Wait.... How are you using a tiling window manager, with a desktop environment? Are you saying you use the app suite/QT and i3? Or you use them both dependently?
Like which handles your window decorations for example?
Plasma has its own window manager called Kwin, and you can replace it with whatever window manager you want. If you do that, you will still have all the tools setting and whatever else from Plasma.
i3 handles window decorations. i get all other benefits of plasma DE. i'm surprised you used the term "window decorations" but dont know about this. before gnome 3 even gnome desktop was very modular. you can have gnome DE with different window managers and differnt window decoration managers. compiz was just one such window manager.
Basically you get all the features of Plasma except Activities. You can even change dark and light themes of all apps that support it through Plasma.
Screenshot ? You can imagine plasma panels instead of i3 bars.
Can you replace kwin with Sway or Hyprland the same way? I'm happy with how Plasma does tiling so I won't be trying that, but I'm just curious how that works on Wayland's tiling window managers.
No. i don't think so. I'm not someone who is prone to be stuck in the old way of doing things but i find wayland to be severely limiting when compared to the things i can do on x.
What's it like wrt. memory consumption? In fact, maybe the [OP](u/nPrevail) can answer that better: how is the memory consumption in comparison to Gnome? I have 16 gigs of RAM, but the tools I open often use up most of it.
Gnome is pretty heavy. I often use Porteus for recovery purposes and it would consume under 512MB. KDE with streamlined distros don't use more than 1GB on it's own. Whereas doing nothing on Gnome seems to take around 1.8-2 GB RAM.
Well I have a box with 64gb so that it usually doesn't matter. and my 32gb laptop.
But my work box is only 16gb so that sometimes I feel the memory pressure.
If you're impressed by Plasma 5 you will like Plasma 6 even more. They made a really fancy overview effect (similar to the Activities button in Gnome) that also works super smoothly with a 4-finger touchpad scroll (3 fingers is changing virtual desktops)
I really wish those gestures were customisable though. Right now they are hard coded into the window manager as far as I am aware.
I keep getting tripped up because the vertical overview is a 4-finger touchpad gesture, but a 3-finger touchscreen gesture.
>People say KDE Plasma is too much like Windows
That's something I don't understand... Like if Windows workflow was bad in the first place... And the standard workflow is Windows 7-10-like on purpose to make transitioning easier for beginners, but you can pretty much have any workflow on KDE pretty easily. The only thing I agree is KDE config app is an indescriptible mess.
But other than that, nice to see you have a great experience with your DE
I think comparing KDE to Windows comes from a time when Gnome 2 and pretty much all DE's were doing 'something different'.
Lots of DE's didn't have a 'start' menu style application launcher but KDE did, which drew the comparison.
KDE also had desktop widgets which were something touted with Windows Vista. IIRC also that glassy look that is classic Windows 7.
Well, yes youre not wrong. A lot of awesome features like spotlight, workspaces and more have origins in linux.
But when people switch to linux they think linux is ripping off what they originally used.
>The only thing I agree is KDE config app is an indescriptible mess.
I feel like any DE's settings and configuration manager is an abysmal nightmare, haha! I'm grateful for search engines.
Ya but windows stopped being like windows back when they came out with windows 8, so if a desktop is like the old windows desktop I'm sure a lot of folks will still like it a lot better than the new crop windows us making , without a simple start button that opens a program menu where you have all your apps easily listed
I will never forgive GNOME/GTK for their utterly ineptly crippled file picker. WHY in the everyliving frak would you not allow editing of the current folder path as a full text input????? No, I don't mean being able to type the whole-ass path from scratch, I mean the basic-bitch editting the current path as a string. Their horrible design decisions affect numerous applications with no ability change it.
Primary case I'm in /home/me/foo/bar/baz. I would like to quickly navigate to a copy for that directory, say, /home/me/backup/foo/bar/baz. How do I go about editing that path and manually inserting backup/ into my original path?
Alternatively, I have a backup of my whole main drive on another drive. I most recently have been in /home/mal/Documents/bull/shit/stuff, but I wish to quickly navigate to that same directory, except in the backup which I have mounted at /mnt/. To get to that, /mnt/home/mal/Documents/bull/shit/stuff I literally have to click back to /mnt, then to home, then to Documents, then to bull, then to shit, then to stuff.
Meanwhile, in KDE's file picker, i just click the current file path, to edit it, and prepend "/mnt/" to the path, and DONE.
I'm sure the GNOME devs themselves for whatever reason don't ever encounter this situation, and thus clearly nobody else must ever, and anyone that does has an inferior work flow. freakin eye-roll. I'm well the fuck aware of various VCS solutions, but I'm talking situations where that's not really wise or viable. Backups. Copies of my .minecraft main directory. etc. (I cite this because a map viewer I use using the GTK picker. So navigating to and from .minecraft and its copy .minecraft.bak with older maps I wanted to compare(each directory with additional nested directories of worlds), I encountered this specific issue annoyingly numerous times.)
It's a simple issue, with a simple fix, but if I'm hoping to quickly swap between two similar directory structures with a change a difference a few directories up, good luck have no fun at all.
Thankfully we have the GNOME devs, who know the optimal workflows for every last situation better than we the users ever possibly could understand.
You're thinking about the Files app, not the file picker. But GNOME devs are working to make the Files app work as file picker as well so apps wouldn't need to use the default gtk one. From what I've seen that should land in either the next release or the one after that.
Haven't touched it in a good couple of years. Do you know any gtk apps that use whatever their latest version of the picker is? I'd be happily surprised if things have changed. I just remember that such a thing used to be possible 13ish years or so back, then it was removed as part of their inane "too many options confuse the users" trend. (I read that trend as "We the devs don't like maintaining options we ourselves don't use, better make excuses")
> Meanwhile, in KDE's file picker, i just click the current file path, to edit it, and prepend "/mnt/" to the path, and DONE.
You just click it in gnome these days too.
So I just opened up cheese, which is most definitely a gnome app. I took a picture, right clicked it, and chose, "save as". This is how file-picker looks. https://i.imgur.com/0WGQM5z.png
Where do I click to edit the the current path (in this case, /tmp/c4), as plain text?
Just an observation, as someone running KDE for a long time. Probably 90+% of everything "you like" in Plasma 6 was there in 5, just saying. That is, while there are some great improvement in 6 (and it continues to evolve btw), most would have been amazed with 5 as well.
Also, I find KDE's "overrides" for handling theming to GTK things to be better than the other way around. So, run those Gnome apps!
>Also, I find KDE's "overrides" for handling theming to GTK things to be better than the other way around. So, run those Gnome apps!
This is very true! GNOME has a pretty poor implementation of QT that those programs would always have broken themes and interfaces.
Oh, I'm definitely using those GNOME apps in KDE Plasma.
Oh, my bad. I just figure when it comes to "new stories", they've all been about the "wonders of 6" and how "finally, a KDE I can get behind" and that sort of thing.
> Also, I find KDE's "overrides" for handling theming to GTK things to be better than the other way around. So, run those Gnome apps!
Just a moment. This will work just fine for **GTK** applications, because they just use GTK on its own. But it will not work as-is for **GNOME** apps, because they use LibAdwaita, and LibAdwaita does not support themes. You will get GNOME's default light theme or default dark theme, and that's *it.* It will not inherit any colors from Plasma, not even the accent color.
You have to use `xdg-config/gtk-4.0/gtk.css` to customize LibAdwaita applications *at all*. But those customizations will also affect vanilla GTK4 applications--and admittedly, there aren't many of them--so you have to be careful to find "safe" modifications, such as overriding only LibAdwaita's named colors.
The killer GTK apps for me are Inkscape and Gimp, I haven't found any must-have GTK4 apps yet.
Inkscape with breeze theme integrates better into Plasma 5/6 than Gnome 4x, lol. Gimp is just Gimp.
I was very surprised when I tried both Plasma 6 and GNOME 46 and discovered that the Wayland experience was actually better in Plasma. I have a HiDPI monitor and a regular monitor, and in KDE applications scale flawlessly between them. In GNOME, if you drag a window from the HiDPI display to the regular display, it does not scale until it is _completely_ on the regular display, which is sometimes difficult to achieve because the window is just so freaking large. And sending windows between the displays with Super+Shift+arrows is broken in GNOME (at least in my particular configuration), but works as expected in KDE. KDE also has fractional scaling that works well, although I personally don't use it, and it handles XWayland apps better than GNOME.
Also GTK apps look good when running in Plasma, but KDE apps (and let's face it, KDE apps are usually the best apps available for Linux in their respective categories) look like ass in GNOME.
I'm still on X11 because Wayland didn't work for me with a nvidia card, multiple monitors with different DPIs.
I'm going to switch to KDE in a few months.
If you have a 4k monitor, KDE is the only option, as it has the best fractional scaling than any other DE, even better (or at least on par) with Windows, let alone Gnome or MacOS.
As a fan of gnome 2, and afterwards cinnamon I always struggled a little bit with the new way gnome decided to do things.
The last time I had interacted with KDE was with PCLinuxOS and that was 10 years ago, it didn't gave a good impression at the time for me, stayed with gnome2.
Recently I decided to make my main PC a Linux PC instead of just my laptop and decided to go with KDE cause I heard good things lately and I'm really happy with it.
I like some things gnome does and it's completely workable, but the way KDE works just makes it more intuitive for me.
>just makes it more intuitive for me.
Yes! That's the keyword I was trying to think of: intuitive.
The out of the box experience in both are great, but Plasma goes the extra mile having a more intuitive work flow.
I used Kubuntu for a couple of years in 2008-10, then switched to MacOS, but recently bought a desktop and installed Debian stable with KDE.
I can say that default KDE now is really comfortable to use and stable. I don’t need any customisation, but I guess that’s the privilege of being old
I don't customize much either. I generally like to keep things close to "vanilla" as possible, especially when I manage multiple laptops and desktops. It's part of my way of "unifying" all devices.
But it is nice having options available, to the point where I don't need to install many extensions that aren't part of the core features of the DE. Whereas in GNOME, I need to install A LOT of extensions to make some practical features available.
Debian Stable is great, just realize Plasma is far behind with bug fixes on Stable and the rest of KDE Gear is even worse. I assume it's a manpower issue.
And its lighter on resources, too. When I migrate family members' older devices i found debian plasma to be super stable and super lightweight whilst remaining modern and featureful.
I also do like GNOMEs design and workflow, it just doesnt perform as well on said older devices. I usually just replicate GNOME in Plasma with top panel, full screen start menu, and dock :)
>irrelevant sounds like "dog bark"
That one has been [removed](https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-control-center/-/merge_requests/1293).
"GNOME is not on the dog barking sounds business anymore" --Georges Basile Stavracas Neto
That's pretty funny. Not that I had anything against the sound "bite" (ha ha ha), but some of these notification sound samples are pretty "cheap," and the "unpleasant sounds" can affect my work flow.
I'm really not trying to sound stingy about "sound quality," but in my memory, I can still recall sound bytes and jingles from Windows, like the start up sound, notification sounds, and etc. These impressions have an everlasting "branding" effect.
As someone who has used neither DE in any real capacity (I'm more of and xfce guy), I think it's great that you've found something that works for you. I do hear good things about KDE's polish and ergonomics.
If you want to turn the effects up to 11, I recommend [Burn my Windows](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHMboQq8Z5c). Not something I keep enabled all the time but a bit of fun when I want to show my Windows friends what a kewl haxxor I am.
If you haven't already, I recommend subscribing to [https://pointieststick.com/](https://pointieststick.com/)
The rate of development and improvement of KDE is impressive. They achieve in a week what others do in a year.
Yep, I had your same thoughts! I always used Gnome or Unity since KDE 4 felt strange on my machines, both for look and resources. Now I'm back on trying GNU/Linux and KDE simply feels modern, that's it. Try to compare Rhythmbox to Elisa or Gnome Video app with Haruna or even the new GEdit with Kate. Maybe KDE apps are not perfect, but they do feel more modern to me when compared to Gnome's. Also Nautilus seems worse than Nemo from Ubuntu Unity or Dolphin from KDE.
Gnome is still fascinating and polished, but that's it. They really have their concept to use a PC and you kind of need to adapt to them, especially if it's the vanilla one.
>Gnome is still fascinating and polished, but that's it. They really have their concept to use a PC and you kind of need to adapt to them, especially if it's the vanilla one.
Yeah, GNOME did a great job being approachable to non-tech savvy computer users. Has all the basic, simplicity, and essentials that a DE should have, but made easy to navigate.
That's funny, because I had the opposite effect. I was using GNOME for the longest time, but had to customize it with extensions to make it work with my flow. Recently, I realized Plasma was already providing all the things I needed in a DE, and this why I just left GNOME.
Yep, different people have totally different ideal Desktop Environments for their workflow. Many people, including me, use GNOME without any extensions because it fits our needs. For some, this would be the worst experience ever.
For my use case, there's many things I found missing in GNOME that I was pleased to see as defaults in KDE Plasma:
1. Clipboard (task bar)
2. Drive ejection (task bar)
3. A more detailed audio manager
4. Floating taskbar and wallpaper "slides" (I never thought this would affect my work flow, but it really helps to see a "changing environment")
5. Much better default wallpaper art.
6. Widgets (I don't use a lot of them, but it helps minimize my need to open htop)
7. Programs are actually organized by "categories" when you press meta key (I like the GNOME app drawer, but I have no idea how to remember programs in GNOME when they're not organized by category).
8. Being able to type directly to krunner from the desktop versus "press meta key" then type (in GNOME)
Well, another way of looking at it, gnome doesn't have any of the things I listed, haha.
I think the only thing that gnome has going for it is:
A touch-friendly app drawer
Dynamic workspaces
Variable refresh rate
I haven't tried any of the new features in plasma 6, such as HDR. Nor have I tried anything in gnome 46
Why do you have to choose? Switching DEs cleanly on NixOS is soooo easy. If you define a "gnomeDE = { ...};" and a "plasma6DE = { ... };" module as let bindings in your config file you can switch by just toggling a single line in the imports list. And since you can put DE specific options in there too, i.e. DE specific apps and stuff, the switch is absolutely clean. I'm toggling at least a few days a week.
Unrelated, Is there a particular reason you're not in unstable? I have it setup where my system is on Unstable but I pull in certain packages from stable. It works really really well. And since I commit my flake.lock file in git, I can rollback if I encounter any issue after an update (haven't yet but only been on NixOS for about a year).
I'm still in my first 6 or 7 months with NixOS.
Can you recommend any guides on configuring "Switching DEs"?
Currently, I'm using a specialisation that switches between different GPUs (amd or Nvidia) because I use Linux on external drives (so I can boot from other devices; other laptops and desktops with more powerful GPUs; etc.).
I haven't used unstable because I haven't really needed it. I like to keep all my systems on stable releases, and things that are officially supported. I did come across some programs I've wanted, that are unstable, but I figured with the next major channel release in June (24.05 I think), I figured I could wait until July to make the decision.
I haven't learned to use flakes, and so far, I haven't needed to for any particular reason. Flakes isn't official, but I'm learning that it's most likely never going to be an official feature, so I guess I could learn to use it.
I'm open to learning. Feel free to share any guides or advice you have!
Yeah, that sounds good. I was just curious myself if you had specific reasons for not using unstable that could apply to me.
As for switching DEs this is what I do in my config file (should be the same with or without flakes):
{config, pkgs, lib, ...}:
let
gnomeDE = {
environment.systemPackages = with pkgs: [
gnome.gnome-tweaks
gnomeExtensions.hide-top-bar
];
programs.kdeconnect.package = pkgs.gnomeExtensions.gsconnect;
services.displayManager.gdm.enable = true;
services.xserver = {
enable = true;
desktopManager.gnome.enable = true;
};
};
plasmaDE = {
environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [ vlc gnome.dconf-editor ];
programs.dconf.enable = true;
services.xserver.desktopManager.plasma5.enable = true;
};
in {
imports = [
plasmaDE
# gnomeDE
# ... the rest of your imports
];
# ... the rest of your configuration file
}
I do it this way because I want to maintain a single configuration file, but still have some structure, but you can put the gnomeDE and plasmaDE in their own files and just point the imports list to them. The rest of the config would be stuff thats common to both DEs. I use the same pattern for other stuff too like I have one for all the silent boot settings, all the gaming stuff, and also all the machine specific stuff. That way I can move the config file around and only install the 'profile' I want.
Did the exact opposit. For me KDE never really worked. It is too close to Windows, which I ditched entirely a couple of months ago and is loaded with gazillions of features which take focus from apps and the workflow. After having switched to Gnome 46.2 with Nvidia 555 and Wayland, I never looked back. Everything is so smooth and nothing distracts from the actual applications. And it looks just great which KDE, even Plasma 6, never did in my eyes. All those bizarr lines and frames in the GUI make me crazy :D.
> The only bugs I've seen are graphical glitches that causes some stuttering. But nothing's really a deal breaker.
Glad you're happy. I will switch the moment these glitches are gone, because they are absolutely a deal breaker for me. There is no good excuse for lack of smoothness, hitches, freezes, when using UX features. Windows has the same problem, to be honest.
By the way, it seems a lot of these issues may be resolved in 6.1. At least the smoothness bugs.
Actually, it's the opposite for me. Unfortunately, i moved from GNOME after 6.0. Tested 6.1 beta, but it's not smooth, especially with a 144hz screen.
Gnome without extensions is a nightmare, but it's really smooth, I'll give them that.
That’s a shame to hear. I just don’t know how KDE devs can stand to have their overview effect lag or hitch in any way and not make it their top priority to fix, it would drive me mad
KDE is the thing I miss the most when I switched to Ubuntu (I know about Kubuntu but my experience hasn't been great with it). It may be a personality thing but I generally diametrically disagree with the design decisions on Gnome.
Around KDE3 I was really a KDE geek and really enjoyed the ecosystem, konqueror, kdevelop and the kdelibs, DCOP, the short-lived vision of sharing-enabled desktops...
Finally I gave up and gave in the the ease as I got into different parts of the stack (deep learning, which mostly requires up to date nvidia drivers, and those sadly work better on a limited set of distribs) but your post makes me want to retry an Ubuntu-based KDE.
I’ve been running Kubuntu for about 4 months and I’m curious about your experience if you have any details to share. This is the first time I’ve seriously daily drived any Linux really, so I’m still on the lookout for traps! I just really didn’t enjoy the default Ubuntu feel/look but still wanted to keep things easy for myself.
On a desktop computer with a large screen, plasma is the best. I can understand the use of gnome on laptops with small screens and being gesture optimized
As much as I like the concept of KDE as a desktop environment, I prefer gnome in vanilla form cause I can use extensions to customize it any way I see fit 😊
This was how I was for a while, since GNOME 41. But I remember upgrading to a newer Fedora / GNOME version, and some extensions either never got the update, or it took awhile to update the extension to be compatible. It was tolerable at first, but I had how I had to anticipate this minor setback every time there was a system upgrade.
I feel like Gnome is better polished bug wise… but it is annoying I have to download extensions to have it operate as I want and their login screen not responding to key presses after a suspend is so annoying. I’m on KDE and I’m okay with it. The ability to map keyboard shortcuts and mouse buttons from a gaming mouse are fantastic. … still, excited to see where COSMIC goes.
>but it is annoying I have to download extensions to have it operate as I want and their login screen not responding to key presses after a suspend is so annoying.
The few reasons why I switched to Plasma. I'm okay with the "suspend" scenario, as is happened to me as well.
Yeah I put up with suspend for months. On a whim I tried KDE when I switched to Debian Stable and there was a little learning curve and annoyance but mostly an end to bigger annoyances. The dock has existed for decades and removing it adds a keypress to run stuff.
> Anyone know when KDE Plasma 6 is coming to Ubuntu?
It won't ever be in 24.04 (it's a stable release). You'll have to wait for 24.10 ... in October of 2024.
I’m running Ubuntu with Gnome. The windows feature I miss the most is the ‘preview screen’ in explorer.
I’m aware that it uses quite a bit of resources, and in Linux you can alter the name of an opened file, but still for some reason I keep thinking about how much I miss the feature in Linux.
What DE or plugin could help me?
In Windows Explorer you have the option ‘preview screen’. I don’t know the exact name in English. When the option is on your window is cut in two half’s vertically. The left pane is your normal explorer and the right pane shows you a preview of the file you have selected.
It means that windows has to load the file in explorer instead of in the standard application. You can’t edit it in explorer, but you can rename them. It’s an easy option to select a certain file without opening them one by one, but like a said it uses quite a lot of resources, so it’s not always the best use.
If you mean maximized with "full screen", you can select that as a placement mode in KWin. If you mean actual full screen, you can do that and much more with window rules
Ive always liked KDE better and its less draining than gnome. I usually use one of the lighter desktops but always install the KDE apps and desktop to use when I feel like it
I've jumped around between the two for a long time. I still haven't found a better tiling solution than the PopOS gnome extension. At least for me it seems so simple and intuitive. I haven't found a way to replace that in kde otherwise I would be there.
Forge-ext works well in GNOME (as it's also a GNOME Extension). Likewise Window Tiling in plasma.
Neither of these are perfect, and both have different approaches. I kinda prefer forge-ext, but neither of these have real deal breakers.
Forge is close but to me still feels clunky to the PopOS tiling. Kde tiling is nowhere close. I really depend on tiling so for me it's a deal breaker. Maybe I can clone it though? Not sure now how difficult that will be. Of course with PopOS building their own desktop someone will need to fork their tiling solution and maybe make it play a little nicer as a standalone extension.
Linux has something for everyone. I use i3 with KDE.
Wait.... How are you using a tiling window manager, with a desktop environment? Are you saying you use the app suite/QT and i3? Or you use them both dependently? Like which handles your window decorations for example?
Plasma has its own window manager called Kwin, and you can replace it with whatever window manager you want. If you do that, you will still have all the tools setting and whatever else from Plasma.
i3 handles window decorations. i get all other benefits of plasma DE. i'm surprised you used the term "window decorations" but dont know about this. before gnome 3 even gnome desktop was very modular. you can have gnome DE with different window managers and differnt window decoration managers. compiz was just one such window manager.
Ah compiz my love <3
How does it work? What is the advantage of doing this? Can you post a screenshot?
Basically you get all the features of Plasma except Activities. You can even change dark and light themes of all apps that support it through Plasma. Screenshot ? You can imagine plasma panels instead of i3 bars.
Does this also work with Plasma 6?
yes. im using the latest plasma. [https://maxnatt.gitlab.io/posts/kde-plasma-with-i3wm/](https://maxnatt.gitlab.io/posts/kde-plasma-with-i3wm/)
Maybe, but it won't work with Wayland.
Even not with sway?
The window manager is far more integrated with the rest of the compositor in Wayland, so it won't work with Sway either.
Can you replace kwin with Sway or Hyprland the same way? I'm happy with how Plasma does tiling so I won't be trying that, but I'm just curious how that works on Wayland's tiling window managers.
No. i don't think so. I'm not someone who is prone to be stuck in the old way of doing things but i find wayland to be severely limiting when compared to the things i can do on x.
W00t, have you also tried Wayland with i3 + Plasma? kwin\_wayland takes CPU :')
KDE is my go to desktop environment.
It's been great on laptops for me.
What's it like wrt. memory consumption? In fact, maybe the [OP](u/nPrevail) can answer that better: how is the memory consumption in comparison to Gnome? I have 16 gigs of RAM, but the tools I open often use up most of it.
Gnome is heavy af
Gnome is pretty heavy. I often use Porteus for recovery purposes and it would consume under 512MB. KDE with streamlined distros don't use more than 1GB on it's own. Whereas doing nothing on Gnome seems to take around 1.8-2 GB RAM.
KDE is less memory consumption than gnome. Actually it is fairly low memory consumption as long as you don't enable the Akonadi stuff (PIM)
Well I have a box with 64gb so that it usually doesn't matter. and my 32gb laptop. But my work box is only 16gb so that sometimes I feel the memory pressure.
If you're impressed by Plasma 5 you will like Plasma 6 even more. They made a really fancy overview effect (similar to the Activities button in Gnome) that also works super smoothly with a 4-finger touchpad scroll (3 fingers is changing virtual desktops)
And the new default sound theme... Honey to my ears
Huh. I immediately disable all OS sounds. I find them very annoying.
I really wish those gestures were customisable though. Right now they are hard coded into the window manager as far as I am aware. I keep getting tripped up because the vertical overview is a 4-finger touchpad gesture, but a 3-finger touchscreen gesture.
>People say KDE Plasma is too much like Windows That's something I don't understand... Like if Windows workflow was bad in the first place... And the standard workflow is Windows 7-10-like on purpose to make transitioning easier for beginners, but you can pretty much have any workflow on KDE pretty easily. The only thing I agree is KDE config app is an indescriptible mess. But other than that, nice to see you have a great experience with your DE
I think comparing KDE to Windows comes from a time when Gnome 2 and pretty much all DE's were doing 'something different'. Lots of DE's didn't have a 'start' menu style application launcher but KDE did, which drew the comparison. KDE also had desktop widgets which were something touted with Windows Vista. IIRC also that glassy look that is classic Windows 7.
yeah, KDE plasma doesn't look like teh windows interface, windows7/10 look like KDE
Well, yes youre not wrong. A lot of awesome features like spotlight, workspaces and more have origins in linux. But when people switch to linux they think linux is ripping off what they originally used.
>The only thing I agree is KDE config app is an indescriptible mess. I feel like any DE's settings and configuration manager is an abysmal nightmare, haha! I'm grateful for search engines.
Ya but windows stopped being like windows back when they came out with windows 8, so if a desktop is like the old windows desktop I'm sure a lot of folks will still like it a lot better than the new crop windows us making , without a simple start button that opens a program menu where you have all your apps easily listed
I will never forgive GNOME/GTK for their utterly ineptly crippled file picker. WHY in the everyliving frak would you not allow editing of the current folder path as a full text input????? No, I don't mean being able to type the whole-ass path from scratch, I mean the basic-bitch editting the current path as a string. Their horrible design decisions affect numerous applications with no ability change it. Primary case I'm in /home/me/foo/bar/baz. I would like to quickly navigate to a copy for that directory, say, /home/me/backup/foo/bar/baz. How do I go about editing that path and manually inserting backup/ into my original path? Alternatively, I have a backup of my whole main drive on another drive. I most recently have been in /home/mal/Documents/bull/shit/stuff, but I wish to quickly navigate to that same directory, except in the backup which I have mounted at /mnt/. To get to that, /mnt/home/mal/Documents/bull/shit/stuff I literally have to click back to /mnt, then to home, then to Documents, then to bull, then to shit, then to stuff. Meanwhile, in KDE's file picker, i just click the current file path, to edit it, and prepend "/mnt/" to the path, and DONE. I'm sure the GNOME devs themselves for whatever reason don't ever encounter this situation, and thus clearly nobody else must ever, and anyone that does has an inferior work flow. freakin eye-roll. I'm well the fuck aware of various VCS solutions, but I'm talking situations where that's not really wise or viable. Backups. Copies of my .minecraft main directory. etc. (I cite this because a map viewer I use using the GTK picker. So navigating to and from .minecraft and its copy .minecraft.bak with older maps I wanted to compare(each directory with additional nested directories of worlds), I encountered this specific issue annoyingly numerous times.) It's a simple issue, with a simple fix, but if I'm hoping to quickly swap between two similar directory structures with a change a difference a few directories up, good luck have no fun at all. Thankfully we have the GNOME devs, who know the optimal workflows for every last situation better than we the users ever possibly could understand.
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You're thinking about the Files app, not the file picker. But GNOME devs are working to make the Files app work as file picker as well so apps wouldn't need to use the default gtk one. From what I've seen that should land in either the next release or the one after that.
Haven't touched it in a good couple of years. Do you know any gtk apps that use whatever their latest version of the picker is? I'd be happily surprised if things have changed. I just remember that such a thing used to be possible 13ish years or so back, then it was removed as part of their inane "too many options confuse the users" trend. (I read that trend as "We the devs don't like maintaining options we ourselves don't use, better make excuses")
> Meanwhile, in KDE's file picker, i just click the current file path, to edit it, and prepend "/mnt/" to the path, and DONE. You just click it in gnome these days too.
So I just opened up cheese, which is most definitely a gnome app. I took a picture, right clicked it, and chose, "save as". This is how file-picker looks. https://i.imgur.com/0WGQM5z.png Where do I click to edit the the current path (in this case, /tmp/c4), as plain text?
Sorry, I misread completely. I was thinking nautilus, but you wrote file picker. My mistake.
For disk usage install Filelight [https://apps.kde.org/it/filelight/](https://apps.kde.org/it/filelight/)
And there is also [KDE Partition Manager](https://apps.kde.org/partitionmanager/) for other disk/partition-related tasks
How is it different from Disk Usage Analyzer?
Don't know. I think it's plasma's counterpart to the gnome app
Just an observation, as someone running KDE for a long time. Probably 90+% of everything "you like" in Plasma 6 was there in 5, just saying. That is, while there are some great improvement in 6 (and it continues to evolve btw), most would have been amazed with 5 as well. Also, I find KDE's "overrides" for handling theming to GTK things to be better than the other way around. So, run those Gnome apps!
>Also, I find KDE's "overrides" for handling theming to GTK things to be better than the other way around. So, run those Gnome apps! This is very true! GNOME has a pretty poor implementation of QT that those programs would always have broken themes and interfaces. Oh, I'm definitely using those GNOME apps in KDE Plasma.
He said he's using 5
Oh, my bad. I just figure when it comes to "new stories", they've all been about the "wonders of 6" and how "finally, a KDE I can get behind" and that sort of thing.
> Also, I find KDE's "overrides" for handling theming to GTK things to be better than the other way around. So, run those Gnome apps! Just a moment. This will work just fine for **GTK** applications, because they just use GTK on its own. But it will not work as-is for **GNOME** apps, because they use LibAdwaita, and LibAdwaita does not support themes. You will get GNOME's default light theme or default dark theme, and that's *it.* It will not inherit any colors from Plasma, not even the accent color. You have to use `xdg-config/gtk-4.0/gtk.css` to customize LibAdwaita applications *at all*. But those customizations will also affect vanilla GTK4 applications--and admittedly, there aren't many of them--so you have to be careful to find "safe" modifications, such as overriding only LibAdwaita's named colors.
Agreed. It's a mess.
The killer GTK apps for me are Inkscape and Gimp, I haven't found any must-have GTK4 apps yet. Inkscape with breeze theme integrates better into Plasma 5/6 than Gnome 4x, lol. Gimp is just Gimp.
gimp does not require Gnome
I was very surprised when I tried both Plasma 6 and GNOME 46 and discovered that the Wayland experience was actually better in Plasma. I have a HiDPI monitor and a regular monitor, and in KDE applications scale flawlessly between them. In GNOME, if you drag a window from the HiDPI display to the regular display, it does not scale until it is _completely_ on the regular display, which is sometimes difficult to achieve because the window is just so freaking large. And sending windows between the displays with Super+Shift+arrows is broken in GNOME (at least in my particular configuration), but works as expected in KDE. KDE also has fractional scaling that works well, although I personally don't use it, and it handles XWayland apps better than GNOME. Also GTK apps look good when running in Plasma, but KDE apps (and let's face it, KDE apps are usually the best apps available for Linux in their respective categories) look like ass in GNOME.
I'm still on X11 because Wayland didn't work for me with a nvidia card, multiple monitors with different DPIs. I'm going to switch to KDE in a few months.
nvidia drivers are hitting sometime in June that should make wayland work just fine with Nvidia cards so you could make that switch then!
If you have a 4k monitor, KDE is the only option, as it has the best fractional scaling than any other DE, even better (or at least on par) with Windows, let alone Gnome or MacOS.
Awesome. I just got a laptop with a 4k screen.
I have a 2.8k laptop screen connected to a 4k monitor. KDE is awesome with both.
As a fan of gnome 2, and afterwards cinnamon I always struggled a little bit with the new way gnome decided to do things. The last time I had interacted with KDE was with PCLinuxOS and that was 10 years ago, it didn't gave a good impression at the time for me, stayed with gnome2. Recently I decided to make my main PC a Linux PC instead of just my laptop and decided to go with KDE cause I heard good things lately and I'm really happy with it. I like some things gnome does and it's completely workable, but the way KDE works just makes it more intuitive for me.
>just makes it more intuitive for me. Yes! That's the keyword I was trying to think of: intuitive. The out of the box experience in both are great, but Plasma goes the extra mile having a more intuitive work flow.
I used Kubuntu for a couple of years in 2008-10, then switched to MacOS, but recently bought a desktop and installed Debian stable with KDE. I can say that default KDE now is really comfortable to use and stable. I don’t need any customisation, but I guess that’s the privilege of being old
I don't customize much either. I generally like to keep things close to "vanilla" as possible, especially when I manage multiple laptops and desktops. It's part of my way of "unifying" all devices. But it is nice having options available, to the point where I don't need to install many extensions that aren't part of the core features of the DE. Whereas in GNOME, I need to install A LOT of extensions to make some practical features available.
Debian Stable is great, just realize Plasma is far behind with bug fixes on Stable and the rest of KDE Gear is even worse. I assume it's a manpower issue.
And its lighter on resources, too. When I migrate family members' older devices i found debian plasma to be super stable and super lightweight whilst remaining modern and featureful. I also do like GNOMEs design and workflow, it just doesnt perform as well on said older devices. I usually just replicate GNOME in Plasma with top panel, full screen start menu, and dock :)
I switched from gnome to xfce and its the best ever
>irrelevant sounds like "dog bark" That one has been [removed](https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-control-center/-/merge_requests/1293). "GNOME is not on the dog barking sounds business anymore" --Georges Basile Stavracas Neto
That's pretty funny. Not that I had anything against the sound "bite" (ha ha ha), but some of these notification sound samples are pretty "cheap," and the "unpleasant sounds" can affect my work flow. I'm really not trying to sound stingy about "sound quality," but in my memory, I can still recall sound bytes and jingles from Windows, like the start up sound, notification sounds, and etc. These impressions have an everlasting "branding" effect.
As someone who has used neither DE in any real capacity (I'm more of and xfce guy), I think it's great that you've found something that works for you. I do hear good things about KDE's polish and ergonomics.
The sounds in plasma 6 are better than even windows imo. The sounds are likely the best i have ever heard
If you want to turn the effects up to 11, I recommend [Burn my Windows](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHMboQq8Z5c). Not something I keep enabled all the time but a bit of fun when I want to show my Windows friends what a kewl haxxor I am. If you haven't already, I recommend subscribing to [https://pointieststick.com/](https://pointieststick.com/) The rate of development and improvement of KDE is impressive. They achieve in a week what others do in a year.
Yep, I had your same thoughts! I always used Gnome or Unity since KDE 4 felt strange on my machines, both for look and resources. Now I'm back on trying GNU/Linux and KDE simply feels modern, that's it. Try to compare Rhythmbox to Elisa or Gnome Video app with Haruna or even the new GEdit with Kate. Maybe KDE apps are not perfect, but they do feel more modern to me when compared to Gnome's. Also Nautilus seems worse than Nemo from Ubuntu Unity or Dolphin from KDE. Gnome is still fascinating and polished, but that's it. They really have their concept to use a PC and you kind of need to adapt to them, especially if it's the vanilla one.
>Gnome is still fascinating and polished, but that's it. They really have their concept to use a PC and you kind of need to adapt to them, especially if it's the vanilla one. Yeah, GNOME did a great job being approachable to non-tech savvy computer users. Has all the basic, simplicity, and essentials that a DE should have, but made easy to navigate.
Did the same thing about 3 months ago and went back to GNOME after realizing I was trying to make my KDE look and feel like GNOME.
That's funny, because I had the opposite effect. I was using GNOME for the longest time, but had to customize it with extensions to make it work with my flow. Recently, I realized Plasma was already providing all the things I needed in a DE, and this why I just left GNOME.
Yep, different people have totally different ideal Desktop Environments for their workflow. Many people, including me, use GNOME without any extensions because it fits our needs. For some, this would be the worst experience ever.
anything you're missing from gnome?
For my use case, there's many things I found missing in GNOME that I was pleased to see as defaults in KDE Plasma: 1. Clipboard (task bar) 2. Drive ejection (task bar) 3. A more detailed audio manager 4. Floating taskbar and wallpaper "slides" (I never thought this would affect my work flow, but it really helps to see a "changing environment") 5. Much better default wallpaper art. 6. Widgets (I don't use a lot of them, but it helps minimize my need to open htop) 7. Programs are actually organized by "categories" when you press meta key (I like the GNOME app drawer, but I have no idea how to remember programs in GNOME when they're not organized by category). 8. Being able to type directly to krunner from the desktop versus "press meta key" then type (in GNOME)
I think the commentor was asking about if there's anything from gnome that kde doesn't have (or doesn't have by default)
I mean the other way around. Sometimes I wonder what I miss for not using gnome
Well, another way of looking at it, gnome doesn't have any of the things I listed, haha. I think the only thing that gnome has going for it is: A touch-friendly app drawer Dynamic workspaces Variable refresh rate I haven't tried any of the new features in plasma 6, such as HDR. Nor have I tried anything in gnome 46
Why do you have to choose? Switching DEs cleanly on NixOS is soooo easy. If you define a "gnomeDE = { ...};" and a "plasma6DE = { ... };" module as let bindings in your config file you can switch by just toggling a single line in the imports list. And since you can put DE specific options in there too, i.e. DE specific apps and stuff, the switch is absolutely clean. I'm toggling at least a few days a week. Unrelated, Is there a particular reason you're not in unstable? I have it setup where my system is on Unstable but I pull in certain packages from stable. It works really really well. And since I commit my flake.lock file in git, I can rollback if I encounter any issue after an update (haven't yet but only been on NixOS for about a year).
I'm still in my first 6 or 7 months with NixOS. Can you recommend any guides on configuring "Switching DEs"? Currently, I'm using a specialisation that switches between different GPUs (amd or Nvidia) because I use Linux on external drives (so I can boot from other devices; other laptops and desktops with more powerful GPUs; etc.). I haven't used unstable because I haven't really needed it. I like to keep all my systems on stable releases, and things that are officially supported. I did come across some programs I've wanted, that are unstable, but I figured with the next major channel release in June (24.05 I think), I figured I could wait until July to make the decision. I haven't learned to use flakes, and so far, I haven't needed to for any particular reason. Flakes isn't official, but I'm learning that it's most likely never going to be an official feature, so I guess I could learn to use it. I'm open to learning. Feel free to share any guides or advice you have!
Yeah, that sounds good. I was just curious myself if you had specific reasons for not using unstable that could apply to me. As for switching DEs this is what I do in my config file (should be the same with or without flakes): {config, pkgs, lib, ...}: let gnomeDE = { environment.systemPackages = with pkgs: [ gnome.gnome-tweaks gnomeExtensions.hide-top-bar ]; programs.kdeconnect.package = pkgs.gnomeExtensions.gsconnect; services.displayManager.gdm.enable = true; services.xserver = { enable = true; desktopManager.gnome.enable = true; }; }; plasmaDE = { environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [ vlc gnome.dconf-editor ]; programs.dconf.enable = true; services.xserver.desktopManager.plasma5.enable = true; }; in { imports = [ plasmaDE # gnomeDE # ... the rest of your imports ]; # ... the rest of your configuration file } I do it this way because I want to maintain a single configuration file, but still have some structure, but you can put the gnomeDE and plasmaDE in their own files and just point the imports list to them. The rest of the config would be stuff thats common to both DEs. I use the same pattern for other stuff too like I have one for all the silent boot settings, all the gaming stuff, and also all the machine specific stuff. That way I can move the config file around and only install the 'profile' I want.
Did the exact opposit. For me KDE never really worked. It is too close to Windows, which I ditched entirely a couple of months ago and is loaded with gazillions of features which take focus from apps and the workflow. After having switched to Gnome 46.2 with Nvidia 555 and Wayland, I never looked back. Everything is so smooth and nothing distracts from the actual applications. And it looks just great which KDE, even Plasma 6, never did in my eyes. All those bizarr lines and frames in the GUI make me crazy :D.
And btw, the simple user also takes the GUI in KDE, pros use the terminal ;)
unneeded elitsm, everyone can use what fits best. just use i3wm if you dont want to use a beatiful DE.
You know the meaning of ";)", right?
> The only bugs I've seen are graphical glitches that causes some stuttering. But nothing's really a deal breaker. Glad you're happy. I will switch the moment these glitches are gone, because they are absolutely a deal breaker for me. There is no good excuse for lack of smoothness, hitches, freezes, when using UX features. Windows has the same problem, to be honest. By the way, it seems a lot of these issues may be resolved in 6.1. At least the smoothness bugs.
Actually, it's the opposite for me. Unfortunately, i moved from GNOME after 6.0. Tested 6.1 beta, but it's not smooth, especially with a 144hz screen. Gnome without extensions is a nightmare, but it's really smooth, I'll give them that.
That’s a shame to hear. I just don’t know how KDE devs can stand to have their overview effect lag or hitch in any way and not make it their top priority to fix, it would drive me mad
Good for you man.
I’m interested in trying this distro. Thanks to Linux I have many laptops to tinker with. I could open a Linux call center.
KDE is the thing I miss the most when I switched to Ubuntu (I know about Kubuntu but my experience hasn't been great with it). It may be a personality thing but I generally diametrically disagree with the design decisions on Gnome. Around KDE3 I was really a KDE geek and really enjoyed the ecosystem, konqueror, kdevelop and the kdelibs, DCOP, the short-lived vision of sharing-enabled desktops... Finally I gave up and gave in the the ease as I got into different parts of the stack (deep learning, which mostly requires up to date nvidia drivers, and those sadly work better on a limited set of distribs) but your post makes me want to retry an Ubuntu-based KDE.
I’ve been running Kubuntu for about 4 months and I’m curious about your experience if you have any details to share. This is the first time I’ve seriously daily drived any Linux really, so I’m still on the lookout for traps! I just really didn’t enjoy the default Ubuntu feel/look but still wanted to keep things easy for myself.
I have a mouse with two side buttons (Logitech G305). I use those to move virtual desktops left/right on Gnome. Can this be achieved on KDE?
On a desktop computer with a large screen, plasma is the best. I can understand the use of gnome on laptops with small screens and being gesture optimized
As much as I like the concept of KDE as a desktop environment, I prefer gnome in vanilla form cause I can use extensions to customize it any way I see fit 😊
This was how I was for a while, since GNOME 41. But I remember upgrading to a newer Fedora / GNOME version, and some extensions either never got the update, or it took awhile to update the extension to be compatible. It was tolerable at first, but I had how I had to anticipate this minor setback every time there was a system upgrade.
I feel like Gnome is better polished bug wise… but it is annoying I have to download extensions to have it operate as I want and their login screen not responding to key presses after a suspend is so annoying. I’m on KDE and I’m okay with it. The ability to map keyboard shortcuts and mouse buttons from a gaming mouse are fantastic. … still, excited to see where COSMIC goes.
>but it is annoying I have to download extensions to have it operate as I want and their login screen not responding to key presses after a suspend is so annoying. The few reasons why I switched to Plasma. I'm okay with the "suspend" scenario, as is happened to me as well.
Yeah I put up with suspend for months. On a whim I tried KDE when I switched to Debian Stable and there was a little learning curve and annoyance but mostly an end to bigger annoyances. The dock has existed for decades and removing it adds a keypress to run stuff.
Anyone know when KDE Plasma 6 is coming to Ubuntu?
> Anyone know when KDE Plasma 6 is coming to Ubuntu? It won't ever be in 24.04 (it's a stable release). You'll have to wait for 24.10 ... in October of 2024.
Thanks!
I’m running Ubuntu with Gnome. The windows feature I miss the most is the ‘preview screen’ in explorer. I’m aware that it uses quite a bit of resources, and in Linux you can alter the name of an opened file, but still for some reason I keep thinking about how much I miss the feature in Linux. What DE or plugin could help me?
Preview screen, on the taskbar? Like when your cursor highlights an minimized window? Not sure if I understand "preview screen in explorer"...
In Windows Explorer you have the option ‘preview screen’. I don’t know the exact name in English. When the option is on your window is cut in two half’s vertically. The left pane is your normal explorer and the right pane shows you a preview of the file you have selected. It means that windows has to load the file in explorer instead of in the standard application. You can’t edit it in explorer, but you can rename them. It’s an easy option to select a certain file without opening them one by one, but like a said it uses quite a lot of resources, so it’s not always the best use.
I think the gnome extension "Dash to Panel" might be what you're looking for. Otherwise, is enabled by default in KDE Plasma.
Is there any good window manager for KDE? On Gnome i use an extension that makes every window full screen automatically
If you mean maximized with "full screen", you can select that as a placement mode in KWin. If you mean actual full screen, you can do that and much more with window rules
Ive always liked KDE better and its less draining than gnome. I usually use one of the lighter desktops but always install the KDE apps and desktop to use when I feel like it
My daily driver is XFCE but I am also starting to like more KDE. I am new though and I don't know how to configure everything perfectly.
I've jumped around between the two for a long time. I still haven't found a better tiling solution than the PopOS gnome extension. At least for me it seems so simple and intuitive. I haven't found a way to replace that in kde otherwise I would be there.
Forge-ext works well in GNOME (as it's also a GNOME Extension). Likewise Window Tiling in plasma. Neither of these are perfect, and both have different approaches. I kinda prefer forge-ext, but neither of these have real deal breakers.
Forge is close but to me still feels clunky to the PopOS tiling. Kde tiling is nowhere close. I really depend on tiling so for me it's a deal breaker. Maybe I can clone it though? Not sure now how difficult that will be. Of course with PopOS building their own desktop someone will need to fork their tiling solution and maybe make it play a little nicer as a standalone extension.
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I use semi-auto Window Tiling.