As a breakout topic from the change proposal to make KDE Plasma the default Fedora Workstation Desktop, we could discuss arguments for and against the desktops here.
Note: There are likely hundreds of small factors that are important.
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mine would be:
pro GNOME
GNOME is way easier to support I guess, as Plasma is huge. GNOME is minimalist, slowly developing and very established.
Also, some unique things especially for interaction with windows:
- best setup dialog
- active directory integration
- online accounts
in general, pro-usability
- calendar, contacts & mail that look well and work well
- simple UI with a tour
- using workspaces really well
Apps
- very modern apps, everthing on flathub and using portals
- software shows flathub app data very well
- epiphany is actually nice and has PWAs
- a ton of GNOME circle apps
contra GNOME
- GNOME breaks Qt apps, even when using Flatpak. On KDE, GTK apps look completely fine.
- app indicators are missing, which are still needed and will probably stay forever
UI
- hitboxes are not at the edges, making no sense
- no maximize button which is strange
- everything is too large and looks like a toy
- without blur my shell, the dark grey looks not good
- the panel at the top makes me look down a bit, which is not good for laptops
- no panel to view my apps by default
general usability
- people need extensions to make it usable, but the API is not stable
- most apps lack features (apart from Inkscape, GIMP and other giants)
- the UI has so little “poweruser” features like desktop entries, deep settings etc., that people need to go straight to the terminal. This is way worse than “having too many settings”.
Apps
- all apps have completely random names, that are not displayed in the GUI and the packages are sometimes called even different from that
- no screenshot utility with editing features
- no image viewer with editing features (Loupe???)
- no kfind
- no batch renaming in files
- no powerful editor
pro KDE
- powerful apps: dolphin, kate, spectacle, okular, systemsettings,
- GNOME apps integrate perfectly, even with dark/light theming support
- traditional layout that doesn’t require using extensions
- a single terminal that is very good ;D
- clipboard menu
contra KDE
- tons of bugs, including memory safety issues
- hard dependency on C++ with apparently less support for Rust bindings, unlike the many already existing Rust+GTK apps
- using Qt which is kinda difficult due to their licensing (reporting backporting fixes)
- no good online account integration, especially for Micro$oft
Apps
- many look old and unpleasant
- no good videoplayer and music player afaik, unlike GNOME circle with Amberol and Celluloid
- the KDE spin overall is bloated with apps (unlike Kinoite, which I would prefer)
- kwallet is very insecure
- kiofuse is probably less well integrated
With this sentence your selves brought it to the point. Why would a main sponsor of the fedora project want to change a working DE? Maybe I have to say it different, why would they want to sponsor a project who wants to put the focus on a DE where is not really on their radar?
The Linux community has thanks of Gnome gained a lot of acceptance and a lot of new users where moved from other OS’es to Linux because it is more what they have been used of.
An other point against KDE for the moment is, It will be released with the newest version on Fedora 40 where is still in beta so, catch the bear before you sell his skin. Lets test the new version first, before try to make it as main DE.
The fedora Project is on a important stage to release a new version, and it would appreciate to get some more beta tester.
@boredsquirrel I know your intention making this topic was not bad. I just think it is not the correct moment to talk about it now.
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I don’t know where you got that idea, because from my perspective that’s Just Not True. Compared to Gnome 2, Gnome 3 was massively bloated to the point that a fair number of Gnome users, including me, abandoned it for one of the many less kown DEs such as Xfce4, where I ended up. There were a number of other reasons I left, but they’re not relevant here.
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Yes I agree that there are tons of GNOME Derivates that are more minimalist. But in the comparison with KDE Plasma, which has a ton of libraries and dependencies, GNOME is minimalist.
@ilikelinux I agree that we should beta test Plasma 6! Its more needed than ever. In my experience it already improved a ton, I can recommend to use the Kinoite Prerelease variant of Fedora 40 for that.
Also I think GNOME and Fedora are a good couple. But KDE and Fedora could be too.
The discussion on fedora devel for this proposal is about giving kde equal billing with gnome on the fedora website, not wanting to replace gnome with kde it seems.
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which would make a lot more sense
My dealbreaker with Gnome is that the decisions around how to support HiDPI screens end up meaning that the user has to fix application by application, otherwise all non-Wayland-native applications will look blurry. That’s a no-no for me, and I am still not clear on what the situation will be with Gnome 46.
With KDE, everything looks fine out of the box on a screen that needs a 150% fractional scaling. The KDE current position on how to solve that issue for the user is the right one.
I have read a lot of argumentation on the Gnome forums, but I honestly don’t care about what their reason is. For newer or high end laptops as the Framework, MacBooks, etc., and 4K screens, Gnome is basically placing the responsibility of the UX into the user and makes the experience way worse than how it should be.
This is one of those examples of them being their biggest stoppers for DE “market” share.
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I think people are missing the point here.
Aside from all the debate cruft, changing the very well-established experience isn’t a good thing. There is a valuable lesson from Twitter/X.
If this by chance really happens, then it’s not Fedora anymore; it’s Kadora, and I’ll probably move to another first class GNOME distro because that’s my need.
The main thread has a point that you may be missing as well: in some ways, we receive an inferior experience with Gnome that harms the Fedora distribution as a product.
Don’t get me wrong, I prefer Gnome to KDE I’m more in line with its proposal. The problem in my case is that without putting a lot of work in making Gnome look decent in a HiDPI screen, investing time I don’t have, I feel that I have wasted my money.
A Linux distribution can’t afford its users to think “for this, I should probably have gone to a Mac with macOS instead of this similarly high end computer where everything is blurry and looks really bad”, which is what I get with Gnome.
I decided to switch to KDE much to my dismay, and probably that’s the feeling that should percolate from the other thread.
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I didn’t know this was an issue. I am also running Fedora Workstation on my retina-display MBP, within a VMWare Fusion VM, with native resolution. Is this only a functionality of VMWare?
to each his own.
let the default be whatever the user chooses during installation!
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There is currently no choice being offered is the complaint.
See https://fedoraproject.org/ that offers Workstation and Server.
Then IOT etc below.
That is no KDE Plasma or any other desktop on that landing page.
The question is should there be, or are things fine as they are?
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I’ve used GNOME since Fedora 20s and up to GNOME 46 on oS TW. The main pro for me back in the day back around when Plasma 5 was new was that GNOME supported more functions for my 2-in-1 without a keyboard at the time (auto-rotate, brightness sensor), including a virtual keyboard at SDDM log-in (Plasma 5 on Arch didn’t have that at the time).
I don’t know how Fedora’s Plasma 5 implementation was and never tried KDE with Fedora, until today with a fresh F40 install, largely motivated by a random post that pointed to Fedora’s proposal to switch to KDE primarily. KDE is a way better default! I went in just waiting for something to appear broken for me to go back to GNOME and scrutinized it hard, and it passed and won me over with the Settings, and even legacy tray icons with Wine displaying and working properly.
KDE Pros:
- Wine and likely other legacy system tray icons work (Jagex Launcher nor Keybase’s trays are intractable on GNOME with the status bar extension)
- Official KDE Connect (yeah GSConnect works good enough as an implementation, but KDE Connect is KDE, and integrated and ready to go on F40)
- Can change display RGB range easily with GUI (big benefit; afaik not possible on GNOME unless you just happen to know how to deal with proptest and command-line, like this)
- More exposure to what’s actually going on with your computer; Info Center is amazing for having all that info in a centralized area, instead of expecting people to know the commands; SMART Status is helpful, and I just learned I apparently don’t have an OpenCL driver
- Easier to customize laptop-specific power settings (like not to Suspend on lid close on AC and switch to Performance perf mode)
- Wobbly windows and virtual desktop cube, and other customizable eye-candy and interfaces right in GUI
- Wine default applications are put in their own category (on GNOME they’re mixed alongside other desktop launchers all in the Overview)
- Being able to share usage statistics with KDE developers. I like the idea of being able to help out development by just using the DE, and so far what I’m seeing on Plasma 6 KDE is serious about improvement!
- The onboarding was kind of cool too; it gave me more info about KDE I wasn’t aware of and gave me a better understanding of the whole project (it made it more down-to-earth and community-driven; I had the assumption KDE was money/corporate driven back with some news about licensing with Qt or something)
- I liked that the extended screen prompt appeared first-thing after booting a fresh install! I use a laptop with a screen connected, and it’s a minor annoyance having stuff go on the laptop screen when it’s assumed Primary after fresh installs)
- Being able to hide the clock on the task bar. On days where I want to relax, I don’t want to know what time it is for a while; Windows 10 can hide the clock easily, 11 never re-implemented this, and GNOME I had to use the Hide Top Bar extension to get rid of the whole bar. On Plasma 6 I right-click the time, show alternatives, and click something other than digital; easy and built-in!
KDE Cons:
- I’m certain it’s a bug, but Dragon Player over-saturates or doesn’t show videos on Intel UHD 630 even with RPM Fusion stuff and KDE 6 phonon VLC; I used mpv on GNOME for years, installed mpv on KDE, and it integrates and works just as-well as it did on GNOME, and has VA-API and Wayland support so I’m content
GNOME Pros:
- History (it’s worked well for years, supported my odd hardware like 2-in-1s and large HiDPI displays, and all mainstream distros feature it primarily; I had no plans on trying KDE with F40 until I stumbled upon the proposal)
GNOME Cons:
- Legacy(?) tray icons don’t function even with the extension (Wine, likely Steam, Keybase, etc)
- Some potentially useful settings are hidden behind gsettings (disable touchpad while typing, mouse acceleration, some other things; you have to know what to look for command-line if you want to change it instead of seeing it as GUI)
- GNOME Weather has been broken for over a year with resolving locations (issue; easily fixed today with a script, but why is it even being left like this and shipped on Fedora? oS TW GNOME doesn’t ship Weather)
I used GNOME for years, tried KDE on F40, and I was able to adapt my config to it no problem, everything I used before works, and I’m finding all the settings pretty cool! I wasn’t unhappy with GNOME and can use it right now today, but I’m glad I got a reason to try Plasma 6.
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I’m not convinced distros (worth using) can maintain more than one high-quality, well-supported desktop environment, and I already saw a relatively concerning discrepancy with the Budgie spin running Xorg as root.
Fedora is proposing changing from GNOME to KDE, and that implies they want to only first-class one or the other.
The landing page above on “Get Fedora” mentions GNOME under Workstation. I don’t know how well the other Spins are integrated, but I don’t imagine people new to Linux being familiar with intricacies with DEs and having a bunch of choices might be confusing. What makes KDE different than Xfce; they both have bottom taskbars, but then there’s Xorg and Wayland.
I think it’s fine the way it’s presented now with Workstation and its primary DE shown first, and others on a different menu. I feel Spins should be above Atomic just on website descriptions (Spins is presented as official Fedora with different desktops, Atomic straight up says they aren’t part of official editions).
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For the spins you get more or less that what the DE project is delivering. A spin is nothing more as a basic fedora installation with a DE spun up on it. Thats why it is called spin.
KDE will just have a chance on mainstream while stripping down. At least do something like basic and advanced looking. And start hiding all the duplicated config possibilities.
I really got almost crazy while configuring and realizing that there a several option to do so.
I think having a vision and go in one direction made Gnome a success.
If there are enough people willing to make it happen then you can as many welll support DE’s as that people care about. For Gnome and KDE at least there are lots of people that care and give there time.
There are people proposing a change, that they admit is provocative.
But unless it is accepted by the Fedora project, its only a proposal.
In fact all they care about is equal billing on the home page with Gnome.
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The KDE edition is already really good, but it is also pretty vanilla. The new startup page is only there since 5.27 and got really good with Plasma 6. This will allow easier custom Distro pages.
The Fedora SDDM theme is just breeze with the current background, while the “Fedora theme” is just breeze “half dark half light”.
It has no flatpak preinstallation on the atomic variant, even though I see that as a pro as it makes removing fedora flatpaks easy.
(It feels pretty bad disagreeing on fundamental things like GUI integration of updates and fedora flatpaks)
I dont know how much packaging efford it is to do GNOME and KDE, I imagine a lot. But I dont see how KDE has worse packaging than GNOME.
And I agree a lot that the KDE settings are just way friendlier to users that actually want features. If there is no GUI, there is no GUI. The KDE settings have good text search too.
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And if only Gnome and KDE are listed, or they’re prominently listed first, how many people do you think will pick them, not because that’s what they want but because they’ll assume they’re the best or the only real recommended choices? Maybe it would be better to list them in a random order and state that the order doesn’t imply any preferences on the part of Fedora.
But that would mean all these DEs have equal support (which is all community based), but they dont. Actually GNOME and KDE are the only ones that are Wayland ready, and Wayland-only. The others are following, but GNOME and KDE had Wayland support since years.
Sway meanwhile is less user friendly by default.
So that is why the proposal asks just to put GNOME and KDE equal, which I find fair.