After 2y on Linux I can say with full confidence that switching from GNOME to KDE (for me) is a bigger barrier than switching from Windows to Linux ever was.

I’ve tried a lot to like KDE but I just can’t. I usually see people discussing distros but I feel like picking the right DE makes much bigger impact. I’m yet to try Hyprland though.

Considering the fact that I’m itching to get Steam Frame and VR on GNOME will likely be broken indefinitely, idk what to do.

  • Riskable@programming.devEnglish
    9·
    6 hours ago

    Every decade since 1999 (the year of the Linux desktop—for me) I spend a few weeks trying out all the hot new shit in terms of desktop environments. I’ll switch to Gnome for a few days, get disappointed at how much I miss from KDE, and then try one of the newer ones like Cosmic. Then I’ll play with the latest versions of the classics (xfce) and marvel that they still make you configure everything in a single file or they still lack basic shit that normal people want like a clipboard manager.

    All the actually useful or just plain really, really nice/handy stuff is built into KDE Plasma. I’ve been using so many of those features for so long, I can’t fathom having to go back to a world without say, being able to navigate the filesystems on all my other PCs via ssh:// (and other KIO workers).

    I remember when KDE 2.0 came out and it added support for kioslaves (now called KIO Workers) and it completely changed how I viewed desktops. That was in the year 2000. How is it that literally nothing else (not other FOSS desktops nor Windows or Macs) has implemented the same feature?

    It’s not just the file manager, either. I can access ssh:// (or any other KIO worker) from any file dialog! The closest thing is shared drives in Windows but even that isn’t nearly as flexible or feature rich (or efficient, haha).

    Then there’s the clipboard manager (klipper), Activities, and a control panel that lets you customize everything to extreme degrees. It even supports fractional scaling and has supported that since forever. I remember when they introduced that feature over a decade ago and it still blows my mind to this day just how forward thinking the devs were.

    Monitors since forever have had a different X DPI than the Y DPI. Yet only the KDE devs bothered to both query the monitor’s DDC info to figure that out and set it correctly when the desktop starts.

    There’s other features that drive me nuts when I don’t have them! For example, the ability to disable global shortcuts on specific windows. So if I’ve got a remote desktop open to my work I can send Super-. (Win-.) and that’ll open the Windows emoji picker in the remote desktop instead of the KDE one (locally). And it will remember this setting for that application!

    I can make any window I want stay above others temporarily to take notes, enter values into the calculator, or just turn any window into something like a HUD (you can control any window’s transparency on the fly!).

    It even supports window tiling! A feature most people aren’t aware of. Like, if you’re already running KDE, why bother with a tiling window manager? You’ve already got it (though the keyboard shortcuts to manage the tiling layout in real time are lacking).

    TL;DR: KDE Plasma is the best desktop in existence across all platforms and this is easy to prove with empircal evidence.

    • Limerance@piefed.socialEnglish
      1·
      3 hours ago

      The downside of KDE is the millions of options and features. It can get in the way and makes it a little harder to learn.

      That said. KDE is pretty great and currently my favorite.

    • djdarren@piefed.socialEnglish
      4·
      5 hours ago

      For example, the ability to disable global shortcuts on specific windows. So if I’ve got a remote desktop open to my work I can send Super-. (Win-.) and that’ll open the Windows emoji picker in the remote desktop instead of the KDE one (locally). And it will remember this setting for that application!

      I did not know this! I’ll look into this and no longer will it piss me off when I tap Super in a VM to open the menu, and have to dismiss my local menu first.

      • Riskable@programming.devEnglish
        1·
        3 hours ago

        That’s just the tip of the iceberg of cool and useful stuff you can do with KDE Plasma (and Kwin).

        Another tip: Did you know that KRunner (Alt-Space) can do unit conversions? Type Alt-Space and 10cm or something like that and it’ll give you that value in inches.

        Another: You can bind shortcuts to mouse buttons like Ctrl-Alt-Right (click) And Ctrl-Alt-Left to say, switch desktops right/left.

        You can type Ctrl-i in Dolphin to filter files. So if you’re looking at your enormous downloads directory and you want to see all the .png files you can type Ctrl-i, png and it’ll only show you files with png in their name.

        KDE’s “get hot new stuff” framework works with Dolphin “actions” (context menu file handlers) so you can go into the settings—>Context Menu and click on “Download New Services” to browse tons of free scripts/tools that let you do things like file conversions, write disk images to USB drives, get checksums, etc.

        I actually made a personal script that converts videos to looping .webp files (or just sets WebP files to loop forever). So I can right click on a .WebP, .webm, .mp4, etc and it’ll run ffmpeg on it in the background.

        • djdarren@piefed.socialEnglish
          1·
          2 hours ago

          Another: You can bind shortcuts to mouse buttons like Ctrl-Alt-Right (click) And Ctrl-Alt-Left to say, switch desktops right/left.

          OK, how the hell do you do this? Because I have Ctrl+left click and Ctrl+right click set on my Mac to switch left/right between spaces/desktops, and cannot for the life of me work our how to replicate that in Linux.