KDE Addressing A Spike In Bug Reports Following The Plasma 6 Alpha

[cj.wijtmans]

Does plasma 6 have dark/light mode or swotching between them based on time(instead of pesky blue light filter that distorts colours). And looking for HDR.

[oiaohm]

It seems their design guidelines need to get rewritten, then.

It's generally understanding that KDE UI is ugly, cluster, messy, even the team recognized it. While GNOME is too simple to be useful sometimes. No need to get so angry over this people 😂

KDE Human Interface Guidelines(HIG) go all the way back to 2003 this is 1 year after gnome Human Interface Guidelines(HIG). So its absolutely not a new thing.

UI being ugly does not mean there is anything wrong with the design guidelines.

Not every KDE application follows the KDE HIG to the letter. Quite a few problems people complain about with KDE applications turn out to be interface code counter to the KDE human Interface Guidelines.

Its interesting as you start comparing the differences.
Lets say your user define.

Do note that Gnome HIG

https://developer.gnome.org/hig/principles.html

Make it Simple

The best apps do one thing and do it well. Often this requires having insight into the goals of your app, not just in functional terms but also how it will be used and fit into peoples’ lives. The principle of simplicity applies to each view and element of your app, as well as the app as a whole.

Being too simple to be useful for some users is written into the Gnome Human Interface Guidelines. Yes the Gnome HIG is a one size fit all model HIG.

https://develop.kde.org/hig/introduction/research/

Project User Research Profile
Short summary description of the purpose of the application, who it is for, and what those people can do with it.
Purpose

About the Project User Research Template: The purpose of this template is to provide a place to document an application's user research information for reference during development. Top level items are information everyone in the project should be aware of. Some of the details in the lower sections may take some work and discussion within the project to complete.

Who is the application for?

• List of types (groups) of users
• User groups can be organized based on any type of dimension
• Some groups may be broken down in to sub groups

(Who is the application not for)

• Sometimes it is easy to identify who the application is not for
• This can help keep the scope of the project under control

KDE HIG is not a one size fits all. Also notice something critical here. KDE applications don't try to suite every user. So a KDE application can be too complex for you because it targets a different class of user who has more complex needs than you.

archerallstars yes a 1 size fits all shoe shop is less messy right but it also supports less customers. Also you find lot of KDE applications have not done the Project User Research Profile as the KDE HIG recommends.

Before using blanket statements you really do need to spend some time reading over Gnome and KDE HIG both are good in their own ways both have their issues. Gnome one of limiting functionality is a big issue to a lot of users and why they end up using other desktop environments to gnome.

[xAlt7x]

KDE needs a new design team. The only thing keeping me on GNOME is KDE's lack of any design guideline or whatsoever. It's not just consistency, overall looking of the desktop is not beautiful (at all). IMO, here's my ranking of the best DE design to the worst: GNOME > Windows 11 = macOS > [random value here] > KDE.

KDE's approach is pretty clear to me: mimic the Windows desktop but rip off Mac OS styling.

I see a gathering of professional desktop interface critics who leave extremely valuable comments here.

---

On a serious note, thanks to the KDE developers for creating a beautiful, yet easily customizable Desktop environment. Additionally, thanks for listening to community feedback.Also, for listening to feedback.

[timofonic]

varikonniemi

He may say shit, but maybe he was accidentally right.

https://phabricator.kde.org/D11552

One of those bugs seems to have a not merged merge request.

ngraham
Thanks a lot for your efforts and the KDE development team too! Thanks a lot to you for being so communicative with mere users like us!

Any progress in improving Baloo? I see Elisa uses it's own indexing instead using Baloo. I see Baloo as a good idea executed poorly, it has an abysmal performance and it's the cause of many KDE performance issues.

Any plans to rewrite it, improve it or remove it?

What about efforts at graphics design? Icons, wallpapers, themes, etc.

Any optimization efforts?

archerallstars Despite GNOME fails at many stuff, their (non-UX) design team seems enough staffed. KDE needs to improve this.

[ssokolow]

KDE needs a new design team. The only thing keeping me on GNOME is KDE's lack of any design guideline or whatsoever. It's not just consistency, overall looking of the desktop is not beautiful (at all). IMO, here's my ranking of the best DE design to the worst: GNOME > Windows 11 = macOS > [random value here] > KDE.

Also, they need something like GNOME Circle, cute little apps that represent their UX philosophy.

I'm glad you're not in charge then. I'd go KDE > macOS > GNOME = Windows 11, with GNOME and Windows 11 sharing the bottom because GNOME has headerbars and unpleasant excess padding while post-7 Windows just keeps surfacing little aesthetic papercuts that make it feel cheap. (eg. stuff that's misaligned by a pixel or two in Explorer and other stuff like that. Windows 10 and 11 are the non-textual versions of "if you really hate someone, teach them to recognize bad kerning".)

If someone were to make themes for them that lacked the usual "not quite a perfect imitation" papercuts that make them uncanny valley, I'd choose Platinum (Mac OS 8/9) or Windows 9x over GNOME or Windows 11... I'm just not sure whether I'd choose them over modern macOS because, ever since 10.0, Mac OS has been so locked down and un-customizable that I've never run 10.4 or 10.5 on the Power Mac G4 in my retro-hobby corner for long enough to form an opinion on the aesthetics separate from the straitjacket. Apparently I'm not alone in that opinion.

That said, I can say that one of the first things I do whenever I install KDE is to replace the OSX Dock-esque launcher-taskbar icons with traditional "This is an app, that is an open window. When I click the former, I want to open a new one. When I click the latter, I want to raise an existing one. Never the twain shall meet." taskbar widgetry. (And one of the first things I did when I HP Restore partitioned what is now my hand-me-down gaming rig back to Windows 7 was to un-pin the provided icons for similar reasons.)

I believe the HCI terminology is that launchers like the macOS Dock and the Unity sidebar have drifted in the direction of a more application-centric GUI as opposed to a document-centric GUI. (iOS is the extreme of the application-centric approach and the Apple Lisa, where you could only open an application by double-clicking a document and there were special "pad" files to tear blank documents off of, was the extreme of the document-centric approach.)

[rafanelli]

If KDE Plasma was like Gnome it would have no reason to exist.

Gnome was a counter movement to KDE. KDE used Qt and the license of Qt was being made more open source compatible. Since this did not happen fast enough, Gnome was born by using Gimp's toolkit (GTK) instead of Qt to build a desktop env. It worked out quite well for them: they still exist and their product looks nice.

While you'd expect Gnome to be the more "bazaar" style project compared to KDE, the opposite is true. Gnome seems to be more "cathedral" with corporate backing, and top down leadership. In the mean time the Qt lib has long been released under several open source licenses: GPL 2.0, GPL 3.0, LGPL 3.0 and LGPL 2.1 (with Qt special exception).

[Vistaus]

KDE needs a new design team. The only thing keeping me on GNOME is KDE's lack of any design guideline or whatsoever. It's not just consistency, overall looking of the desktop is not beautiful (at all). IMO, here's my ranking of the best DE design to the worst: GNOME > Windows 11 = macOS > [random value here] > KDE.

Also, they need something like GNOME Circle, cute little apps that represent their UX philosophy.

They already have a design team: https://develop.kde.org/hig/
And they already have a GNOME Circle thing: https://apps.kde.org/

Plus it's only your opinion. In my opinion, I hate the way GNOME looks and feels. So to counter your argument: GNOME needs a new design team.

[Vistaus]

I remember those days of KDE 1-3... it was horrid. GNOME was the clear choice then... I don't think I ever saw hide or hair of KDE4. But KDE 5 is friggin' fantastic, and I'm glad they're not making any radical changes (*cough* GNOME3 *cough*)

KDE 3 horrid? That's the first time I hear anyone say that… In fact, 3.5 especially is generally regarded as one of the best KDE versions ever to exist (which I, btw, agree with, even though I love Plasma 5 too!).

[horstderheld]

Does plasma 6 have dark/light mode or swotching between them based on time(instead of pesky blue light filter that distorts colours). And looking for HDR.

At the moment, you can use third-party tools such as Koi or Yin-Yang

But the KDE-Team is working on this:

https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-workspace/-/issues/59

[mercster]

There seems to be this trend with newer Linux hobbyists that they judge the desktop on how it looks at first boot. KDE can be customized to a crazy degree. But there are people who "distro hop" to see which has the most "beautiful" desktop. I mean, it's your time, waste it however you like... most people just want their desktop to be functional and easy to use, with customization being the most important when it comes to BEHAVIOR, not necessarily "looks." I have a feeling some people have an inner interior designer impulse that enjoys smooth lines and "cute" things... whatever?