I’m team Plasma, but mostly just because every time I touch Gnome it feels like I’m using a really bad copy of OS X that they got bored of copying halfway through and said fuck it, good enough.
Granted, yes, you can tweak it and blah blah blah, but Plasma ships and feels complete and functional right out of the box, and Gnome feels incomplete the more I use it.
I daily drive macOS and Android. GNOME is more like Android to me. Feels too touch focused, where Plasma feels like something actually made for a desktop.
I’d say it’s non-mouse focused. Heavy touch or keyboard focus work pretty well, but the mouse really isn’t intended as anything more than a helper.
I absolutely love Gnome, but only when I have a touchpad/touchscreen. It blows KDE out of the water in that regard. However, it loses its shine for me when transitioning to a traditional KB+M, and KDE takes the cake there.
Basically, KDE for my main desktop, Gnome for my laptops, tablets, etc.
I don’t know, I recently got a 2-in-1 laptop, and was surprised to see that KDE works great. Got Onboard as on-screen keyboard. Screen rotation works great. Glad I didn’t have to run Gnome on that machine.
I like Plasma, and it’s my go-to, but I’m a bit excited to see what System76 does with Cosmic.
I’ve only ever used GNOME. What am I missing?
I just really like KDE, been between that and XFCE for years. Ubuntu’s version of gnome when they went to that side bar layout that looks like it’s meant for tablets turned me off of trying it again (though probably be great on a tablet). KDE’s super customisable too, totally done a faux osx look for my laptop and use more or less stock KDE on my shop computer. I didn’t mind older gnome though, isn’t that what cinnamon or mate are meant to feel like?
Certainly Plasma if you’re coming from Windows, unless we’re considering pre-customized GNOME variants like for example Ubuntu uses.
Sure, KDE can be more complex in terms of configuration and customizability, but the default configuration is already good for most users.
Beginners using vanilla GNOME will quickly miss features like a minimize button and certainly tray icons.
Beginners using vanilla GNOME
Beginners will never really be in a position where they’ll be using vanilla gnome, so that argument is kinda moot. And even if they did, those features are literally one extension away…
will quickly miss features like a minimize button and certainly tray icons.
Tray icons don’t exist in gnome’s ecosystem, it only becomes problematic once you get third party applications. The real problems are the minimize/maximize, desktop icons, and panel on top when coming from windows. Although these days with the ever increasing phone use people might just be more at ease with gnome’s workflow anyways.
Okay but the comparison was about GNOME vs KDE, not “GNOME modified with 5 extensions and tweaks that may or may not break with the next major update”.
Also, most users will want to install third party applications. Your average gamer will likely install Discord and Steam, both of them use a tray icon. And no, most gamers aren’t very technical when it comes to their OS.
Okay but the comparison was about GNOME vs KDE, not "GNOME modified with 5 extensions and tweaks
Yeah each distribution has their own patch set. If you really want to compare you need to start with the most popular, ubuntu and fedora.
Also, most users will want to install third party applications. Your average gamer will likely install Discord and Steam, both of them use a tray icon.
The two examples you gave are definitely not most users. I’d be surprised if it were even 20%. And the tray icon isn’t necessary for either of them to work correctly. Most people use the computer to open the browser.
Fedora is pretty much vanilla GNOME. And yes, pretty much all users install third party apps. Not everybody installs Steam of course, but let it be Teams or Zoom for meetings for example. I don’t know anyone just using stock apps on their computer (or phone for that matter).
… and feel endless pain from whatever they did to the scrollbars. Seriously, wtf.
I think both are fine for beginners. Both are easy to use and can be good looking.
GNOME is more different from Windows, which means that users will have to put more effort in to get used to the UI, but it doesn’t have as many complicated settings or customizability for EVERYTHING that Plasma does, so it can be less confusing in that sense. I switched to primarily using Plasma a couple years ago and I’m probably with Plasma to stay, but personally I think GNOME might be better for Linux beginners. Though if you really want a beginner-friendly DE, go for Cinnamon.
Gnome if you come from MacOS, KDE if you come from Windows. But, for a beginner, I think that highly customized to be Windows-like Zorin OS or Linux Mint with Cinnamon would be better choices.
I started with gnome then moved to plasma, that’s probably a good way for beginners to go
A question with no right answer, because it is a matter of taste and habits.
Both are very much sophisticated desktop environments which very useful defaults. Neither Gnome nor Plasma are too complicated for beginners and can be customized easily. If you want to you can go very deep into the customization too.
I am plasma here is why: Customizable: you don’t need a million extension (forgot name) to theme your desktop it’s all in plasma Less buggy: tracker3 on Gnome is soo problematic it will just randomly break/ from what i heard online it will consume so much resources and some apps will refuse to run (idk if me problem) Has alot of qol features
