I understand that KDE is a clusterfuck, but giving the money to the American desktop environment instead of the European one is not really a good look.
It pains me to see them throwing money at the wall instead of creating dedicated jobs, paying (German) engineers to fix bugs and develop long needed features. Given how low German wages are, they could pay around 10 engineers for a full year with that money.
I've been using Linux as my primary desktop environment for 19 years. It's unbelievable how little I know about Linux these days. Things just work!
The only thing that is annoying in macOS is the lack of good tiling, but there are good third party options that add tiling.
I'm partial to KDE myself, but honestly anything with a sensible panel is usable.
Yes. It'samazing how much better Linux runs when the hardware vendor actually supports Linux.
It also helps that the Steam Deck has a narrower Mission than a desktop computer.
I’m the same! I’ve never understood how people have such strong emotions when it comes to a desktop environment. They all (including Windows, macOS, and even iPadOS) feel like they are good enough to me and I enjoy switching to something different once in a while.
Steam runs on KDE on SteamOS
Game mode is a wayland session with gamescope as a WM, but it isn't controlled directly by the user. The steam client controls the WM and exposes those controls to you through menus and handles stuff like notifications and being a driver for the controller, so you could call it a DE in game mode.
More like X session running under XWayland. gamescope doesn't really expose Wayland interfaces to clients (well, technically it does expose some stuff, but I wouldn't qualify that as anything else than implementation detail - although that may have started to change recently, I've seen some stuff being done around xdg-shell there).
I'm not entirely convinced that using SteamOS can really be counted as "using KDE" in any way.
Well, I wouldn't make that statement so strong. KDE Plasma is the default desktop environment on SteamOS, it's just that it doesn't boot into its desktop environment by default (but you're two buttons away from switching into it).
I don't think it's fair to judge GNOME's quality based on 1 app that targets the platform.
It's just an app that describes itself as being ”for GNOME”.
Neither does KDE Ark on Wayland. Tested yesterday.
It'd be low for a senior dev: https://www.stepstone.de/gehalt/Senior-Software-Entwickler-i...
Unless you're talking about net income, then it is truly god-tier...
Fwiw Wayland is a bit of a disaster, see: https://gist.github.com/probonopd/9feb7c20257af5dd915e3a9f2d...
There was an HN thread on this, but it was flagged: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38210694
Reddit, Phoronix, the entire internet has people complaining about Wayland. It's really not hard to find them.
That is not the point.
Most big open source projects end up with an entire commercial ecosystem backing them. KDE has probably directly created many more jobs in Europe/Germany than GNOME. Such things should be taken into consideration when determining who deserves grants paid by EU/German tax payers.
KDE e.V. is based in Berlin, Germany
Both have corporate and individiaul contributors from around the wold but these are not indentically distributed with Gnome being more popular in the US compared to the EU. Calling these two desktop environments "American" and "European" is of course not painting the full picture but it isn't entirely wrong either.
Nah it's the most capable desktop on Linux these days.
Yes, I know there are other ways to do this (e.g. screen), but they require planning in advance and I don't always know when I want to do that. There have been other things that I used that have also been removed over the time that I used Gnome.
I appreciate Gnome for the smooth experience they provide but have switched to KDE which better meets my needs and wants.
People don’t make much art in MS Paint, or code in Notepad, despite those being the default for most computer users.
I think GNOME is very explicit in pushing you towards using independent applications that best fit your needs, while also providing simple to use, but not very feature-rich, defaults. I appreciate that approach.
That was my point: I understand who power users of terminals are; I understand who power users of graphics software are; I understand who power users of CAD are. But a DE is a glorified application launcher; there really isn’t much there of which to be a power user.
This is very Windows-specific problem. macOS, iOS, Android, ChromeOS, KDE nowadays all include decent sets of apps, thankfully. I will not miss the days of installing PDF readers (half of them full of ads), ZIP decompressors, image viewers (IfranView), MP3 players, etc.
Sadly, last time I was daily-driving GNOME (~2 years ago), this was exactly my experience - Evince was extremely laggy on big PDFs compared to Okular, Eye of Gnome had little functionality compared to Gwenview, File Roller lacked drag-and-drop and some formats that Ark supported, Gnome Terminal lacked many keyboard shortcuts that Konsole had, Gnome Software looked like just a proof-of-concept, etc.
> I think GNOME is very explicit in pushing you towards using independent applications
I wasn't aware this is the case, but I could accept this philosophy and be happy... if the distributions (Ubuntu, Fedora, etc) shared this opinion and thus made their default flavor have GNOME WM with e.g. KDE apps. Sadly this is not the case, so I've started recommending my non-tech-savvy friends (that became curious to try out Linux since Windows got so bad) to go for full KDE experience.
My examples of a drawing app and a text editor stand, I think.
> if the distributions (Ubuntu, Fedora, etc) shared this opinion and thus made their default flavor have GNOME WM with e.g. KDE apps
A distribution, typically, does not have a better way to guess your preferences than a DE does. Pushing overloaded applications on everyone is not a solution.
> I've started recommending my non-tech-savvy friends (that became curious to try out Linux since Windows got so bad) to go for full KDE experience
Do you support them afterwards?
It's good that there are 2 distinct, competitive desktop environments, that each suit different people well.
No, they don't. Most of the time updating an extension for a new gnome version is simply a matter of adding a number in the manifest file, but even when it isn't, they all get updated very quickly. Gnome 45 changed some core APIs so basically every extension had to be updated, and yet from ~10 extensions I use only 1 was not supported immediately upon GNOME 45 release, and even it got updated less than a week later.
I still haven't used anything more 'just works' and 'capable' than xfce, what has KDE added in the past decade or so since I used it that made it 'most capable'?
(though I quite enjoy kde myself)
Unless it is The GIMP. That seems to get people going every once in a while.
2. UI\UX is lacking. Too many controls all over the place or at least too sticking out.
PS: "all over the place" is just the best phrase I can thing of in english to describe KDE. But most of all this is just about two different views on how a DE should look and feel like.
KDE fans prefer this "I have all the inputs in one place even if I use 80% of them once a year" and "I can configure every pixel even though I won't do it ever".
Gnome fans prefer "clean and simple (and opinionated)" and "this DE gives me 80% of what I can possibly want for 20% of effort".
To each their own. Like I said.
The difference is that KDE prefers doing this incrementally, which takes longer especially outside of core apps like Konsole and Dolphin, but it also prevents clusterfucks like the gnome-terminal vs gnome-console situation, and reduces churn in general.
You contrast this to Gnome, where there are NOT comparable configuration options, and you are 'happy with minor issues'.
I don't see how this is materially different from simply choosing to not use the extensive KDE configuration capabilities and being as 'happy with minor issues' as you would be with Gnome.
>AND that you feel you must use them.
I'm misunderstood here then. I'm not saying that a feel I must use them. I'm saying the KDE UI by default exposes too many controls and provides settings to control this (more or less).
While Gnome exposes less controls (and arguable better UI desicions). Resulting in cleaner UI by default.
See this comment by the other user who shares my views: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38230429
I've never really understood the complaint 'there's too many configuration options', at least in software where you don't need to touch any of those configuration options for a reasonable out-of-the-box experience.
If your problem with KDE is, in fact, that a vanilla stock install doesn't align with your personal UI preferences, while also bemoaning that there's too many ways to adjust the UI, then the problem might not be with KDE.
Or, more likely, will configure many of them once and then be happy, as opposed to GNOME where if you're unhappy with anything you're just out of luck.
The whole point of my comment is that people are different. I'd rather not spend my time configuring KDE as I did 15 years ago and be happy with minor issues of GNOME.
That's very subjective. I used Windows, Mac OS, Android (various UIs), KDE etc.. It's not "modern" semi transparent themes and gradients and rounded everything and whitespace, it is very responsive and works like I expect.
My whole comment is a private opinion.
I wish I could configure KDE "declaratively" with a configuration file, like what I do with i3.
KDE always offered more options and configuration and was never as dumbed down as Gnome. But obviously most users do not need that that is why they like Gnome better. KDE has cool things like KDE Connect that was ported to Gnome later. When I used stable versions it was always perfectly fine to use. Not at all a Clusterfuck. 2nd most popular DE for a reason.