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.
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).
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.
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 ↗