A Call For KDE To Fully Embrace Simplicity By Default, Appeal To More Novice Users

[thechef]

How about fixing the godamned bugs in Plasma before fucking around with design choices?

How do you imagine that? Hey Devs, please zero-inbox the bug-tracker?

[HighValueWarrior]

"Let us try to please everyone!" ... Famous last words.

The beginning of the end .....
Leave it be. Fix the bugs and stop the 'features'
Get rid of SDDM fix smb transfer speeds and get us on wayland.
You build UP to a standard not to the lowest common denominator.

Probably the single most depressing news item I have ever read on phoronix.

[Turbine]

You pro-KDE people are the reason KDE is so terrible.

It's overwhelming the settings and the app design leaves a lot to be desired.

[nado]

KDE is for people who care about tweaking and configuring their desktop more than actually just using it to get work done. I support this idea, it will bring it more in line with GNOME as a DE that you can just use and get your work done. How about leaving out options that most people won't use? If someone needs it they can download a module or application for it.

At this point KDE is like Samsung where it just throws in a myriad of useless features in case 2 people want it. Give people the bare basics and stop cluttering up a DE with feautures only a few use. Most of these features look incredibly gaudy too... Remember 3D desktops that people loved to show off on Linux in the early 2000s? Well the rest of the Linux world and beyond moved on from that... *rolls eyes*

[rabcor]

Simple by default, powerful when needed

I'm sorry but this is just not a good message. It sounds need, but wtf does powerful even mean? Shouldn't it be "Simple by default, versatile when needed"?

Honestly, if they want to make KDE more appealing to people who are less well versed in computing by making the UI 'simple' they should just try to match Windows 7 in simplicity.

Everyone loved windows 7, people with limited computer skills loved it cuz it was simple, people with more advanced skills loved it because it didn't get in your way too much when you wanted to dive under the hood a little bit.

Meanwhile windows 8 was just an all round atrocity, and windows 10 was great to people who had low computer skills but it was an atrocity to every power user as more and more advanced functions and settings became more and more obfuscated, their control panel now filled with all osrts of useless jargon, etc.

However by the sound of it they're thinking more like matching macos? simplicity right? who else has simplicity as it's core design philosophy?

GNOME.

So basically what this guy is saying is that KDE should become less like KDE and more like GNOME.

That is not a good message.

Honestly, KDE is doing pretty good right now, it could use some performance tweaks (kwinft is a godsend for example and more effort sohuld be focused towards it, the original kwin should just be dropped at this point (by developers I mean, not that it should be swapped out for kwinft yet, kwinft isn't stable enough yet), kwin is a clunky mess),

If he thinks there are some defaults that could be better than that's fine, we have settings, the defaults can be whatever the hell the devs decide, but honestly, i recently installed KDE; I haven't liked KDE for years and everytime I installed it I had to change (usually because of either issues with kwin or because of some, well, I suppose, poor defaults, remember the stupid nut?). This is the first time I'm actually pretty happy with it, I installed manjaro kde and I barely touched KDE's settings. I twewaked a lot of other things, but KDE itself? The only thing I changed was swapping out kwin for kwinft, and I mostly just did it because I was curious if kwinft was good or not (it is, it's much smoother, faster and more responsive, it's so much better that even if it has some kinks and crashes sometimes, I still prefer it over kwin in it's current state).

I'm not sure what this guy wants to change, he's super vague aobut it, but as someone who recently tried KDE for like the 10th time and mostly likes it now as opposed to disliking it as I did the last 9 times; I'm quite curious, what exactly is the problem he's trying to solve? Because it looks to me that he's trying to fix something that just isn't broken.

[nado]

To be fair, every single UI rework in history has been a complete and utter disaster. GNOME3, Firefox, YouTube, Twitter, Windows 8. It's not that people simply hate change, it's because every time someone does change something, they seem to intentionally make the worst decisions on everything they possibly can.
At this point I think it's reasonable to get angry at someone who wants to redesign their UI to make absolutely sure we're going to be insanely pissed if they screw it up like everyone else does.

You're incredibly misguided. Every rework has paved the path for them to iterate on a design that becomes better with each revision.

[nado]

[/I]

I'm sorry but this is just not a good message. It sounds need, but wtf does powerful even mean? Shouldn't it be "Simple by default, versatile when needed"?

Honestly, if they want to make KDE more appealing to people who are less well versed in computing by making the UI 'simple' they should just try to match Windows 7 in simplicity.

Everyone loved windows 7, people with limited computer skills loved it cuz it was simple, people with more advanced skills loved it because it didn't get in your way too much when you wanted to dive under the hood a little bit.

Meanwhile windows 8 was just an all round atrocity, and windows 10 was great to people who had low computer skills but it was an atrocity to every power user as more and more advanced functions and settings became more and more obfuscated, their control panel now filled with all osrts of useless jargon, etc.

However by the sound of it they're thinking more like matching macos? simplicity right? who else has simplicity as it's core design philosophy?

GNOME.

So basically what this guy is saying is that KDE should become less like KDE and more like GNOME.

That is not a good message.

Honestly, KDE is doing pretty good right now, it could use some performance tweaks (kwinft is a godsend for example and more effort sohuld be focused towards it, the original kwin should just be dropped at this point (by developers I mean, not that it should be swapped out for kwinft yet, kwinft isn't stable enough yet), kwin is a clunky mess),

If he thinks there are some defaults that could be better than that's fine, we have settings, the defaults can be whatever the hell the devs decide, but honestly, i recently installed KDE; I haven't liked KDE for years and everytime I installed it I had to change (usually because of either issues with kwin or because of some, well, I suppose, poor defaults, remember the stupid nut?). This is the first time I'm actually pretty happy with it, I installed manjaro kde and I barely touched KDE's settings. I twewaked a lot of other things, but KDE itself? The only thing I changed was swapping out kwin for kwinft, and I mostly just did it because I was curious if kwinft was good or not (it is, it's much smoother, faster and more responsive, it's so much better that even if it has some kinks and crashes sometimes, I still prefer it over kwin in it's current state).

I'm not sure what this guy wants to change, he's super vague aobut it, but as someone who recently tried KDE for like the 10th time and mostly likes it now as opposed to disliking it as I did the last 9 times; I'm quite curious, what exactly is the problem he's trying to solve? Because it looks to me that he's trying to fix something that just isn't broken.

The notion that you need something more in the sense "power" also woul indicate that the design is lacking. Make a desktop that will work for everyone instead of making it more complicated by hiding it behind menus like KDE does. Look at GNOME, Windows, MacOS, iOS, Android etc. These work perfectly fine out of the box without gimmicky animations and stolen car designs.

[pqwoerituytrueiwoq]

Well kde is for power users, they need to make some radical changes for it to be beginner friendly, for ex making windows key actually open the menu like most people expect to begin with.

that does actually work like that on kubuntu 22.04 stock, though it is a bit buggy (inconsistent or i managed to break it somehow)

As long as I can make the tweaks I like, I don't really care about they do with the defaults.

Speaking of simplicity, how about making the "Application Menu" the default? Is way simpler and direct than the one they use. Is a no bullshit, direct and simple to understand launcher. Your favorites, right there. Any program perfectly categorized? Right there. Search, last used? Right there. And the power off and restart buttons are not ridden and perfectly placed. Is perfection.

[snip attachment, see page 2 of thread]

Plasma developers had tried for years to teak a hopeless design launcher, trying to make a something similar to the Windows launcher that, lets face it, is a steaming turd. And all along the perfect launcher is right there, buried away like a step child.

So I suggest, stop losing time making KDE look too much like Windows, and start making a better Windows, which KDE is already, but can be even more.

personally i think the kicker one is probably better, though the search results could be better i have never found recently used to be useful in all the years i had that feature in XFCE as the thing i need was always long gone from recent history


If you are trying to draw in windows users you want them to feel comfortable

Something that not enough people bring up is application names.

What the hell is Kate, for example? Why isn't it called anything even remotely recognizable as a text editor? This whole thing where everything starts with K is Kool and all but it doesn't do wonders for newbies.


That's not just KDE. GIMP is another example.

You know in the XFCE4 DE using the applications menu it has the option to show stuff by the generic name, sadly KDE does not have this feature, i even renamed one of my programs in the launcher cause the name is meaning less and looks more like some random username

It will never cease to amaze me how quickly everyone starts panicking when someone starts talking about improving the UX of software in the world of Linux. As if somehow there's this unspoken assumption going on that making software easier to use could only make it worse.

Better defaults, cleaner UIs, clearer labels, simpler structures for menus and dialogs, will do nothing but improve the experience of using KDE for all users, both average users and more advanced users. There's nothing to panic over.

Every time I have seen software get 'simplified' the way this was achieved was by making it useless removing the nice to have features that made it great, so yea when i see that it worries me

How about fixing the godamned bugs in Plasma before fucking around with design choices?

From KDE 4 up till today I have never been able to right-click a panel without having the context menu disappear after hovering over an expandable menu entry. That's > 10 years of experiencing the same bug, you think that's fucking funny?

You know what happens to me when i right click anything in the panel using wayland, that does. X11 is not a problem

[mrazster]

In the past, I've been keeping away from KDE as I've had all kinds of issues with KDE/plasma, anything from stability issues to inconsistency and confusing options in system settings.

But for various technical reasons I'm currently stuck on KDE/plasma and have been running it for a little over a year. And I have to say it's really growing on me, fast and hard. I have come to really like it. It's been stable, performant and just working.

But the overwhelming amount of settings and customization options can be a bit much, even for a person who have been using linux since back in 2005. So I can absolutely understand new users being a bit “put off” or even intimidated by all options and what they actually do. So in my mind, it's a good thing that the devs are picking up on this and hopefully trying to address it.

So maybe work a little on the defaults and then and the rework the system settings, so you have “basic options” always shown. And then have the ability to expand to more “advanced options” (or what ever else is appropriate) when/if needed.

[t.s.]

ngraham maybe something like vlc configuration? they show basic configuration. but then you can toggle it to advanced and expert. Example: systemsettings -> Appearance

• in basic conf, we show bare minimum and important conf. Example: Appearance basic: just show Plasma Style (no edit button) and Win Deco (no edit button).
• advanced conf, the basic plus colors, font, icons, cursors. place the edit button
• expert, show all.

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