I’m team Plasma, but mostly just because every time I touch Gnome it feels like I’m using a really bad copy of OS X that they got bored of copying halfway through and said fuck it, good enough.
Granted, yes, you can tweak it and blah blah blah, but Plasma ships and feels complete and functional right out of the box, and Gnome feels incomplete the more I use it.
I daily drive macOS and Android. GNOME is more like Android to me. Feels too touch focused, where Plasma feels like something actually made for a desktop.
I absolutely love Gnome, but only when I have a touchpad/touchscreen. It blows KDE out of the water in that regard. However, it loses its shine for me when transitioning to a traditional KB+M, and KDE takes the cake there.
Basically, KDE for my main desktop, Gnome for my laptops, tablets, etc.
I don’t know, I recently got a 2-in-1 laptop, and was surprised to see that KDE works great. Got Onboard as on-screen keyboard. Screen rotation works great. Glad I didn’t have to run Gnome on that machine.
Personally, I particularly find all the included applications more useful. GNOME’s definitely aren’t bad, but KDE’s are often best-in-class, particularly for power users. Like, Okular is the PDF reader I recommend even to Windows users. Dolphin is IMO the best file manager out there. Kate is my favorite text editor.
The customizability regarding the workflow is also important to me. It took a few years of experimenting to figure out my preferred workflow, but I’m now often much better organized than my coworkers, just because this workflow is so helpful for me.
I use a few apps intended for KDE on my GNOME system and its clear that there’s a different design philosophy with them. In general I need to have things be very visually uncluttered, so I think it’s just as well that I landed on a distro with GNOME. I have found that the KDE apps that I do use tend to have more functionality/tweakability though. For me it’s a balancing act and I love that Linux gives me these options. Something I also love is having learnt to do things in the terminal. Being able to use a bash alias or keybinding to launch a script or an app in exactly the way I want feels super tidy.
I just really like KDE, been between that and XFCE for years. Ubuntu’s version of gnome when they went to that side bar layout that looks like it’s meant for tablets turned me off of trying it again (though probably be great on a tablet). KDE’s super customisable too, totally done a faux osx look for my laptop and use more or less stock KDE on my shop computer. I didn’t mind older gnome though, isn’t that what cinnamon or mate are meant to feel like?
Yeah, MATE is a direct fork from GNOME 2, so pretty much identical in its workflow.
Cinnamon forked from early GNOME 3, because they weren’t too happy with the new design direction, but they actually ended up building almost a carbon-copy of the Windows desktop (albeit more customizable and lightweight). Even the keyboard shortcuts are basically identical, which is helpful for newbies switching from Windows to Linux Mint.
Certainly Plasma if you’re coming from Windows, unless we’re considering pre-customized GNOME variants like for example Ubuntu uses.
Sure, KDE can be more complex in terms of configuration and customizability, but the default configuration is already good for most users.
Beginners using vanilla GNOME will quickly miss features like a minimize button and certainly tray icons.
Beginners using vanilla GNOME
Beginners will never really be in a position where they’ll be using vanilla gnome, so that argument is kinda moot. And even if they did, those features are literally one extension away…
will quickly miss features like a minimize button and certainly tray icons.
Tray icons don’t exist in gnome’s ecosystem, it only becomes problematic once you get third party applications. The real problems are the minimize/maximize, desktop icons, and panel on top when coming from windows. Although these days with the ever increasing phone use people might just be more at ease with gnome’s workflow anyways.
Okay but the comparison was about GNOME vs KDE, not “GNOME modified with 5 extensions and tweaks that may or may not break with the next major update”.
Also, most users will want to install third party applications. Your average gamer will likely install Discord and Steam, both of them use a tray icon. And no, most gamers aren’t very technical when it comes to their OS.
As if extensions on kde wouldn’t break. How many outdated extensions are there on kde right now? Last time I checked it wasn’t only one or two.
Just because everything is shipped with kde doesn’t mean that gnome is worse because you have to install one more app. Yes it should be included but that’s not my decision to make.
Okay but the comparison was about GNOME vs KDE, not "GNOME modified with 5 extensions and tweaks
Yeah each distribution has their own patch set. If you really want to compare you need to start with the most popular, ubuntu and fedora.
Also, most users will want to install third party applications. Your average gamer will likely install Discord and Steam, both of them use a tray icon.
The two examples you gave are definitely not most users. I’d be surprised if it were even 20%. And the tray icon isn’t necessary for either of them to work correctly. Most people use the computer to open the browser.
I would say it depends on the user. Some might feel more at home with KDE, because the layout is similar to Windows. Some might be coming from macOS, so they would be more at home with Pantheon. Some might choose GNOME, because…
Anyway, the answer is none of the above, it’s terminal only. Get good or get out. Using graphics is for quitters.
Gnome if you come from MacOS, KDE if you come from Windows. But, for a beginner, I think that highly customized to be Windows-like Zorin OS or Linux Mint with Cinnamon would be better choices.
I think both are fine for beginners. Both are easy to use and can be good looking.
