this post was submitted on 07 May 2024
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Linux
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Man.... I'm doing to switch to Linux full time soon. I really love the Windows 10 desktop interface. (Don't judge me) It's flat. It's fast. It's intuitive. It's got good ergonomics.
KDE allows me to reproduce that to a certain point using third party extensions. However, KDE plasma has way, way too many configurable options. And I've had my whole interface break just by changing the themes to the ones provided by default. There's too much stuff to configure. It breaks easily too and trying to come back often means nuking your whole home directory and start over. And when you go use someone else's PC, you're almost certain they've modified their desktop to a point you can't even recognize anything.
Gnome is simple to a fault. What you see is what you get. The user is limited to what they can configure but your environment stays the same and you get the same experience from one PC to another. You know what to expect. And it just fucking works.
This is what Linux needs. One single user experience for all. It needs a champion to sell it to normal less tech savvy people. As much I love KDE and QT, Gnome is the way to go.
Well there’s a simple thing you are overlooking. You could just not theme Kde with third party themes and extentions and stuff like kvantum themes. It wouldn’t break, just like gnome. Still if you do decide to change stuff its going to be fine most of the time. The beauty of Kde is that there is the option to change stuff, but you aren’t required to.
KDEs default layout is really beautiful and well put together, just like gnome is.
Oh and don’t forget to take backups of your /home. Thats good practice for every desktop environment.
The config files of the major desktop environments have become a mess though. Plasma absolutely shits files all over
~/.configand/.local/sharewhere they sit mingled together with the config files of all your other applications and most of it is thoroughly undocumented. I've been in the situation where I wanted to restore a previous state of my Plasma desktop from my backups or just start with a clean default desktop and there is just no straightforward way to do that, short of nuking all your configurations.Doing a quick find query in my current home directory, there are 57 directories and 79 config files that have either plasma or kde in the name, and that doesn't even include all the
/.config/*files belonging to plasma or kde components that don't have it in their name explicitly (e.g.dolphinrc,katerc,kwinrc,powerdevilrc,bluedevilglobalrc, ...)It was much simpler in the old days when you just had something like a
~/.fvwmrcfile that was easy to backup and restore, even early kde used to store everything together in a~/.kdedirectory.Yes!!!! Thank you!
KDE doesn't even need me to use plugins to break though. Just messing with the themes that are delivered with KDE by default is enough to break it.
That really shouldn’t be happening, make sure to file a bug report if it’s the core themes!
Hasn’t happened to me in the years i have used KDE.
Which theme and what did you do? I've never seen breeze break.
The last time I broke Plasma with themes, was because they weren't compatible anymore. They could do better with the store, though, there is a lot of stuff which doesn't work anymore.
There's also XFCE and LXQt, if you want simple, easy-to-use environments.
My elderly, non-techy mum has been using XFCE over a decade across three different distros (Mint, Xubuntu, Zorin) and her experience has been consistent all these years, with no major issues or complaints. If my mum can use Linux just fine - so can anyone else (who don't have any specific/complex hw/sw requirements that is). I don't see how much further intuitive it needs to get.
KDE, Gnome, XFCE, LXQt etc all have their own place and audience. There's no need to have one experience for all - in fact, that would be a huge detriment, because you can never satisfy everyone with a one-size-fits-all approach. Take a look at Windows itself as an example - the abomination that was the Start Menu in Windows 8 (and the lack of the start button) angered so many, to the point that Microsoft had to backtrack some of those design decisions. Then there was the convoluted mess of Metro and Win32 design elements in Win 10, and finally the divisive new taskbar in Win11... you're never going to make everyone happy. And this is where Linux shines - all the different DEs and WMs offer a UX that suits a different audience or requirements. And we should continue to foster and encourage the development of these environments. Linux doesn't need to be like Windows.
What I'm saying is, Linux needs a champion. It needs a default DE to be the face of Linux everywhere if we want to advertise it and make it to mainstream. Too many different options will confuse people.
If you want your environment to be consistent between desktops, keep it mostly stock. The default KDE themeing and setup is pretty damn similar to Windows 10, and I've kept it stock ever since I started using it ~1 ½ years ago.
Sure. But the problem with KDE is just how much stuff you can configure. It's too much and it's prone to breaking things.
Instead of clicking the "disagree button" (downvote) please take the time to reply with your opinion. Downvoting is for things that don't deserve discussion. This post doesn't deserve to be hidden.
Now, my take:
I love GNOME's UX/UI because it's amazingly intuitive for me, but it's underlying tech is inferior to KDE, for gaming purposes. That's why I use KDE, but I miss GNOME every day.
Yes! That's how I feel as well.
To me, Gnome 2 was the best user experience ever in Linux. I've used Mate for a long while after Gnome 3 came out because I found it unusable initially.
As a dev, QT was a dream to work with. And it works so well across multiple platforms.
I wish there was a combination of the two.
You most certainly can customise it, the previous version of Nobara had GNOME looking like windows. Not only can, but need to. Try starting out from default GNOME, and then compare it to what comes with distros. It's essentially unusable if you don't spend a lot of time and effort to customize it in order to have the basic functionality you'd expect coming from Windows.
GNOME is bad, and even if it wasn't, you most certainly don't need a one true DE. If you want that, you can go right back to win or mac.
It’s actually really funny you say that since starting out with default gnome is actually what got me to stick with Linux. I tried out Ubuntu style gnome and tried stuff like dash to panel and dash to dock but found it either unstable or hated it. Vanilla gnome is what got me to be at peace lol. I thought I didn’t like it at first but then it just suddenly clicked once I got over that. Calling it bad is just rude.
Oh man. I have to agree with you there. I've been using Ubuntu for so long I forgot how bad Gnome 3 is ootb. Ubuntu really brought some good quality of life improvement to the DE with their own modifications.
But I still stand by my argument that we need one desktop to be the star of Linux if et want more people to adopt it and for it to become mainstream. Giving most people too many options can confuse them.
Honestly, if you want one simple DE for everyone it should probably be XFCE. Dead simple to use, feels vaguely familiar to Windows users, not overly complicated.
KDE is heavily customizable, Gnome is very opinionated, and tiling WMs don't adhere to orthodox UI patterns. Those are all suboptimal if you want something usable by the absolute widest range of users.
Someone recommended Linux Mint's Cinnamon also.
There's also Pantheon from Elementary OS that I really really liked. But it's missing a few features in my opinion.
Mind you, the real winner is of course Android. It has a consistent, easy to learn interface and a wide range of applications that integrate nicely.
And we don't need to speculate; it has already won and is the true face of Linux for the masses. Plenty of young people don't even own traditional computers anymore and do everything on their smartphone or tablets.
And that's why this entire discussion is really just a form of fan wank; we don't need to find a unified UI for Linux because it has already been found and has a massive market share. You may not like it but this is what peak performance looks like.
Everything else can be as complicated, janky, or exotic as it wants because it doesn't matter.
We're talking about desktop environments.
The comment reads a bit like corporate-speak and or an advertisement.
Folks also don't need to be protected from themselves, because people perfectly capable of governing themselves once they figured out how plugins work.
One could read from this that plugins should be moderated better, maybe with automatic checks.
Try Linux Mint Cinnamon