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Comment by musicale | Hacker News Reader

Agreed - Ubuntu is the path of least resistance for installing Linux on your laptop or desktop.

But I still appreciate KDE-based Linux environments for their more straightforward, consistent, no-nonsense GUI, which seems to be derived from classic (pre Windows 8) Windows. Another thing that KDE seems to have gotten right is realizing that what makes macOS and Windows useful isn't just the GUI itself but the set of apps that use it and interoperate seamlessly with each other.

Ubuntu seems to have more UI churn than I'd like (even though I prefer Mac-style menu bars, etc.) And Wayland (which KDE has also moved to for better or for worse) has never brought me happiness.

I understand the motivation for Snaps, but I only want them for app store type apps, not for everything.

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> But I still appreciate KDE-based Linux environments for their more straightforward, consistent, no-nonsense GUI, which seems to be derived from classic (pre Windows 8) Windows. Another thing that KDE seems to have gotten right is realizing that what makes macOS and Windows useful isn't just the GUI itself but the set of apps that use it and interoperate seamlessly with each other.

I am deeply confused by this passage. KDE takes a much less staunch top-down development approach than Gnome, which means that every KDE application, and sometimes even with the KDE GUI, things are done their own way. It makes for a very disjointed experience when UI/UX patterns don't transfer between applications.

Its why I always end up switching back to Gnome, despite deeply disliking the flipside of the Gnome team's attitude. For example, it is beyond me why they haven't integrated Dock-to-Dash, Tiling Assistant and Night Theme Switcher. Especially Dash-to-Dock is so vastly popular that I reckon there's more people running Gnome with rather than without.

When was the last time you used KDE? Cause this time around that hasn't been my experience at all, it's gnome that's currently really disjointed with random hamburger menus and whitespace everywhere.

Current KDE feels like the most well put together DE I've ever used, and its really efficient once I get my custom keybinds in there.

> When was the last time you used KDE?

Half a year ago, thereabouts?

And no, Gnome is not inconsistent. I just opened a bunch of applications, and they either have a hamburger menu on the top left or top right, mostly with the same options list and "About" at the bottom of the list. There is some slight visual difference between GTK4 applications and GTK3 applications that are yet to have a rewrite, but it is very consistent. Which does comes with the aforementioned problem of the Gnome devs being very "my way or the highway".

In a strange way KDE reminds me of Windows, where the application devs always seem to be using 3-4 different frameworks, 3-4 different installers, and none of them try to get more than broad consistency between eachother.

I did say in my experience, whereas you seem to be speaking in absolutes.

Either way I disagree with you. I think we have differing opinions of what good actually is, and gnome just isn't good anymore to me. Best of luck to you though.

That the GNOME team is notorious for regularly breaking their ABI compatibility between upgrades _is_ the issue.

Why do they do that?

I personally started with Mint and that's what I would recommend. It's "straightforward, consistent, no-nonsense" and works out of the box. Cinnamon is less configurable (though it is) than KDE maybe but more focused. The fact that is Ubuntu makes troubleshooting so much easier.

We have Kubuntu for that

EDIT: for stupid downvoters - Kubuntu is an official Ubuntu variant. It is officially part of the Ubuntu project. https://kubuntu.org

I prefer kubntu too, I'm currently on 22.04 LTS or 24.04 LTS depending on the machine.

I don't like the fact that you can't surface the menu with standard cua keyboard shortcuts in dolphin, e.g. alt-v for view. As someone previously using windows this is a step backwards for efficiency.

Depends on the individual. I don't use those shortcuts on Windows either.

I almost never need the menus. I set the view settings globally, applied to all folders.

There are keyboard shortcuts for actions within those menus, like cut/copy/paste. The shortcuts are more configurable than on Windows.

F4 opens a terminal in the current directory

That's all I use 99.99% of the time

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