5 Reasons KDE Plasma Is Actually Awesome
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- čas přidán 1. 07. 2024
- Some people seem to think that I hate KDE Plasma after my prior videos but that couldn't be further from the truth, I think it's a great environment but it has some rough edges so instead let's talk about whats good in it.
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0:00 Intro
1:04 Widgets
3:35 Legacy App Support
6:45 Best Protocol Support
9:17 Modularity To A Fault
11:29 Better Window Rules
🎵 Ending music
Track: Debris & Jonth - Game Time [NCS Release]
Music provided by NoCopyrightSounds.
Watch: • Debris & Jonth - Game ...
Free Download / Stream: ncs.io/GameTime
#KDE #Linux #OpenSource #FOSS #Wayland
DISCLOSURE: Wherever possible I use referral links, which means if you click one of the links in this video or description and make a purchase I may receive a small commission or other compensation. - Věda a technologie
2024: Brodies title elevated to "KDE Shill".
I thought he was the "Wayland shill".
@@shisui3436 Wayland shill is such a 2023 thing.
From Wayland shill to KDE shill. The glowup is insane.
@@shisui3436 can be both
Winner of the Luckiest T-shirt Ever Award: BRODIEROBERTSON
Wow, I can't believe he hates plasma, doesn't think people should use it, and thinks it's a terrible environment.
This will be the year of the Brodie v. Nicco cage match
Fr I can't wait for another TechOverTea between the two. Granted, I know that they don't have beef with each others, but I find it funny that we've reached the point in Linux community where there is perceived "content creator drama".
(Okay, it's been there for a while, see BabyWogue, but we need our own "LTT vs MKBHD" counterpart in Linuxtuber world)
I hope both make a rap video, like Brodie did with DT.
the *what* now
Just recently switched from Windows to Arch, and am constantly impressed with how Plasma handles a lot of things. It's got some quirks here and there, but I've yet to run into anything game breaking. Back when I was on Redhat, I recall that setting up the desktop alone took me weeks before I felt I was comfortable. Took me maybe 10 minutes this time around.
What I like even more than Plasma (and I do like Plasma) is the KDE apps. They're not watered-down things you need a ton of plugins to make functional, they're powerful out of the box. Kate, Konsole, Dolphin, Okular and others have more features and usability than those packaged with any other desktop.
Gimme a good Konqueror.
@lucyinchat a web browser is harder to write and maintain than a DE. Even harder than an OS, apparently.
@@MrWorshipMethe ladybird devs beg to differ.
@@lucyinchat it's infuriating, the hostile forks of khtml nowadays rule the browser market, but khtml is dead.
@@AbteilungsleiterinBeiAntifaEV ladybird is far from competing with Chrome or even Firefox.
Plasma is the reason I went back to using a DE. The integration between everything is so nice, especially coming back to linux after using MacOS for a few years.
I will never go back to using a DE, unless I am forced to move to Wayland and it still doesn't have a tiling window manager which ticks all my boxes (like having the panel and systemtray integrated and work 100% correctly) at that itme. I am happy for you that you have such a good experience with Plasma.
@@peterjansen4826 cosmic is looking like a tiling de. still would prefer something more minimal but having a full de experience with tiling would be nice
@@peterjansen4826 I switched from a tiling window manager Qtile to KDE Plasma 5 now to 6 just recently. I really really miss some of the stuff from Qtile. And if there was no workarounds to get some sort of auto tiling in Plasma, I would probably go back. But there is Polonium extension. At least auto tiling works in some capacity, but off course all the other goodies (small footprint on the ram, less resources, flexible and simple editing of configuration files) are not there.
There is something good feeling about a complete package and not to worry about the smallest details. I don't know when I go back to Qtile, but at some point in time I might at least dual use them. And there is also the possibility to replace Kwin, the window manager of KDE, with a tiling window manager. So you would have all the KDE stuff around, plus the entire tiling window manager of your choice. But I don't know how well it works nowadays, its an option to explore.
Plus there is a possiblity not to install the entire suite of tools with KDE Plasma. You can just install the bare minimum and then choose applications and stuff, so its not "bloated".
@@peterjansen4826 Whats wrong with Plasma's panels? Are you on Wayland?
Lacks autotiling. Pop os is the only linux DE with good autotiling
That’s the thing about KDE, is it’s the most powerful so even if it’s not perfect the design and features make it a viable and attractive solution
BTW you can easily add window rules by right clicking the title bar of the window.
The global menu bar is one of my favorite things
Yeah it's amazing
Not enough people talk about how great plasma's support for fractional scaling is. It's really good
Personally, I like how much lighter Plasma is compared to how it was back in the day. I've always had a love for Plasma. It has all the functionality I need from it and while others do as well, I just love the aesthetic and how stable it is...usually. lol
8:18 Gnome does support VRR in Gnome 46, as an experimental feature.
We're finally making getting there lol
One of the nicest things about plasma is that it gives me options. I don't like being fenced in when it comes to my workflow. It has good defaults, but allows you to customize in so many ways.
It kills me to this day that Apple and Google took KHTML for all it was worth to get Safari and Chrome started, but most people have never heard of KDE and neither company contributed back much of use for the original engine.
As is the case with most huge companies and open source projects.
That's why the GPL license is necessary.
As a long time KDE user and volunteer for the project in the past, I definitely agree that there are edges that need sanding (some more than others....)
With that said, I've tried daily driving GNOME and other desktops, and so far, I keep coming back to Plasma since it lets me do EXACTLY what I want my desktop environment to do
Gnome is the opposite of KDE. But xfce and cinnamon are worthy competitors. I especially like how quickly my desktop boots and responds to clicks on xfce when compared to KDE. KDE is for bling, xfce is for getting things done, and cinnamon is in the middle.
Man the KDE devs never cease to amaze me.
Window rules + kwin scripts let you make any window behave like guake or like i3's scratch space. It's extremely handy.
Thanks. I forgot about the rules. Now my windows tile to their exact position without me monkeying around. This suffices until they get real tiling built-in. ;)
14:45 "I'm going to do the polonium video soon"
Brodie, 04.2024
The Wayland video bridge is super handy for me as somebody who enjoys sharing my screen in Discord and regularly finds myself a little annoyed at Discord not supporting Wayland fully.
Those window rules are something I wish I knew of before though. I like to have a few of my windows to always be the same size. I probably spend too much time counting pixels to get them just right. This is so much easier than messing with resizing and hoping the app remembers.
let's hope cosmic takes a good while to release so we can have broodie on KDE for a good while
😅
considering its prealpha software, probably gonna be a hot minute lmfao
@VioletRM I think they plan a release by the end of the year.
Agreed 😅
Same here coming from tiling and feel there is potential which I also really want to see improved and also sure will be improved upon - but that aside, I think plasma 6 is amazing and will just continue improve. I never liked KDE but I'm kinda in love now.
Great video Brodie
I really like widgets. The main feature i like with KDE is the ability to easily add images and notes to your desktop. Want to copy and paste a note for later, well just copy it and paste it to the desktop and it will instantly create a sticky note. The same goes for images last time i tried it.
Linus Tech tips just mentioned you lol
I need details
@@BrodieRobertsonhe called you wayland shill
@@rizkyadiyanto7922 If that actually happened my channel would be complete
@@BrodieRobertson I think he said Brodie in the 10 weird Linux distros video but I don't think it was a call out to you, lol.
Found the clip. I think it's a legit Easter egg (that is, the scriptwriter must be a fan).
Great content. Nice job
Plasma is the forth state of matter.
Parts of KDE are being sponsored by Valve, and sure corporate sponsorship in nixland is nothing new, but Valve just happens to be one of the corporations most interested in the _User Experience_ side of things.
The only reason I am on hyprland is fake fullscreen, so I can watch maximized videos as a window
oh, this worked as a hack on i3 too - open video window as full screen, then use full screen key from i3, it drops window into tile, but window still thinks it's full screen (and iirc you can even make it floating)
Can't that be done with gamescope? A bit hackier in the way it functions sure, but that's how I'd do it if I absolutely had to use another desktop environment. It has a borderless flag too.
If this is in a browser, usually this can be done with config changes, such as in Firefox
I've been using KDE plasma 6 on my Dell XPS 13 laptop and ofc on Arch that should be obvious. It is an awesome experience. Very well crafted DE
Graphically setting all sorts of stuff, even if it's not perfect in how it does it, is what I like about KDE Plasma. I'm sure System76 has taken notes and inspiration from it while developing Cosmic.
I learned the hard way on how broken VR is on gnome back when I still used Fedora Workstation but now on the KDE spin everything is great for it and even Valve recently updated SteamVR to work better with Wayland!
KDE's great. Had I not seen the light of dynamic tiling and per-monitor workspace I'd still be running it
I just noticed why AlacriTTY is spelled that way.
Same with kiTTY
Foot left alone :(
i love using kde plasma... i dont use widgets... i really like kde connect with my phone... i can use my service phone as a modem through usb tethering... use my laptops wifi as a hotspot and control my computer from back on my bed with a second phone...
2023: Wayland Shill
2024: KDE & Cosmic Shill
2025: GNOME Shill?
What won't Brodie shill, sheesh.
Jokes aside, kwin's window rules is what I always miss whenever I use something else like Windows or GNOME. Tiling is cool and all, but window rules is much more useful for my workflows.
Btw, Brodie, I see that you have 4 workspaces? Have you tried doing in two rows? It'll make the widget take less space and make Desktop Grid, well, a grid. While I think KDE's Overview is worse than GNOME, I find the Desktop Grid to be just perfect for how I use my workspaces with 2 virtual workspaces per rows.
In Plasma 6, current desktop overview (with edge detection) doesn't work as a grid. Only works if its in rows. They'll fix it for 6.1 or something apparently.
I defected to team KDE Plasma (5.27) from Gnome Cosmic. KDE has a few rough edges to polish, but it's on a trajectory to be a superior user experience very soon. The fact that they're reacting quickly to changes in developments and listening to their community is huge. At some point in the future I believe many distros will make Plasma the default or at least have it on par with Gnome on their website.
I agree that KDE is looking to rise and become more of a default on some distros but Gnome will always dominate now because it is the preferred DE for Big Business. Corporations like locked down "Do your job" DE's in which even file copying is viewed with suspicion and the users are not allowed to alter their desktop at all.
Big Purple and other major sponsors of Linux prefer Gnome and that is not going away. And I say that as a massive KDE fan.
Don't forget about accessing Window Rules from titlebar right-click, where everything is already set, and you need only to add a rule.
I use it for changing theme of titlebar so it would match the app, if it doesn't follow the system theming, like Spotify or making app always on top, for CZcams and Picture in Picture option to be always on top in Wayland, etc.
What I love about Plasma?🤭 Meeee???🤗
Well it's this kind of window positioning and details to control just about every aspect separately, and yes, the modularity, and really the general logic and efficiency in their programing/philosophy works out quite well for me!🤓
I'm a Plasmazoider!😆🤪
I last used Plasma 5.27 and found it stable for the most part, but being an early Wayland user (I stopped using i3 because of this) the switch to Fedora Gnome was rough as I used Qt5 applications mostly. Wayland on Plasma 5.27 was OK, but I'm looking forward to a Arch/Plasma install soon.
Setting up window rules can be even easier than what you've shown. No need to manually go to the settings, just rightclick the window's titlebar and find the option to modify rules for that window. It'll either bring up the existing rule for that window, or create a new one with the window class and rule name already filled in
The one thing about plasma I would really, really like: have a "pop-over" button to bring the desktop widgets on top of the applications. I like having a lot of windows open. But I want to be able to use the notes or the calendar or the media controls, etc. I don't want to have to swap to a different desktop or minimize everything just to use the feature.
I can't help but wonder if the "some devs don't use widgets" think was a miscommunication. I only ever really thought of widgets as the ones on the desktop. Having nothing on the panel (or maybe just no panel?) just sounds bizarre. Maybe it's just me.
Never used window rules in my life, but I agree with the rest of the video.
Window rules are great to place certain windows on certain virtual desktops all the time. I currently have eight of these and so I almost never have to hunt for some window buried beneath countless other windows, instead I just need to switch to the correct virtual desktop.
i do like kde, i think it is a very nice overall DE, there are 2 non-stock widgets i make use of 'Resource Monitor (fork)' and 'Do It Yourself Bar' really hoping an annoying bug vanishes when i upgrade to Kubuntu 24.04 (not sure if it is a kernel (amd gpu) or kde bug) it is not a every day issue, but when it happens i roll my eyes and groan
I love widgets and you can also rotate them to any angle that you want.
I started using kde around 2008/2009 , i cant remember if kde4 supported it , i think 3.2.2 did , but ever since were on 5 im still waiting till the day i can drag and drop reorganise the systemtray icons :)
Brodie! Window rules. Just right click the window bar on top!
My favorite thing about Plasma (I don't know if it is available in other DE's) are Virtual Desktops!
I typically have 4 Virtual Desktops running with border switching. On each Desktop I have specific applications setup.
So, now that you just taught me how to make window rules, I can now have them spawn where I want them on each desktop! (I hope)
It definitely works, have done that for years (with eight VDs at the moment, and some apps always appearing on the same one).
If you like those, you'll love Activities, which are basically megadesktops for your desktops. A really underrated feature of Plasma.
@@JHSaxa Yeah, I have been meaning to try those out, but just haven't had a serious use case for them yet
Also, KDE Connect is best piece of software for connecting devices together, can't live without clipboard synchronization across devices, works flawlessly on any platform. Windows, MacOS, Linux, Android, iOS (with some restrictions)
Plasma and XFCE are my two favorite desktop environments. But Plasma is rough around the edges, I agree.
in my setup i have A 1080p and 4k display in 2 different rooms, and with kde although i need to trick it into letting me do it, it's the only DE so far that i can have the 1080p display taking up the top left quarter of the display and works flawlessly while doing it. it even duplicates the full screened video onto the 1080p display if i full screen it on the 4k one, instead of only showing 1/4 of the image. if i full screen it on the 1080p it only takes up 1/4 of the 4k display. and since the 1080p is the primary display everything everything opens on the 1080p screen, so programs i open never hide themselves only visible in the livingroom. you can also move windows you can't see after right clicking on them on the task bar (I seriously don't know why every DE with a taskbar doesn't have this).
It brings joy to my heart to hear you change your mind about KDE haha. Plasma 6 is great. Despite its flaws, it is brilliant to use for my workflow.
I never hated it
I tried almost every wm out there, and the one I stick with after all is plasma. Second fav is i3, but now I have pretty descent computer, so why not enjoy all these eye candies
incredible brodert 👍
I absolutely love Plasma. Occasionally, I try out Gnome when a new major version is released. Usually I can't stand more than a couple of hours of it and I'm back to KDE. It's just way too restricted for my liking.
So... I use X11forwarding to a windows desktop, is there a wayland way to do that?
There was a time when Windows desktop was like KDE Plasma and a lot more colorful too, and I really wish MS just go back to that time.
5:40 That's not quite right. "Only non-character keys" already allowed 'meta+F4' and whatnot "As above..." allows apps to capture 'Ctrl+H', but not 'H'
One of the things I "fixed" with window rules is that on wayland the protocol that would allow for example libreoffice to set the appropriate desktop file for its windows is not yet implemented.
If the window class is "soffice.bin libreoffice-startcenter" and the title includes "LibreOffice Writer" then apply the desktop file "libreoffice-writer".
The protocol has been there forever, LibreOffice just doesn't do per-app .desktop files for some reason and bundles all the apps into one
@@zamundaaa776 There are separate .desktop files for them in my /usr/share/applications and I didn't put them there, so can you explain what you mean?
@@zamundaaa776 hold on, nevermind, it seems they fixed it, so that's why the .desktop files are here now
I started using Hyprland you're right Window managers are the best but I might use KDE 6 when that is ready I cant stand the fullscreen mouselag right now deal breaker and in crysis 3 remaster i got this problem the mouse doesn't move fully its locked into the fullscreen window and not centering lol
The biggest downside of plasma for me is the totally disjointed look of the application and the lack of consistent themes made by people who know anything about design
13:00 Remember when a button used to look like a button? This is a perfect example how "modern" flat UI is failing the user.
Indeed, flat UI is the worst of the worst, banishing decades of experience on user centric, intuitive design for the sake of "modernity". And it gives countless talentless hacks the right to call themselves UI-designers, apparently.
as normally a windows user who made a attempt to dual boot both arch and fedora (40 pre) after each other due to some issues (wanted to use plasma 6 for hdr reasons), I got some major issues where with me doing no weird config just system updates especially on fedora it would just stop booting into wayland for some reason, I really liked the experiment but something was very wrong given that leaving the system in sleep mode it would never wake up my main monitor without me powercycling it via the powercord, outside of that I loved it, now could these issues be due to my pc likely a nvidia gpu (early 3080) plus a stupid monitor setup (2x portrait 27" 1440p 144&165hz respectively and main 43" 4k 144hz) but for me it was a poor experience to have updates just break an entire install which yes both these attempts weren't stable things but hey I've paid for monitor features I would love to use them
The fact that I can't use the command button to open the task menu drives me up the wall.
Yesss polonium, my only hope of migrating back to plasma.
What I can't wait for is if/when GNOME finally adds mosaic tiling and Brodie gets pressured into trying it out.
13:08 there is no way to match fullscreen so no way to block compositing if window is fullscreen (x11)
As a Windows user I do have to say that I like Kate, Kdenlive & krita....
1. Wayland
What holds me to move back to KDE is that in gnome i can add padding to edge screen and gap for windows. This just gives me hyptrland feel to me. Idk how to do that in KDE Plasma. And why not using hyprland? It's wayland.
What I like about Plasma?
Real simple, to me it feels like the good stuff I liked from Windows 98 in terms of Window handling.
But it also features the good stuff I like about more modern things as well, unlike Windows 10 and 11 for an example.
03:05 i hate this calendar because i can't edit month names and week day names
I didn't like Plasma before but I gave Plasma 6 a try recently and finally migrated from progressively decaying and buggifying Gnome.
I still hate Breeze tho
@@tannisroot😅😅
@@tannisroot Its not windows you can tweak the look
I've been using gnome for the longest time but having to reply on extensions for a system tray gets on my goddamn nerves
I would switch from XFCE to KDE but it's way too blue.
It's genuinely terrifying that there are KDE devs who don't get how people could like widgets.
Sure, don't use them. But not getting why others would want to is mind boggling.
Almost Gnome-tier mind boggling. And I sure hope that "gap" remains...
I thought everyone used widgets
0:53 I agree!
What did he said in the end? "i'm gonna zoop plenty nvidia soon, don't worry about it"?
Plasma's a rough diamond, but it can do with polishing
Plasma for sure has its issues. I would like it to get to a point where it has less issues on Atomic systems.
I've been using it on Bazzite and Kinoite (Aurora DX now) devices. It's been fine, even with me just randomly copy pasting stuff for the themes and all to the image builder on github.
I miss KDE 3.5 and Amarok 1.4. :
I was a KDE fanboy but since I discovered Sway I can't switch back to KDE.
Always switching DE's. Making a forever solid choice is not an option for me.
I wish plasma was easier to reproduce, that is one of my biggest issues. I have a very heavily customized kde but if I want to reproduce it on a 2nd machine I will have to do a few hours of re setting things up. I wish there was just a single folder that had all the kde configs to easily back it all up.
You can make a script I fou know the config files thera are list of KDE config files online.
~/.config
~/.local
Or just backup your home folder excluding .cache
Go to ''Nicco Loves Linux'' and look for the Videos : Create a KDE Plasma Theme with No Code! Part 1 and 2. He shows how to make Global Themes!
czcams.com/video/XrNWYt_vciA/video.html
On Plasma 5 you also had the widget PlasmaThemeConfigSaver but that one doesn't work on 6. Maybe it will come back in the future.
Something better than one person becoming popular and championing their ideals... unless the story is fascinating involving golden tablets and hieroglyphics or something.
I have nvidia gpu and unfortunately there are bugs on wayland plasma:
- touchpad configuration is I think a little more limited on wayland,
- there was some wired bug with konsole that allowed me to detach some part of thw window but there was no option under wayland to attach it back,
- firefox picture-in-picture mode is not launched with always-on-top option
- in games I have wired stuttering or tearing. I think, it is more visible whem I have low framerate
Do you have nvidia enabled in your etc/boot file and the wayland backend in firefox?
@@DCM777. I don't know what do you mean by etc/boot, I don't have /etc/boot directory. And I didn't even knew that firefox under wayland should be run differently - but now I tested "firefox-wayland" from terminal and bug is still there.
@@Daniel_VolumeDown Modify /etc/default/grub and add nvidia_drm.modeset=1 in GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT.
Regenerate grub.cfg by running grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
Reboot.
@@Daniel_VolumeDown For firefox go to about://flags and search for wayland and enable it.
i wish plasma had a dedicated widgets page that can be brought up with a shortcut like old mac os x versions. i'd like to use widgets but i don't like them shitting up my desktop/panels
You can add something similar to this yourself.
Add a panel, widen it so it fits the widgets you want, set it to auto-hide and add a shortcut.
After which this panel will show up when you press that shortcut.
It will also pop up when moving the mouse to it's edge, this might be undesired.
I do not know if this can be disabled in a configuration file, the GUI lacks a setting for this.
Also, we used to have something exactly like that in Latte Docks. The problem is that Latte Docks dev retired so the porting process to KDE 6 is being done by random contributors that won't ever get merged to the main repo.
@@FengLengshun having used Latte on Plasma 5.27, it's also very unstable as the moment KWin craches you loose all panels and docks set up in it.
KWin crashes semi-frequently, with stock Plasma you only see the panels disappear for a second, to then re-appear like nothing happened.
@@WyvernDotRed I know. It hasn't been maintained for a long while now, even before KDE 6. It's a great extension to Plasma and I think everyone agrees about that, which is why I feel like slowly its functionalities ported to either the main Plasma and KWin in the correct sustainable maintainable way, or ported to other extensions like the Panel Spacer Extended plasmoid.
I've broken plasma a few times myself 🤓
TBH I feel like we live in an alternate time line or something that has GNOME as the desktop of choice which is WEIRD because frankly GNOME is terrible.. not user friendly, anti-choice, and breaks EVERY update.. I feel like in the proper timeline KDE is the desktop of choice lol.. it only makes logical sense lol
april fools: extended version
Cinnamon sitting over here just working.
and lacking more than half of the functionality of plasma
@@burein_itastability > buggy features
I could probably tolerate Cinnamon and Budgie if they have KWin's window rules. Going back to a DE without it almost felt like I stepped back to Windows and macOS land.
Cinnamon is in the process of doing the Wayland thing
@@Alo-xs5quI always thought cinnamon was stable, but I tried and found 3 random annoying bugs. Although I feel overall it's less prone to break due to it being way more simple than plasma.
Oh god. Brodie's a linux Vista user.
"I hate plasma, I don't think people should use it, I think it's a terrible environment" - Brodie 2024
He hates plasma
Did you lose a bet against Nicco? 👀
For me I use Plasma for a few reasons. 1st my disability. For my needs it is easy to use with one hand (my left hand). Other DEs I can use but they don't make it as easy. This has become more challenging of late as the KDE devs have moved to a more gnome-eque like idea. But it's still the easier DE for me because I can customise a lot. 2nd is I like my workflow and theming. No other DE even comes close to Plasma with consistent theming across gtk, kde, qt. 3rd is I have used it for so many years now. I still blame Quidsup for that. Watching his videos was why I switched many moons ago.
This is why every desktopenvironment should support both mouse and keyboard 100%. I am on the opposite end than you in that sense, I often notice how the support for keyboard-only is lacking for no good reasons, just because developers didn't think about implementing it that way. That includes Plasma, mostly you can only use the keyboard but in the menus it breaks. In my opinion many userinterfaces got too much mouse-focused in that sense (like some games for which you can't go through a menu or other GUI-thing without using the mouse) but of course I want it to always be possible to only use the mouse, or the keyboard, for people who need that.
@@peterjansen4826I completely agree. There needs to be well sorted for both. Not everyone needs the same tools. But both are important. I struggle with keyboard centric stuff. Especially if it's many keys at once. My fingers just can't do that yoga ha ha. So I can see how not being able to use a keyboard would also be a challenge.
@@roo79x I use hotkeys as much as I can, for everyhing, including placing this post here (in the browser ctrl+enter), closing or opening a tab in the browser, opening a new (private) window etcetera. Whenever I can I avoid the mouse. Not because I struggle with using a mouse, not at all. I play realtime strategy games and shooters, I am quite handy with it. I just don't like the ergonomics of having to switch all the time between the keyboard and the mouse and it would be less efficient for me to move my hand to the mouse, aim and click in comparison to just hitting a few keys on the keyboard. However, I type blind, I have a pretty good musclememory in my fingers and I have a pretty big reach for my fingers. I can imagine that for other people the mouse is easier or even necessary (if you would only have 1 hand), I think that it also is about habits, you first have to find out what the hotkeys are and that takes effort and makes you slower at first so not everybody feels like doing that and that is fine.
I've tried every desktop environment under the Sun and I always end up returning to Gnome. KDE has so many features that it feels unfocused, since they've apparently tried to satisfy every use case imaginable. I prefer the guided simplicity of Gnome.
If you like GNOME and its lack of features (but also simplicity, and imo, too much sumplicity), then that's fine.
Personally, as a former Windows user up until the horrorific mess that is Windows 11, I could never get to grips with modern GNOME (3 and later), because the workflow doesn't mesh well *with me.* If it works for you, again, that's good for you. But modern GNOME is absolutely not for everybody.
I chose Gnome because I don't want to keep procrastinating by raising up my desktop. And also I use gnome apps as far I can for the same reason.
I have opposite experience always go back go plasma). GNOME can't do even basic things by itself such as turn screen off when laptop lid is closed (you need to edit logind.conf to make it work this way).
I honestly just set up KDE once and forget about it. I just copy paste all the important config files to my ublue image builder and Nix home-manager repos and I just... Don't bother changing anything for the last year or so.
Much like anything Linux, it's only as complex as you make it complex. Me? I just setup a White-Sur themed Unity DE-like UX config once, as well as make sure my kwin rukes are always synced, and then be done with it.
Have you given Plasma 6 a try? They really streamlined UX in the recent versions.
kde, wayland, nvidia: a winner
Try to install GDM on another environment that is not Gnome 😅
Dependency hell!
I love widgets.
And someone donate 2 bucks to wikipedia so they quit asking