KDE is now my favorite desktop

And yet people still complain about some inconsistencies in UI.

These people should be forced to use the hair-covered-gum-on-the-floor style UI experience that Windows has become and then perhaps they get to have an opinion.

There's a hint of cat urine mixed in too.

There's two types of desktops: the ones people complain about, and the ones nobody uses.

I can’t stand those smug one-liners — they flatten reality instead of reflecting it.

Reality is... often-times the best things are often unused. And if these things were hypothetically used... there'd be significantly less complaints than the status quo.

I find KDE still worse than both Windows 11 and macOS. Sorry, but the UI is just such a mash of margins, borders and icons that it looks downright janky in a way that even Win11 doesn't.

Um, Windows 11 still hasn’t moved all the necessary utilities and administrative panels over to the windowing toolkit Microsoft introduced in 2012, and MacOS 26(??) is… hideous.

KDE the desktop is consistent. The problem is the applications aren't. It's completely possible to run a GNOME desktop without a single QT app, it's near impossible to use KDE without any GTK apps. And there are so, so many great libadwaita apps coming out these days. So on KDE you still end up with an inconsistent mash up of toolkits and styles.

Which parts of Windows 11? Because there are still double digit different context menus in there, on recently developed built-in applications (introduced in 8 onwards). KDE is 1000x more consistent than that and has been that way for a long time now.

It still has weirdly inconsistent margins in places but compared to the disaster that is the jumble of different UIs in Windows that's nothing.

macOS before Tahoe, sure, but now? Have you looked at the screenshots where people layered different fullscreen apps on top of each other and the rounded corners look like a stack of cards because they're all different? It's a complete disaster.

You could power all those fancy new AI datacenters with Steve's spinning skeleton.

Why are there 2 context menus, multiple places to change settings, and a file explorer that is somehow a worse experience to use than one they had in XP?

All the while they develop and push a product that screenshots what you are doing so that AI can "assist" you. Not to mention pushing ads and news and free to play games.

Maybe the margins or icons aren't what you'd prefer, but you're being intellectually dishonest pretending that there is any uniformity in their product let alone even a single iota of care or interest in the experience the user has with their product.

Even Windows 11 is more refined and consistent in its design. (well, in the parts that are modern, which...shouldn't it be damning that even with those legacy parts it's still better designed?)

Both DE have tools to make the UI toolkits to adapt to the DE, GTK with breeze theme and qt with libawaita theme

Sure but they look pretty bad.

That's completely backwards. KDE provides consistent styling and window controls across a wide range of toolkits. GNOME, on the other hand, is incapable of this, particularly on Wayland.

It's sad because I really like the aesthetics and user experience of the GNOME desktop and its applications. However, the inconsistent user interface for non-GNOME applications is becoming a deal breaker as more of them transition to Wayland. These applications have no choice but to create their own title bars and other UI elements, resulting in a mishmash of different looks, controls, and fonts. Many of them don't even include shadows around the windows because they aren't sure if they should. As a result of all of this, many third party applications look hideous on GNOME.

As much as I want to continue using GNOME, I'm increasingly drawn to KDE with each passing day due to this issue. I rely on applications like Kitty Terminal, mpv, and WINE. They all suffer from this issue on GNOME, but not on KDE. Ultimately, if I have to choose between a desktop environment and third-party applications, I will prioritize the applications. I think many others would do the same.

There are 4 (or 5?) volume control UIs in Windows 11.