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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: 0.001s | source
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sirwhinesalot ◴[18 Sep 25 13:47 UTC] No.45289648[source]▶
We now live in a world where KDE looks nicer, more professional, and more consistent than the latest macOS. I don't know how that happened, and KDE isn't even particularly nice looking, but here we are.

For many years now KDE has focused on polish, bug fixing and "nice-to-have" improvements rather than major redesigns, and it paid off.

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GuB-42 ◴[18 Sep 25 15:24 UTC] No.45290812[source]▶
KDE is, as its name implies, a desktop environment. And it hasn't been "infected" by the "mobile" virus.

I often wondered why desktop UIs became so terrible somewhere in the 2010s and I don't want to attribute it to laziness, greed, etc... People have been lazy and greedy since people existed, there must have been something else. And I think that mobile is the answer.

UI designers are facing a really hard problem, if not impossible. Most apps nowadays have desktop and mobile variants, and you want some consistency, as you don't want users to relearn everything when switching variants. But mobile platforms, with their small touchscreens are completely different from desktop platforms with their large screens, keyboards and mice. So what do you do?

In addition to mobile, you often need to target the browser too, so: native desktop, native mobile, browser desktop, browser mobile. And then you add commercial consideration like cost, brand identity, and the idea that if you didn't change the UI, you didn't change anything. Commercial considerations have always been a thing, but the multiplication of platforms made it worse, prompting for the idea of running everything in a browser, and having the desktop inferface just being the mobile interface with extra stuff.

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fluidcruft ◴[18 Sep 25 16:40 UTC] No.45291814[source]▶
You probably mean tablets/touch input, not mobile. There was a time when things like iPad and Surface were going to dominate. iOS won that space with Android still limping along. Windows devices haven't managed to survive really and Surface seems to be retreating to laptop form. Frankly the SOC hardware universe seems to be a real technical challenge. Frankly, even Microsoft gave up trying to improve the phone hardware situation.
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1. freeopinion ◴[18 Sep 25 17:35 UTC] No.45292541{3}[source]▶
I think the small form factor of mobile is more relevant than touch, although touch is also a significant factor. App design is forced to change radically to be usable at all on tiny screens. Indeed, touch is a result of the tiny aspect of mobile.
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2. pixelready ◴[18 Sep 25 18:51 UTC] No.45293527[source]▶
Mobile form factor and touch inputs are pretty inseparable, and are so different from desktop + pointer. A lot of subtle pain points get missed because people tend to focus on one over the other. So many desktop patterns rely on hover interactions. Touch targets need to be big enough for beefy fingers (which will then cover the thing being touched). Gesture is considered normal on touch devices but not pointer ones. Reading distance differences between mobile devices and desktop ones impacts typography. And that’s just a few basic UX concerns all before you get into the weeds of WCAG and other accessibility standards.

TL;DR - your designer needs a hug