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Comment by mikevm | Hacker News Reader

I really want to like KDE, but something about Plasma still feels off to me. Is it the lifeless grey color? Is it the ugly font? or ugly icons? I can't tell exactly where the problem lies, but at least GNOME looks much more polished.

I wish it would reach the polish level of Windows or MacOS.

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For what it is worth it is actually a matter of taste.

For me, the defaults of typical KDE desktops have been wonderful during KDE 3 and KDE 5 cycles.

Ubuntu was the only Gnome centric distro that I used that was at times better.

I can't but a finger on exactly what but dull and uninspired feels very close.

Edit: as for Mac I used it for 3 years and while I support devs who want it I never got it. At least back when I used it there seemed to be an informal rule that any popular app had to have a gear icon (some had two) thrown into the user interface by a drunk dev.

I'm actually serious here, this was my experience: I could never understand why some had the gear in the bottom left corner, others somewhere else.

Windows used to be more boring and polished but now have 2 or 3 different control panels. Ironically I like Windows more than before though.

Maybe because Windows is becoming less dull and I'm becoming more dull?

- The paddings are all seemingly arbitrary.

- The proportions are inconsistent.

- There are way too many icons; I generally dislike this Linux GUI convention that every button must have an icon on the left. These icons add no information, they just make the whole thing look more busy.

- Sometimes there are shadows, but sometimes there aren't. You have to pick one or the other. And if you pick the other, you'd want borders because there needs to be a visual hierarchy either way.

- Sharp corners and small shadows don't work well together.

I'm not a designer, I'm a developer, but I've seen way too many people make these same mistakes when designing UIs.

Gnome does look more polished, and it's maybe nice to use with a touchscreen, but they're being weird by optimizing everything for touchscreens yet positioning it as a laptop/desktop DE.

I think you've hit the nail on the head!

Lot of small inconsistencies as another said. Look at this screenshot[0]. The padding on the contact name and avatar is completely off.

Also look at the dialer[1], long inputs there are not that likely, but it still sucks that the numbers are behind the scroll bar.

Don't get me wrong. Last time I used KDE was some 5-6 years ago. These small inconsistencies were a lot more common, and back then for me it meant it's unusuable. I've been following KDE development, from the screenshots I've seen, it has come a long way. There are nowhere near as many inconsistencies as there used to be back then.

[0] https://plasma-mobile.org/2021/06/10/plasma-mobile-update-ju...

[1] https://www.plasma-mobile.org/2021/06/10/plasma-mobile-updat...

Funny, I'm much more bothered by the buttons floating at the bottom, one or two pixels from the border but not touching. The sharp, rectangular design of KDE also doesn't speak to me, which is kind of strange because I do like it in the old win9x designs. I think maybe it's the combination of sharp edges and soft shadows that annoy me?

Most KDE design is actually pretty consistent, but the design language just doesn't sit well with me. I'll stick to Gnome/Phosh if Linux on phones ever becomes popular.

I believe it's a lack of good / opinionated defaults. KDE is deeply customizable, and once you have spent some time tweaking it you can have a great looking desktop. However, most/all of the distros ship with a bland/conservative default, which is probably supposed to be generally appealing, but in reality is bland. They badly need a design lead who can overrule the status quo.

It's a lot of small inconsistencies that add up. Like the wifi icon being the wrong size for the amount of spacing it has around it, and also the fact that it's unclear what it actually does without clicking on it.

The spacing in the settings menu in the final screenshot is horrible too, the text gap sizes just change for no reason and the design has two layers of headers that aren't visually distinct enough.

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