English, German and Dutch are Germanic.
English is the weird one, except for the others.
I had hoped KDE was over the K-named thing, but I guess not. At least Karton is better than Kvirt-manager.
I like KDE apps though, usually end up using those together with something like lxqt or xfce
Don't use that on formal contexts, BTW.
I think KDE is back in top again.
(IMHO, later versions of KDE got good, but even today I understand the appeal of just sticking to the same thing)
That said KDE 6 is pretty solid. I rarely have issues with it.
So far I really like Cachy. It's been great for the bit of gaming I do. I had a bit of audio grief, but installing a different kernel seemed to have fixed the issue. Overall I'm pretty damn happy with it. It was much easier than default Arch. I tried Endeavour and though it was nice, there was something about it I didn't quite like (I don't recall what). I'm off Windows entirely - between shoving their AI stuff and Ads everywhere, after decades of off and on use, Linux is my forever home.
And yeah, KDE is pretty nice and solid now.
I figure if I ever need anything Windows related, I will just load windows in a VM. Gaming wise, mostly the only games you can't play on Linux are Windows games with root kit level anti-cheats. Not sure if that is a downside...
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PCI_passthrough_via_OVMF#Wi...
I am running a modern PC (z790, i9-14400k, RTX 4070-Ti)
My main concern was gaming on Linux and I have been pleasantly surprised at the limited issues I have had -- only minor things.
I have recently played around with Gnome-boxes and seems to do the trick although it would be nice have GPU passthrough.
I love CachyOS and the Plasma DE and do not plan to return to Windows.
I had to install an extra app to control startup applications.
Fractional scaling and several displays was wonky, made screen recording impossible. My 60fps display has a stuttery mouse pointer.
Hiding keyboard layouts like Swedish Sami or svdvorak didn't make things better.
Copy and paste not working cross screens (wtf?). Drag and drop not working if you switch windows using alt+tab. Context menus locking focus from the whole desktop: open the nautilus file transfer dialogue and suddenly I couldn't click anywhere else than in nautilus. Having it open and trying to interact with another app just wouldn't work.
At the end had accidentally tried KDE in a VM and realized I wouldn't tolerate a hammer behaving badly. I went back to opensuse the same day.
Gnome2 was a good functional desktop, sure it was copying the 2000s with windows 98/2000 style, but it worked. Hell, even OpenStep is more functional than Gnome3 as a daily computer interface.
Gnome3 targeted a weird mix of incompatible devices, like a windows 8 interface, and kinda failed as a design given the devices it optimized for never took over the market. There's not that many tablets running Gnome or touchscreen laptops anymore.
It's almost like Android took the design team by complete surprise, while they tried to make desktops a tablet experience, but failed at doing both.
I used to run Hyperland but was tired of constantly tweaking it... so this is good and easy enough.
I hear good things about COSMIC as well. But I'm too busy being productive at the moment to mess up my well working NixOS/Vanilla-Gnome based laptop :)
I'm not sure about that. Convertible laptops are quite popular as a product category, and GNOME 3 works great on those. Besides, MATE and Xfce are still around if you prefer a traditional desktop interface.
Fast forward to 2024 I get a Linux tablet with gnome installed (phosh) and guess what? Not a single gnome video player exists that works well with the touchscreen, and many of the apps only work by keyboard!!
We lost so much in the transition, and they didn’t even bother to nail the supposed new use case. Gnome in itself is a complete failure, so far at least. Cinnamon and Mate are decent but suffer from GTK deterioration. Phosh seems to work well enough.
I like kde these days and have it on a machine, but every time I open the context menu on konsole I get upset because there are a hundred options in there. I want a simple menu.
Such an underrated set of distros.
I know a similar thing has been done before but would be great to have upstream support from a major DE
Happy to be corrected if I'm wrong, this was my conclusion last year when researching again this space (since we're talking about virtualization support, thanks again RedHat for deprecating SPICE /s).
I've read that it's possible in Windows' RDP, but haven't found a Linux client/server setup that supports that.
FreeRDP has supported this for over 10 years as a client. I don't know about non-windows servers: https://files.catbox.moe/roso8c.png
It's also significantly more responsive than any libvirt framebuffer.
I was pretty bullish on SPICE last year, with hardware acceleration enabled it was great. Not game streaming software latencies, but the seamless host-guest VM integration and usb/smart card redirection where features that I really desired for my workflows.
Problem solved
I have multiple VMs running on my laptop. I can attach an external display and resize the VM windows. When detaching the display, the windows all resize back down automatically. With shared clipboard and a few other niceties, each VM feels pretty close to a native experience.
I have single-application VMs (e.g., the one that hosts my daily-driver browser environment that I'm typing into right now); those run a lightly customized openbox environment and the application is full-screened inside the VM. Those really feel like a Qubes-like experience, like a native application but inside a VM.
I also have purpose-specific VMs. For example, anytime I get started on a new contract, I spin up a new VM for it. All credentials, dev tooling, files, etc. for that project are contained inside that VM. I typically set it up so that there are multiple virtual desktops on my host environment, but a single desktop inside the VM; alt-tab switches tasks inside the VM but not the host environment. So, it's easy to switch "into" the project VM, work there for a while as naturally as I would if everything were native, and then switch out again as needed.
I really really want to swap all of the VirtualBox bits out with QEMU or KVM, but those aren't quite as polished just yet -- despite VirtualBox's numerous and sometimes work-stopping bugs, and the ever-looming threat of Oracle's litigation team.
The only reason why I'm a gnome user, it's because of that.
And yes, I know I can just customize, but everytime I try, it just make KDE more sluggish for some reason, and doesn't really feels natural.
Oh no I just checked and they also drank the kool-aid. Seems like you can turn it off at least.
Not saying you're wrong, just that it's interesting how much perspectives differ on design, I suppose.
Having as much whitespace as possible and icons over text does not a modern application make.
But talking about real UI/UX, I do guess it's just about everything. It feels like the UI/UX was developed by programmers. It feels unpolished.
Border radius, paddings... A lot of things there being square and not round... The default icons. The context menu being to square, again. Even the default close/minimize buttons.
Like, UI wise, Finder and Nautilus is just way ahead than Dolphin for me.
Libadwaita apps also feel very consistent. I can find most of my apps with basically same consistent design on gnome.
UI wise I find gnome beautiful, their problem it's with UX and the excess of simplicity, like removing real features from Nautilus...
But at the same time I guess, KDE made the mistake of being too much complex UI wise. Even their screenshot tool it's a little insane hahahah
Maybe I just find it KDE ugly because I got super used by Gnome, macOS and Windows 10/11 UI? Likely.
I like the concept, but I guess maintaining it is no easy task, and people is more motivated to add things than fix them.
In the end, I gave up, went to window managers instead to full DEs, then to i3, and now am on a Mac.
Still, I remember 3.5 fondly. The last good Linux Desktop Environment (Gnome tried so hard, but always was a bit too 'our way or the highway' when KDE allowed for some customization)
There are still bugs but they do seem to be ironing them out, they go in the right direction.
The only big bugs I notice these days are the occasionnal plasmashell crashes but it comes back on its own. KWin doesn't crash and that's fortunate because on Wayland, that would bring down non KDE apps.
I exclusively use plasma, I'm quite sensitive to instabilities, it's not an issue for me with KDE.
I did avoid the first years of KDE 4 and was using GNOME at that time.
Have you tried Trinity?
I don't think it's people holding a grudge, I think it's people who got burned and are hesitant to touch that burner again because they don't want to get burned twice.
I don't want to invest migration of workflows and time to understand a new UI paradigm for a system that once catastrophically crashed and burned something good on the altar of 'new and innovative and unfinished'.
That's not a grudge. It's growing older and setting other priorities in life.
I find it a lot more sensible than windows especially because the latter started embedding ads and "helpful suggestions" everywhere in the UI.
I think it was the closest we ever came to a 'Linux on the Desktop' year for a mass market.
A trivial example: keeping a working weather widget on my taskbar for an update cycle without breaking it was too much to ask for Gnome. I put up with this kind of thing for YEARS before switching to Plasma. Widgets for your taskbar and stable plug-in APIs should be table stakes for a desktop environment, especially if its whole philosophy is one that the core product should be minimal and most functionality should be in plugins.
You know what KDE has? Features. You know what it doesn't have a lot of? Bugs. Maybe you've tried it four times over the years but after a short trial three years ago I've been using exclusively Plasma.
It's way better than Gnome at this point, and I say this as a Gnome 2.x user. I laughed at KDE 4 back in the day.
But I'm pretty sure everyone in this thread who is bitching about Plasma has not used it in recent times. It's an absolutely fantastic, solid, polished, featureful desktop. To say otherwise is just to display your ignorance, frankly.
My last time using kde was a few months ago, and it was stability issues (which could be hardware related), but also cumbersome customization of main UI, and minor annoying bugs, that keep accumulating through usage.
Don't get me wrong, I love KDE concept and I don't think Gnome is making great decisions keeping it minimalist (I use i3 for that reason. If I want a DE I want it fully featured and customizable).
I'm just sharing my personal view and agreeing with another user. I know what users can think about fabulous software, and that they (we) are biased in many many ways.
On the other side, KDE consists of almost exclusively native (C++) code, although I believe some tools are written in Python. Great for performance, but C++ has a reputation for a reason.
For what it's worth, the last major release has been very stable. It has also always been stable for me on my Steam Deck. I have a feeling KDE's issues are similar to WordPress': external plugins hooking deep into the native API, making it seem like the software they're integrating with is unstable.
For me, KDE is a better concept than Gnome, and I genuinely don't know which is better developed/mantained. But it is true that I always change after a week or so, and I've been a gnome user for longer periods of time.
I'll keep testing it, more so if I install updated hardware in my computer
To me, KDE's job should be to organize and render windows, application launcher icons, and the like
If I want a virtual machine, I'll use a virtual machine for that
All this "KDE suite" stuff and what not is unnecesarry - some of these are good pieces of software that I like to use, but there's no reason they need any integration with a desktop environment (arguably a few basics like a file manager, VTE and plain text editor are expected and fine but in theory also can be wholly separate)
Also, any integration attempts like making the icons a common asset rather than each application have their own, _fail_ and make things worse, with these integrations applications less often have working icons at all, and more often have mistakes like black icons against a black background making them invisible
I believe you are confusing Plasma, which is KDE's desktop environment, and the KDE Project, which also hosts a lot of applications that can be used with or without Plasma, many of which are multiplatforms. Even on Windows one can use a lot of KDE apps without using their desktop environment, Plasma. It's also totally possible to use Plasma without any of the KDE apps, not even the file manager (Dolphin), the VTE (Konsole), or the simple text editor (Kwrite).
Historically, the desktop environment was KDE (Kool Desktop Environment), but it's been quite a long time since the DE is one among many software that the KDE project works on.
That said, I 100% agree with you on icons, and never used an icon theme :).
One thing the GNOME community got right, despite the clamour and gnashing of teeth.
Consistent cross-app theming support is a pipe dream from the 90s that has never worked, except in manicured screenshots to get karma points on /r/unixporn
I don't want every app to have a different look or 'brand' as that page says. I want my system to be consistent.
open the color panel and tick the option "tint window title bar with accent color"... which used to be just the window decorator title and borders. ... now some dev wanting to post screenshots on Reddit decided the accent color should be a light pastel tone that can be applied to the top elements of the qt application, bringing back the worst of gnome 2 era.
But I don't really understand what goes wrong there.
i personally think wm fiddlin with application content absurd.
Theming sucks even when you keep the default look. I bet that since many Linux users use custom themes, app developers just give up and don’t even test the default combination.
Your UI is a collection of input/output widgets. The vast majority of apps have maybe one or two app-specific widgets and the rest are completely standard. Why the hell do so many developers insist on styling every stupid textbox just they way they like it?? No, fuck you, a textbox is a textbox, your textbox isn't special, if I want texboxes on my screen to be in purple comic sans on a green background, that's exactly what they should look like.
The reason why apps break when custom themes are applied is almost always because a developer made a "white box with a grey border and black text" instead of a "--bg-surface-color box with a --border-color border and --fg-primary-color text".
It's the same with icons - if you want a homepage button, reference the "home" icon. If you want a house/flat/skyscraper/boathouse dropdown, reference the "house" icon. If you use "home" to show a house because that's what it is on your theme, don't be surprised (let alone angry) that I've set home to a picture of a cat and now your dropdown makes no sense.
Yes, sometimes the platform doesn't give you enough tools to adhere to the system theme (although most apps aren't complex enough to run into that), but there are usually workarounds or you can open a bug report. Most "modern" developers, however, just don't. They draw their UI in Figma and set out to make it in code, pixel-for-pixel if possible.
Besides, if app developers are doing their job properly as described in the parent comment, then neither user themes, nor distribution themes, should break anything.
Because when a distribution like Ubuntu ships a broken theme, and some app doesn't work as intended, users will report this to the app although it's a bug in Ubuntu.
The linked website is basically complaining that 1) it's too hard, and 2) it precludes app developers from doing their own "branding". The former is just laziness, given that software 20 years ago managed to do it fine, and the latter is narcissism.
Nonsense. Linux is about libre software. It might be about choice, if you want. It’s not about “all software needs to let my desktop look like a clown makeup set or it’s literally 1984”
Amateur environments from the 90s let you do that, but it has nothing to do with the Linux philosophy
Except it literally is about that? Libre software guarantees users the right to make their own modifications to it. That's basically the entire point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software
Being actively hostile towards users making and sharing modifications to your software, while still technically permitting them, probably doesn't disqualify your project as "libre" software, but it goes against the spirit of it.
KDE solved 99% of the theming requirements by just allowing color customisation and shipping with a default theme that doesn't suck too badly.
Plasma is only a small part of KDE's toolkit, and that's why KDE is so popular. Hell, most of Plasma has no business being part of a window manager.
If you just want something to render windows, there are much more minimalist alternatives, such as LXDE, Hyprland, Sway, i3, and so on.
Yes, and it has to be said that the most popular browser engine (used in Chrome, Safari, Opera, Edge, …) has its root in the KDE project as WebKit was originally a fork of KHTML :).
I've reported so many bugs it's not even funny. Audio is completely broken in my VMs now. It breaks regularly, restarting the viewer session used to fix it, now it just produces garbled ear piercing audio. No responses. No responses to issues where i ask for packaging guidance in case we don't configure it the way they expect.
It's truly unfortunate. And I'm betting that KDE is probably just using virt/spice components, but at least it won't be GTK3 near-abandonware.
Looking forward to a new VM manager. virt-manager is what I use and it's not very maintained: it still has issues on a HiDPI screen where scaling is all messed up. GNOME Boxes is both buggy and featureless in the usual GNOME sense, haven't found much use for it. I think all the focus has been on the virsh CLI and we haven't had a decent VM GUI in a while.
It's stunning that apparently not a single dev working on it has ever owned a hidpi screen apparently.
KDE’s approach could strike a balance, especially if they leverage Qt's flexibility and KDE’s existing system integration. I’m cautiously optimistic—if Karton stays focused and avoids becoming bloated, it could fill a long-standing need for developers and desktop users alike. The key will be how well it handles real-world edge cases (HiDPI, GPU passthrough, multi-VM workflows, etc.).
shmerl•8mo ago
I've been using virt-manager for a long time, but more KDE native solution is welcome.
Still waiting for virt-manager to add support for Vulkan rendering through libvirt.
Side note, not sure if it's specific to Kirigami, but a bunch of interfaces which use it have this excessive margin spacing feel to them.
Something like that happens with print-manager's configuration which is using Kirigami supposedly too.