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…
Welcome, make yourself at home! Want to put files on your desktop? You can do that here! We’ll still make fun of you for doing it, but you can do it.
KDE Plasma is honestly impressive in terms of customization, I’m running it on Pop!_OS on an ancient Macbook and I have it customized to look like Window 7.
Good stuff.
NGL, you had me in the first half…
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.
What is this place?
Windows minus Microsoft BS.
Windows
Take that back… /s
I think that’s the window environment on SteamOS. I honestly really enjoy it on my Deck. It feels light and fresh.
KDE + Arch is such a great combo. I’m using it on a 10yo laptop (though admittedly it’s a rather beefy lappy for it’s gen, a 2014 ZBook g2, with 32 GB ram)
KDE can be slow on lower spec devices but it is so great to use and it was trivially easy to alter keyboard shortcuts, default application, startup behavior, etc.
KDE can be slow on lower spec devices
Not any slower than anything else. KDE is surprisingly light for all it does. I am using it on a laptop with an Intel N processor and 4gb ram. I also use it on modern stuff, but it works better than gnome and about equal to xfce on this old hardware.
Yeah I used to do consumer computer recycling and the really old laptops that were not worth a Windows reseller’s license we would just slap Linux on I tested just about every de out there and plasma was shockingly fast on some of these ancient Celeron laptops. Gnome was like molasses, I’ve never understood where people get the idea of the plasma is heavy
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.
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.
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.
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.
What do you think so far?
I have a colleague, who’s super deep down the Linux rabbit hole and he always ran GNOME. I was never quite sure, if he actually prefers it, or if he just does not care, because he’s doing most things in a terminal anyways.
Recently, our IT department made a change, which accidentally switched him over to KDE. He could easily switch back, but he’s been checking KDE out instead, and yeah, it’s been super interesting.
He definitely has some of that GNOME workflow baked into him. For example, under GNOME you can use Alt + the key above Tab to switch between windows of the same application. In KDE, that shortcut exists, but the default keybinding isn’t exactly usable.
Another minor complaint was, for example, that using Meta + arrow-keys doesn’t move windows between screens automatically when you press it repeatedly. That’s a separate shortcut under KDE, with Meta + Shift + arrow-keys.
EDIT: Apparently, I misunderstood him, his complaint was that Meta + Shift + arrow-keys moves the window between screens in a weird way. It just picks some kind of order for the screens and then goes between them as previous/next, even though you press the left/right arrow keys. There even is the more appropriate shortcut key for left/right, but it’s just not the default binding.
Meta + arrow-keys does work for moving windows between screens.
He’s aware that he may need to relearn some of his workflow, but yeah, will have to see, if he sticks to it. His emotions are nigh impossible to read, unfortunately. 🙃
To clarify, those are the default keybindings, but you can change them to match your needs or expectations. I like the alt tilde for windows within a program switching, it works fairly well though I have not set it up on my current machine yet.
Yea, my sister, for example, had changed all keybinds in GNOME to be the same as they are in macOS
Lol, about that, while changing keybinding on spectacle (kde app to take screenshots/screenrecording) seemed to work, changing key bindings to launch keepass, somehow de-activated the key
y. I noticed that rebooting fixed it, until I pressed any keybind (even ctrl+c). I had to reset the keybindings.Not sure exactly what is going on, but I noticed that if I opened discord it would type
ycontinously whenywas disabled.Somehow this happened again with
xwhen I launched outerwilds and discord.Very weird bug, but I was too busy setting up linux to report it. I’m just being a bit hesitant to change any system keybind now😆
Woah, that is wild, I hope you did some bug reporting about that, for something to go so insanely wrong it would have to be a fairly bad bug but also hard to find. Cool trick though, “Check this out, Copy ate my Y key, I am without purpose!”
I didnt report that bug cuz I ~just had installed nixos on my laptop and wanted to get things working again (it was some tedious 4 days after ~4months of preparation).
Once I get enough time again (now that my system seems stable enough), I might play around and try to file a proper report(s).
(There was also another issue with file associations preventing kde apps from exporting to some types of files, like png, jpg etc. I had set some file associations, differrent from the default and somehow it caused that bug. Check the step 13. in my guide if you want more info.)
man, I love the workflow of meta-arrow switches desktops, and meta-shift-arrow takes your current window with you.
Is that the default on GNOME? I happen to have the same workflow configured on KDE, except I use WASD instead of arrow keys. 🙃
not sure of it’s the default, but I change Gnome or KDE to that. I think it’s KDE’s default.
I have changed them to pretty much like how windows has it.
Good comment ! I laughed at “the key above Tab”. So useless nobody remembers caps lock. Do we need an international caps lock day ?
Well, caps lock is below the tab key (still useless tho). The key above is the weird backtick or tilde key.
Yeah, I specifically wrote “the key above tab”, because on our German keyboard the ^ is there, but it’s still the same keybinding, so presumably GNOME determines it based on key location rather than the produced symbol.
Thanks for correcting me !
Until you remap it in Plasma. You can actually do things with it then.
I’ve never been a real plasma user (played around with it sure but never more than a week or something) and have been using GNOME since ~3.10 the whole workflow is just ingrained in my mind and simply works. So I’d be happy to hear how you’re doing on Plasma even if I don’t see myself switching anytime soon.
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 just installed plasma and I love it. I have no experience with it before this year.
Got used to the Steam OS Desktop on my steam deck. I used Ubuntu a decade ago and went with Kubuntu on my gaming rig which won’t support windows 11 but I wanted the same desktop like my steam deck.
More than 6 months and no regrets. Since 24.10 you even get wayland natively. Even my old NVIDIA 1080 Ti works good.
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.
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!
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.
There is always Cinnamon for you.
Or MATE.
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.
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.
Gnome 3 is long dead.
It is now gnome 40+
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.
And it’s still confining unless you add buggy addons that often crash after an update.
