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KDE is now my favorite desktop

(kokada.dev)
892 points todsacerdoti | 2 comments | 18 Sep 25 12:17 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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mcdonje ◴[18 Sep 25 13:30 UTC] No.45289463[source]▶
Just switched over from gnome. Overall, I'm happy.

Gnome is configurable, but in a way that isn't really well integrated. It seems buggy to me, but I think it's because my preferences aren't standard.

For instance, I like having my dock on the left, and I like top bar stuff to be in the dock, so the dock is the only thing that can take up screen space, and I like the dock to disappear when I'm not using it.

Simple, right? Can't do it in the regular configuration. Can do part of it in tweaks, which is a separate configuration app, but then some of it requires extensions. So, that's 3 places to go to

What's it called when hiding complexity makes it more complex?

So, that gets me there, but then the dock fails to hide half the time on zoom calls. And when I unlock the screen, I can see the empty space where the top bar used to be for a quick flash before the full sized app window goes back to where I left it.

So far, I don't have those issues with KDE. I don't like the annoying and krappy branding with the launcher icon and more than half the apps having a K in the name, but you can change the launcher icon and use whatever apps you want.

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kccqzy ◴[18 Sep 25 13:45 UTC] No.45289624[source]▶
> Can do part of it in tweaks, which is a separate configuration app, but then some of it requires extensions.

I'm not sure why you think requiring extensions is a bad idea. I have tried out at least 20 GNOME extensions (and kept maybe a third), and I appreciate the flexible underlying architecture to allow extensions to flourish. With extensions, the same GNOME can have Windows XP style taskbars or Mac-style docks or i3-style tiling or anything in between.

Certainly it would be a more refined experience if the core developers took care of every single possible customization users could want under the sun, but at some point it's more effective to outsource that to other developers. Either that or you end up with Apple-style highly uncustomizable experience designed by a UX designer, which is not what I want.

Extensions are a pragmatic choice.

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1. mcdonje ◴[18 Sep 25 14:01 UTC] No.45289826[source]▶
Extensibility can be nice, but the experience has a lot of friction. If you want something that isn't bog standard, you need to get or make an extension.

Making one is more work than what I can do from basic configuration settings in KDE. I want to spend my time on other projects. The marketplace suffers from the same problems as most marketplaces. Plenty of unmaintained extensions. No guarantees of quality. Now I need to do research on extensions instead of just changing a configuration setting.

The existence of extensions allows gnome devs to figure they don't have to support basic features because someone will make an extension for it.

Extension configurations don't live in the same place as standard configurations.

The experience is fragmented and has friction.

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2. pmontra ◴[18 Sep 25 15:48 UTC] No.45291144[source]▶
Well, I never wanted something standard so I always configured my desktop. My current GNOME desktop looks more like KDE than GNOME. I gave a try to KDE in 2014. It seems that it has been the wrong time to be there. I switched to GNOME Flashback (the one that looked like GNOME 2) and updated to 3 only when there has been the right extensions to make the desktop look like what I want it to be. Neither Apple nor Microsoft figured out what I want, so I use something else. Actually Microsoft have been closer to that with XP and 7 but it's Windows. I migrated to Linux in 2009.