UX wise, GNOME is oversimplified and Plasma is overcomplicated.
this post was submitted on 04 May 2025
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Whenever I try KDE there are a many minor bugs that are super annoying. Last time it just switched main and secondary monitor so my main one was a weird mix of both. I really wanna like KDE but since I switched to Wayland it always feels like something weird is going on.
Even in plasma 6?
iirc that was fixed in 5.27 or so, kde's been really smooth since for me
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I install Fedora Workstation and change nothing. I'm pretty happy with GNOME in that case. KDE has been too fiddley for me the last few times I tried it. It's there a distro that has a default KDE setup that feels minimal and out of the way?
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I dont understand why so many people are saying KDE is so much better than GNOME.
GNOME is by far my favorite DE
When leaving windows, i didnt want my computer to be almost the same, with a couple extra settings and different icons. GNOME does something different, and something i like
I like GNOME but I think thereβs essential functionality missing from it. Fortunately the extensions fill the gap.
GNOME 2 was different and easy to customize
GNOME is still in their KDE 4.x days where it needs time to mature.
KDE 3 was loved, KDE 4 made a ton of breaking changes, and was reviled. KDE 5/6 are now butter smooth and fixed all the issues from the 3 -> 4 transition
GNOME 4/5 will probably come back into the loved category if they start stabilizing the extension system some more
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From a UI/UX point of view Gnome is excellent (very subjective of course, it's a matter of taste - obviously this sparks endless discussions). There are very good arguments to be made about the organisations behind it and the tech that powers those DEs.
I have one PC on gnome and another on kde. I like them both for what they are. I lean towards gnome though. Looks nice, feels nice. I don't find myself needing more functionality than what is there. I tried mimicing gnome in kde, for fun. Didn't quite get there. I appreciate simplicity where possible.
My issue with gnome isn't the software itself, it's the project refusing to coordinate with crosse desktop protocols and refusing to implement anything that doesn't 100% line up with their vision even if it makes the rest of the ecosystem worse.
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Plasmaβs growing on my and I think it definitely works better on a laptop but I just wish it looked like a modern operating system. It feels like something from the 00s at best.
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Gnome devs have a clear vision of what Gnome is supposed to be:
simplistic, designed for touchpad and keyboard, not mousy-clicky, and staying out of your way.
People install it, miss stuff they are used to from traditional desktops like Windows or Plasma, and bolt that back on using extensions from third parties.
They install those extensions from a different source than Gnome itself (Gnome from their distro repos, extensions from the website).
And then they complain when those third party add-ons from a different source aren't perfectly integrated or in sync after an update.
And blame the Gnome devs.
i cant think of any valid reason gnome doesnt have official system tray icons
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Gnome devs have a clear vision of what Gnome is supposed to be: simplistic, designed for touchpad and keyboard, not mousy-clicky, and staying out of your way.
Nobody questioned this.
People install it, miss stuff they are used to from traditional desktops like Windows or Plasma, and bolt that back on using extensions from third parties.
Like the Extension feature intends it.
They install those extensions from a different source than Gnome itself (Gnome from their distro repos, extensions from the website).
Even those you can install from some distro repos can cause your whole Gnome DE to crash. However this isn't even the main problem; the point is that it's able to crash your DE at all. If they did it correctly only the bad extension would crash. If that doesn't work for some reason, the whole extension layer/API may crashes without taking the DE with it. If something phenomenally bad happens your DE should crash but, as the absolute minimum, your open applications should still keep working so you can save things and restart things gracefully. What you just did is blame the extension devs again.
And then they complain when those third party add-ons from a different source arenβt perfectly integrated or in sync after an update.
It's about your computer (well, everything graphically) crashing, not some small problems. Get your facts straight.
Conclusion: the clear vision that Gnome devs have is obviously wrong.
It's a non-profit, open source project.
If you don't like it, just ignore it.
It's not a commercial project where market share is important.
The only defense of Gnome: It's not mandatory.
Except they also do GTK, which still manages to leak outside their 9 foot thick steel and concrete containment vessel.
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afaik KDE still doesn't have any tolerable way to tile windows on wayland
if i need to open a menu to set up zones you are doing it wrong. if i have to pick from premade layouts you are doing it wrong. pop shell on gnome would be perfect if it wasn't married to gnome and slowly rotting over time: i can pick up a window, drag it to where i want to put it in the binary tiling tree, and it goes there.
unpopular opinion probably, but I like the configurable zones approach. it's probably because I'm used to fancyzones on my work pc and have gotten used to it.
every time I try to become a cool kid and use i3 or some other tiling wm variant, I get frustrated and go right back to plasma
My main issue with the zones is for some inexplicable reason one cannot save their template. You're stuck with the default ones, and -- at least in my case on Fedora -- the custom one you set up tends to reset on reboot (not always, which is also ?? unless somehow it gets affected by OS updates?).
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I have never understood how there was any competition.
KDE has always been a better DE than anything on any platform, while gnome has been one of the worst and it just keeps going downhill.
KDE gathered a lot of initial hate because the Qt widget library it relied on used to not be proper Free Software. (That was fixed about two decades ago, though.)
Unfortunately, GTK is much prettier than QT.
I disagree completely, GTK looks like they took windows 3.11 and covered all the widgets in dried shit.
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"i have painted myself as the chad and you as the virgin"
I mostly neutral on KDE vs Gnome thing, but after I got into theming my computer more I started to hate how Gnome handle its theming capability (confusing, messy, if I fix one thing something else break) while on KDE it has menus dedicated to colors scheme and general looks and feel
Yeah DE is very much a personal flavor preference, which is kind of the point of OSS. I prefer KDE too but thatβs because I was a windows kid forever and never liked the feel of Mac-style approach.
I use Gnome with Dash to Panel snd WinTile extensions. I sometimes wonder if I just made it like KDE.
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