I assume that most of us are using GNOME, but there are definitely many Fedora Linux users who prefer something else, especially Plasma. Can you share with the community what stops you from using GNOME, or what drew you to something else?

  • sudotstar
    2•1 year ago

    I use and prefer GNOME on my work machine, but I use and prefer KDE Plasma on my more consumption-oriented gaming desktop and light laptop (used basically just for web browsing):

    • Plasma is noticeably lighter on resources than GNOME Shell, which on my laptop makes the difference between its fans running at idle or not.
    • Plasma is generally far quicker to adopt gaming-oriented features like VRR, tearing in Wayland applications, and so forth.

    My resulting desktop is effectively identical on GNOME Shell and KDE Plasma: a persistent top bar across all monitors that contains a clock, media controls, and system tray, and an autohiding dock with my running applications and launcher. Stability-wise I’ve found Plasma to be slightly better in this aspect, as the GNOME Shell setup requires the use of the Dash to Dock and Dash to Panel extensions which sometimes behave unpredictably or cause the Shell to restart, while my Plasma setup can utilize just the vanilla Plasma Panel with no need for any additional applications (such as Latte Dock, which I’ve found to be similarly unstable these days as the Shell extensions).