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!
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.
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)
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!
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.
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)