfection”, but again an extra extension (although this one is very well maintained)
What version of KDE did you try on what distro?
The second to last time last time I tried it, when I had all the trouble with crashing, it was in a vm. I think it was on fedora. It was a pretty current version at the time. Maybe 6 months ago. Then a few days ago I installed it as an alternate DE on the current version of pop os. I had some bizarre scaling issues. Didn’t check the version that time. Got frustrated and immediately uninstalled it.