As someone who didnt use KDE for a long time, all the publicity and praise made me try it out again.

Here is an old-kde-user-who-switched-to-gnome comments on the fedora 42 version of kde.

Notes / disclaimer

• this includes more than just a desktop, also some opinions
• tested in gnome-boxes

The awesome

• The best thing that happened to KDE in years is that Nate’s weekly blog moved to KDE infra and ssg. This is now super fast to open, super clean design and works well on mobile. Not to mention that this weekly status updates are amazing to read.
• News that SDDM is going away
• News that new theming is coming

The good

• When clicking shutdown/restart, we dont get the full set of options. I think this is the good UX. It used to work different: when you go into main menu, you select what you want to do (shutdown, restart, logout), but then once you clicked it, you got the same list yet again in that full screen overlay. Going to confirmation-only is a super sane move. Thanks whoever did this.
• Stable progress in bugfixes

The manageable

• This is super subjective, but i find visuals of KDE to be still super bad:
  • Icons lead this bad feeling as soon as i start kde, but this is easly fixable by installing another icon theme. Current icons i find pretty un-intuitive. Just take the icon from the application and ask someone what just the icon means. Few examples:
    • in dolphin toolbar, back and forward should really be arrows
    • in dolphin sidebar, desktop icon is what, a box with an underline? could also be a terminal or a placeholder.
    • in dolphin sidebar, network icon is really a share icon in the real world
    • in dolphin sidebar, download icon looks like its not finished, or there is a glitch in rendering since the shape is disconnected
  • Alignment of UI elements is still bad. Few examples:
    • in dolphin toolbar, left border of the file path textinput (or whatever widget it is now) is slightly off the
    • in dolphin sidebar, the devices section, the bar that shows how much diskspace has been used is too close to the right edge compared to padding from the left edge where the icon start.
  • Different sidebars depending on the application: example settings in dolphin and systems settings have different styles.

Conclusion on the manageable part:

While i like the policy “less is more”, the chopstick icons are overdoing it.

The bad

• The outline for a selection, e.g. in dolphin going over an icon, shows a blue rectangle on mouse over.
• System monitor with the dials. This was probably done just to differentiate kde others. Windows and Gnome have a similar system monitor app, why not adopt that design?
• There are some missing apps:
  • decent video player (Haruna?)
  • vm tool like gnome-boxes
  • clone of notepad++
    • context: in every company i ever worked, notepad++ is a must-have. kate is nowhere to be seen. people who come to kde are used to it and kate, while powerful, is different and clumsy if you didnt work with it. It would be beneficial if an equivalent app would be available
  • simple mail app (merkuro?)
• Overview looks half baked and kind of ugly. Gnome did this right, if you are already copying it, copy it 1:1 to make it right.
  • example: super ugly blue outline on mouse over a window when in overview mode.
  • example: screens on top seem really functional and yet they stick out

Conclusion on the bad

Gnome might have questionable technical decisions, but UX they did very much right with some exceptions (tray icons, no minimize by default, workspaces, etc…). KDE on the other hand tends to overcomplicate everything and discuss everything until its completely obsolete.

The ugly

• Clean fedora installation and immediately after system update, plasma session crashed. I have to say in the last several years i had 0 crashes in gnome, yet here, clean install and immediately crash.
  • Opinion: core parts like compositor and shell should have as little moving parts as possible, possibly statically checked. Complexity should go into the apps. I dont have exactly clear vision what should be removed, having kwin scripts is a red flag since why would you want to script your compositor?
• Opinion: Plosma is a follower, changes only once the whole world has changed, which gives the impression of “late to the party” feeling and Steve Buscemi meme in the software world
  • overview implementation first done by gnome (?), then windows. Only afterwards KDE adopted it
  • Late wayland adoption: while gnome is talking that they will drop xorg, kde is again late with this decision
  • No vulkan adoption? GTK is moving (if not already) to vulkan as a default renderer.
  • It took you years to realize that integration (gdm/gnomeshell) is a good thing and sddm needs to go away. The bad thing here is the “years” part, not the realization part.
  • just went through a thread on kde gitlab about representing sections and subsections. proposal is to move to cards, but some dont feel its a good idea because “others” are doing this. while the reason “others are doing it” is not a good one, having a “standard” UI over all platforms for sure is. point here is that of all these discussion nothing will happen and kde will adopt cards design when others start moving to something else.
• Opinion: Area where customization are possible are not often used:
  • kde doesnt have a thriving theme ecosystem because themes are super difficult to make. pretty sure i read it from some kde devs as well somewhere
  • how many people made alternative widgets like start menu?
  • all this effort is put into providing the ability to change stuff, then people just change wallpaper and widget positions and enable or disable some options.
• Bugzilla
• Naming gitlab “invent”. it would make more sense to call this source.kde.org.

Conclusion on the ugly

Im just wondering about the following: how much are people outside of KDE fanboys and/or developers actually customizing KDE?

All people i know behave the same, either in a corporate environment or privately (mostly windows): nobody cares about all those widgets that come with the OS, nobody changes a thing except wallpaper. They care about:

• taskbar to find what is running and focus an app
• clock
• tray icons to use chat apps or similar purpose
• start menu with search.

People just want to use defaults and move on with their lives -> which in digital world means to use apps. This is why default theme and defaults in general must be great and kde here is just “ok”. This is why preinstalled windows on laptops are a major factor in windows domination. All those people dont care about changing things, widgets, whatever. They want to put at most wallpaper and maybe “tint”. Gnome gets this.

I have a feeling a lot of effort went into modularity and things like desktop edit mode. This edit mode would be solved with a taskbar setting dialog if the whole damn taskbar would be a taskbar and not a container for a random widget nobody will use.

Conclusion

EU is a bureaucratic monster, sluggish to change and always discusses things until all agree. They find really hard to adapt to new realities and a way to progress. They are stuck in some paper “newspaper” world, while everything else moved on. For a long time i didnt know how to describe kde, but now i do: its like the EU. KDE tends to discuss thing to no end until all agree, then move 1% over to the new decision while everything else stays in whatever version it was before. KDE is afraid to not piss someone off because https://xkcd.com/1172/

I have news for you: major version are meant to change things even if it breaks something. For example, plasma 6 should have dropped xorg and opengl. Including xwayland. You should have went with cards. You should have dropped unused features. You should have also dropped seldomly used features which cause big maintenance overhead.

Suggestion: remove a bunch of cruft (theming in settings, widget-centric everything…), focus on the basics (sddm, windows10 layout, gnome layouts and overview, main apps: dolphin, music player like winamp, video player like smplayer, vulkan graphics), then start adding back what is actually missed. You know what will be missed? nothing. Because you dont use desktop to do something, you use apps to do something.

Ever heard the saying “fortune favors the bold”?

PS. Did Valve pick a KDE for their Deck because a toy is a good fit for a toy?