A Week With GNOME As My Linux Desktop: What They Get Right & Wrong

[Marc Driftmeyer]

Hands down, GNOME 3.x is now mature, consistent and far more pleasant to manage than KDE 4/5. I keep KDE 5 around in case Debian screws up a GNOME update leaving me to fix it while in KDE.

GNOME 3.18 will just increase the gap over KDE 5.

[edoantonioco]

Only Gnome seems to fit the bill of being complete. KDE feel's half-finished when it comes to "coming together" part, let alone offering everything you need for a "full experience".

Exactly, KDE doesn't feels like a finished product, that's why once I switched to Cinnamon I felt again than I was using a completed OS, and not just a bunch of things tied together. I'm kind of sad than this experience is still how it feels in plasma 5.
And btw, which one of both is currently able to sort the desktop icons in a vertical and horizontal way (as on windows)? and not just to create a mess of icons in the desktop. I wont consider any Linux GUI good enough if they will keep ignoring obvious improvements like that. They should fix the obvious things before adding others less important features.

[Ericg]

Nice comparison, thanks! I agree that it appears like gnome has designers assigned to almost everything they do by principle, and it's not just a bunch of coders that may or may not ask for "help" from some design team. That side-by-side comparison clearly demonstrates it.

KDE is by far more powerful, which is a great thing. All of the work to use hardware accel in Qt5 and all of the work towards optimizing Kwin and the kdelibs are great things. I love that. I love the configuration that KDE lets me have. I love the fact that when I'm just using applications (LibreOffice, Firefox, Blender, etc) that KDE is out of my way, with Gnome Shell it always felt like I was fighting against the shell to try and do more than one thing at a time. I'm not saying that KDE / Plasma / Kwin is bad. What I'm saying is that everything -other- than Plasma and kwin need serious work.

[artivision]

For mobility, we only need less options per App Gui and preferences (opposite of Windowz), and icons instead of characters on App Gui and preferences, or 2-3 characters long words. The same for the desktop. We don't need all this shit like KDE-Gnome-Unity-Android. Just use XFCE, Xubuntu rocks.

[Ericg]

Exactly, KDE doesn't feels like a finished product, that's why once I switched to Cinnamon I felt again than I was using a completed OS, and not just a bunch of things tied together. I'm kind of sad than this experience is still how it feels in plasma 5.

Part of the reason its "Still like this in Plasma 5" is because a lot of the applications haven't been updated since KDE 4, and some not since KDE 3. I knew that going in, and I knew that I was gonna find some remnants of KDE 3 and early 4 laying around. Which is kind of the problem. "Core" applications that haven't been maintained or updated to follow current HIG.

And as to system settings well... Eric ... I would have expected you to be the last person to be complaining about this since I'm sure you're quite aware that the VDG is working on this problem but that it is still very much a work in progress which we may not see for another few releases but I'm quite sure you know are coming.

I do know the VDG is working on things, Luke, even beyond System Settings. But there's a lot to be fixed, years of ugly UI and consistences that need the VDG's firm hand. I've used KDE for -years-, Plasma 5 is -beautiful.- But after spending a week with Gnome and seeing all of the attention that has gone into their applications and then coming back to KDE... That's what made me realized how crappy some "core" KDE applications are. I was so used to it that I was blind to it, or just ignored it, and using Gnome made me realize it. This can be seen as an attack, which isn't what I wanted. Or this can, as I was trying to make it, be looked at as a list of specific pain-points, paper cuts, and other oddities and inconsistencies that hurt the user experience for the VDG to focus on.

The Visual Design Group and updated KDE HIG are new things in the KDE camps, it will take them time to get up to speed and really making change in the KDE Community. That's okay. I'm not expecting these things to be fixed tomorrow. But I've been on the other end of things too-- walking into a place where everything is fscked to hell and back and being told to "fix it." First thing I did was ask customers / users "What's the biggest problem to you?" and focus on that. Sure, the backend stuff, the stuff the end users / customers don't see is important too and needs to be fixed just as quickly, but its the front-end stuff, the visible stuff, that is costing users and customers.

[Ericg]

As to auto-login and being prompted for your password all I can say is... Grow up. The current behavior is default for the very good reason of security and whining about it is along the lines of whining about cars having locks.

I disagree with you Luke, and that's okay. I understand the fact that it reduces security if your keychain logs in, but if you are opting to enable autologin anyway then I kind of feel like "reduced security" is already a moot point. As anyone in security knows: if you've got physical access then the machine is pwned anyway.

[mudig]

KDE doesn't feel like cohesive experience. KDE doesn't feel like it has a direction its moving in, it doesn't feel like a full experience. KDE feels like its a bunch of pieces that are moving in a bunch of different directions, that just happen to have a shared toolkit beneath them.

This neatly sums up my opinion of KDE. I've used KDE 3.x in FreeBSD 4.8 days iirc up to 4.something before I jumped ship to Ubuntu, and, well, KDE never felt like a pleasure to use, never mind beautiful. It took me some getting used to Unity, but after recently switching to Fedora 21/22, it still is most usable DE, imho because Canonical relies on user testing. Gnome and KDE could learn a few things from Unity, which still feels less paper-cut-y.

[emblemparade]

The tone of this editorial is a bit over the top, but of course I share the frustrations when I feel that my computer is asking me to do something that makes no sense...

For me, the only desktop environment that doesn't cause frustration is Xfce.

I gave GNOME 3 a try when I saw that there were plugins that could replicate a more "traditional" desktop. It was great for 2 weeks, until an update came along that broke the plugins, and wow was that frustrating. I think GNOME 3 might be my future desktop once the platform because truly stable, or if Xfce really drops the ball with supporting new tech (for now, they are working slowly at switching to GTK+3).

[Luke_Wolf]

I do know the VDG is working on things, Luke, even beyond System Settings. But there's a lot to be fixed, years of ugly UI and consistences that need the VDG's firm hand. I've used KDE for -years-, Plasma 5 is -beautiful.- But after spending a week with Gnome and seeing all of the attention that has gone into their applications and then coming back to KDE... That's what made me realized how crappy some "core" KDE applications are. I was so used to it that I was blind to it, or just ignored it, and using Gnome made me realize it. This can be seen as an attack, which isn't what I wanted. Or this can, as I was trying to make it, be looked at as a list of specific pain-points, paper cuts, and other oddities and inconsistencies that hurt the user experience for the VDG to focus on.

The problem is you wrote it as a rant, and thus as an attack, and in a place that isn't going to actually start a dialog. If you truly wish to start a dialog you should instead approach the VDG directly and tell them your concerns, not write a blog piece about it, and if you are going to write a blog piece about it, it shouldn't be a rant. As a journalism major I'd have thought you'd understand the importance of using the neutral tone even in editorial pieces, particularly one meant to invoke a change. I really think you need to pull the article, step back for a few days from this particular piece and then edit/rewrite it

The Visual Design Group and updated KDE HIG are new things in the KDE camps, it will take them time to get up to speed and really making change in the KDE Community. That's okay. I'm not expecting these things to be fixed tomorrow. But I've been on the other end of things too-- walking into a place where everything is fscked to hell and back and being told to "fix it." First thing I did was ask customers / users "What's the biggest problem to you?" and focus on that. Sure, the backend stuff, the stuff the end users / customers don't see is important too and needs to be fixed just as quickly, but its the front-end stuff, the visible stuff, that is costing users and customers.

While I get your concern, the VDG isn't really lacking in direction, that's not to say you shouldn't voice your concerns in their direction, but they're not exactly floundering around. It's just going to be a while before their suggestions can be implemented and you have to be patient. One of the biggest problems with the community on this site is that they do not understand patience resulting in the paradox that statements become more ridiculous in their impatience the closer something comes to completion.

[Luke_Wolf]

I disagree with you Luke, and that's okay. I understand the fact that it reduces security if your keychain logs in, but if you are opting to enable autologin anyway then I kind of feel like "reduced security" is already a moot point. As anyone in security knows: if you've got physical access then the machine is pwned anyway.

If you don't care about security then you can just create a passwordless wallet and use that, just use blowfish and don't type anything for the password, AFAIR it doesn't prompt you for the password after if you do that.