I have been trying to get on with Gnome on F40WS for a long while now, as a replacement for 20 yrs on MacOSX (which I miss, but distrust so won’t use, but still MISS!). I love Fedora, not so much to use, but the ethos/community/free and open source, no spying unlike Apple etc! But my productivity has dropped so dramatically since leaving MacOSX, I have to do something about it. I have even considered going back to Mac but just can’t bring myself to place any trust in them (which is a pre-requisite of using their OS).
I have some real bugbears in Gnome/Fedora, some of which are Thunderbird/Signal (so their ‘fault’) but some are Gnome or Fedora related. Top 5 annoyances:
No columns in Files app (I want Mac style columns)
No preview (space bar) of files in file dialogues, making it a NIGHTMARE to attach files!
No thumbnail for some files, and ALWAYS the ONE file i need to see a picture of prior to attaching!
‘Recents’ behaviour not reliable (or reliably not good for me) in Files.
Preview of media files (audio for example) are so dark you can’t see the drag bar, weird.
It looks like KDE will be well worth a try for me. I suspect I will find it better in some ways, maybe worse in others, maybe not.
I am hoping I can have Desktop folders and icons again, and also hoping it generally just feels/works better for me. But I am not sure how to try it, without risking my current setup.
I have two options:
A: Try installing it on this Dell laptop
B: Try installing it an old iMac which I have Fedora running on just for fun, unused machine otherwise.
Grateful for any advice on the best way to try out KDE, and how to actually go about doing it. Do I need to reinstall Fedora completely, hoping not.
Installing it on the iMac is the way to go I’d say.
The other options I can see are:
install KDE (sudo dnf install @kde-desktop should do the trick) on your existing fedora with GNOME and use the same user - this is a bad idea, KDE and GNOME, as with many other combinations of desktop environments, tend to mess up each other’s settings, themes etc. In my experience GNOME will be most affected by this.
install KDE on your existing fedora but create a new user and use that to log in to KDE (and be careful not to mix them up) - less problems than above (eg themes should be fine), but there may still be a few conflicts. Also, you will have two different home folders, which will probably be annoying. Still, if you just want to have a go at playing with KDE before going all-in, it should be fine for the most part.
try the Fedora KDE spin live iso without installing - fine for a quick look, but doesn’t do it justice imo. Things don’t always work so well when using it live, changes won’t be saved after reboot, and it’s just not the same as properly trying it for a while.
install the Fedora KDE spin and dual boot - this is great if it works. But if you don’t have experience with dual booting 2 fedoras, this might really suck, since the bootloader might only show one of the fedoras, and getting both to show in the same time can be a pain. Installing rEFInd may help (I wrote about it here). And of course you will still have two different home folders.
install the KDE spin and wipe Fedora Workstation - great if you like KDE (you will ), not so great if you don’t
install it in a VM as dalto said - doesn’t really capture the full experience imo, especially if your hardware isn’t very powerful. But still, it’s usually easy and doesn’t mess things up.
So that leaves the iMac. Trouble free, and once you see how great KDE is, you can erase gnome and be happy forevermore.
Well, many will have the opposite experience, depending on hardware, apps, luck, etc. And recommending Arch to beginners is a bad idea. I’m not quite sold on Manjaro - it’s still rolling release, even if they delay updates.
Appreciate the thought, but I am such a beginner, I am still learning Fedora and if I was to leave Fedora, with the lost time/energy thus far, I’d just have to go back to Mac. At this rate I’ll be dead before I find an OS I am as happy with as Mac OSX!! But I am not going back to Apple, so KDE Fedora must be tried.
What is ‘spin and wipe’? I could use that on the iMac maybe? The iMac was my way of testing out Fedora initially, and I just liked the idea of ripping OSX off ‘obsolete’ hardware (which funnily enough, runs both Fedora AND OSX (albeit via OCLP) perfectly!). So that machine is sat with an empty install of F40WS Gnome. I’ll go for KDE on that, set up some programs and stuff and have a play around before ditching Gnome on the Dell laptop, I can’t be without it for long.
More interestingly, as someone who sounds like an avid fan of KDE, I’d love to hear any of your experiences/comments about KDE. It sure looks more complex, which I thought was a bad thing (hence my going for Gnome), but the more I use Gnome, the more I realise I MAY BE DUMB, but I DO actually like having a lot of customisation!
Example: I spent hours, no, days, no, weeks setting up key combos to mimic my muscle-memory driven keystrokes from mac (CMD Q, CMD H, CMD Space etc) on my Dell ‘Windows’ keyboard!
I really no sweet FA about KDE, other than (I THINK) it allows desktop files/folders/icons. That alone is worth me trying it
I think what @katflap was referring to was to use the live image for the KDE spin of Fedora Workstation to format the drive and install it on the machine.
As far as KDE is concerned, it’s my preferred desktop environment and I came from macOS. There definitely was some relearning of keyboard shortcuts, but there are settings to set up your own keyboard shortcuts.
I prefer KDE over GNOME for its flexibility and customizability and I prefer the KDE file manager (Dolphin) over GNOME’s. I definitely miss the multi-file rename feature of macOS’s Finder, but I found an app called KRename that I use for bulk file renames.
Aaah, thanks. In that case that’s a no-no. I have a machine all set up with my files etc. I was hoping I could just switch to KDE - ONCE I have confirmed it’s what I want (on other machine probably )
Very interesting to hear your experience, I am dying to try KDE now!!
Thanks
Oh and PS - Can ‘Dolphin’ do column format for viewing folders/files?
If wiping the system isn’t an option, you can install KDE along side GNOME as Jasper mentioned when you’re ready to do so.
Unfortunately, Dolphin does not support the columns view that Finder has. The file browser for Elementary OS seems to support it and it is available in the Fedora repos as elementary-files.
Thanks. I have a feeling I briefly looked into that a while back, but was scared off by the complexity (maybe it required me to navigate github, something I have never managed to master!).
It may be that Dolphin without columns is ok for me, I am forced to go without columns in Gnome and whilst I hate it, I manage (slowly, with gritted teeth!). Have you (or anyone else here) ever tried to have columns view in KDE or Gnome?
Since it’s available as a Fedora package, you should be able to install it by running sudo dnf install elementary-files and it will take care of installing the necessary dependencies.
While it’s not a direct replacement for the columns view in Finder, there is a split view that can allow you to drag and drop stuff between locations within the same window. It’s more akin to Norton or Midnight Commander, but it can work in a pinch. You can toggle it by pressing F3.
Thanks, but not sure it’s what I am referring to. I am talking about the way folders in Mac’s Finder are shown in columns, click once on a folder and it’s contents appear in the next column to the right, and so on. It’s about viewing rather than moving files.
Also, was your post referring to Gnome or KDE? Or can it be installed on either?
thanks
Yeah, the split view isn’t the same as the column view in macOS Finder, but it’s an alternative that could tide you over as you learn the ways of KDE.
As far as elementary-files, it is available on any spin or edition of Fedora with a graphical interface, including GNOME, KDE, Sway, etc. The dnf installer will automatically install the required packages and dependencies that it’ll need. Kind of the same way as being able to run GNOME-oriented applications on the KDE spin or KDE-oriented applications on GNOME.
Thanks. Can you just confirm something for me please…
Is there any difference between finding an app in Software app and hitting install button, versus command line dnf install? I never do the latter, but now wonder if there is a benefit as in this instance (dependencies)?
There shouldn’t be any different in the results when it comes to installing Fedora packages in the Software app than using the command line. Using the command line gives you some additional details on the dependencies that will be installed along side the requested application.
There things differ is when you want to install Flatpak packages, since you would use the flatpak command in the command line instead of dnf.
Coincidentally, I was just reading some recent KDE-related news today, and saw that they are working on a new file manager called Whale. They added miller columns last week. I have no idea when Whale will be released, but you might have an alternative to elementary files in the coming months. They showed a little screenshot here.
Besides the fact that “Fedora” is the name of a “project/community” sposored by a firm named Redhat while “Mac OS” is the name of a software, Fedora offers several versions of a “distribution” and a “distribution” basically is a collection of software that comes from many different and independent sources, while “Mac OS” is a single product made by Apple.
Gnome is the name of a “desktop environment” made with the GTK toolkit.
KDE is a “project/community” that provides various software, the main being “Plasma” that is a “desktop environment” made with the QT toolkit.
GTK and QT have two different “ecosystems” of applications, for example you get a drawing software like GIMP for GTK and you get Krita for QT.
You can install KDE - QT programs on top of GNOME - GTK and viceversa, so you can have Krita on Gnome and GIMP on Plasma. It is relatively common.
So if/when you like a QT program you don’t have to install KDE Plasma because of it, you can have the same program on Gnome.
I do advice to install Fedora “KDE spin” on the spare PC. You always assume a new installation is going to destroy everything. Prepare for the worst.
Since the decision to try out KDE Plasma has already been made, I would suggest considering also the atomic variant of Fedora shipping with KDE Plasma (called Kinoite). You might find the concept of atomic desktops more suitable to your needs.
Some research is needed to understand the difference to traditional desktops. This is a good starting point.
), not so great if you don’t
