We could do well with change on the desktop, but very little of the change I've seen during the past 10+ years is actually benefiting the user. Even on Linux, the changes happening are stuff like bugfixes and reducing jank; small incremental improvements that have already been done, but are just getting their final round of polish.
All the other changes I see are just shuffling around the UI, which doesn't really help anyone. And even newer features are either so marginal as to not matter, or can't be trusted to stick around. Why bother to learn a new UI, when all that does is get you back to square 1, and it might not even stick around? I'd be much more interested in tweaking my DE if I could be confident in knowing that those tweaks will persist and not cause other problems down the line, but I have no such assurance.
I don't blame the casuals for hating UI updates. I myself went to Linux to get a more cohesive and stable experience. If we're going to make changes, we need to not break workflows that already exist. New features and workflows need to either not be in the way for established users, or opt-in until they're established and known good. Doing anything else is user hostile, and by this time, given how much we know users don't like changing UI, dare I say, evil.
Care to point out what improvements KDE 6 has got that isn't something that's already been done in some other DE or OS, and isn't a bugfix or polish?
I haven't daily driven KDE to see what it's truly like, but from a distance it doesn't seem to be doing anything revolutionary or truly new, but I'd love to be proven wrong.
You should not be doing anything revolutionary. UX design is a well understood field with a lot of research into it. Doing something revolutionary or new is a bad idea. I'm sure there are new things in KDE, but nobody will be able to think of them for a long time because the new things are minor things that nobody is going to notice or care about.
You sound like you're disagreeing with me, yet what you write is inline with my opinion, but I might just be misreading your comment.
I wrote in my OP that 'even on Linux, the changes happening are stuff like bugfixes and reducing jank; small incremental improvements that have already been done, but are just getting their final round of polish'. The comment I was responding to claimed disagree, and said that KDE does get improvements. I wanted to clarify what improvements those are, since I can't see why they would disagree with my original comment in the only improvements in KDE are 'stuff like bugfixes and reducing jank; small incremental improvements that have already been done, but are just getting their final round of polish'.
Ah, in that case I've misread their comment. If their opinion is that the desktop doesn't need change because KDE is good and only delivers small incremental improvements, then I can definitely see their point.
Not necessarily 6, but KDE Connect is such a seamless experience of integrating your phone with your computer out of the box. Sharing clipboard, files, notifications, controlling cursor and keyboard from your phone, controlling media - all of that just works really well, without online accounts, on your local network.
Sure, there's Apple Continuity, but looks like it was released 2014 (KDE Connect - 2013) and it's tightly locked to the Apple ecosystem. And yes, the 2013 version doesn't have the same feature parity or stability as the current one, but that's ok because we're not discussing bugfixes or polish.
It's innovative enough that GSConnect is the Gnome implementation of the KDE Connect.
KDE Connect is over 10 years old by now. Hardly new. I also think it's sort of an extension of Apple's Messages app on MacOS, which let you send and receive messages through iMessage from a Mac, and thus pick up where you left of with your phone. That might be a stretch though, since KDE Connect and later Continuity does a lot more (although I'd be very surprised if Continuity wasn't viewed as that inside Apple at that time).
I'm also pretty sure the basic feature set you're mentioning, like clipboard and file sharing, using your phone to control your desktop, was part of the 1.0 release. Are there any features in KDE Connect that are new-ish?
That said, props to KDE for actually making a feature that hadn't been done before. But if KDE Connect is the most recent example of genuine improvements in the desktop experience that aren't just fixes, that goes to show that nobody's actually doing anything significant (in a good way) to the desktop experience.
KDE used to be terrible. However today, despite some grievances, it's probably the most polished modern Linux DE experience. Enough so that Valve chose it for SteamOS. I am also enjoying it on a Bazzite system.
I used xfce for pretty much my entire life because yes, there's been very little meaningful improvement to the DE experience in 25 years. Modern KDE finally convinced me to switch, and it does feel like a much more mature, refined experience than the shit show that was past KDE. It's also stable and fast. You should give it a spin!
I'm very happy on Cinnamon, but it's nice to have an escape hatch. KDE probably isn't going away or in a ditch any time soon (even when it was shit, they seemed to have had their minds in the right place). Nor is xfce for that matter (I wouldn't be surprised if there's still an active xfce dev after the bombs fall).
How long have we had tiling? It's not a new feature to me, but maybe I've just got my years off. Maybe the exact implementation in KDE is new, but the idea isn't.
You're one of today's lucky 10,000 then. If you've got a large screen, a properly flexibly tiling window manager is a game changer. Try out i3 or hyprland or press meta-T on KDE.
You're arguing from a position of ignorance. That's a great position to be in, because it means you get the thrill of experiencing something new and awesome.
I have no idea what you're talking about. It's as if you're responding to a comment I didn't write.
This subthread started with you disagreeing with me, saying that KDE continually gets better with each point upgrade. Then I asked you what new features KDE has implemented that already in some other OS or DE, and that aren't polish and bugfixes, since one of my points in the OP was that Linux largely isn't improving through new features, but just through polish and bugfixes.
You pointed out tiling as a new feature, which I pointed out isn't a new feature at all (unless I'm just wildly off base). KDE might do it well, but it polishing and fixing a feature, or reimplementing a feature which already exists in another DE, or some combination of those two, is not making something new (maybe their tiling is really good and actually revolutionary, but then you should tell me that, and not just tell me to try it out!).
I'm not interested in trying out tiling, even if it's good. I've known about it for a while, so I don't understand why you're telling me I'm one of today's lucky 10000. I literally wrote that it isn't a new feature to me. I have no idea why you're telling me to try it out. I'm very happy using fairly plain Cinnamon. I'm interested in knowing whether or not KDE has implemented features that aren't already in some other OS or DE, and that aren't polish and bugfixes. That's why I asked that question.
Ok. Now what's the new and revolutionary part of the way KDE does tiling, that hasn't been done before, and isn't just polish and bugfixes?
KDE is the only desktop that manages floating windows and tiling in one. Tiling WMs are tiling-first, gnome and crew is floating only, KDE is both.
But that’s not the only thing that KDE does that’s revolutionary and hard to find. I’ve written a whole blog on this, but to say a little here:
- full panel and widget customization with alternatives. Some panel designs are very space efficient and high-information, which you can’t find on Gnome, Windows or MacOS
- krunner, which lets you search everything all at once. Granted Apple has spotlight, but krunner is very good.
- activities, which is like virtual desktops on steroids. You can have completely different desktop configurations if you want, and switch between them.
dwm is only a window manager, not a desktop. Which is fine, but it’s not the most fair comparison because it’s not dwm vs KDE, it’s dwm vs kwin. Or dwm + 20 applications vs KDE.
Technicaly Windows 1.0 was a tiling window manager. Dynamic tiling became popular with Windows Aero Snap (2009) and i3 (also 2009). But I remember an experimental tvwm as early as 1994/95 (it didn't get popular). OSX got side by side tiling in 2015 and full dynamic tiling only recently.
For me the greatest thing about KDE is that once you have it, you don't miss anything from any other DE or OS. It has everything! I find gnome and the new gtk4 apps definitely more beautiful but I end up running KDE always.
KDE is an experiment to pack 20 big things in a bag that can only hold 5 things. Then add one more thing in next release. And make every pixel clickable.
KDE 6's out of box experience is really good. You can tweak it to your heart's content, but you don't need to. It's not "every pixel clickable" unless you deliberately made it so. Older versions of KDE were more like you describe.
Yeah, they're hidden in three-level deep burger menus. Konsole and KWrite are particularly egregious.
There is a middle ground between GNOME's minimalist wasteland and KDE's kitchen sink. And yet for some reason, the patch to add smart copy/paste to Konsole, like most modern terminals have and default to, has been stuck for years waiting for approval from the design team just to add a checkbox hidden in the settings.
This might sound heretic but maybe running mostly GNOME apps on a KDE desktop might be an interesting "best of both worlds" situation to investigate...
Telaneo · · focus · HN ↗
All the other changes I see are just shuffling around the UI, which doesn't really help anyone. And even newer features are either so marginal as to not matter, or can't be trusted to stick around. Why bother to learn a new UI, when all that does is get you back to square 1, and it might not even stick around? I'd be much more interested in tweaking my DE if I could be confident in knowing that those tweaks will persist and not cause other problems down the line, but I have no such assurance.
I don't blame the casuals for hating UI updates. I myself went to Linux to get a more cohesive and stable experience. If we're going to make changes, we need to not break workflows that already exist. New features and workflows need to either not be in the way for established users, or opt-in until they're established and known good. Doing anything else is user hostile, and by this time, given how much we know users don't like changing UI, dare I say, evil.
bryanlarsen · · focus · HN ↗
Telaneo · · focus · HN ↗
I haven't daily driven KDE to see what it's truly like, but from a distance it doesn't seem to be doing anything revolutionary or truly new, but I'd love to be proven wrong.
bluGill · · focus · HN ↗
Telaneo · · focus · HN ↗
I wrote in my OP that 'even on Linux, the changes happening are stuff like bugfixes and reducing jank; small incremental improvements that have already been done, but are just getting their final round of polish'. The comment I was responding to claimed disagree, and said that KDE does get improvements. I wanted to clarify what improvements those are, since I can't see why they would disagree with my original comment in the only improvements in KDE are 'stuff like bugfixes and reducing jank; small incremental improvements that have already been done, but are just getting their final round of polish'.
bryanlarsen · · focus · HN ↗
> We could do well with change on the desktop,
Telaneo · · focus · HN ↗
duckmysick · · focus · HN ↗
Sure, there's Apple Continuity, but looks like it was released 2014 (KDE Connect - 2013) and it's tightly locked to the Apple ecosystem. And yes, the 2013 version doesn't have the same feature parity or stability as the current one, but that's ok because we're not discussing bugfixes or polish.
It's innovative enough that GSConnect is the Gnome implementation of the KDE Connect.
Telaneo · · focus · HN ↗
I'm also pretty sure the basic feature set you're mentioning, like clipboard and file sharing, using your phone to control your desktop, was part of the 1.0 release. Are there any features in KDE Connect that are new-ish?
That said, props to KDE for actually making a feature that hadn't been done before. But if KDE Connect is the most recent example of genuine improvements in the desktop experience that aren't just fixes, that goes to show that nobody's actually doing anything significant (in a good way) to the desktop experience.
soulofmischief · · focus · HN ↗
I used xfce for pretty much my entire life because yes, there's been very little meaningful improvement to the DE experience in 25 years. Modern KDE finally convinced me to switch, and it does feel like a much more mature, refined experience than the shit show that was past KDE. It's also stable and fast. You should give it a spin!
Telaneo · · focus · HN ↗
bryanlarsen · · focus · HN ↗
Telaneo · · focus · HN ↗
bryanlarsen · · focus · HN ↗
Telaneo · · focus · HN ↗
bryanlarsen · · focus · HN ↗
Telaneo · · focus · HN ↗
bryanlarsen · · focus · HN ↗
1: <a href="https://xkcd.com/1053/" rel="nofollow">https://xkcd.com/1053/
2: i3, hyprland or KDE meta-t or another good tiling window manager
Telaneo · · focus · HN ↗
This subthread started with you disagreeing with me, saying that KDE continually gets better with each point upgrade. Then I asked you what new features KDE has implemented that already in some other OS or DE, and that aren't polish and bugfixes, since one of my points in the OP was that Linux largely isn't improving through new features, but just through polish and bugfixes.
You pointed out tiling as a new feature, which I pointed out isn't a new feature at all (unless I'm just wildly off base). KDE might do it well, but it polishing and fixing a feature, or reimplementing a feature which already exists in another DE, or some combination of those two, is not making something new (maybe their tiling is really good and actually revolutionary, but then you should tell me that, and not just tell me to try it out!).
I'm not interested in trying out tiling, even if it's good. I've known about it for a while, so I don't understand why you're telling me I'm one of today's lucky 10000. I literally wrote that it isn't a new feature to me. I have no idea why you're telling me to try it out. I'm very happy using fairly plain Cinnamon. I'm interested in knowing whether or not KDE has implemented features that aren't already in some other OS or DE, and that aren't polish and bugfixes. That's why I asked that question.
bryanlarsen · · focus · HN ↗
This whole thread is me saying tiling is really good and a significant update.
Telaneo · · focus · HN ↗
preg_match · · focus · HN ↗
But that’s not the only thing that KDE does that’s revolutionary and hard to find. I’ve written a whole blog on this, but to say a little here:
- full panel and widget customization with alternatives. Some panel designs are very space efficient and high-information, which you can’t find on Gnome, Windows or MacOS
- krunner, which lets you search everything all at once. Granted Apple has spotlight, but krunner is very good.
- activities, which is like virtual desktops on steroids. You can have completely different desktop configurations if you want, and switch between them.
leephillips · · focus · HN ↗
preg_match · · focus · HN ↗
leephillips · · focus · HN ↗
zweifuss · · focus · HN ↗
slipperybeluga · · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
eklavya · · focus · HN ↗
xeyownt · · focus · HN ↗
bryanlarsen · · focus · HN ↗
neutronicus · · focus · HN ↗
Feels like my work box, except it isn't constantly showing me ads and pegging 2 cores with an anti-malware process of some kind.
endemic · · focus · HN ↗
hobo123 · · focus · HN ↗
I suppose some power users like that they can really do everything with it.
bryanlarsen · · focus · HN ↗
vconnor · · focus · HN ↗
There is a middle ground between GNOME's minimalist wasteland and KDE's kitchen sink. And yet for some reason, the patch to add smart copy/paste to Konsole, like most modern terminals have and default to, has been stuck for years waiting for approval from the design team just to add a checkbox hidden in the settings.
amlib · · focus · HN ↗