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Comment by flohofwoe | Hacker News Reader

IMHO the difference is that KDE took the classic Windows desktop as starting point and has developed it into something that's now actually better than the Win10/11 desktop. GNOME OTH might be trying to imitate macOS but if that's actually the case they are doing a very poor job (I spend most of my time on a Mac, but have recently switched from GNOME to KDE on my Linux laptop because after updating to Ubuntu 24 I was finally fed up with GNOME's UX only ever getting worse, never improving).

PS: switching from GNOME to a KDE desktop session was absolutely trivial and quick on Ubuntu btw.

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> IMHO the difference is that KDE took the classic Windows desktop as starting point and has developed it into something that's now actually better than the Win10/11 desktop.

In some areas KDE has also taken inspiration from macOS, and imo significantly improved over the original. The best example in my view is the Present Windows desktop effect, which is fundamentally a take on Exposé/Mission Control but massively outdoes those equivalents in usability by adding fuzzy filtering as you type to select windows. A less appealing version of that (Contexts) is something I have to pay money to a proprietary app developer for on macOS.

Ignoring all the other bad stuff with Windows 11, one thing that made me switch to Linux was the ugly "modern" design. iirc, someone on HN said that Windows designers don't even use Windows, they use Mac.

But then I switched to Linux and a lot of apps, specially gnome and gnome-inspired apps, have such terrible design as well. I'm going to spare you the details because I could rant about it for hours.

I recently started using a Mac at work and Gnome aping MacOS is the only thing that makes sense.

The applications selector, the settings drop-downs... spatial Nautilus... it didn't just start with Gnome 3. These are all poorly-implemented, half-baked versions of MacOS features. It has been going on for years.

I mean, the thin scroll bars for $deity's sake! On MacOS this makes sense because the trackpad and trackpad/mouse work, and work very well. On Gnome, it makes no sense at all since you can't hit them with the mouse pointer.

The pain is very real with Gnome.

It's a very, very poor ape of MacOS.

I disagree. For me, it's superior.

> Ubuntu 24

You're running a pre-release?

https://ubuntu.com/download/desktop

Ooops, it's actually 23.10. Not sure why I got confused (for some reason the version number 24.04 was fixed in my mind).

GNOME is better than macos imo

As a decade old macOS user, I agree. I don’t want to use macOS after Gnome. I like the new one. It’s 45 now, but I think the major update was either 44 or 43.

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