Why Isn't Every Linux Distro Shipping KDE?
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- čas přidán 30. 12. 2023
- When you look at the Linux world it looks very GNOME but KDE does exist and it looks like it's great so why don't more distros just ship KDE instead, well the answer might not be that complex.
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IMHO, it boils down to history. KDE began as a DM based on Qt when Qt licensing wasn't free. It drove a lot of would be developers away. Then at the same time, GTK was not only free but could be programmed in C instead of C++ which was way more popular at the time. This drove devs not only away from KDE, but actively towards Gnome.
The landscape has changed considerably, but the early feelings linger.
And the conspiracy (not so much of a) theory was Microsoft (the previous employer of the creators of GNOME) distracting everyone from the use of OpenSTEP, which was already fully functional and part of other OSes at the time, later on used in macOS and iOS.
I doubt the feelings linger, since most devs were children back when that all happened. Remember that this fud is 20 years out of date. Most original devs are long gone.
@@voxelfusion9894And Qt is still a project owned by a single company and I doubt anyone can patch anything the same way it's done in GTK since they have release schedules, planned features and other processes decided internally.
@@voxelfusion9894 The Qt Company has been pushing the limits of the GPL as much as it can, as recently as a couple of years ago. Around 2020 it almost came to KDE having to mantain a fork of Qt on their own, because the company threatened to withhold updates (including security patches) for up to six months for open source projects. (Since they own the copyright for Qt and are a major contributor of updates, they can do it legally.)
No, it's not an unfounded, lingering suspicion from another era. As much as I love KDE, it's always been on shaky grounds legally/financially, depending for their entire project on a toolkit the copyright of which they don't own, and the toolkit itself being so huge and complex nowadays that it can't easily be mantained by unpaid volunteers alone were they to decide to fork it. (Which I wish they would, honestly.)
There was also the time when Microsoft bought out Nokia's phone-side of the business at the time Nokia also owned Qt. Even though Microsoft didn't even indirectly own or influence Qt, it drove a lot of people away over silly rivalry stuff. It was also around the time KDE was replacing its awfully bungled KDE 4 release with Plasma 5, which also had tons of issues on release, compared to Gnome 3 which was improving dramatically.
KDE used to rival Gnome very closely during the KDE 3 v Gnome 2 days, but when both projects fumbled the ball (KDE 4 v Gnome 3), Gnome decided to patch up the ship while KDE had to deal with a snippy user-base while simultaneously showing that they were quick to abandon failed ideas. It didn't make a lot of new fans.
IMO what Neal mentioned there is part of the story, but not the whole thing. I see a few more:
- Inertia: switching to something else is harder and more of a psychological leap compared to making a different initial choice.
- NVIDIA support: being fully GPU-accelerated makes Plasma vulnerable to driver bugs, and NVIDIA has historically been the worst here. Their Linux market share is shrinking and their drivers are getting better, but it's still a concern for the maintainers of general-purpose distros.
- Accessibility: some countries have legal requirements for a certain level of software accessibility support, which matters for distros created by people who make a living selling it or related services in said countries. Plasma has been making major strides here, though.
- Misconceptions: there are still harmful memes about high resource usage and Qt licensing issues that persist despite being untrue.
Thus I think it makes sense why you see more new distros defaulting to Plasma compared to old ones switching. Two that come to mind are SteamOS and Asahi Linux. Neither one needed to care about NVIDIA GPUs, perfect accessibility support, or switching from something else. And their maintainers were already KDE enthusiasts who didn't put stock in the old misconceptions.
Honestly, I think the biggest third issue is the accessibility stuff. But that's improving by leaps and bounds every Plasma release. And the accessibility landscape was largely reset with Wayland, since everyone had to start over. And in this respect, Plasma is better than every other Wayland environment right now.
I didn't mention it in that post because for most distributions, accessibility wasn't the main driver for not including it or defaulting to it. Especially with Enterprise Linux distributions where they'd likely fund the development of that gap if as they'd need it.
I liked KDE well enough, but I ended up just using GNOME again because either KDE or one of the KDE apps would crash at least twice a day
Steamdeck uses KDE in their desktop mode. So it's possible to have a mainstream flagship use KDE, but that's just one OS using it as a default. I'd love to see KDE be used as a flagship just for the competition as a base DE.
steamos is arch based (aka rolling distro) so release schedule doesn't really matter there
OpenSUSE and Mageia have always had superb KDE integration.
This is the only way I run KDE lol
I still don't get that choice-yeah, the assumption is that the majority of people using desktop mode will be Windows converts using a docked keyboard, but MATE is _so much more_ touch-friendly, and the first-time launch lets you choose to style your desktop UI after "Redmond" (or "Cupertino")
It also helps that you aren’t always in desktop mode. If that was the case I would have to switch to Bazzite with gnome.
I run Debian with KDE. GNOME isn't a bad desktop, it's just something I can't get into, and I've been doing different distros since the late '90s.
Glad to see Linux Mint break the norm by specifically omitting GNOME from its desktop selection.
Technically speaking, Linux Mint's desktops are all either derived from GNOME or use the Gtk toolkit, although they are very different in most ways.
@@mjdxp5688That's the optimum in my book-GNOME is bad, GTK is bae.
@@mjdxp5688 I'm ok with derrived, nothing wrong with GTK, just not everyone wants the Gnome laws, regulations and guidelines.
I like having a computer made to be customized and Gnome wants to eliminate all customizability it feels like.
@@hopelessdecoyGnome is the HOA of Linux, makes sense lol
You know Linux Mint has specifically omitted KDE right?
My two cents: I was drawn to Gnome as it very simplistic and minimalist. I use Linux for work so I just open the text editor, a bunch of terminals and don't interact much with the desktop.
Using the super key to quickly switch windows became so second nature that switching to windows is jarring.
Granted, I haven't used KDE in 6 years or so. But I found it cluttered and slower to navigate without a mouse.
Yeah, 6 years have made a lot of difference. KDE Plasma 5.27 and the upcoming 6 look to be much better for mouse users.
KDE Plasma 5 lets you switch windows many ways, you can set the window switcher to use Win+Tab instead of Alt+Tab or anything else. You have lots of switcher layouts to choose from... Virtual desktops. KRunner lets you navigate to window by typing in the name. Or you know, you can use rofi or dmenu
KDE is still a buggy ugly mess. If you're happy with Gnome workflow you will hate KDE. Don't listen to the fan boys. Ofc Hyprland is better 🤣👍
@Alex-uc7ty
Agreed. Alothough i stopped using hyprland because i got tired of how i made it look, and it's too much time to write a good status bar, app launcher and hyprland config.
There is something nice about having someone else taking care of the look and feel, as i suck at that. And gnome looks good enough for me to be usable.
But i agree hyprland is the best wm (wayland compositor techinically) out there! And it's so fucking easy to get into, unlike most other wms out there
I like KDE for it's customization, Gnome you got to download a thousand plugins to do with KDE Plasma can do by default. I'm seeing lesser known distros making it their default like EndeavourOS, Ubuntu Studio then there's a majority of Manjaro users run the KDE spin. I'm rooting for KDE in the longrun.
Me too. Antergos, the predecessor to EndeavourOS, actually used Cinnamon (as CinnArch) and then moved to GNOME before Antergos was discontinued in 2019 and the majority of the community moved to another Arch-based distro, EndeavourOS. EndeavourOS used a customized Xfce until November 2023, when they switched to a mostly stock KDE Plasma with Breeze Dark and a purple accent color by default (although the Live ISO is still XOrg, not sure if they'll change it for Plasma 6, even though they ship the Nvidia drivers as a boot option).
EndeavourOS has been my secondary OS since 2020 and my primary OS since Windows 11 released and basically pissed me off so much that I left Windows for Linux. By that point, Proton had gotten so good that I didn't need Windows for gaming (I don't play FPS games).
Exactly. GNOME tends to use the most memory of any desktop environment, or close to it -- AND needs extensions just to do basic things that can be done out-of-the-box on, say, KDE, Cinnamon, MATE, or Xfce. Makes absolutely no sense...
TBF the reason i use gnome boils down to how bad KDE handles multiple screens. I want a task bar on every screen that looks the same on every screen. While I can get that on gnome on KDE for some reason pinned programs are only valid for one panel and makes them have everything in a different order for each panel which is just feeling wrong.
@@adherry8142 IMO, macOS is even worse than Linux, because scaling makes most screens that aren't Apple branded look bad. That's definitely a macOS issue.
Though I'm pretty sure there's an option to pin an app across all taskbars in KDE Plasma though?
You have to pin it to each task bar separately and then move it so they are in the same order on all@@cameronbosch1213
I will say I couldn't quite understand this myself, I've always thought plasma was better, even at its worst. (I'm pretty happy with hyprland right now, despite some nuisance issues with it - perhaps nvidia related.. not sure)
I thought probably the reason is something like, people want something that doesn't look too much like windows (not that plasma has to look like windows).
I think the argument presented in the video about their release schedule makes sense. Yet another reason I think I've generally been happier with rolling release distros.
Good news that I can just replace gnome with whatever I want at any time I want.
This is one of the many reasons I like to use Linux.
I actually use both of them depending on the computer I'm working at. My laptop is running gnome and my desktop is running KDE. I find that KDE is significantly more enjoyable to navigate with the mouse while gnome is more usable for me with a touchpad. Different strokes for different folks I guess
I also think gnome is better for keyboard centric work flows. KDE shortcuts are a joke at best.
All-things-Flatpak has really been a game-changer. Back when I started using Linux (2006), if I wanted GNOME Mahjongg _and_ KDE Konquest, I'd have to install both frameworks and would end up with an extremely bloated desktop where the theming was just a mess-and that's assuming I even managed to avoid Dependency Hell.
@@GSBarlev I agree 1000%. Flatpak is amazing and I enjoy every second of my time on Fedora Silverblue. Only thing that I would want to switch for would be a Debian Immutable Version.
@@GSBarlevboth of your issues aren't solved by flatpaks though. Now every application uses that very same runtime that back in 2008 was installed though your package Manager. But now you have them twice. For flatpak and Not flatpak
@@keit99 there is a solution for that... Never install something not in a flat pack format...
I'm still waiting for someone to figure out how to flat pack a desktop manager
The KDE issue was the initial horrible release of KDE4 It caused so many issues because they did it so poorly, everyone moved to Gnome, and by the time KDE got their act together it was too late. Some people will argue it's also the licensing from Trolltech... but based on the high percentage of KDE default desktops in the KDE3 days, I don't think most users or distro's cared all that much. Yeah, some people definitely did care, and they were super vocal about it, but KDE3 was definitely the more business orientated desktop of the time, and made it a better fit. KDE4 introduced performance issues, things became much more complex, and a lot of bugs that should have been handled pre-release were just put out there as a "stable" product.
I could be misremembering, but my recollection was that the whole Qt landscape was a giant mess _ca_ 2008. Nokia had recently acquired Trolltech and was much more interested in pivoting the toolkit to support mobile. And while GTK was _aggressively_ FOSS-first, with high-quality tools like Glade being GPL, Qt was at least _toying_ with the idea of a "freemium" developer ecosystem.
If my 15-year-old recollections are wrong, hopefully someone will correct me, but I distinctly remember consciously choosing to go the GTK+-2.0 route even though it made cross-platform development a bit jankier.
Also like gnome 3.0 kde 4.0 wasn't ready. Which devs at the time said but the big distris ignored them.
I remember this as well. KDE 4 was a punchline on release. Gnome 3 wasn't well loved, but KDE 4 was like half-melted base of a crap-sundae with everything else going on at the time: poor management, botched releases, the Nokia/Microsoft thing, straight up abandoning big portions of KDE 4.
@adamsfusion If you think KDE 4 wasn't ready, GNOME 3 was early beta quality at best upon release. They just kept removing crap to the point where Cinnamon (a fork of GNOME 3 components but with a Windows-like experience), MATE (the continuation of GNOME 2 technologies), LXQt (because of GTK 3), and Unity (because even Canonical got sick of working with the GNOME 3 developers) all were results of that. Even Linus Torvalds left for Xfce for a few years. And now COSMIC and Budgie are things because GNOME developers haven't learned.
@@adamsfusion hell Debian considered Leaving gnome 3. If IT weren't for 3.4 which kinda made it usable Debian would have used xfce
The Nobara Project just recently switched to KDE as the 'Official' DE, so that's another one in the books for KDE.
I've heard Nobara is switching to KDE as its default desktop environment.
Happy New Year Brodie!
I love KDE but one of the main problems for me is that developing a QT Application is not great in any language other than C++/C/Python. GTK has bindings for many languages because it's just binding C and every language as a C FFI. But QT makes use of C++'s templating weirdness that QT which makes it much harder for other languages.
If python, a syntactically really simple language, can do it, I don't know where the problem is tbh. It may be harder than with C, but by no means unmanageable.
@@voxelfusion9894 I don't know if this is the issue, but I know that there are good C++ libraries for interfacing with Python, and there might not be any good Python interfacing libraries for most other languages (because interfacing with Python probably isn't top priority for most languages).
@@voxelfusion9894 Python is a first-class language supported by Qt. The reason Python can do it is because a ton of man-hours have gone into making it work and continues to be invested to make it work. Qt has changes inside of its design to compliment Python.
From tons of experience myself, I can spin off a simple FFI into any language I want for GTK in an afternoon, but Qt would require a small dedicated team to keep up with their release schedule. A great example of this is the GTK v Qt situation in Rust: The former is a simple FFI binding while the latter is a massively involved, complicated-to-build mess.
well, gotta learn C++ then.
@@znhxnxzjx I love C++ but it certainly is an acquired taste. C++ is a difficult language; it retains all the foot-guns from C while adding a bunch of its own. I think improved QT bindings for other popular languages would make KDE development much more accessible.
I need to make a correction here; SLES _does_ support KDE Plasma even on the server side - officially.
You can install a full blown KDE Plasma on SLES 15 and it will be supported by SUSE. Only the default for the installation will be GNOME and once you have your system up (or if you use the Server template, then add KDE on top of it) you are free to choose from one of the fully supported environments.
No. This is not supported. KDE Plasma comes through PackageHub, which is SUSE's version of EPEL (of the RHEL world).
Oh, so I'm the odd one out? I absolutely prefer the Xfce UI above all others: Does all a user needs, easy to set up, doesn't gobble resources, runs well even on older or weaker CPUs...
I run Xfce also, and on a very powerful computer. Gnome and KDE are OK, but I like desktops to stay out of the way. I do most of my work in a terminal or Web browser anyway, so don't need a heavy desktop.
I do use both KDE and Gnome applications, however (kdenlive and gimp, for example) and they work fine under any desktop.
I think Ubuntu could plausibly become a KDE-first distro. They already have a track record of switching primary desktops. Also I believe Unity was built on Qt like KDE, so there's potentially some familiarity there.
Not that I think it's super likely. But it could happen. But nobody else is going to change up what they're already doing.
Unity was Build with GTK.
@@rueeggerme Not unity 8 that was supposed to be Qt
@@rueeggerme I went and looked it up and apparently the main one was GTK up through 7. There was a Qt fallback that was eventually discontinued, and Unity 8 was supposed to move to Qt from GTK.
Too bad unity 8 never shipped in any meaningful way to the desktop @@keit99
That would be great. I have been running on kubuntu as my daily drivers for several years now and I am never going back.
At least for OpenSUSE it is KDE, GNOME, XFCE, .... I bet SUSE as in SLES, will let you pick xfce or kde in the package patterns. you pick your desktop for the most part. always has been. admittedly XFCE was not a default selection in the easy install path, but it is now. it was always an option if you choose let me pick my own desktop and then chose the pattern for it in package selection.
> I bet SUSE as in SLES, will let you pick xfce or kde in the package patterns.
Yes, but you receive reduced support for the non-gnome option, in the sense that support takes longer to take and handle your cases. When you're deploying a fleet of SLES workstations, gambling on that when you could just tick the "Gnome" box and not have to talk to management later is an easy choice.
Default SLES and SLED use GNOME not Plasma. That's actually why openSUSE Aeon gets more resources than Kalpa.
As a Linux user, I always thought that distros chose Gnome over KDE because they thought it was a better user experience. Turns out, distros chose Gnome because it is a better experience for distros.
Gnome has always been far better (for performances and user experience) than KDE. At first some people coming from Windows liked KDE because it looked more like Windows than Gnome, but Gnome was better from the start.
Making a distro is damned hard work, and it's mostly done by volunteers. Thus, I'm fully sympathetic to distros sidelining projects that make their work harder.
@@moventofly I have to disagree. Suggesting that Gnome has always been far better is a matter of opinion and in this case yours. I have used OpenSUSE which in my opinion has been the best distro out there and I have used it since the SUSE days around in the early 2000s. I did try Gnome several times in various forms and distributions, never my main, but for trying out. I can say that I hated it every single time. I don't like the Gnome layout and I use both command line and KDE. I would never push someone to use KDE but if I am asked about my GUI choices, I would say KDE or maybe Cinnamon but never ever Gnome. As I said at the beginning. To suggest Gnome has always been far better is simply a matter of your opinion and not a fact. Just like me preferring OpenSUSE as my best distro of choice in now 24 years is also a matter of personal choice and not a hands down fact. For me it is the best. For others, you would get a different response.
why isn't every distro shipping hyprland???
Thank you, that is very informative. As just a desktop normy doing normy things, I wondered why KDE seemed to be getting more and more a niche choice (or at least, "special order"). I'm also one of the 50% who finds pure Gnome annoying, and it's interesting to see that the rigidity that wants to tell me how to use my computer has its good side in a more disciplined and generally tighter development pattern. Meanwhile Mint says "A plague on both your houses." Works for me.
Very interesting topic, thanks for the video.
Happy New Year Brodie
I have liked KDE but there are some issues that prevent me from switching completely:
Defaults are wack
UI/UX don't feel consistent
Bugs (I am on a Wayland GNOME+ sway setup, tried KDE but the cursor is very jank)
I like KDE for customization but that’s about it. Gnome has way better keyboard shortcuts and I don’t have to use my mouse as much.
I've learnt to live with these
KDE defaults always felt like they wanted to show off all the cool things they can do. That's not really conducive to good UX.
> UI/UX don't feel consistent
a big LOL. do you think GNOME is consistent?
@@znhxnxzjx Certainly feels more so than KDE to me.
GNOME feels more intuitive to me, but I think Budgie looks good and has great functionality as well.
Happy New Year to each and every one of you!
Greetings from Finland!
Although I´m the biggest FVWM fanboy there is. If I or somebody else want a DE, It´s KDE all day long. How Gnome got this golden ticket to be the standard is beyond me... or at least it was. So thanks for a really good one Brodie, and a happy new year. Maybe 2024 is the year of the KDE desktop?
>How Gnome got this golden ticket to be the standard is beyond me
GNOME 2 and Canonical, kinda became a standard, plus RHEL. I use Gnome since 2008 by force of habit, basically, even tho' we got quite a disaster with Gnome 3 back in past.
@@IvanIvanov-nn9os MATE.
@@folksurvival nah, it is 2024 and I use wayland.
Lennart Poettering
I think plasma 6 could potentially be a game changer like Gnome 46 was, where the small things that were beeing built and decided and slowling moving forward finally came together.
"like Gnome 46" was? Gnome 46 is in public Alpha since ca. 2 weeks. How could it have been a game changer when the final release is still just around the corner?
@@alicethegrinsecatz6011 you're right, i meant gnome 40.
@@jonnyso1 GNOME 40 is nice and was next to the bugs I experienced the reason why I moved from Pop to Fedora.
I can certainly respect Distros for just shipping gnome and calling it a day and focusing on other things. I think KDE is the future though and has a much better end use experience over all. So I'm really glad they are revising their release model to be closer to gnome. This way their adoption rate should be much higher
I don't agree with you on the "better end user experience". Gnome is deliberately made very simple and easy to manage, I find its settings page much easier to comprehend than KDEs for example. I'm genuinely curious, in what way do you find the end user experience better? It's much more customisable yes, but that freedom IMO overcomplicates it to a degree that I don't fancy using it. Also the UX is worse than Gnome, doing an intuitive gesture or input combination doesn't always work.
@@setaindustrieswe'll have to agree to disagree, because I'm the opposite these days. I find GNOME much harder to use and feel it oversimplifies things that don't need simplified, and complicates things that were fine in GNOME 2. It's why I'm happy using KDE these days, even if it's somewhat broken in certain areas.
@@setaindustries first gnomes tray icons are broken which most user who switch from other os feels odd and it makes things much harder bcz stream alwase runs in backgroud no way to stop it until and unles you go in system moniter and close it, same goes with discord and other apps then vrr, hdr and other usefull things is not supported in gnome which kde have, so yeah user experience is better in kde.
@@legendboyAni I (really) started using steam a few days ago, and this also disturbed me.
If you didn't know, in steam just click on the quit button (not the window close, but quit) and it'll shutdown steam completely.
A bit annoying imo since I don't know the point of eating 1 gig of ram just to run steam. There should be an option in steam settings to close it with the window altogether ?
@@setaindustries IMHO, Gnome is in a broken state right now, and it has been since years, but it invests into its future. While KDE focuses on the details that are relevant for end users right now, Gnome focuses on the "bigger ideas", but leaves many features in an unfinished state.
This technically makes Gnome more future-minded and KDE more present-minded.
Implementing stuff that is actually works for end users right now with the technology that is currently available (what KDE does) introduces more technical debt, as all those features need to be changed as soon as newer technology is available. It often requires working around limitations in current technology, which Gnome devs often refuse to do.
The question is if the future that Gnome always prepares for will ever happen, or if Gnome will just never finish their stuff because they always replace it with new stuff before it's finished.
Yeah this is exactly why I asked for update on that reddit post - I know I'm not the only one curious. Glad to see people interested in the update of the state of KDE as well.
Happy new year🎉
Arch is the perfect KDE distro for me. If I'm on Fedora, Gnome works well for me as well.
I don't get the hate for KDE (plasma 5), at least not in the context of GNOME Shell and Unity. On release it was less resource intensive, more stable due to its release schedule, and had a much more coherent visual design than the competition. And I really tried to like Unity and Shell until they committed to major white space and Ambiance-Gnome stopped getting support, it made installing MATE feel like a breath of fresh air from all the screen space I got back, and the transition to KDE wasn't nearly as painful since it didn't try to be discount OSX.
I think if KDE attempted to court the enterprise-space better, it _could_ do a lot better for their adoption. As enterprises have demanded more of the DEs, such as accessibility, remote management, and limiting customization, Gnome has met those needs (thanks to RedHat), but KDE has largely ignored it.
Another thing, as a developer/engineer, is for KDE app development to not feel like a giant kludge. If I'm writing an app not using C/C++/Python, I'm having to go pretty far out of my way to make Qt work, and by extension, fit into the KDE ecosystem. Once Frameworks hitches onto the semi-annual release cycle, that too will make things a lot easier. Picking the right KDE Frameworks version for a given Plasma environment always feels like a gamble. GTK versioning is just way more easy to reason about and leads to far less tickets ending up in the support queue over simple things like dependency availability.
That's not going to happen. RHEL owns the Gnome desktop, and RHEL is the main "enterprise" Linux distro. They'll never push anything other than Gnome. Ubuntu and Suse would have to be the ones to step up and push KDE on enterprise systems, which is also unlikely simply because they've already chosen Gnome and changing a whole UI for Enterprise users doesn't typically go down well.
Similarly, Enterprise IT departments aren't going to manually change the DE on an enterprise distro they choose to go with, because then support for any issues they might have would be worse.
Customization is one of the major features of KDE/Plasma, though. Why would they want to limit this?
If KDE had decent funding, I think this would be much different.
It's about release cicles. When gnome version X is released, everything in the base gnome DE gets the update. When KDE has a release, it may pass some months before releasing everything with the new toolkit, making it way harder to repackage
I think one of the big issues with supporting Plasma is how much more deeply customizable it is than Gnome, that adds a lot of extra complexity for distros who operate commercially to provide support for
I've read some distro maintainers say that support questions are much higher for their KDE than Gnome editions.
This is a dumb thought process. If customizability is a problem just set a default and lock it until users enable an experimental mode. Then your shipped system is consistent. its not rocket science
@@GarrisIiariMaybe that’s because the KDE editions of many distros are clearly an afterthought, and tend to have weird incongruencies, missing or sub-par documentation, and are just generally neglected.
When they announced they're splitting the releases for KDE 5, I kind of thought they'd still do 2 releases a year, but just stagger the components a bit
i.e. Frameworks 5.y in January, then Plasma 5.y in February, and finally Apps 5.y in March, followed by the respective x.y+1 in July, August, September.
As an Arch user I'm not bothered by frequent updates, but like 4.0, I guess my preferred desktop hurt themselves again...
I use Ubuntu server LTS and install KDE desktop on top of that for anything that needs a desktop. The only thing I did not like with KDE is when the default mouse click was single click to open stuff. I've tried Gnome many times and its OK but I just like how KDE works. It has the feel of Windows but you can customize everything.
My 'guess' on Gnome, in addition to the points already given, given Gnome 3 was written back in the day with both convergence in mind, AND input from Red Hat and thereby corporate requirements, such that Gnome 3 ended up being little more than an app loader. Corporations like feature limited, locked down "Just do your job!" GUIs where employees concentrate on their work and are not distracted by customization, and everything is locked down and, thus, easy to support/maintain, fits corporations. Click app, work, save. End of. IT will take an automatic back up of your work during the night via the LAN..
To do anything much in Gnome 3 requires dropping to the command line or loading extensions - neither of which would be permitted in a corporate workstation scenario. Corporations want ANY changes to be done by the IT department who will say "No" because workstations are for work, not themes, moving panels and pretty stuff. I do not like gnome but I can completely see the appeal of it's minimalism, reflected in it's low component array compared to KDE. A minimal UI just for runing apps with half the UI missing, but can loaded in by extensions or other utilities, can be done on your own system *at home!* A small, limited GUI focused on loading up apps, copying some file, that's it, end of, suits the suits very much indeed. The rest of us can load in whatever else is needed to make Gnome a 'real' UI.
I have suggested to the KDE team that they include a 'locked down' mode for workstation use that hides many of the config options and imposes a single workflow in 'workstation mode' but KDE was not having it. As such I do not see KDE taking of in the corporate world.
Edited because I REALLY cannot type or proof read!
Kali is standard XFCE. I really like XFCE. Don't need AppStores like Flatpak, or the really awful snaps
I was just thinking about this yesterday, actually. I'm glad to hear they are making changes that might allow for some greater adoption. I tried the newest version of Plasma recently, and I was *shocked* at how good it had gotten. I have heard over the years about some of the changes that have been made, but I had no idea just how polished it had actually gotten.
1:19 I have Ubuntu Unity on my laptop and manually installed the KDE Plasma package on it. Neofetch now calls it "Kubuntu", even though it still is Ubuntu Unity.
I used to use Gnome, but I've now switched to Plasma. It's been a great move for me. I can find stuff, and I can actually drag and drop effectively, which I couldn't in some critical situations under Gnome. My only complaint is baloo_file is a PITA and keeps chewing CPU and I/O. That component needs a serious rework IMO, especially if you're using a COW f/s like btrfs.
It does need a rework but you can just turn it off. I have a massive distaste for file indexers
As a huge KDE fan, this is a welcome video. Very interesting and informative
Great video thanks Brodie and gnappy new year! Interstingly those making PCs for Linux like Tuxedo, Kfocus, Slimbook or System 76, do not ship Gnome as flagship.
I see desktops like Cinnamon as little more than 'what if KDE, but GTK?'.
Six monthly releases still seems quite frequent. I wonder if there'd be benefits from more distros/desktops switching to annual releases? Although I'll admit I see the non-LTS Ubuntu releases as little more than betas for the next LTS 🙂
I'll always root for KDE over Gnome. Gnome just reminds me of Mac OS too much (in aesthetics and in the attitude of the developers, i.e. you are gonna do things our way and be happy about it). I doubt much will change with this, but one can always dream of Gnome being brought down a few pegs.
Why must Gnome be brought down ? Did they kik your puppy or something ? This almost religious aversion to Gnome is really weird, just use wathever you like without beeing silly about it.
The consequence of this from my view is the GTK applications that decide that they want to do their decorations that break on any other desktop environment.
KDE has been around for so long, if it hasn't become more popular than Gnome by now, something else is supposed to win.
I recently came from Windows and almost went back to it when I saw Fedora's Gnome and couldn't make sense of it. Then I installed Cinnamon, and things made more sense.
I never really thought that much about it. I've been using a rolling release distro with KDE long enough that I never really considered why the other distros didn't use it by default outside of running behind where KDE project was. Now it makes a bit more sense. I'm looking forward to KDE6, but if the project can get onto a regular release schedule (for all components, not just Plasma) then I'm hoping to see more distros ship with KDE as the default DE. That'll be cool to see.
GNOME could use some competition for being the default. It may spur them to fix some of the controversial choices they've been making over the years and be less dependent on people having to install extensions to do what they want.
I love the design/features of Gnome, but I hate the developer mentality of *always* doing their own thing and spitting on all standards that didn't come directly from them.
I still use Gnome and I still donate to the Gnome project, but I'll be damned if I don't say I hate *how* they do things.
Huh, can you give any concrete examples ?
@@jonnyso1 it's very early in the morning and I'm tired, so I make no claims for perfect correctness.
There's variable sync, them refusing to even look at explicit sync, which is by far superior to implicit sync, fractional scaling, having no stable extensions API, the whole libadwaita nonsense, some other stuff I can't remember right now...
If I don't forget this thread exists I'll see if I can add more stuff to the list when I'm actually awake
@@insu_na Thanks, I'll look those up too, but I feel some of those are work in progress, I find that Gnome usually has good reasoning behind these decisions. Libadwaita for instance is paying of, and it was a step twoards decoupling Gnome from GTK, so Gnome specific requirements stop changing things for downstream, at least thats what I thought it was about at the time.
@@insu_na Oh, and no server side decoration on windows. Literally _every other compositor supports this._
Your'e right, KDE has always worked best with rolling release distros. What doesn't make sense to me is why KDE neon is Ubuntu based.
Shorter stable release cadence than Debian, a balance of stability from not having to update the base system that often but still fast enough that the updates probably makes sense for a user. Honestly I would much rather enjoy a yearly "stable" release with optional quarterly unstable kernel and package upgrades in between.
Do they even maintain KDE Neon? It feels like a shell to me
@@Mallchad It's been working fine for me, package updates rolls around normally.
...I *did* compile my own kernel for it though (needed Logitech G923 support).
Fedora is a bit arguable because it does have an official KDE spinoff called Kinoite, and it does have other official and community spinoffs but the main release Silverblue is using Gnome
Workstation is GNOME though. And the KDE Spin has been abnormally bad for a KDE Spin. Meanwhile, Arch with KDE has been rock solid.
I run Fedora KDE spin. Plasma might be bigger but it's simply superior to Gnome is almost every single way and feels like it truly embraces the freedom and customization of the Linux desktop whereas Gnome feels like it goes in the opposite direction like Windows, I thought it was crazy when they put in the full-screen menu by default after it was sooo popular in Win 8. Damn for me Gnome needs like 5 extensions to even be usable. I'd rather use XFCE.
Doesn't beat Gnome in simplicity and design language
TBH if Linux started shipping KDE by default for new users alot more users coming from windows would stick around longer to you know actually try out other DEs instead of being ran off by GNOME
Such a shame since I personally think KDE is so much better.
Honestly, I think that in addition to what you said, the fact that we also have distros with spins goes to show the effort that people put into it, and probably why lots of people are confused on why only Gnome was default, because they probably think "Well, they have a KDE Plasma spin, so why isn't it the default?". Spins are pretty important for some cases, for example when we need to spin a virtual machine on a server so people will work only with that(you will see this practice when it comes to security) but KDE and Gnome are not the best in terms of latency, reason why spins with Mate, Xfce4 and other light DEs come into play. Personally, I have no problem seeing Gnome as the default as long as options are available, as such is the case with the Linux community in general. I understand the question, but I don't get why lots make out of this a mountain out of a molehill.
Happy new year, you all!
Consistency goes a long way for enterprise. Opensource whenever it will happen release schedule has really hurt some of my projects.
A million percent this. From experience, the Gnome offerings just had better support for things like accessibility and remote management that we required. Enterprises indirectly fund a lot of DE development, both in Gnome and KDE, and Gnome just scratches that itch better.
im only use xfce4, i like it works fine for me and its light enough for me.
xfce is great, still needs some time before they get wayland support properly going though sadly
Never thought about these release rhythms.
Good explanation
I've actually found that gnome is a great (at least for me) laptop interface, especially if you don't carry a mouse. KDE for desktop all day though.
I agree!! I use GNOME at work with my laptop,but i would never use it with my desktop pc!! I got 30 inch of 4K to work with!!
Okay, I've got to ask, is the "g" in Gnome supposed to be pronounced, or is the project pronounced with a silent "g" like in garden gnome?
I’ve never really thought about it, but good question I would also like to know
It's already an english word, just say it like a normal human person.
@@JEM_Tank I've always thought that the "g" was silent because it's silent in every other use of the word, but I keep hearing Linux CZcamsrs pronounce the "g" and it's got me wondering.
Both pronunciations are accepted, but technically you are supposed to pronounce the G.
Guh-Nome. Because GNU Network Object Model Environment was the former acronym.
Is SUSE gnome? Ive always heard the opensuse best experience is KDE it is even there first option for desktop on the installer or at least one of the main one.
Does KDE perform well if you don't have an SSD? What if you have a "mere" first-gen i7? "Only" 8G of RAM?
I switched from GNOME to MATE a few years ago because the G was getting too resource thirsty with all those darn updates
It's all about accessibility. GNOME's had corporate and government money going into making sure it complies with all regulations for screen reading, on screen keyboard, modifier helpers, large text, high contrast, etc. KDE has had very little work put into it, especially lacking corporate backing for such features in KDE.
not sure what you mean about large text but you can change font size in system settings
I would say the opposite. KDE has put more work despite lacking the funding. They solve the fractional scaling problem in wayland, they did a proper HDR support, color profiles in wayland and windows surviving after a crush, while Gnome just do gnome things that are not in standard....
When Gnome 3 was released they decided to make default a font that did not support most world languages with no easy way to change the font.
@@ChimeraX0401 all of the things you mentioned are also being worked on GNOME or GTK. Check their GitLab repos.
I don't know about the money but that has always been important for the project. Although, as far as I know, with the transition to Wayland a lot of that will need to be reworked.
I prefer Gnome over KDE. It feels much better to use. But I agree that KDE is more forward in several things.
Ubuntu Gnome has a built-in plug and play WiFi Access point. Love that. No special drivers or software to set up, it just works
Yea, testing is the most important phase in software lifecycle. I used to write UI software, the creative part was like... 1 month for a certain version, the testing took 2-3 months to make sure we had the major bugs out. Then the beta took another month or two to catch the not-easily-found-bugs. I understand that from the developer perspective a 6 month schedule can be quite a stressful one, but it can be done. But I can tell: no developer is happy about it.
I still find it insane that they claim easier for distros to patch the hell out of GNOME rather than use something else...
@darthtaurusvontotenkopf6659 No AppIndicators? No minimize or maximize buttons without digging into GNOME Tweaks of dconf editor? A default file browser actually made dumber to the point it was forked by the Cinnamon / Linux Mint team? No dock without extensions that constantly break? And developers that 80% are absolutely horrible people to work with?
Is that the GNOME you're talking about!?
@@darthtaurusvontotenkopf6659 ZorinOS would like a word
Part of it might be the frameworks. I haven't really played around with the SDKs since 2008, but what I remember learning Qt4 vs. GTK+-2.0 was that the APIs and (FOSS) tooling were significantly better on the GNU side (plus Qt was going through a bunch of acquisition drama that put its future in question).
And the patches can become completely new Desktop Environments, which is the case of many distros.
@@cameronbosch1213been using gnome for years, there's no need for minimizing and maximizing apps into and back from taskbar, it's inefficient and it takes space. Gnome makes the overview mode so easy to use so that you make use of it. And the file manager does everything you expect: copy, cut, paste, delete, symlink, sorting, grid, list and tree views, tabs, mounting and unmounting drives, browsing files over FTP, SFTP, SMB, and other protocols. If you need something more complex you might as well open your terminal.
I agree that removing the app indicator was premature, but I also see why they want to get rid of it in favour of something with better UI/UX (such as the Background indicators they are working on)
In don’t get why there is a issue with using just the latest KDE.
Yeah, especially with Plasma 6 toning down the releases per year. This is only going to hurt Linux if GNOME keeps being the default.
Isn't the next Kubuntu an LTS release? That's pretty good timing if Plasma 6 is ready for it.
I like Gnome and i use it. I feel it's smoother and simple to use. Really good accessibility it offers as well.
Lo que se debe hacer es que las distros tengan un netinstall como debian o arch donde uno pueda elegir el escritorio preferido.
After your discussion about having a regular combined release cycle, it seems obvious. Heck, Ubuntu has benefited from their lockstep release cycle for almost 2 decades.
Question: Why do you think this wasn't obvious to the KDE team long ago?
Honestly that's a good question, it could be that GNOME for a very long time has been a project whereas KDE is more of a collection of smaller projects
KDE is an extremely fragmented ecosystem of completely seperate projects, many of which aren't employed by or regular particupants in KDE events or get togethers... To me even suggesting it is an unthinkable concept, not that I'm bashing the idea of have a problem with it persay.
To put it into perspective the entire ecosystem is volunteer and community driver and very major components of a KDE distribution like Dolphin file manager aren't even grouped or shipped as a part of KDE Plasma. Whether or this is right or not is another manner. It'd require a moumental effort to get a release schedule together. and honestly. it would only take 1 very motivated person.
One of the reasons in favor of Gnome is that it ships a new version on a regular agenda, so that distros (notably Ubuntu) know exactly how to work at including it in their next release. KDE Plasma is less regular, and to me, this is a major issue. I use both, switching from one to the other (currently enjoying my time with KDE).
Qt is the problem, it is still not a 100% community driven project and has multiple versions, many of which are commercial releases with additional features not available in the open source version. This will always leave a bad taste in the mouths of open source purest, but I think it is a viable solution for generating revenue.
This is why there will most likely always be more GTK based distributions and until KDE can drop Qt for another option, it will have to live with that fact.
I am excited about the possibility of Iced becoming a new toolkit and seeing what System76’s new desktop environment will be once it is released as a completed product.
To me as a user it's super annoying that many programs and small tools are either based on Electron or GTK. But not plain GTK3, but GTK3/libadwaita or GTK4 instead - guaranteeing that things will look incoherent. Having to ship half of Google Chrome with every application isn't particularily great either.
Libadwaita is very coherent, but if you want to override it just set the GTK_THEME environment variable.
@@mckendrick7672yes libadwaita is coherent in gnome. But nowhere Else.
@@keit99 "Coherence" only matters from a theming perspective, but this has pretty much always historically been left up to the developer in all programs except those made with GTK and Qt for the Linux desktop. Libadwaita is very coherent in that you have a suite of applications (GNOME applications) which all behave and look similar to one another. Lack of coherence is not something you can blame libadwaita for - that's pretty much its entire purpose, whether or not you like the choices they made. As I said, if you don't like it, you can always change the GTK_THEME variable and most programs will respect that and follow your themed choices. I've never been a fan of GNOME or adwaita myself, but lack of coherency is not the fault of libadwaita. At the very least you'll have a coherent suite of applications, even if they aren't coherent to the rest of the environment.
@@mckendrick7672 These applications have hardcoded colors and widget styles. GTK_THEME only works with vanilla GTK3 applications.
actually KDE team is doing extra work to make gtk apps to look like home in their DE
whereas Gnome team stopped even doing that. Actually theming in Gnome is broken for a couple of years now even for gtk apps.
First DE I touched was Xfce, then I switched to Plasma, some time later I entered the WMs realm. I initially disliked GNOME because I heard people in the community hated it, but when I tired GNOME I immedialy fell in love with it. The smooth animation, polished Wayland experience (especially for an Nvidia user like me), powerful keyboard shortcuts and touchpad gestures really got me attached to GNOME.
I have been a GNOME user for more than 1 year now. I do hear about the hypes of VRR, HDR from Plasma, but neither does my hardware has that nor do I need that, so I don't feel like jumping ships. COSMIC and Xfce wayland does get my attention though
Can you believe both Xfce going wayland and COSMIC releasing is in this year, 2024? I'm pretty excited
It might not be "the year of the Linux desktop" but it's certainly the year of Linux desktops!
@@bvd_vlvd 2023 has seen a wild ride of changes and new stuff for sure. In 2024 we might get even bigger news
If you're playing games KDE is the superior option at this point. I simply can't go without VRR anymore and KDE supports it out of the box, no patches. I do really enjoy Gnome and use it on my work machine, but my bone stock Debian 12 with KDE and flatpak Steam has ran flawlessly for me fully migrating away from Windows for everything.
KDE 4 was so buggy, that distros preferred the controversial Gnome 3 as flagship instead.
It's down to three things entirely, consistency in UX, stability, and Qt. Gnome was consistent and RedHat made the switch because KDE was both inconsistent and unstable. Getting corporate support for Gnome became a massive bonus for business use case, it rolled into Debian and Solaris as standard during the same time period.
Aand... Qt. It shouldn't be a surprise that Qt wasn't attractive for RHEL and Debian distribution due to license antics. Just look at the most recent ones.
It was consistent... Until GNOME 3.
how is qt not attractive? the open source variant is lgpl3 and with some parts that are gpl3
@@cameronbosch1213 I agree with this half way, but the Gnome shell system itself is consistent and stable, no matter what else you might say about it and despite their recent efforts to make it less stable and useful. Believe me I'm not happy about it.
@@idk-sy3iu I don't know what to tell you other that read up on it.
@orbatos It's stable until an app changes the default folder opening app from Nautilus to Amberol (a music player) and you can't change it without going into a config file and logging out and in...
That being said, MAYBE I'd use GNOME if a large portion of the developers weren't trash.
Whenever someone comes up to me asking for an introductory distro, I generally tell them any major distro is fine, but they should absolutely pick KDE Plasma as their desktop environment for the best experience. I still get random strangers stopping to ask me what I'm running on my laptop, and the themes they see me run on Plasma make even die-hard Windows users consider switching.
Yeah, I find OpenSUSE Tumbleweed to be a good compromise between a rolling release like Arch and the stability of a point release distro. GNOME would confuse a Windows user so much that they'd go back to Windows and possibly never return for years, if ever.
@@cameronbosch1213 I think GNOME is less confusing and more frustrating. And you can't fix it in settings.
@@cameronbosch1213 GNOME pretty much looks and feels like working with your phone. How is that any "confusing" ?
Why don't Distros ship with a handful of desktops to choose from on install like Open Suse used to do back in the day. Like pick a distro and at install Gnome, Mate, Plasma Kde, XFCE, and Cinnamon all just as install options right out of the gate. PS Personally I liked DDE but they have mad to many functional changes to the UI between releases. My favorite was Ubuntu DDE 20.04.
I learned something today, thanks Brodie!
Whenever I used KDE in the past, there was a sense that there was feature overload which is overwhelming and also it kinda felt a lot more unstable. Gnome is just a whole lot simpler and a more sane default I think. KDE looks like it has gotten a whole lot better though and moving in the right directions. I love gnome and its direction though so I probably wouldn't move from it although it's not perfect either.
Installed KDE on my Surface 5 and hated it for touch screen use. Gnome works great by default with touch out of the box and the themes are more asthetically pleasing IMO.
@@Rexhunterj that's the way i always looked at it, gnome for touch, kde for mouse, WM for kb, but the question as to why gnome is standard still stands with this logic cuz touch is definitely not the majority of users
@@RexhunterjTouch support is sketchy for KDE but honestly its an X11 input driver problem. Just nobody has written a good touchpad driver and we've been stuck with crappy drivers since forever and actual gesture support is even worse. Honestly I think just not that many care to develop touch support on Linux because touchscreen monitors are few and far between if they're used at all
It's not exactly that **linux** is gnome heavy it just comes back to "we have too many distributions". We have way too many distros that make no meaningful changes from the upstream projects so it all looks very GNOME and SystemD heavy. A proper distro is not what friggin DE it uses but a difference in init, its package manager, and how frequently it updates.
Don't worry, just use one Distro. Linux is about choices and choices are a good thing.
I was fully expecting this to be another "Chromium vs Firefox Quantum Engine" situation, so there being a more concrete answer is cool.
I'm an xfce user... Let me answer the KDE vs Gnome flagship question from that point of view.
When it comes down to it, I came to Linux from Windows because Windows kept taking more and more control over how the system ran away from me. The control that I wanted and was not getting was almost always NEGATIVE... that is to say, I wanted not to ADD more bells and whistles, but to REMOVE or DISABLE them. When it came right down to it, I just want a DE that allows for efficient access to application launch points, efficient management of open applications, and non-intrusive system notifications... Everything else is irrelevant at best and a distraction at worst. Now, I CAN configure KDE to work the way I want in a flat, animationless, no-transparency, no-shadows, square-corner, super simple mode. But. I'm fighting what it is designed to be when I do that... It literally takes me about 45-55 minutes to configure a new KDE user to what I consider minimum civilized interface standards. Just about all of that time is spent turning "features" off. Setup time for a new xfce user account for me is maybe 5 minutes (half turning stuff off, half setting up the panel the way I like it).
Most Linux users are probably not as extreme minimalist as I am, but that doesn't mean they want all of this visual effect nonsense that KDE supports. I mean, lets face it, you don't look at the Mona Lisa for the frame... and similarly the DE should never be a distraction from the CONTENT of the windows.
Since switching to KDE I'm shocked that Gnome is the default. Why.
Old mate spend 20 minutes explaining it. It’s unmanageable by distro’s.
I can't deal with any of those big stodgy fixed-release distros anymore. I've been using Garuda KDE Dragonized Gaming Edition for 2 years now and I've never liked Linux more. But this change sounds like it will be good for KDE.
i mean...once i get used to WM, i simply can't use any DE anymore.
In fact, Hyprland is a strong candidate for popular distro releases just like AwesomeWM.
Never understood how or why it got this way.
Especially suse. They were known as one of the best KDE distros. The betrayal!!
GTK is also just lighter than QT. When making minimal or simple desktop applications, devs prefer the simplicity of GTK over QT, and I'm sure end users also appreciate the reduced resource usage.
GNOME has a monopoly on Linux distribution
same with systemd
There's no such thing as monopoly in the linux world, the majority have just chosen what they think is the best option.
@@leonbishop7404 At least systemd isn't unusable for a good portion of users like GNOME is.
@@jdigi78SystemD is still terrible compared to OpenRC.
Kubuntu is pretty much industry standard. To be honest, i actually don't know why they even build the Gnome version. 1-2 years Hyperland replaces Gnome. But you still have the optipn of Puppy Linux. Or rebuilding old PC's with windows NT and Vista.
Hyprland is cool, but :
"Hyperland replaces Gnome" - mmmm NOPE, it does not.
Gnome is what happens when you get developers who want to make something that superficially looks like MacOS while screwing up everything about the UX. Took them over 2 decades to add thumbnails to the filepicker, and it STILL doesn't show up in many cases.
I don't think Gnome and MacOS are as similar as people say it is. They share basic design principles like the top bar, a similar looking dash/dock (but Gnome's is hidden by default), and an apps screen (Launchpad). Besides from that, the UX is quite different.
Also not sure what your filepicker issue is. The main issue with it in modern versions is that it can't generate new thumbnails, it can only show thumbnails previously generated by nautilus. But some people in Gnome are working towards replacing the GTK filepicker with nautilus so it shares the same codebase.
Gnome is nowhere close to macos. It's just an opinionated project with weird decision history.
And even then, Their desktop is still usable. But what are they doing with their web extension things that at least on my computer crash constantly.
And worse multi monitor support than Windows.
Meanwhile GTK-based Pantheon is _OSX_ (explicitly *not* macOS) *_done better_* than Cupertino has managed to deliver since Jony Ive was around.
@@GSBarlev Nah, Apple has god-like UX. The only thing that comes close is fully configured KDE, but on MacOS it's just the default. Little things like saving all your window states right down to what you had typed and where you had the cursor, or the sizes and shapes of your various terminal windows before the system shutdown.
Unfortunately that functionality isn't really widely adopted on Linux.