this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2024
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Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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[–] [email protected] -2 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Have you guys tried windows?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago
[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago
[–] [email protected] 28 points 7 months ago

You have my vote. The out of the box experience would be polished and I have no doubt would be done very well.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago

why would they post this on April first this is amazing

[–] [email protected] -1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

KDE rules, not surprised more and more and moving its way

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

The reason this is feasible now, is that KDE is changing the release cycle for Plasma, Frameworks, and the Apps to all be aligned with the sometime-before-the-distro-release 6-month cycle, that allows for a release of everything KDE to be taken, tested properly, and released with the 6-month release cycle for Ubuntu, Fedora and other distros following that release cycle. Until recently, we would have the releases of these components all separate throughout the year, meaning that it would be harder for the distros to package, test and ship Plasma as a flagship desktop because of stability concerns (also because of bugs).

Now, with Plasma 6 being all about making Plasma better and more stable, especially in the Wayland department, I'd say Plasma is superior to GNOME in every way (except funding). At this point, it's not too unrealistic to see distros consider the switch to Plasma, including major distros like Fedora, as seen here. I really think this is the best time to consider using Plasma over GNOME.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Dang, I finally started liking gnome over kde because of fedora

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (2 children)

you could just use the gnome fedora spin, this is just about making it not the default.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

What about upgrades, are they going to switch everyone to KDE?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

No you'd just find that your fedora says gnome edition or whatever

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago (3 children)

GNOME always seemed like an odd choice considering how little customization is available. It feels like a prescriptive approach, you will use your computer the way GNOME feels is appropriate, whereas KDE tries to accommodate however you want to use your computer.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

This is the advantage to GNOME. I know that all I need to make a Linux desktop work the way I want is to install GNOME and GSconnect. I really like default GNOME, adwaita, and the actually usable out-of-the-box experience. Sure there's a learning curve but that's true of every desktop and I really hate the context menu hell that KDE imported over from Windows.

Not to mention there are still a lot of amateur mistakes over at KDE like the recent themes fiasco.

People who want the customizability of KDE will use the KDE spin or a distro that ships it by default. People downloading a massively popular distro like Fedora should get something as maximally functional as possible out of the box, and with all the stuff they've been adding recently, GNOME is more and more polished almost to a macOS point. I just recently found the built-in RDP, SSH, and filesharing toggles in the settings menu, and they're easy enough that I'd actually call GNOME quite beginner friendly at this point.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

Having a company behind software means you can pay to have your bugs fixed. Big distros want that stability for their corporate customers. It's no secret or anything. KDE has sponsors, but doesn't have a direct relationship with a huge contractor like RH. Same reasoning for systemd.

Politics, basically.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Whoever pays the band decides what they play.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

I wonder if the Gnome team's cavalier aditude towards agreed upon standards is related to Redhat's influence 🤔 It's totally possible the devs are just high on their own fumes due to being the default for so long.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Back in the Gnome 2 days this wasn't as much the case. Plus KDE was kind of a mess back then so the main choices were Gnome or XFCE which had fewer features. When Gnome 3 came around the devs switched hard to a much more opinionated approach, leading to Gnome 2 forks like Cinnamon since KDE was still very underpolished. It's a bit regrettable that all that effort was poured into Gnome forks instead of improving KDE especially considering how great it is now.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Gnome 2 was great and I wish MATE got more attention

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Not gonna happen obviously. It's so funny to see every fedora announcement on linuxfr.org detailing every single aspect of the release while ignoring completely KDE.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

Obviously it's a difficult sell - but if this got positive attention I could see Fesco relenting and "upgrading" the branding on Fedora KDE to Fedora Plasma Workstation

[–] [email protected] 52 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

Slowly more and more distros are looking over to a KDE future. GNOME devs being so incredibly hard to work with and this feeling of a huge community that is KDE and with how polished Plasma 6 is becoming, many distros are finally looking to at least give Plasma a try as a default. GNOME is well polished but there are so many extremely important and urgently needed features that KDE already implemented that are not even being discussed for GNOME. Many distros are getting fed up with how slow GNOME is into advancing their desktop. They take 2 years to change a few buttons around. And now that Plasma 6 has a 6-month fixed release schedule, it finally aligns with what distros want.

First Valve shocked the corporate distro world by choosing the seemengly less stable KDE as their default for the Steam Deck, which proved to be an amazing choice after all. Then recently, Nobara Linux, one of the most used Fedora distros, also switched to KDE as the default. And now Fedora is discussing into switching the main distro too. Qt6 is also a really flexible and promising framework and developers seem to have more fun working with it than with GTK4.

Recent switchers from Windows also largely prefer KDE instead of the minimalist approach, macOS-like GNOME. And linux has been gaining a lot of popularity and market share recently, and I could bet that a lot of these new users are not on GNOME, at least not on vania GNOME.

A great example is KDE having hit a HUGE record of bug reporting and feedback submissions, which means that more people than ever are using KDE actively and actually trying to help the project somehow. KDE has also been having a huge presence in social networks like YouTube and TikTok (especially because of its fun and interesting features that make GNOME look plain and a bit boring, needless to say GNOME vanilla wont convince a Windows user to switch...) which might speed up its adoption too.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Ah i see kde has fixed the issue where dropdowns had broken behavior when scrolling https://invent.kde.org/frameworks/kirigami/-/commit/f6ca218607ff7e5d5066eb3224154c3256cb9516 this was my main blocker why i couldn't use it when i tried it around 2020. Maybe i could give it another try?

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