Fedora 42 Change Proposal Wants To Make KDE Plasma The Default Over GNOME

[anda_skoa]

If you think having ten constantly visible icons in the systray

If you have ten constantly visible icons on the tray that you will likely have configured them that way, no?

Currently my tray shows the icon of KDE Connect.
It wouldn't be visible if the paired phone wasn't connected. Or if I just never wanted to see it in the first place.

The only two permanently visible entries are clipboard and volume control because I tend to interact with those quite often.

Similarly with files on the desktop - a weirdly defined place as it's actually a file explorer, just *behind* all your apps, showing files from a subfolder of your home dir.

I don't use icons on desktop either but surely it would display whatever folder you had configured?

[avis]

Nobody forced systemd or Wayland, Red Hat employees didn't force other distributions developers with guns to make them use systemd and Wayland. They are default (well, Wayland is not yet default but sooner or later it will be) because they are better solution to the previous defaults. Accept reality instead of claiming that people accepted solution you don't like because they were forced or something.

This is not entirely true.

Systemd was in some ways forced on us because it replaced parts of the previous software stack and newer applications started to heavily use/depend on its features. Since there's not enough manpower in Open Source, distros had no choice but to adopt it. And during its first 3-4 years, systemd was quite rough.

The same story with PulseAudio though its final iteration, PipeWire is finally something you don't notice as it works beautifully.

Wayland "adoption" is kinda similar: Gnome and KDE have wound down their X11 support efforts and will probably disable its support sooner than later.

[anda_skoa]

Systemd was in some ways forced on us because it replaced parts of the previous software stack and newer applications started to heavily use/depend on its features.

But nobody forced distributions to ship any of these applications.

Or not at this point and either waited for them to support alternatives or those alternatives supporting the features required by the new applications.

[qlum]

While the outcome remains an open question, I think it's good for Fedora to at least consider it.
Fedora is a testing ground, KDE has changed it's release cycle to work better for stable distributions, which may help if it ever moves beyond just fedora.
The arguments about features and compatibility with newer standards, which is relevant for Fedora also makes it something worth considering.

Just because you have had a default for over a decade does not mean you should never re-evaluate the choice. Just because Red Hat has Gnome developers on payroll does not mean it always has to, I could imagine from a corporate level, if a different desktop environment keeps up, without having to pay for developers, that is already a win.

KDE in the past had little corporate backing, but now at least Valve actively backing it changes things here.

Fedora is not the same as RHEL, and I am not saying Gnome is without merrit. Still it's a good time to, reevaluate choices in that regard.

[avis]

But nobody forced distributions to ship any of these applications.

Or not at this point and either waited for them to support alternatives or those alternatives supporting the features required by the new applications.

Distros don't have the luxury of staying with random older versions of applications. This is not how Linux works. It's all quite interconnected and imagine your users want a new version of application X, which in its turn depends on a new version of application Y which now has a dependency on systemd, thus you decided not to upgrade Y, thus your users are screwed.

[duby229]

This is not entirely true.

Systemd was in some ways forced on us because it replaced parts of the previous software stack and newer applications started to heavily use/depend on its features. Since there's not enough manpower in Open Source, distros had no choice but to adopt it. And during its first 3-4 years, systemd was quite rough.

The same story with PulseAudio though its final iteration, PipeWire is finally something you don't notice as it works beautifully.

Wayland "adoption" is kinda similar: Gnome and KDE have wound down their X11 support efforts and will probably disable its support sooner than later.

Udev!! It -WAS- forced on us. Thank god for the Gentoo devs,,,,

[sophisticles]

Microsoft already does that. Running "Explorer.exe" as a desktop on Windows.

And we all know how messy this is.

The current Windows version is not based on Linux, though they do make a Linux distro.

Explorer.exe is hardly a mess, much better than Gnome and KDE put together.

[duby229]

But nobody forced distributions to ship any of these applications.

Or not at this point and either waited for them to support alternatives or those alternatives supporting the features required by the new applications.

YES they did!! The sucked in every other project that they could possibly do specifically for the entire purpose of forcing it on us!! Its a fucking black hole... It's an oligarchy by its very definition to the fucking letter!!!

[Daktyl198]

forced systemd like how?, making it better than everyone else?, lol

Gnome (GDM specifically but maybe Gnome itself as well? Not sure) required a new feature that was only implemented in systemd at the time. Can't remember which feature exactly, as it's been a while.

It wasn't a systemd-specific feature in that anybody else could have implemented it and some did, but not quick enough. It was the straw on the camel's back for distros like Ubuntu who were recently transitioning over to Gnome as their main DE, or those who were trying to avoid "upgrading" to systemd at the time.

We all can agree systemd is great now, but back then it was highly controversial for a reason.

[logical]

GNOME can come back when it figures out how to make a functional top bar, system tray, desktop icons, application selection menus, window management header bars, system controls that don't require extra tools and plugins.....I could keep going, but the point is that GNOME isn't a serious contender in the desktop game regardless of the display server.

LOL. So, you don't like it. That's fine. Hate to break it to ya, but that doesn't make it a bad desktop. There are other folks in the world who are quite happy with it.