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…
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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.
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.
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!
So went frivolous, and installed KDE after years of Xfce.
Wierd interactions everywhere, ctrl f4 doesn’t close windows, the terminal is called “Konsole” lol
Would not recommend, i m going back.
And the RAM usage!
XFCE for life!
How close to plasma is Cinnamon?
Plasma isn’t as visually polished as Cinnamon. Go ahead and get your clock and CPU temp widgets in the system tray the same font size and positioning.
KDE feels a bit more cluttered because…I’ve said this before, KDE gives you every option under the sun, GNOME software isn’t designed to do anything unless you add extensions to enable features, and Cinnamon is somewhere in the happy middle.
By default, both Plasma and Cinnamon have a very similar set up to Windows.
However, Plasma is insanely modular and customizable, so if you’re willing to take the time to, you can make it look as much like Cinnamon as you please. Given how simple Cinnamon’s design is, I don’t think it would be hard at all.
Hmmm. I’d like windows 98 to be honest.
What is this place?
Windows minus Microsoft BS.
Windows
Take that back… /s
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.
I just installed plasma and I love it. I have no experience with it before this year.
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.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. 🙃
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.
Thanks for correcting me !
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.
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😆
Yea, my sister, for example, had changed all keybinds in GNOME to be the same as they are in macOS
I have changed them to pretty much like how windows has it.
gnome user getting confused by customization, seems about right lol.
confused about
customizationbeing allowed to customize anything…FTFY
Ironically most of my customization so far has been to make it more like Gnome lmao
Still trying to figure out how to make workspaces/virtual desktops more…usable.
Overall though it’s amazing how solid Plasma is now, it sure as hell isn’t the buggy mess it used to be in the earlier Plasma 5 days.
I just installed a global theme to make it look like macOS 😄 loving it, have now a old unsupported macBookPro (2013) running latest macOS bootleg on latest Linux kernel 😆
Love it!
For me i use 4 workspaces in a grid manner(2 rows) and switches with three finger swipes to whatever direction. Also four finger swipe up/down for overviews
Still trying to figure out how to make workspaces/virtual desktops more…usable
That’s a thing about gnome. The multiple desktops are great and easy to switch between. Especially on a laptop you can easily switch between them with the trackpad, or if you have, by using the touchscreen.
You can do the same on Plasma. Switch by three-finger-swipe
Didnt knew that, since I have only used KDE on my Desktop so far.
For me, i made it so pressing Super+<number> switches to that workspace.
Super+Tab to toggle overview (Super+W by default)
And a hot corner, which is set to trigger almost instantly, to toggle overview.
Same here with the Super+<number> to switch (or equivalent function key if you use that binding for something else), and similarly Super+Shift+<same key used to switch to workspace> to send the current window to that respective workspace. For me, without the second one workspaces are waayy less productive.
I remapped my side mouse buttons to switching workspaces, and I absolutely love it.
That actually sounds good, but i like to use those in the browser and games
To be fair customization is a good thing, the problem is it’s too easy to accidentally get into too advanced settings. It feels like the settings most people want 95% of the time are burried in the same place as the niche settings. The gnome tweaks app often gets criticized because it contains basic settings, but I think it could be beneficial for plasma to have the same thing. Only keep the base level user settings the the settings, and put all the customization stuff in a separate tweaks app. The simple by default, powerful when needed moto is true to some extent, but the simple by default part could be much improved and a lot more intuitive
Isn’t there an advanced toggle already in the KDE settings?
As a new linux user I was overwhelmed by plasma and all the choices. I much prefer an OS and DE that feels like it isn’t there and gets out of my way. It was all a bit too distracting, so I went back to Gnome like DEs (Cinnamon and now Cosmic).
Something like your suggestion, with basic settings first and then a deeper layer or toggle for advanced settings would have kept me on the platform longer.
I don’t understand. I’d you’re overwhelmed by settings just don’t open them? You don’t “need” them, like ever.
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.
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!
You don’t even need to reinstall. You can have both at the same time and chose one or the other at each login.
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.
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.
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.
Welcome back to the land of the
livingusable UITakes literally minutes to try with 0 install and no risk for your data : https://distrosea.com/start/kubuntu-24.10-default/
I’m not saying you should enjoy it (even though I do, Debian stable with Plasma for a while now) but it’s so convenient to give any distribution with any desktop environment a try that IMHO it’s wrong not to spend few minutes and see what you might be missing.
Fedora/dnf makes installing additional desktops super easy, also with no risk to data. To hijack your comment a bit:
To install Plasma:
sudo dnf install @kde-desktopLogout and log into the Plasma session to use it.
To rollback, get the transaction ID of the above:
dnf history listAnd then rollback:
sudo dnf history rollback <ID>If Gnome’s fonts/icons don’t revert, install and open gnome-tweaks and reset settings.
I think generally installing another DE on top of an existing one (assuming you already had one) is not recommended, as they might use some of the same config files and mess them up for each other.
Interesting, thanks for sharing.
