Trying Plasma for a bit to see how green the grass is as a longtime Gnome user. The last time I ran Plasma on my main desktop was version 5.11, I think? It’s been a while…
Just looks like windows to me and I don’t want it
Just looks like windows to me […]
That’s because Windows copied KDE Plasma, obviously. /j
The Windows 11 look was basically stolen from Plasma’s breeze theme. But obviously 30 years ago the story was different.
Even the win11 tagline lol
its very customizable, not just in appearance.
Just change the theme, no?
I’ve got mine set up to run somewhat like OS X, since I like the top bar and the disappearing dock. Modern Plasma is very customizable and easy to customize.
Ironically, so is Gnome (unlike I used to think). I’ve been toying with setting up an OSX-like experience in both via VMs, and they each have pros and cons, as it turns out.
This right here plasma is literally anything you want it to be. And I’m a pop os guy.
Dude. You can make that shit look like Amiga if you want. Whatever floats your boat.
Look like Amiga Workbench sure but certainly not feel like it.
Yes, but unlike some others, Plasma allows and encourages you to rearrange it to your heart’s content. Mine looks nothing like Windows.
Share?
So went frivolous, and installed KDE after years of Xfce.
Wierd interactions everywhere, ctrl f4 doesn’t close windows, the terminal is called “Konsole” lol
Would not recommend, i m going back.
Funny thing, I used Xfce pretty much everywhere. When I recently had a work laptop I tried KDE seriously for the first time ever, and I was like, oh, this is just a sensible desktop nowadays.
Clearly meant for nice hardware though. Sometimes a bit slow on my Raspberry Pi 4. Might switch back. But otherwise, no complaints.
alt+f4 closes windows, like it did in Windows. Where does ctrl+f4 come from?
Even in Xfce ALT+F4 closes windows. Maybe bro changed it at some point and forgot about it
And the RAM usage!
XFCE for life!
Lol ram usage. If you are trying to split hairs between KDE at about 800 mb and XFCE at 400 mb when a browser is going to hit you for at least a gig these days, I am not sure it matters that much.
What is this place?
Windows minus Microsoft BS.
Windows
Take that back… /s
What do you think so far?
Plasma is so good nowadays compared to some years ago. I remember suffering a lot in those early times too.
I love plasma. For the longest time there was just something that felt off about it and I could never get into it.
Once I started using it with the steam deck I fell in love with it. Whatever visually thing irked me was gone and it’s such a good looking DE.
How close to plasma is Cinnamon?
Plasma isn’t as visually polished as Cinnamon. Go ahead and get your clock and CPU temp widgets in the system tray the same font size and positioning.
KDE feels a bit more cluttered because…I’ve said this before, KDE gives you every option under the sun, GNOME software isn’t designed to do anything unless you add extensions to enable features, and Cinnamon is somewhere in the happy middle.
Plasma isn’t as visually polished as Cinnamon.
I’m pretty sure you can get Plasma to look and behave nearly identical to Cinnamon if you wanted.
I recently tried to do this because Cinnamon was pissing me off
I gave up after ~6 hours over 3 days, Plasma Amish a beast
Linux Mint 22.1 just came out with a new high DPI theme and some theme reworking and now my issues are fixed thank fuck
By default, both Plasma and Cinnamon have a very similar set up to Windows.
However, Plasma is insanely modular and customizable, so if you’re willing to take the time to, you can make it look as much like Cinnamon as you please. Given how simple Cinnamon’s design is, I don’t think it would be hard at all.
Hmmm. I’d like windows 98 to be honest.
You can make KDE look like that if you want.
I use cinnamon right now. I might do that on my next build
OK. Easy enough.
i hadn’t used kde (on my own systems) in over twenty years. i downloaded a bunch of ISOs over the last month or so, mainly looking to see what installs easiest and runs best on some old systems here. among them were several with plasma 6.
one of those kinda ‘stuck’ in my head and i had to go back through several until i ‘found’ it again. been messing around with it now for a couple weeks trying to figure out what i’d want for a ‘working’ setup. might just end up switching one of my ‘working’ desktops over.
Takes literally minutes to try with 0 install and no risk for your data : https://distrosea.com/start/kubuntu-24.10-default/
I’m not saying you should enjoy it (even though I do, Debian stable with Plasma for a while now) but it’s so convenient to give any distribution with any desktop environment a try that IMHO it’s wrong not to spend few minutes and see what you might be missing.
Fedora/dnf makes installing additional desktops super easy, also with no risk to data. To hijack your comment a bit:
To install Plasma:
sudo dnf install @kde-desktopLogout and log into the Plasma session to use it.
To rollback, get the transaction ID of the above:
dnf history listAnd then rollback:
sudo dnf history rollback <ID>If Gnome’s fonts/icons don’t revert, install and open gnome-tweaks and reset settings.
I think generally installing another DE on top of an existing one (assuming you already had one) is not recommended, as they might use some of the same config files and mess them up for each other.
This is the first time I’ve heard of this, and I pretty much always have more than one DE installed and have never run into issues. Assuming you’re using a display manager (SDDM, LightDM, etc.), it should handle loading whichever graphical session at the time of login properly.
edit: For clarity, what do you mean by “installing another DE *on top * of an existing one”–like kludging two DEs together in the same X/Wayland session? If so, that sounds like a horrible mistake that lead to that happening.
I mean in a way where you’d get 2 different X/Wayland sessions to select in your login manager.
I have also never run into issues doing this, just have always been told it’s a bad idea.
eh. only vaguely.
basically, there might be some conflicts, such as a different icon theme being selected, but for the most part, things are fine - and most distros, uninstall is straightforward.
one more significant issue you might run into is display manager changes. Gnome may not always play nicely with a kde display manager, and vice versa, regarding sleep, lock, etc. however, i think all of those issues are pretty much fixed these days.
Be free! Install all the DEs/WMs your heart desires.
Regarding the multiple entries for X and Wayland versions of a particular DE: for the most part, I think xwayland has solved this, but as always–for better or worse–you have the freedom to go either way.
Interesting, thanks for sharing.
I used to be a huge fan of Gnome, back before they switched to whatever this mobile-first nonsense design is. Looks like something you would see on a tablet designed for children. They destroyed Gnome!
Old gnome was great. Was like the best middle ground. Enough options to tweak stuff, but not plasma levels of knobs. Le sigh
And let’s not forget that it looked great. The perfect blend of style and minimalism.
The same. I used to love GNOME, now I’m forced to use KDE because GNOME 3+ is completely disgusting and unusable.
Yeah, they really did our boy wrong.
I use Cinnamon on my desktop to avoid the whole “modern” Gnome problem. It’s far better. But it’s Plasma all the way on my laptop baby!
Yeah, Cinnamon is great, but I use Plasma myself. I got used to it after switching to Nobara, back in the day, but for most of the past year or two I’ve been using Bazzite and it defaults to KDE as well.
I’m tired of fighting GNOME 3 to make it feel like GNOME 2. My next reinstall is going to be KDE. I just want a traditional desktop metaphor. 😩 Next major overhaul Kubuntu here I come!
Gnome 3 is long dead.
It is now gnome 40+
And it’s still confining unless you add buggy addons that often crash after an update.
Nah, I think if you’re on e.g. Debian oldstable you could still be on Gnome 3. That’s not “long dead”.
Old stable is going EOL fairly soon.
Maybe not long dead but it is long past its prime.
Yeah if you’re looking for a traditional/Windows-like metaphor, you’re WAY better off with Plasma than trying to wrestle Gnome into that shape.
Kubuntu has always been a buggy mess for me, might not be the best way to judge Plasma. Unfortunately, I think that’s where people develop their poor opinion of it from.
You don’t even need to reinstall. You can have both at the same time and chose one or the other at each login.
Check out Cinnamon for that GNOME 2 feeling.
There is always Cinnamon for you.
Or MATE.
I just installed plasma and I love it. I have no experience with it before this year.
I have been a GNOME 2 and then MATE user for over a decade. Now I use KDE since that’s what SteamOS comes with and it’s fine.
Wow, I found the one other MATE user. Cheers.
I will never not up doot an Over the Hedge meme, so underrated in both meme ability and as a movie lmao
Squirrels on speeeeeed.
The couple of times I have decided to switch to Plasma I somehow get pulled back to GNOME. Like, I tried out earlier Plasma 5 on my system76 laptop and then s76 announced Pop!_OS. Then I tried again when I came across Nitrux which was essentially a heavily customized Plasma. Then I got a Librem 5 which uses phosh, based on GNOME.
I really liked it though, and have thought about trying Plasma Mobile.
gnome user getting confused by customization, seems about right lol.
confused about
customizationbeing allowed to customize anything…FTFY
To be fair customization is a good thing, the problem is it’s too easy to accidentally get into too advanced settings. It feels like the settings most people want 95% of the time are burried in the same place as the niche settings. The gnome tweaks app often gets criticized because it contains basic settings, but I think it could be beneficial for plasma to have the same thing. Only keep the base level user settings the the settings, and put all the customization stuff in a separate tweaks app. The simple by default, powerful when needed moto is true to some extent, but the simple by default part could be much improved and a lot more intuitive
Isn’t there an advanced toggle already in the KDE settings?
As a new linux user I was overwhelmed by plasma and all the choices. I much prefer an OS and DE that feels like it isn’t there and gets out of my way. It was all a bit too distracting, so I went back to Gnome like DEs (Cinnamon and now Cosmic).
Something like your suggestion, with basic settings first and then a deeper layer or toggle for advanced settings would have kept me on the platform longer.
I don’t understand. If you’re overwhelmed by settings just don’t open them? You don’t “need” them, like ever.
it’s all stuff you need to sort through to get to the relevant settings you want. Some people aren’t there to learn to OS, they’re only there to use it.
Yeah this shit is weird… I guess some people just see a lot of text and say “nope” without even bothering to read if any of that shit is actually necessary?
Ironically most of my customization so far has been to make it more like Gnome lmao
Still trying to figure out how to make workspaces/virtual desktops more…usable.
Overall though it’s amazing how solid Plasma is now, it sure as hell isn’t the buggy mess it used to be in the earlier Plasma 5 days.
I just installed a global theme to make it look like macOS 😄 loving it, have now a old unsupported macBookPro (2013) running latest macOS bootleg on latest Linux kernel 😆
Love it!
For me, i made it so pressing Super+<number> switches to that workspace.
Super+Tab to toggle overview (Super+W by default)
And a hot corner, which is set to trigger almost instantly, to toggle overview.
I remapped my side mouse buttons to switching workspaces, and I absolutely love it.
Yea I did something similar on GNOME I mapped one of my mouse side buttons to be META and that way I could use it to access the overview and applications aswell as using side button + scroll wheel to switch workspaces.
I love it so much I have implemented the same functionality In cosmic and would do the same in KDE.
That actually sounds good, but i like to use those in the browser and games
Same here with the Super+<number> to switch (or equivalent function key if you use that binding for something else), and similarly Super+Shift+<same key used to switch to workspace> to send the current window to that respective workspace. For me, without the second one workspaces are waayy less productive.
Same. I have to use windows for work, and the virtual desktops are just mediocre at best to use.
Man, the Windows implementation of virtual desktops is beyond useless to me to the point of exponential loss of productivity. That’s probably my fault for thinking it’s the same use case as workspace switching in Unix–it’s really more like KDE’s Desktop Sessions feature, which is nice, but not really useful for my case.
For me i use 4 workspaces in a grid manner(2 rows) and switches with three finger swipes to whatever direction. Also four finger swipe up/down for overviews
Still trying to figure out how to make workspaces/virtual desktops more…usable
That’s a thing about gnome. The multiple desktops are great and easy to switch between. Especially on a laptop you can easily switch between them with the trackpad, or if you have, by using the touchscreen.
You can do the same on Plasma. Switch by three-finger-swipe
Didnt knew that, since I have only used KDE on my Desktop so far.
I don’t really have a use for it, so I removed it, but for a while I was messing with multiple desktops on KDE, and it was incredibly easy and super customizable. Nothing you said is specific to gnome.
I’m a regular Gnome user. I love KDE’s activities. I don’t know if it’s still required, but Latte dock made it so that you had a nice dock with clean animations, dropping and adding your preferred shortcuts for whatever activity you’re currently on.
I generally had three activities, work, general, and play. switch to work, and it looks like all I do on this computer is work. professional look and feel, all the relevant applications available in a clean autohide dock. switch to play, and it’s some sick background from anime or a game I’m currently into. Steam, Discord, Heroic, and various preferred games are the only visible icons on the dock. it’s really a pleasure to use.
my problem is that when in Plasma, I miss Gnome’s overview, though, and whenever I switch back to Gnome, it just feels homey, functional, and straight to the point. Sure, I lose some customizations, but I gain in simplicity. Overall, that itself is a big customization choice - whether to use Gnome, KDE, or something else. …so I don’t regret Gnome’s lack of customizability, that’s just Gnome fulfilling is niche well. But Plasma is always a close second for me.
