KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017) | Hacker News Reader

KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)

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36 pointsjhvkjhk84 comments

Anyone think that ubuntu around 2011, final days of Gnome 2, really had perfected the desktop UI experience, before all the forays into wanton novelty for noveltys sake made it the confusing mess it became later?

To think that a linux distro had the almost ideal desktop UI realised and then squandered it all away, seems puzzling now.

This. One million times this.

I thought they started going to hell when they had that botched too-early integration of (resource-sucking, to add insult to injury) PulseAudio, in... '08? '09? I remember it was back when Flash was still big, and opening Flash content on that Ubuntu release would, IIRC, crash X, reliably, because of PulseAudio, in addition to its general bugginess, lots of audio stuff that had "just worked" for years suddenly being fiddly and broken, and absurd levels of memory & processor cycle use for PA (I'm not sure whether PulseAudio ever got those under control, or we just started using faster computers so no-one cares about the audio subsystem sucking up tens of MB of memory while idle, anymore).

Flash was still big enough that there's no possible way they didn't know they were crashing with it. Zero chance no-one at Canonical had tried it, and discovered the problem. Released it anyway.

PulseAudio was the last straw that pushed me to get a Mac. When I switched to Ubuntu, wifi worked, sleep (and more to the point, wake) on my T42 worked, and audio worked. Each release after that something would break, and but you couldn't really work around PulseAudio very well.

Yeah, I had no idea PA was even a thing (and I guess it kinda wasn't yet, which is part of why the release was so rough) so that was a rude surprise when my whole system just... broke, on upgrade, in a ton of ways that they had to have known about. Especially when it was over audio, which was the one part of Linux that hadn't given me any trouble whatsoever since like 2002. I still kinda hold a grudge against Ubuntu and PA over that (in the case of PA it's also because, I'm pretty sure between that and SystemD, Poettering and I have very different ideas of what an appropriate level of engineering design-quality is for fundamental system components, and what quality design looks like—in fact I'd say he's the main reason I've become more distant from Linux over the last ~decade)

PipeWire (from the guy behind Gstreamer) is coming. Seems like it won't be anything like PulseAudio. The future seems exciting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PipeWire

There was an LWN article about PipeWire [1] a while back. Among the interesting parts of the article was an explanation for the PulseAudio debacle, and why PipeWire likely doesn't have the same problem. Basically, PulseAudio exercised several kernel APIs that had existed in ALSA for a long time, but had not been used widely. Hence it uncovered a ton of bugs in device drivers that were not tested against applications using these function calls before. By now, all those bugs are fixed because PulseAudio is widely used. PipeWire is using mostly the same APIs as PulseAudio and Jack, so it's not going to have the same troubles as PulseAudio.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26327779

Eh. PulseAudio is nothing like PulseAudio. People hated PA when it was forced into distros before it was ready, and still had many bugs. That PA doesn't exist any more and most of the issues have been ironed out for years. PulseAudio can do a lot more things than ALSA ever could.

(Yes, obviously at least one person reading this will still have intractable issues with PulseAudio, but there are exceptions to every rule. By and large it just works and has been a great solution for Linux for close to a decade now.)

My introduction to PA was a bit funny. After the fateful Ubuntu upgrade the sound was there but it was also interspersed with regular periods of silence. In other words, it was pulsing. Since the cause of this behavior was called Pulse Audio I really thought this is intentional and not a bug...

I disagree. Gnome3 for me is perfect. I think tastes are tastes but gnome 3 gives me the function as well aesthetics.

The zoom out functionality to show all windows open is essential given i have a lot of windows open at the same time. Alt-tab icons are a huge cognitive load.

We had all this with Gnome 2, although you had to apt-get install it.

A lot of the compiz stuff still blows things away today. But truthfully, while I liked it, I didn't need it.

The cube was over the top, but I did install it every time :)

I agree. GNOME 3 stays out of my way.

Good dynamic virtual desktop.

Windows key (or Alt-F1) to see all open windows.

Windows keys + typing to start an app.

I don't understand why Tweaks is not part of GNOME vanilla, but it's easy enough to install.

I have to work on Windows and Mac OS when working for some customers and that is an absolutely miserable experience for me.

If I recall correctly it didn't have a dock. Everyone seems to have settled on the dock being the best paradigm for managing open apps, and launching favorites, for most users. You might disagree, but the ux people at Apple, Microsoft, Google, Gnome, and KDE seem to think it's the best approach for the vast majority of users.

Microsoft doesn't have a dock does it? It's not in my Windows 10 installation, which has this weird combo of Awesome Bar + lag and Start Menu. Unless maybe it's an option I'm not aware of (as I actively try to avoid time in Windows)

I don't really trust GNOME and KDE to have done actual UI research. Maybe Google did, but given the Android experience, I strongly doubt it.

So that leaves Apple as believing in the dock, Microsoft with their task bar thing they've had ever since Win95, and everyone else copying Apple. So it might be the settled approach, but "best" seems like it is really overselling it. It seems to me everyone beside Microsoft thinks that Apple's approach is good enough that they can't think of a better one. (Which is fine by me, I like the dock as long as it hides properly)

The Windows task bar these days behaves almost exactly like the Mac OS dock and has since Windows 7. The main difference is if you click on an application with multiple windows open, it pops up a window selector (tip, ctrl+click to cycle through the windows instead) instead of whatever Mac OS does (some combo of bring up the main/latest-used window of the application). You can enable the Vista and earlier behavior—listing all open windows and not grouping by application—but I imagine very few people do.

Well. I believe Windows Taskbar is most sophisticated Dock implementation.

The Microsoft taskbar has always had the most prominent feature of the dock: Allowing you to organize and launch apps from a bar on the left/right/bottom of your screen. Prior to Windows 7 though, you could only add shortcuts to the taskbar and when you launched an app from that shortcut a wholly separate taskbar button would appear.

Starting with Windows 7, Microsoft merged the functionality of launching apps into the taskbar buttons. This way, when you "pin" an app to the taskbar and then click on the pinned item, the pinned item became the taskbar button which represented the running app. This is how the Mac dock works. I think that the only major feature of the Mac dock that Microsoft doesn't offer is "recent apps" but I could be forgetting something since I haven't used Windows for work in a while.

In the end, as per usual, Microsoft lets you have it both ways. If you want a dock you can leave the taskbar configured as default (grouping taskbar buttons and collapsing them into a single button) or you can turn that off and have the original taskbar functionality. If you add something like 7+ Taskbar Tweaker you can even ungroup them, drag and drop taskbar buttons to re-organize them and enable "middle click" to close the window represented by the taskbar buttons like you would with browser tabs.

When I moved my workstations/work laptop all to Manjaro/XFCE I was happily surprised to find that XFCE taskbar has all the features of 7+ Taskbar Tweaker. I don't know what XFCE's design philosophy is, but if I had to guess it's "Implement all the desirable features of Windows in a minimalist fashion and add features for power users."

Ubuntu MATE, which looks like GNOME 2, has option to enable dock.

https://ubuntu-mate.org/features/panel/

Linux Mint has a MATE flavor, so it too might have it.

Not Microsoft[1], not KDE[2], and not Google [3]. Gnome's "dock" is only visible when you go into the "expose" mode at the top left corner [4], making its behavior very different from an Apple style dock. To be honest I have no idea what you're talking about. The only org that has "settled" on a dock being the best paradigm is Apple, and that's simply what they've done for decades. It's hard to imagine them reconsidering their ways.

Perhaps by "dock" you are referring to using an icon-based taskbar rather than one that also contains the window title? That's not what most people mean by a dock.

[1] https://cdn.windowsreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/win...

[2] https://kde.org/announcements/plasma/5/5.21.0/plasma-dark.we...

[3] I don't think it would be fair at all to call ChromeOS's taskbar a dock. The icons are centered like a dock, but they're in a full-width bar that also contains many other buttons and indicators. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c9/A_screenshot_...

[4] https://www.gnome.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/overview.pn...

Read my other comment in this thread. The Windows taskbar he almost the exact same behavior as the Mac OS dock.

Windows invented the taskbar, so far as I know, and their initial implementation only showed the icons: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/88/Windows_1_Bar...

The macOS dock distinguishes itself aesthetically precisely by not being a taskbar with other functions and features. Every other taskbar implementation, even the ones that use icons (an approach that predates the Apple dock), sees it as important to not waste space and provide indicators and useful widgets on the same bar.

The "dock" approach is distinct in that it contains only large friendly application buttons, and doesn't use the full width of the screen. The thin taskbars common to other operating systems which also frequently use icons to switch applications shouldn't be considered docks, if for no other reason than that they predate Apple's approach. As you pointed out in your other comment, clicking on one of the icons doesn't even do the same thing in Windows as on macOS, and the task switcher part of the taskbar is the most comparable thing between taskbars and Apple's dock.

> Windows invented the taskbar

Maybe, though it was probably inspired by a merger of the dock, which was not introduced by Apple but by NeXT in NeXTstep 1.0 (well, before 1.0, really), and the graphical shell menu/status bar in MacOS which MacOS had long before it had a dock, which it didn't get until OSX; the Windows task bar approximately merges those functions (but doesn't also serve as an application menu bar the way the MacOS one does.)

Yes but the Windows 7 taskbar became very similar in function to the Mac OS dock. The behavior in previous versions was different, showing each window as a separate entry and not merging the app switching and quick launch mechanisms.

It’s true the Windows taskbar also does other things. But that’s not really my point. Gnome 2 didn’t have a component that acted like a dock.

Ubuntu MATE has the GNOME 2 look. Linux Mint has a mate flavor too I think.

I agree that was a local maximum, but I'd say peak Linux-on-Desktop was Ubuntu 16.04 with Unity 7. I'm hoping that Gnome 3 + Pop Shell will take us to the next peak, but except for the awesome tiling we're still below the 2 previous maximums in the "everything-just-works" department.

Gnome 2 got forked as Mate, you can still have that very same Desktop Experience in 2021, complete with Compiz.

I'm still on Unity, and will probably delay update for a long time because I just cause use Gnome 3.

It's not for lack of trying, but it requires to many plugins to be just usable, and then they break, some features is missing in nautilus or other shit.

I don't want to fight with my desktop manager. I have work to do.

I was in the same place as you but I broke my 16.04 and I was "forced" to upgrade.

Now I use Pop_OS with dash panel and it does the job. I use it on the bottom you can put it on the left side to imitate Unity. It's not the same but it's usable.

Now I can't recommend linux to anyone, though. I'm not going to explain everyone that they're going to install some extensions that may crash after an update if they want to be able to, let's say, see a bar with all your opened applications, which you can't do in Gnome.

>To think that a linux distro had the almost ideal desktop UI realised and then squandered it all away, seems puzzling now.

Hard to say how much truth is in this story, but there was some speculation that this was caused by Microsoft. They started to make some noise about Linux desktop infringing their patents, and while Novell (who was contributing to KDE) signed patent-sharing deal, neither Red Hat nor Canonical (big contributors to GNOME) did, presumably choosing redesign instead.

https://www.theregister.com/2013/06/03/thank_microsoft_for_l...

Considering how KDE largely kept chugging at the traditional metaphor, I find it hard to believe.

So why don't they go back? How many patents have expired in 10 years?

Yes, at that point it was approaching Windows 2000 with a much better terminal experience. A "workstation" experience. We all know how things went after tablet mania took over.

I still use Ubuntu Mate today, closest I've found to the earlier peak and still supported.

One of the things I really like about modern KDE is that I'm able to recreate exactly that experience in an updated desktop environment with an excellent compositor. Only two differences in my case:

1. I've forgone the bottom bar entirely in favor of merging everything into an icon-only taskbar at the top. But it's still got all the same features as the traditional Gnome 2 desktop (including the iconic 4-panel workspace indicator).

2. I have an "expose" feature at the top left of the screen which imitates the one really nice to have feature from modern Gnome. By hitting the hot corner with my cursor, I can show all the windows on my desktop, allowing easy switching. KDE can do this out of the box.

YUGE problem 3. KDE dynamically generates desktop configuration, making it extremely difficult to modify programatically. If I want to configure all of these settings by default (say on new user login), I have to parse the existing config and use those settings to extend my desktop.

D-bus may solve this but it is a headache

Example: https://github.com/ryanpcmcquen/linuxTweaks/blob/master/.kde...

Exactly. Modern Gnome interface on Ubuntu is complete junk.

Is my laptop a wannabe tablet or something?

I thought Windows 10 desktop was bad. But then, there’s Gnome that is worse.

It really was the heyday of Linux on the desktop. Maybe it's just my friend group, but I had several less-nerdy friends running Ubuntu around that time. They're all on Windows/Mac now.

This is quite old. I think Amarok's Qt5 port didn't get finished, and I think Elisa is the new KDE music player:

https://invent.kde.org/multimedia/elisa

Also CD Burning? I think even in 2017 PCs and Laptops didn't come with CD drives.

Personally, I like KDE for the small touches. Like the file browser having an integrated terminal that follows the directories you're browsing.

If you want to see what the KDE's Design Guidelines are look here:

https://develop.kde.org/hig/

And GNOME's is here:

https://developer.gnome.org/hig/stable/

Perhaps it's worth doing a 2021 comparison?

According to [1] there is a "new" amarok in alpha... but I fear that the steam has gone

[1] https://amarok.kde.org/en/node/890

> I think Elisa is the new KDE music player

Just installed it. Holy fuzzy fuckballs, what a punch in the gut. There are icons, but no buttons and menus. Can't figure out how to add a music file, so the program fails at its fundamental task. Disabled icons are not greyed out and have no tooltips. 20% of the space is taken away by some blue-green bar with a big honking picture of a CD. The separator widgets between the columns don't change the mouse cursor into a left-right double headed arrow.

What were they thinking? This can't possibly be HIG compliant. Is everyone at the helm asleep? This would never have passed as official project during era KDE 3.

Welcome to Plasma KDE. Visually bloated by default.

I always say everything looks like a quick sketch made after a brainstorm.

I recommend Sayonara as a good Qt music player with a solid Amarok-like interface:

https://sayonara-player.com/index.php

Thanks for the recommendation. Another spiritual off-shoot is Clementine / Strawberry.

https://www.clementine-player.org/

https://strawberrymusicplayer.org/

HN hug of death?

Here's an archive snapshot:

https://web.archive.org/web/20210325135037/http://www.ocsmag...

Thanks, I thought it was just me

A few months ago I switched to gnome since it supports hidpi and fractional scaling, and it's snappy enough but somehow feels bloated in everyday use (ubuntu 20.04). I tried to switch back to xfce with a recent fix for fractional scaling, but it looked fuzzy on my screen no matter the resolution, so I had to abandon that for the time being. KDE was the default at my work and I've used it for many years, probably over a decade. The article says gnome is lighter, but that's not my impression, or maybe I'm missing something with gnome?

I found it interesting that they compare CD burning software and a music player. In 2017 I am not sure how relevant these software were...

I myself haven't used CDs for around 10 years now. And apart from my love of ncmpp, I would also suppose the majority of desktop users would listen to music from a streamer service.

I'd rather had a look on the Settings / configuration dialogs, file pickers (as it's been mentioned already) and other stuff that are relevant (and were relevant in 2017)

For HN terminal app comparison would be nice. I am only familiar with Konsole and I am happy with it.

To my knowledge there aren't a whole lot of dedicated apps for streaming services. So the comparisons would be:

- How a Spotify tab looks in a browser in KDE vs GNOME.

- How the unofficial Spotify Flatpak looks in KDE vs GNOME.

So compare apps in other categories which have remained relevent: file browser, settings, calendar, reminders, notes, etc

Around here buying CDs is still quite common.

Strangely people like to keep around for years to come the music that they own.

Does anyone know what KDE activities actually are? Is there a concrete description somewhere?

They're broadly similar to Workspaces, except you can also apply different panel and desktop configurations to each Activity. From KDE: "Activities are a super-set of Virtual Desktops. They don't replace Virtual Desktops -- in fact, each Activity can have its own set of Virtual Desktops if you choose. Instead, Activities are alternative desktops, each of which can have its own wallpaper, icons, and widgets."

KDE Activities are a little bit like virtual desktops. If you set up 4 virtual desktops you can tab between them and keep specific stuff on each desktop. With Activities you hit a command key and you get a new set of desktops. It's almost like logging into a new, empty session but you can switch back to a previous activity easily.

I used to use the same laptop at work as at home, so I added a Home activity. When I was done with work I'd hit [windows key] tab and work would disappear from my desktop and all my home stuff would be there.

KDE activities are separated instances of all your desktops. So you can have a set of desktops with open applications, background images, etc. for "Work", and other for "Personal", for example.

I dislike comparisons like this; it's very easy to cherry pick the worst examples of A and the best examples of B.

For example, why didn't they compare the file-chooser dialog? Is the gnome one still unable to display a list of thumbnails, and instead require the user to click on each file to show a preview? Good luck if you are looking for a single image in a directory that has more than 50 or so.

That's a common, daily need all users have - pick a file in a dialog, and yet the last time I used Gnome it was broken and had been that way for decades.

After years of trying to make either work like I want, I discovered tiling window managers like xmonad and i3 and I haven't looked back, as I've gained so much efficiency in my work tasks.

I still use a traditional desktop environment for most browser and app tasks, but even there I end up tiling or maximizing the windows using keyboard shortcuts. Dragging overlapping windows sucks and I never want to do it again.

Don't look back, look forward. You don't need to abandon KDE over the perceived lack of a single feature. It's simply not enabled by default because tiling is esoteric.

Run `systemsettings5 kcm_keys` → KWin and (re)assign keys to the window manager actions you need. If that's not sufficient, then run `systemsettings5 kwinscripts` → Get New Scripts… → filter "tiling".

> Don't look back, look forward. You don't need to abandon KDE over the perceived lack of a single feature.

It's not a single feature, tiling window managers are an entirely different paradigm that fit my programming workflows so much better. The constraints they impose are actually a good thing for me.

I did say that I use a traditional desktop environment for tasks that are not driven by a text-based environment, although in a way that completely hides all desktop environment provided screen widgets, rendering the differences between KDE, Gnome, XFCE, etc moot. I handle window switching with things like Alt-Tab, which pretty much work the same in every environment.

At some point if I switch to KDE, I'll definitely pick up your suggestions though!

Is it really still an either/or choice between KDE and Gnome? I'm not a Linux expert but I thought there were more options than just these two. The article seems like it presents a false dichotomy.

They're still the two biggest DEs on Linux, and also the flagships for Qt and GTK respectively.

1) They're usually the best-supported by major distros,,

2) Most other solutions don't present as much system-config stuff as well as they (or Windows, or macOS) do in the GUI, so you're in for more mucking about in config files, writing scripts, et c. with any of the many window managers (not "desktop environments" like Gnome or MATE or KDE)

Besides KDE and GNOME (and some GNOME forks like Cinnamon), none of the other choices are particularly close to a decent full desktop experience. They are generally either limited in nature or require you to be one of those people that likes to dig around for hours cobbling together scripts and adjusting the minutiae of scattered, poorly documented config files exactly to their specification. I have certainly done all those things, but of all the people I know nobody else actually wants to basically fight with their machine like that. They would rather want a useful suite of easily discoverable applications that they can use right now, and a couple ways to personalize their machine in a cosmetic manner.

This is not true. Ubuntu MATE works ootb. Linux Mint Cinnamon works ootb. Both have GUI to install apps. Just like KDE and GNOME.

Depends on the definition of "works ootb". For the most part I would say yes but a few little things here and there not, IMHO. It also depends on the distro but "ALt-Tab" through windows across workspaces (virtual desktops) often requires an install of dconf and setting it yourself. Just as a minor example. But that perhaps admittedly is nitpicking. Overall Mate works perfectly fine of course.

I'm curious is anyone else feels like I do about these things. I've used linux off and on over the years, various distros, various GUIs, sometimes KDE based, sometimes Gnome, sometimes others. I've never noticed any differences that seem substantive. It just seems like a random walk around the usual gui design space. Which I think makes sense as there isn't really a whole lot to do there.

Is it just me? Do other people feel strongly about any of these differences?

I'm in the same boat. Switched from Gnome on Pop_OS to KDE on Arch Linux and well, they both work, I guess?

I mean, I'm using Linux to work, so as long as I can pull up a terminal, run Zoom, run my browser, and run IDEA, I'm sorted, I'm not overly fussed about what the MP3 players look like, I can just open Spotify in a browser if I need tunes.

My preferences aren't religious-strong, but I have enough of a preference that I installed KDE Plasma on Pop! OS instead of the Gnome-base default. And I've struggled to get the network manager working in KDE which has been a nuisance and never a problem on distros who ship KDE as the default - so there's at least some importance in a distro's default, even if others are available. I've been known to pull up a Gnome version of some application in KDE and vice-versa because of individual preferences. But as a desktop / window manager yeah I actually have a strong preference.

The article actually isn't loading for me, so I'm not sure if these are the same design philosophies addressed, but some of the key things are:

* I find Gnome's dock-like things very annoying. I find it easier to get KDE's task bar to take up a very small number of pixels and I feel it stays out of my way more while I'm focusing on other applications. It feels like Gnome takes after Mac and KDE takes after Windows, and I just prefer the latter, UI-wise.

* KDE is far more configurable for keyboard shortcuts. I use the ability to pin a window to the left / right half, or one of the quadrants using they key-binding of my choice all the time. I hadn't been using KDE for very long when I would miss that every time I was on another machine. Even after being back on Gnome for a couple of years I wanted it. There are some third-party add-ons that do it, but they were buggy for me. I'd rather just have KDE out-of-the-box. This is one example, but keyboard shortcuts in general are for more widely used and configurable on KDE.

edit: Clarified a few things, but also have now read the article: yes I like this "completist" philosophy, especially since much of the complexity is hidden away in drop-down menus. I think it's the best of both worlds.

Try KDE Neon. It has the latest Plasma on top of stable Ubuntu LTS.

https://neon.kde.org/

Also KDE Connect is awesome for integration with android phones. It's available in non-KDE distros too. Available on Fdroid too.

https://kdeconnect.kde.org/

https://f-droid.org/packages/org.kde.kdeconnect_tp/

My problem with KDE has essentially been the same now for years. To me, it feels too fragile.

I know exactly what you mean, my personal tolerance is higher so I don't care as much but I think everything being customizable also makes it less solid feeling.

I am familiar with KDE and years ago when I was in the community I know that most of the apps are just a few unpaid volunteers/developers, in their free time add missing features and fix bugs. There was no big ego designer that had to approve if we add a new menu or feature or any study to decide if a new feature might segfault the brain of some user. Each maintainer decides if a feature makes sense and the design was usually the generic Qt/KDE layouts , no freacking custom widgets that a user can't theme.

I would be interested to hear if there is a major difference between GTK apps that are not part of GNOME and GNOME first apps .

I am opinionated. To each their own, here are my opinions:

KDE is near Windows defaults, maximum configuration (you can even emulate Mac OS X if you want.)

Gnome 2 was Windows-like and somewhat customizable.

Gnome 3 is Mac-like and harder to customize.

Unity is Mac-like and unnecessary hard to customize.

Elementary looks Mac-like but isn't rage-inducing in the same way for me as they have a working application switcher.

I do not feel strongly about any of this but i've found myself happier with KDE over the years.

Gnome seems to combine the worst aspects of OSX and windows with some things in side panel, some persistent menu bars, some applications with double menu bars... it's annoying is all.

KDE tends to stick to what i understand and what i want is usually where i expect it to be.

I would disagree with you in that the differences are substantive.

I've used both Gnome and KDE based UI's, and yeah, I don't feel strongly about the differences, but also I've never felt like either one was actually good. They both get the job done, but they both feel designed by developers for developers, on the assumption that anything you can't figure out in the UI you'll Google or open a terminal and text editor to deal with it. Compared to, say, the iPad 2 which felt clearly designed for lay users down to the settings UI. (I feel like the later versions of iOS got more complex and harder to parse, so I'm picking the iteration I liked the most.)

But then again, it's Linux, I'm a developer, I'm used to Googling how to do things, and I play my video games on Windows, so 90%+ of my time in Linux is in the terminal, text editor (or IDE), and browser anyway. So no complaints - the presence of a fully featured UI isn't why I use Linux.

> * they both feel designed by developers for developers*

As a developer, I disagree.

KDE's interface is often broken and/or unintuitive for what I want to do. At least it usually provides the levers if they're hard to use or find.

Gnome's interface is almost always too simplified and doesn't present the powerful levers at all unless you go digging behind the scenes and hope that an update doesn't break some "private" implementation detail.

> KDE's interface is often broken and/or unintuitive for what I want to do. At least it usually provides the levers if they're hard to use or find.

I'm not so sure that we're saying different things. I didn't mean it as a compliment, more as an explanation. In general developers aren't good at designing UX (not their job), and in general developers are used to often byzantine UX, including falling back to terminal rituals, and both UI's feel (to me) like they're 80% of the way there and left that way because of the tacit understanding that there's always the terminal and text configs.

KDE recently improved it's interface.

https://kde.org/announcements/plasma/5/5.21.0/

If anyone want to try the latest KDE Plasma, KDE Neon has it on top of a stable Ubuntu LTS base.

https://neon.kde.org/

I switched to Linux/Gnome from macOS about 3 years ago. From my perspective, they're both frustrating in different ways, but I would be okay using either one. Gnome is too simplistic and opinionated, KDE is too heavy and fragile (but I also don't have a lot of experience with it).

Overall, Desktop Linux works well enough for me to live with it. A few years earlier, that was not an option if you wanted to live a relatively normal computing life without missing out on too much or spending an inordinate amount of time on keeping your system alive.

I'll go a step further and say that these projects end up being net harmful to the Linux space precisely because they're seeking a goal that the last 10-15 years has proven that they are not good at.

The goal is something like "a unified Mac-like system space," but as people here have correctly noted, I don't think its possible to bring a bunch of developers together to create a universally "nice" space unless one of them is named Steve Jobs.

What makes it worse is that we have these two large projects with a lot of good history behind them that nonetheless have not really done anything good (in terms of a unified experience, many of the individual apps are great) recently. They have a lot of the mindshare and very little to show for it.

Obviously, developers are free to run their projects how they wish, but my wish is that they'd wake up and realize they're not Apple; but there is something they could do that would actually be helpful. Not try to work on carving out their own space -- but the opposite -- try to figure out how to create modular parts of a workspace that really work well together and across WMs and platforms.

Until then, I'll do what I've been doing, which is Openbox plus the things I need and like. I see cool things in Gnome and KDE that I'd love to have, but then they bring the rest of their baggage that just gets in the way, so no.

It depends a bit on what you do and use. If you primarily use a terminal, Firefox and thunderbird there isn't much of a difference between those. Yeah, taskbar etc look a bit different but not much.

If you switch between KDE and Gnome apps (kedit vs gnome-edit, kmail vs gnome evolution, KDE dolphin vs. Gnome nautilus, kmines vs. Gnome mines game ...) you see more of the differences in App Design principles.

Terminal. Check

Web browser. Check

They're the same

(2017)

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