Comment by still_grokking
4 years ago
"Consistent shortcuts" is the main "feature" keeping me on KDE.
Cmd+Shift+, opens preferences in every app.
Alt+Left or Right (or Back or Forward) goes "back" and "forward", in every app that has those concepts
Cmd+Tab or Cmd+Shift-Tab switches tabs, in every app that has tabs.
Cmd+W closes the current tab by default, if the app has tabs, (or current window, if the app has no tabs)
Cmd+Q quits the app.
Etc.
What's again so special about macOS?
One needs only to avoid GTK stuff, Electron, and Windows Software, and one gets perfectly consistent behavior.
And those behaviors can be "even" configured globally! (That's something to mention specially of course when talking to Mac users as such an advanced feature like "configurability" is notoriously missing in the Apple universe).
> One needs only to avoid GTK stuff, Electron, and Windows Software, and one gets perfectly consistent behavior.
So as long as one avoids all the inconsistencies then one gets consistent shortcuts? ;) Only using Qt apps on Linux is very hard. A lot of good apps are GTK or Electron. On macOS there is no GTK & Qt divide and Electron apps are very good at implementing macOS shortcuts. Hence you get more consistent bindings.
Also, many bindings are absent even in Qt app. For instance, on macOS you have Emacs-style bindings in every app (Ctrl+a, Ctrl+p, Ctrl+k, etc.). Those are very useful. You can get them on Linux (at leasts in GTK apps) but it's very hacky and it conflicts with a bunch of stuff, whereas they fit right in on macOS. Cmd+Shift+/ to search all menus is also super useful and I don't think you can do that on KDE.
> And those behaviors can be "even" configured globally! (That's something to mention specially of course when talking to Mac users as such an advanced feature like "configurability" is notoriously missing in the Apple universe).
If you don't think macOS can be configured then you are mistaken. It can't be configured to the extend that KDE can that is true (some of us consider that to be a feature). But a lot is still possible. As an example, kindaVim adds vim-style keybindings to every app which is kinda cool.
> Only using Qt apps on Linux is very hard.
There are even whole distris doing that… ;-)
https://kaosx.us/
I have hardly any GTK app installed and I would not know what I'm missing. (Firefox uses GTK but it has it's own UI anyway). Electron? That's the plague of modern times. Besides VSCode (which I will switch away in a blink as soon as the alternatives are ready) I don't use any Electron peep. Also here I would not know what I'm missing.
But of course, it's only me. YMMV
> Cmd+Shift+/ to search all menus is also super useful and I don't think you can do that on KDE.
Global menu is of course integrated in KDE. You can even use it form KRunner (of course with fuzzy search).
https://libreddit.northboot.xyz/r/kde/comments/r85jcz/tip_yo...
I think the idea of using a "HUD" in KDE is actually even older than the macOS feature.
https://github.com/Zren/plasma-hud/
> If you don't think macOS can be configured then you are mistaken.
Apple products are made for the mass market. That's one of the reasons they actually follow the same philosophy as Gnome. What this means regarding options everybody knows I guess:
Options are hard to maintain and "confuse the user".
So Apple products are dumbed down even more with every release. (They even replace perfectly fine working software with "touch-ware" in the attempt to make everything more tailored to the causal users).
I'm glad you like KDE and by all means keep using it. It sounds like it's the right DE for you.
That being said, your statements about macOS sounds like they are coming from someone who's never used it and are making a fairly uninformed straw-man opinions about it. For instance, the statement "Apple products are dumbed down even more with every release" is just demonstrably false. Apple products gets more features with every release. For instance, the last macOS release got Shortcuts, Focus Modes, and Universal Control. All of which are power user features.
How do you get Firefox to respect Cmd (Meta) consistently? I find it's been half broken since Quantum.
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> Cmd+Shift+/ to search all menus is also super useful and I don't think you can do that on KDE.
Not sure if this is what you're talking about, but KDE now has KCommandBar (or some name like that?), a HUD menu that can be invoked with Ctrl+Alt+I.
Though I as a KDE fan concede that the need for some GTK stuff is kinda disappointing, for me Firefox and Inkscape (can't care less about Electron stuff, though). Inkscape AppImages have turned out very handy, but alas the Firefox ones don't bundle GTK so you can't have a GTK-free system if you want to use Firefox.
Still though I don't think something as configurable as keyboard bindings are too much of a deal to promote or convince people about a DE or a OS.
Yes, KCommandBar seems to do the same thing. Cool! Thanks for sharing.
Which is true on MacOS too. Emacs doesn't care about Mac keybindings. Even worse, the MacOS "Emacs keybindings" for things like text fields aren't totally consistent with actual Emacs. Oh and Emacs was until super recently bundled into the OS too so even out of the box it wasn't totally consistent.
I'm sure there's other programs on MacOS that don't follow the global key bindings.
I switch between linux, windows and mac on a daily basis. Mac short cuts are far more consistent.
Now, copy and paste. It is cmd-c in mac, in ubuntu you can’t tell me unless I tell you if I am in a terminal or not.
But most of all, readline shortcuts ctrl-a goes to the beginning of a line in nearly ever mac app. Not so in linux.
I find Mac less consistent, especially around home/end key behavior. In some places, home goes to the start of a page, in others, the start of a line. In addition, the key combinations and gui behavior are annoying. Ever try to cmd+tab to a minimized window? You have to do finger gymnastics to add an extra key to get that window to open. Other than the cli, I've seen little benefit in using a Mac vs. a decent PC with just about any Linux distro or Windows.
Since you mention GTK, I assume that must be the root of my problem – I keep trying Ubuntu and some other GNOME distros, haven't tried KDE. Ubuntu was definitely a mess when it comes to consistent shortcuts when I last tried it (a couple years ago).
Yes, the lacking usability of GTK (3 and later) apps is the root of all problems with GTK desktops.
But the issues aren't Linux specific of course.
KDE is by now one of the most lightweight¹, stable, and usable desktops by far.
And KDE is completely configurable regarding look&feel. You can make it by now even look and behave like any other desktop with one click using global "themes" (the feature switches more than the theme; that's why I've put the term in quotes).
https://store.kde.org/browse?cat=121&ord=rating
¹ KDE beats mostly everything in this point, except maybe raw WMs and LXQt. Yes, it's more lightweight than say the GTK3 based Xfce by now… The "magic" lies to one part in Qt that gets optimized for embedded applications now for many years, and all the work in optimizing KDE itself after it got bad rep one and half decade ago for being bloated (which was indeed true back than; but they learned the lesson; only the internet FUD never dies).