I’ve found GNOME a pleasure to use. From my experience many folks that use Linux like to tinker with their computers. Even those new to Linux see a world of possibilities. GNOME doesn’t really embrace this tinkerer philosophy. They have an opinion on what at desktop manager should be and they’re constantly working towards that vision.
When I introduce GNOME to new people I explain to them some the project goals, design elements and how it’s intended to be used. Then I tell them that GNOME is opinionated on how things should behave and look, and if you try to force GNOME to be something it’s not you’ll probably end up using poorly documented or unsupported third-party extensions that break things. Generally the advice is, GNOME is great, but not for everyone, take the time to learn the GNOME way of doing things and if you don’t like it you’re better off switching to another desktop environment than trying to change GNOME.
I have no problem with using Gnome. It stays out of my way and Things Just Work for the most part as 99% of what I do is in a browser or a terminal anyway.
I think both have their use cases. Gnome is absolutely fantastic, if you use it on a laptop with a touch screen (for university, school, etc), but on desktop I dont really like it that much. I like the simple design, but KDEs customisability is much better. However, their virtual desktops are kinda ass, but I dont really use them on my desktop PC anyways.
Honestly I can’t imagine why anyone would use either of these when there are lightweight DEs like XFCE and Cinnamon that are not only easier on the system resources, but also more stable, customizeable, user-friendly and more pleasant to look at. I stopped taking gnome seriously ever since they came up with GTK3. They had a chance to fix it with GTK4 but instead they somehow made it even worse (as if client-side decorations wasn’t bad enough, now theyre doing clientside shadows? Seriously!?!?). KDE is allegedly better because it gives the user more options, but anyone who’s actually used it will tell you that it suffers from the same kind of bloat and braindead design decisions as gnome.
Gonna talk from KDE positions here. GNOME, too, has its place, but I recognize it’s not for everybody.
More pleasant to look at
Certainly not for the average person. For a normie user, KDE looks way way nicer, and it’s certainly way more modern than either XFCE or Cinnamon. Sure, the latter can be made into something modernishly enough, but the customization options are way more limited here. Either way, out of the box, KDE is much more preferable to most.
User-friendly
Can hardly find anything that is more user-friendly than KDE. Everything you can possibly think of is available graphically, the interface is extremely sleek and ergonomic, and you can change anything at all to your liking. Which leads us to…
Customizable
Why would anyone say XFCE or Cinnamon are more cutomizable is beyond my comprehension. XFCE can be somewhat reasonably customized, but the anount of technical knowledge required to do anything more than resizing bars is beyond the scope of normal users. Cinnamon is outright rigid, and its customization options are extremely poor by any means. KDE is easily customizable and can be turned into anything through a what-you-see-is-what-you-get graphical editor that requires 0 technical knowledge. Still, if you really want to go the old school way because you’re used to it, want something not offered, or can’t imagine yourself descending into the GUI designed for plebs, you can do it too. KDE is king when it comes to this aspect.
Stable
As far as XFCE goes, this does hold quite some weight. It has a mature codebase, allowing it to have plenty of things figured out. For mission-critical systems, it might be preferable. Same can’t be said for Cinnamon, but either way, every popular DE is stable enough for home use without much worry - including KDE.
In any case, having used all four, I stopped exactly at KDE and GNOME - the former being perfect for casual multitasking and entertainment, the latter being nice for focused work.
From the top of my head I can think of a few reasons:
- Better feature support (HDR, better fractional scaling etc)
- Better integration (specifically Gnome)
- More complete graphical settings
- Quicker adoption rate
- Wayland support (X11 is pretty much dead at this point)
Aside from RAM (of which most machines do have plenty by now) there isn’t really too much overhead these days. In fact battery usage on Gnome and KDE with Wayland is usually better than with X11.
KDE is allegedly better because it gives the user more options, but anyone who’s actually used it will tell you that it suffers from the same kind of bloat and braindead design decisions as gnome.
I have used it & can’t tell you this. What am I doing wrong?
I wanna go back to XFCE when support for Wayland is okay.
KDE is allegedly better because it gives the user more options, but anyone who’s actually used it will tell you that it suffers from the same kind of bloat and braindead design decisions as gnome.
I’ve used KDE on and off for the past 20 years or so. These days I use KDE on my work laptop and Cinnamon on my personal one. Personally I think they both do their job just fine, but apparently I’m in the wrong.
deleted by creator
I am really glad both exist. Gnome is awesome because of its simplicity and ease of use and KDE is really cool because it makes me feel like a superior human being
KDE is objectively the better DE from a technical standpoint (in my objective opinion) but sometimes GNOME just feels right in the moment. I have both installed and switch between them all the time
I liked gnome for its minimalistic UI. I then realized i3 does that better :D
lol if
Gnome was the main obstacle in Wayland adoption, by not implementing “server-side decorations”.
The main obstacle in Wayland adoption was Wayland not being usable for years.
I wish KDE worked well on Touch screens. It seems to really fail at that. Don’t tell me it’s X11. X11 on Gnome doesn’t think my touches are a mouse. KDE thinks it is though.
It works fine for me, and I use Wayland.
Steam deck is quite good with touch I find.
It’s okay. But it would be better if it didn’t recognize touch as a mouse input. When I booted into Ubuntu once it worked flawlessly on the Desktop touch input working distinctly from mouse input. on KDE touches are mouse input which is annoying and uncomfortable.
Maybe I’m biased because gnome is stock fedora but it runs so smoothly and I love how the windows button and search feature works out of the box. I know that can be setup in KDE though. I love how it feels unique unlike KDE and most other DE that just feel like bad windows. I love that it doesn’t have dumbass names like KDE adding k to everything. Also feel it just works.
Every time I’ve added KDE there’s also a bunch of stupid minor things that just down make sense. Why do so many applications lose the ability to use the right click menu like in jdownloader? Why do windowed games get pushed so vertical low? Why does search recommend things I clearly didn’t ask for? Moving windows with the arrow keys is icky and not smooth. Blowing them up with windows W like gnome’s windows key just looks bad. I want to love it but it just feels like a FOSS windows.
UX wise, GNOME is oversimplified and Plasma is overcomplicated.
Gnome: We lock down everything since youre too wtupid to handle womputers Also gnome: “oh you want right click-create file? We can’t think of a more streamlined solution than navigating to the folder you already have open in nautilus using terminal, making an empty file with a terminal text editor and googling the command to save and exit empty file. Intuitive is our MO”
I love gnome workflow and simplicity but it is too locked down in nonsensical ways and it is too broken too often.
You can just put a blank file in the Templates directory then it shows up in the right click menu. At least it does that on PopOS
Or, and now hear me out, you could add a New > File/Directory to the context menu.
Yes that is what you have to do. It is ridiculous that this is what you have to do.
I was searching for this a few days ago and was stunned that you aren’t able to just create an empty file in the gnome file manager.
In the terminal you can use
touch file.txtto create an empty file, but it should be possible to do this in the file manager.Oh i know i can painstakingly navigate to the correct folder with ls and cd, then google what that one command I never use is and then use man to stop the whole process and read how to use it.
It’s nice to have that option for those who want to have fun with it, but it is a joke this is the intended option in gnome of all places.
I like a BeOS style vertical taskbar with window names. Neither of them do it well.
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
Exactly my experience too.
Do you have an nvidia GPU?
No.
It’s hard to believe that KDE used to be considered one of the worst DEs around and now it’s like Gnome is getting worse while KDE is getting better and better.
I’m pretty sure that the vast majority of hate for KDE back in the day was because Qt started out with a non-Free Software license, not because it was bad in terms of quality.
KDE Plasma 4 was also really buggy when it first launched
I personally hated KDE because it was a buggy, unstable mess for a long time.
What is happening to GNOME is truly one of the biggest fumbles in OSS. They could have just continued improving things, but instead choose the path of most resistance, refused to commit to any logical strategies for further improvement, and are now stuck in a loop of nothing getting done
Seems to be an organizational thing, at least some who try to work with- or are part of the Gnome Foundation mentioned this. Apparently KDE e.V. got a way more flexible structure with work groups, easier ways to propose changes etc. while Gnome gets awfully stuck with their panel/council structure (not sure which one is the right word in english).
When mentioning the problems with extensions (rather furiously since I just lost some work again and installed KDE) I was told both: Go on an create a PR, but also that “this was discussed and a panel decided against changing anything”. Obviously no one will waste dozens, if not hundreds of hours of their time even just creating a Proof-of-Concept for sth. like an extension API if some authority already decided that nothing is supposed to be done about it.
As long as your Gnome environment can’t gracefully crash without taking absolutely everything with it (like with KDE or other DEs) there’s no way in hell anyone should use Gnome on computers where actual work is being done, let alone something critical.
I always try KDE and after a while all the quirks and odd behaviors make me go back to GNOME. GNOME may not be easily themeable but it is predictable
That’s the good part. There’s plenty of choice, and it’s easy to swap
Exactly this. It always surprises me when people get bent out of shape because there is an option that they don’t like. Even worse when someone makes a choice they don’t like. “Who the fuck cares. Let them do their thing. be grateful you have a choice.”
Exactly. Its the best part of Linux. I like what Zorin did, they customized backend of GNOME to give you 4 choices of DE style.
Can I ask what quirks/off behavior you see (genuinely asking)?
Sometimes its a slight hang of a dialog box, like delay. Sometimes its a dialog getting stuck on top of other dialogs and it becomes unresponsive. Like it is above all other apps on screen.
And hard to describe minor stuff that just feels a bit off. Where as when I go back to GNOME it is smooth like a fully finished environment.
Maybe most people don’t notice stuff like that, but I’m the type of guy that friends call when they want to buy a used car. 500ft and I’m like nope, bad bearing on right side, transmission shudder at start off, worn bushing in steering…and others are like it drives great
Yup!
At least we have MATE: fork of Gnome 2.
Tried that last week.
God it feels so outdated.
Yes, it’s what I started on, but there are good reasons we don’t use it much anymore.Use Xfce if you want something traditional.
Umm, KDE/Plasma shell is a fucking absolute disaster of a UX. It makes Windows look good. Gnome has major flaws in its software that make performance go to shit, but overall the architecture and design guidelines are superior and at least have a semblance of direction. Just open the preferences/settings on KDE and you see nothing but pure chaos.
I don’t know… Friday I installed Linux on my dad’s “new” Thinkpad T495.
I tried to go with Gnome. It’s supposed to be the user friendly one, right?
First thing I want to do is change the charging limit of the battery to 80%. It’s not impossible to replace the battery, but it would be nice to not blow it too fast.
After 20m of trying and failing I switched to KDE, where the whole thing was 3 clicks.
And even if I didn’t know how to do it, the systemsettings window has a search function that will get you the right option in a split second.
Just open the preferences/settings on KDE and you see nothing but pure chaos.
It looks fine to me. Everything is categorized nicely and you know where to find something you look for. I am not sure about GNOME Settings, because I have never used GNOME more than 30 minutes (because of annoyingly shitty UX), but it’s at least much better than what Windows does.
Just came across this issue today. I need to install a font. The dir is not accessible through gnome Files. Actually, nothing but mmom ounted drives and my Home dir is. So if I to work in dirs outside my Home, I HAVE to use the terminal. Just to copy a font to a dir outside my Home.
Gnome is made by designers, kde is made by devs.
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.
Same as you but I lean towards KDE since it doesn’t break as often when programming things across sftp and also VR and HOTAS systems work better on it for some reason.
Also cause right click -> open terminal in location and right click -> new file must be part of any desktop environment as a default.
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.
It’s called a blackbox and it’s considered a good API design.
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 that’s 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.
