For people who already tried both, what’s the reason you’re sticking with GNOME or KDE as your desktop environment?
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I found KDE to be cleaner, they work extremely hard on making GTK apps look like native Qt apps for example. Or how tray Icons (which need a plug in on Gnome) look and behave. On KDE they feel native, Gnomes plugins make them look foreign.
So weirdly enough KDE is imho the cleaner of the two.
I use KDE. I found GNOME annoying and extemely opinionated. I also got turned off by it when I asked a question on mastodon like a year ago about an issue I was having with GNOME and an actual GNOME dev replied to me and essentially said I was using the DE wrong. basically I wasn’t using it the way the GNOME devs use it.
I always find it quite funny that when talking about KDE, your type of people always talk negatively about Gnome instead of just saying why you like KDE. It just reminds me of the little children I work with.
fine. KDE is more customizable, more configurable, more solid, better wayland support, doesn’t break scripts or addons when updated, and the devs nor the users (i.e. you) don’t have conniption fits if you knock it. I swear GNOME users are just like Omarchy users. heaven forbid you knock their poor choices.
You almost did it! Congrats, big steps. Not a gnome or KDE user tho… <3
The opinions of Gnome are not a match for mine.
KDE let’s me get really specific on the things I want to, and its well supported.
Just that simple for me!
One adapts to me.
The other requires me to adapt to it.
KDE doesn’t adapt to you. You adapt KDE to yourself.
it lets me
Gnome is simple and clean. It gets out of my way and functions the way I expect a modern DE to function.
Before:
- Gnome 2 was great
- Gnome 3 was terrible
- KDE 4 was terrible
Today: KDE.
Why not Gnome:
- It’s missing basic features.
- General new users startup is:
- searching online to try and fix things
- 50% chance of it working.
- 50% chance of it not working because the fix doesn’t work on your version of gnome and having to find another fix
- Common recommendation for missing features (to use extensions) is a non-starter since the extensions break after every update, so every update you need to go back through the general new users startup steps above.
Why KDE:
- It has all the basic features by default, and a bunch of extra stuff.
- General new user process is:
- looking through settings and changing the 2-3 they care about
- looking through features, trying them out to see which ones you want to use, turning on/off the 2-3 you care about
- Never needing to look through or remember the other settings, because your computer is already set up for you.
Future:
- Gnome: more of the same, likely basic features missing until specific people are removed (could be 5-10 years, then another few years of catching up).
- KDE: Will continue making updates and consolidating similar features where it makes sense.
- Cosmic: Will continue sanding off rough edges and fill in last remaining missing features. Will probably surpass Gnome for 90% of user’s needs in a year. Will probably be trading blows with KDE in 3 years and will surpass them if KDE ever makes any missteps.
KDE just works. The few things I want to change I can. GNOME by default is further away from what I want and you have to get extensions that break with updates to change anything.
GNOME expects the user to adapt to the workflow its developers have in mind. It’s the desktop environment that should adapt to me, not the other way around.
Plus, I love customization and theming. But GTK app developers create angry websites where they try to shame me for it.
Gnome. Sublime flow, very polished. Simply works.
KDE can be OK but it is very overloaded on customization, not nearly as polished, and honestly I dislike that style it upholds. IMHO.
I’m running Plasma at the moment. I actually prefer three look out Gnome and I think I would use it if my home computer was used for anything productive. It’s mainly used for gaming though and Gnomes main design doesn’t quite flow as well while gaming on a dual screen setup.
It’s just easier to be able to see the task bar and all open programs (and sys tray) on my second monitor all the time instead of having to go through a hot cornet or hitting the super button.
Sure, this could be fixed through the use of addons (like Ubuntu has by default for instance) but these tend to break on new versions of Gnome while Plasma just keep working.
My preferred setup while running Gnome was the stock adwaita theme, dag to panel, arc menu and whatever that sys tray addon was called.
If I could have the same look over in Plasma I’d be pretty happy tbh but I haven’t really made the effort since it just works the way it is and doesn’t look bad doing it either.
I’m really easily distracted and have things to do when I use my home PC(s). So gnome is really the only thing I can reliably set up and not spend all my time customising. Also, Ubuntu was my first distro (tbh it was Kali Linux but we don’t talk about my larp era) and I liked the DE from that.
Its not like I don’t customise it mind you, but that’s limited to changing the default wallpaper, installing blur my shell and dash to panel, then adding custom icons, usually Tela circle. After that though I don’t touch anything in the DE. If I’m on a laptop, I go full Ubuntu and put the dock on the left vertical side of the screen
In comparison I once spent hours customising KDE to look and sound like windows 98, only to realise I didn’t like it, to change it to something completely different 3 more times. I did not pass the assignment I was meant to be doing. Its fun but I’ll do anything to procrastinate.
Gnome always felt too basic and minimalist. KDE feels powerful and like I can do anything I want. On KDE I don’t ask myself “can i do this?”, I ask myself “how do I do this?”
I got tired of “customizing” everything and just wanted to get work done. GNOME is the default on many distros, so I learned the intended workflow instead of fighting it. Now I can just install a distro and be productive immediately instead of spending time tweaking things.
KDE doesn’t need customizing. My parents use KDE and have never opened the settings dialog. They are productive.
Why do you think it needs customizing?
I interpreted the question less about kde vs gnome, and more about kde or gnome vs other desktops. Maybe OP intended the former now that I read it again. I used to have heavily personal setups of DWM or CWM back in the day, with lots of small scripts to cover some functionality, but now I just want the “default” because the OS itself stopped being my hobby. Nothing against KDE, I just found GNOME to be more polished out of the box and stayed.
Nothing against KDE, I just found GNOME to be more polished out of the box and stayed.
I see. No problem. Just personal preference. I thought that KDE had unreasonable defaults compared to GNOME or something, hence the question about customising.
KDE looks modern, has features I didnt even know I wanted. Whatever I can think of wanting it’s either already there or I make a post on the fourm and its there in a month.
When I had an issue with an update removing something that I liked. I made a post and KDE devs added a toggle so I could keep the functionality I had before. Even though it was a minor thing they could have told me not to worry.
I’ve stuck to KDE because it’s more customizable and the devs don’t try to actively remove features from updates. Gnome might be a cleaner experience, but I don’t want to have to search for alternatives when my favorite gnome extension gets unexpectedly killed by an update.
KDE appears to be much more stable in that regard in that they’re actively trying (Union) to make themes more resilient over time.