• megopie@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    22·
    7 days ago

    the first DE I used on Linux was cinnamon and I was like “wow, this is great, everything makes sense to me out of the box”

    And then I tried Gnome and was incredibly put off by it, like “why the hell is this over here, this layout is strange to me. Why are all these unconventional features on by default, this is very annoying.”

    And then I tried KDE and I was like “wow, this is great and everything makes sense to me out of the box, also there’s all these features and options, I don’t know what they do, but i don’t have to interact with them if I don’t want to.”

    • baltakatei@sopuli.xyz
      2·
      6 days ago

      I tried Cosmic for a week. It looked nice but I returned to LXQt because I want:

      • To display time in ISO 8601 without also messing with locales
      • To customize my file manager columns
      • To use Emacs in a terminal emulator
      • To not have my windows scattered to the four winds every time I lock my screen because the fancy window tiling feature is half-baked
      • To have the X window manager back. I’m sure some people with use cases besides mine that are compatible only with Wayland, but I simply don’t see the need nor do I wish to be a guinea pig submitting bug reports when so many guinea pigs before me had years of their lives sacrificed polishing X.

      Also, the performance of programs like the default Cosmic file manager was much slower then comparable alternatives like pcmanfm-qt which I know run fast even on 2005 Compaq laptop hardware.

  • versionc@lemmy.world
    12·
    6 days ago

    I would love to give GNOME an honest try, but there are so many ways in which it feels like it’s actively working against me. In KDE I can for example create as many panels as I want on as many monitors as I want. On GNOME? There’s an extension to put the panel on another monitor, but then you can’t use the dock. I guess the GNOME developers don’t use multiple monitors? I mean you can’t even set different wallpapers on different monitors without a third party application.

    As for Niri, Hyprland and all that… Yeah, they’re cool, but I’m too old nowadays. I just want shit to work, even though I do miss some of the functions that exist e.g. on Hyprland that doesn’t exist in KDE. But on the other hand, the developer of Hyprland is an asshole, so I wouldn’t really want to promote or use the project anyway.

    • reksas@sopuli.xyz
      3·
      5 days ago

      to me, gnome seems to be just bad ui design for people with stockholm syndrome about it.

    • vodka@feddit.org
      6·
      7 days ago

      I miss being on XFCE, I’ll be so quick to go back when their wayland transition is done

          • Bluewing@lemmy.world
            2·
            5 days ago

            Yeah, that’s fine that’s what you use. I don’t have a pig in this fight. But I’m using Wayland because that’s what Fedora has adopted for a good while now. I do have to say, it’s been a seamless transition. Everything just works. My dual monitor setup, running Kinonite, has never been so easy and trouble free as it is with Wayland. The single monitor box I have with a low power mini desktop with 8Gbit of shared memory, runs Wayland without a hitch.

            The thing is, everything has its time under the sun. Whether its X11 or you and me. The guy that has been maintaining X11 doesn’t want to do it anymore. And it appears no one else wants to do it either. So X11 will fade away and Wayland will have it’s time now. And someday Wayland will also be replaced. And people will mourn it’s passing just like X11.

  • ian@feddit.ukEnglish
    101·
    6 days ago

    Plasma is great. But it’s missing an important feature. Apps, such as backup or sync, cannot navigate to network shares, to use as a backup target. Dolphin sees the shares ok, but its important to backup. Windows lets apps select network targets. Plasma should too.

    • pelya@lemmy.world
      6·
      6 days ago

      Dolphin shows you places that are not in your file system, such as network shares or your phone‘s media directory. Those are fake files, illusions of Satan, temptations designed to stray you from the path of God. Avoid anything that is not opened with open and not read with read system calls, for doing so is a sin before eyes of God (fopen and fread are permitted). Mount your network shares using sudo mount -t cifs.

      • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        2·
        6 days ago

        hear me out. what do you do when the network share server is not always available? like because your system is a laptop, or because you are doing maintenance on your server and its off.

        what I do is suffer the consequences of many software that does not handle it well, and freeze for a minute (or worse) when it tries to open the mounted share even when it shouldn’t even try. multiple KDE apps are guilty of that, including dolphin and kate, but to some extent almost everything else too.
        but that is not ideal.

      • ian@feddit.ukEnglish
        1·
        6 days ago

        It’s a shame Dolphin gets it wrong. I hope that bug has been reported. And I’d love to find a way for non IT users to mount the share as a workaround to the missing functionality. But that’s missing too.

        • pelya@lemmy.world
          1·
          6 days ago

          Dolphin does mount it …somewhere. Supposedly. I expect only KDE developers know where exactly. You can get the same functionality using Gnome file manager and gio command, and you get your network share properly mounted in a file system, but then you won’t be using KDE.

          • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            1·
            6 days ago

            dolphin manages your connection with kio, but only those things can use the share that are aware of kio. so qt apps mostly.

    • Johanno@feddit.org
      3·
      6 days ago

      I use Nixos, but my ssh mount and nfs and samba mount can be selected as backup path for kup.

      • ian@feddit.ukEnglish
        2·
        6 days ago

        Nice. Kup actually lets me see the Network. But then complains if I select a samba share. There is a popular bug report about this. I prefer sync backup to access documents directly, instead of kups scrambled backup files.

        • Johanno@feddit.org
          1·
          6 days ago

          What do you use for backup?

          Kup currently also does not satisfy my needs, but I am not sure what else I should use.

  • Twongo [she/her]@lemmy.ml
    4·
    6 days ago

    i used cinnamon in 2016 (worst time i think), then i briefly used gnome in '23. i’ve been using kde since '25 and i regret i have no desire to use anything else anymore.

    want a tiling wm? - just install a plugin and customize kde within 5 minutes

    want to build a mediabox with a simple ui for use with a remote on a tv? - just adjust the sizes and find one of a million widgets!

    do you want the ms win98 look? - it’s 3 clicks away!

    i am sure other DE’s may be better for my specific usecases. but the flexibility of kde gives me good enough results within a familiar environment. i can change my whole computer experience in a few clicks and revert whenever on the same de!

  • grrgyle@slrpnk.net
    5·
    6 days ago

    I’m still stuck on i3 and sway. I hear there’s a version of KDE that is tiling…? But I haven’t found anything definitive on that.

      • grrgyle@slrpnk.net
        1·
        5 days ago

        I’ve heard this which made me assume it was like an option I can just enable, but every search has only come up with some baroque scripting or configuration guides, which seems like a lot more work than just using an actual tiling window manager.

        E: Oh I get it now, you just install Krohnkite. This is a bit of an improvement, I will admit.

        • Liketearsinrain@lemmy.ml
          2·
          5 days ago

          Yes, scripts like that exist (or replacing kwin). I don’t do it anymore, so I didn’t have recommendations, but may check this one mentioned.

    • AeonFelis@lemmy.world
      2·
      5 days ago

      still stuck on i3 and sway

      That’s an odd statement. I’d place i3 and Sway deeper down the rabbit hole, being build-your-own[1] as opposed to packaged deals like KDE.

      1. in the sense of building a configuration - not in the sense of compiling code. ↩︎

      • grrgyle@slrpnk.net
        2·
        5 days ago

        I’d place i3 and Sway deeper down the rabbit hole …

        I mean they are, but my mind and fingers have been so twisted by vim that I can’t really interact with floating wms without feeling honestly pretty intense discomfort. I see people having fun with their cool Plasmas etc and I wish I could make the leap, but every time I try I just bristle at all the mouse use. The lack of control makes me feel like I’m trying to use a computer while wearing oven mittens.

        • AeonFelis@lemmy.world
          2·
          5 days ago

          My point is - why go backward? You already have your Sway[1] based setup, configured just the way you like it, with the ability to switch various components in and out. What does a monolithic[2] environment like KDE have to offer you?

          1. Assuming it’s Sway and not i3 because I assume you have already switched to Wayland. You switched to Wayland, right? You need to switch to Wayland. Why are you not switching to Wayland? ↩︎

          2. , Yes, you can tweak KDE, but since all the various parts were created to fit together switching one will always result in awkward UX. ↩︎

          • grrgyle@slrpnk.net
            1·
            4 days ago

            why go backward?

            I guess I hadn’t thought of it that way. Maybe I already have the wm experience that works for me, and I can just load up KDE when friends come over and I want to provide a more approachable UI for them.

        • yaw@infosec.pub
          1·
          5 days ago

          I made the switch from i3 to kde with https://github.com/tilorenz/compact_pager and keyboard shortcuts similar to tiling WMs. Check out my config for keyboard shortcuts for window management with curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jowodo/config/refs/heads/main/plasma/window-managment.kksrc | grep -v '=$'. You could even import them into your kde settings and they will be added. PS.: yes I use meta AND alt, because I also use windows (where alt is my mod key) and macos (where option is my mod key) at work.

  • Bluewing@lemmy.world
    6·
    6 days ago

    I’ve enjoyed KDE since Mandrake 6. The control you get to have as a user is amazing. Thought to be honest, I really change very little. But the Cube! I will die for that Cube.

    But I have used probably every DE that runs on Linux one time or another. Each has its own charms and quirks. While my laptop lives comfortably with Fedora 43 Kinonite, the cheap mini desktop I’m using right now currently has COSMIC on it. And to be honest, as much as I like LXDE, dnfdragoria as it’s package manager, someone at Fedora needs to take dnfdragoria out back and launch it into the sun. COMIC is far lighter feeling than I thought would be. I will live with it for a while I think.