I learned to love KDE, but I understand why people don't default to it. All other alternatives are dead and it makes sense. The scope of something like KDE or GNOME isn't really reasonable these days. I learned to install the most minimal version of KDE.
The (maybe) rising solution is "build-your-own-desktop" options like:
- Hyprland (for Window management and other random tasks like wallpapers and lockscreen)
- Waybar (for task bar/menu bar)
- Rofi/Wofi (for Spotlight/Search&Launch)
Then you a la carte your File Manager, photo editor, browser, and whatever apps you like.
While I find that somewhat appealing, and those solution are flexible enough to pretty much build whatever you like your DE to be like, they are also extremely complex. For most things there is no "defaults". You don't get to do anything "by default" other than boot into a GUI environment. You configure a shortcut to launch your terminal or apps, a task bar that also has an empty default. Things that have defaults are gonna be extremely "basic" (think html no css). Just the data dump, and it expects you to style it. They are entirely configured (and styled) through a series of conf/css/ini/yaml/json files.
These apps/environment pretty much dominate all the Linux desktop discussion these days. (At least discussion I can find on here or reddit or Twitter when I used to check it)
It's really hard to tell if anyone is actually using those things or not. They are extremely tedious and a giant pain in the ass for daily use. Maybe it's early days. It's been about 8-6 years now since all the talk has become about new Wayland compositors. There were dozens of them, but Hyprland seems to have the most mindshare? maybe? hard to tell. It's the youngest, but it would take many years to reach KDE or GNOME maturity
I find that KDE just works like most people expect a computer to work, and it doesn't get in my way, or try to impose a way of doing things. The defaults are reasonable, but you can tweak nearly anything to your liking.
My "favorite" Gnome-ism was something that happened a year or two ago. At work there's a machine in the workshop we use to reference technical drawings, charts and so on. So I wanted to set the display to never turn off, because I got annoyed with having to drop what I was holding (and sometimes walk down a ladder) and wiggle the mouse to wake up the machine.
That is impossible on Gnome. You get a dropdown of a few fixed values, none greater than 60 minutes, and you better like what choices the Gnome devs have granted you. The workaround requires some brain surgery in the terminal.
On KDE I can set the timeout to any integer I want.
> That is impossible on Gnome. You get a dropdown of a few fixed values, none greater than 60 minutes, and you better like what choices the Gnome devs have granted you. The workaround requires some brain surgery in the terminal.
AFAIK what gnome does is not give you any options above 15 minutes, but they do provide a toggle for disabling screen power saving and toggles for other such power saving features.
I've always been able to disable if fine, what irks me is the artificial 15 minutes limit in the drop down menu, forcing you to edit dconf entries to increase it...
> It's really hard to tell if anyone is actually using those things or not.
They do.
You're mostly spend a few days on configuring the basics, then tweak things over the next months. Then you don't touch anything for years as everything is working exactly the way you want. Some programs do better with defaults so you can tweak the shipped config.
I don't need GNOME or KDE maturity because what I need is just a fraction of what they can do. And what I concocted is more stable and don't require clickops to get the same version on another computer.
> The (maybe) rising solution is "build-your-own-desktop" options like
That's not new, people have been doing that with twm, awesomewm, dozens more for over a decade. That's niche though, the majority see Gnome and that's it. They will never even know that there is something else, they probably don't even know that Gnome != Linux.
I am happy as can be running Linux Mint Cinnamon. It just works.
Also there is good old Xfce, in fact there are lot of good alternatives.
This year was the first time I ever used a Mac and I was shocked how bad the desktop was. You can barely be productive without installing ten different apps that allow you to use basic stuff like alt-tab or properly rebind keys..
Linux users have it really good, all things considered.
> The (maybe) rising solution is "build-your-own-desktop" options [...].
This is not a solution for power users, this is a half-hearted non-solution for people with too much time on their hands. As a power user, I need the computer to do the stupid work for me, so I can focus on the more interesting/important stuff, like playing games, recording a song, building an app, or just making a living.
I play guitar. I tried building one. It was terrible. There's a good reason why there's very few luthiers among guitarists.
> Maybe it's early days.
People have been doing this since before KDE. I started using Linux around 2002, and it wasn't long until I was theming Fluxbox.
If you want a decent and hackable desktop environment, start with matching the functionality of OS X 10.4, then work from there.
True. They're stuck in between badly aping Apple, trying too hard to do their own thing, and being toxic to the rest of the developer community.
They're not a trillion dollar company. Sure, many projects would do well with more decisive decision-making, but the strength of free software comes from community and collaboration.
TL;DR: if you want window decorations, link with libadwaita.
SDL ended up linking with libdecor. You know how when you use a Qt app in Gnome, it looks out of place? Now even the window decorations look inconsistent from one another.
And there are no alternatives.
I learned to love KDE, but I understand why people don't default to it. All other alternatives are dead and it makes sense. The scope of something like KDE or GNOME isn't really reasonable these days. I learned to install the most minimal version of KDE.
The (maybe) rising solution is "build-your-own-desktop" options like:
- Hyprland (for Window management and other random tasks like wallpapers and lockscreen)
- Waybar (for task bar/menu bar)
- Rofi/Wofi (for Spotlight/Search&Launch)
Then you a la carte your File Manager, photo editor, browser, and whatever apps you like.
While I find that somewhat appealing, and those solution are flexible enough to pretty much build whatever you like your DE to be like, they are also extremely complex. For most things there is no "defaults". You don't get to do anything "by default" other than boot into a GUI environment. You configure a shortcut to launch your terminal or apps, a task bar that also has an empty default. Things that have defaults are gonna be extremely "basic" (think html no css). Just the data dump, and it expects you to style it. They are entirely configured (and styled) through a series of conf/css/ini/yaml/json files.
These apps/environment pretty much dominate all the Linux desktop discussion these days. (At least discussion I can find on here or reddit or Twitter when I used to check it)
It's really hard to tell if anyone is actually using those things or not. They are extremely tedious and a giant pain in the ass for daily use. Maybe it's early days. It's been about 8-6 years now since all the talk has become about new Wayland compositors. There were dozens of them, but Hyprland seems to have the most mindshare? maybe? hard to tell. It's the youngest, but it would take many years to reach KDE or GNOME maturity
I find that KDE just works like most people expect a computer to work, and it doesn't get in my way, or try to impose a way of doing things. The defaults are reasonable, but you can tweak nearly anything to your liking.
My "favorite" Gnome-ism was something that happened a year or two ago. At work there's a machine in the workshop we use to reference technical drawings, charts and so on. So I wanted to set the display to never turn off, because I got annoyed with having to drop what I was holding (and sometimes walk down a ladder) and wiggle the mouse to wake up the machine.
That is impossible on Gnome. You get a dropdown of a few fixed values, none greater than 60 minutes, and you better like what choices the Gnome devs have granted you. The workaround requires some brain surgery in the terminal.
On KDE I can set the timeout to any integer I want.
> That is impossible on Gnome. You get a dropdown of a few fixed values, none greater than 60 minutes, and you better like what choices the Gnome devs have granted you. The workaround requires some brain surgery in the terminal.
AFAIK what gnome does is not give you any options above 15 minutes, but they do provide a toggle for disabling screen power saving and toggles for other such power saving features.
I've always been able to disable if fine, what irks me is the artificial 15 minutes limit in the drop down menu, forcing you to edit dconf entries to increase it...
> It's really hard to tell if anyone is actually using those things or not.
They do.
You're mostly spend a few days on configuring the basics, then tweak things over the next months. Then you don't touch anything for years as everything is working exactly the way you want. Some programs do better with defaults so you can tweak the shipped config.
I don't need GNOME or KDE maturity because what I need is just a fraction of what they can do. And what I concocted is more stable and don't require clickops to get the same version on another computer.
> I understand why people don't default to it.
Can you explain why KDE shouldn't be the default?
> The (maybe) rising solution is "build-your-own-desktop" options like
That's not new, people have been doing that with twm, awesomewm, dozens more for over a decade. That's niche though, the majority see Gnome and that's it. They will never even know that there is something else, they probably don't even know that Gnome != Linux.
> And there are no alternatives.
I am happy as can be running Linux Mint Cinnamon. It just works.
Also there is good old Xfce, in fact there are lot of good alternatives.
This year was the first time I ever used a Mac and I was shocked how bad the desktop was. You can barely be productive without installing ten different apps that allow you to use basic stuff like alt-tab or properly rebind keys..
Linux users have it really good, all things considered.
should have have mentioned Wayland is what I was considering. Mac is pretty rough I agree.
2 replies →
> The (maybe) rising solution is "build-your-own-desktop" options [...].
This is not a solution for power users, this is a half-hearted non-solution for people with too much time on their hands. As a power user, I need the computer to do the stupid work for me, so I can focus on the more interesting/important stuff, like playing games, recording a song, building an app, or just making a living.
I play guitar. I tried building one. It was terrible. There's a good reason why there's very few luthiers among guitarists.
> Maybe it's early days.
People have been doing this since before KDE. I started using Linux around 2002, and it wasn't long until I was theming Fluxbox.
If you want a decent and hackable desktop environment, start with matching the functionality of OS X 10.4, then work from there.
Dunno if you missed it but Linux Mint team forked libadwaita into libadapta to enable theming
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44230914
True. They're stuck in between badly aping Apple, trying too hard to do their own thing, and being toxic to the rest of the developer community.
They're not a trillion dollar company. Sure, many projects would do well with more decisive decision-making, but the strength of free software comes from community and collaboration.
I've found GNOME developers to be pleasant to work with & I enjoy the experience I have with the DE.
<https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/217>
TL;DR: if you want window decorations, link with libadwaita.
SDL ended up linking with libdecor. You know how when you use a Qt app in Gnome, it looks out of place? Now even the window decorations look inconsistent from one another.
2 replies →