Oddities of this desktop environment

Ask Fedora
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I’ve been using Gnome for a few years now and am generally fine with it. Two or three months ago I installed Fedora KDE on a laptop. I find there are things I like and dislike about both, but I was getting close to switching to KDE on the desktop computer I use most of the time. But then KDE began having problems booting on my Thinkpad laptop after upgrades. It would start, but then hang on a black screen. Sometimes it would work the second or third time. Occasionally I just had to back down to the previous kernel installation. So I’m back to Gnome on everything.

There are some oddities about Gnome that surprise me and which KDE seems to have gotten right.

  • The most obvious one is the need in Gnome to press a key at the login screen in order to get the password field, even when I’m the only user.
  • Another one is the 4 times you have to click on something to reboot (or wait 60 seconds!)
  • I typically use Ctrl-Alt-Del to shut down. To do so immediately, I need to click on the power off button that appears, or else wait 60 seconds for it to happen. What are the chances that I don’t actually want to shut down right away when I use that method (or the multiple clicks to shut down with a mouse)?
  • In Libreoffice, whether installed from the Terminal or flatpak, when you open a file, you have to actually click on the file to start editing it (or hit TAB). Why would I open a file if I didn’t want to edit it? This doesn’t appear to be a LibreOffice issue as it doesn’t happen in KDE.

I recognize that these are minor issues and this is not intended as a gripe. I greatly appreciate those who give us an excellent alternative to Windows, and I especially appreciate those who do it as volunteers. I just find it odd that such obvious things are never improved.

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You can disable the logout prompt like this:

gsettings set org.gnome.SessionManager logout-prompt false

Set to “true” to return to standard behaviour.

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Thanks!

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Or just use where KDE where none of these situations exist.

Honestly, I’m constantly staggered that anyone chooses to use Gnome with this level of “you’re an idiot, we know best” design decisions. On the other hand, I’m stoked on a daily basis that the choice exists.

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And I probably would use KDE (though I’m enthusiastic about it), but having the computer boot up the first time is more important to me than these minor annoyances. As you say, it’s great to have an option.