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.
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.
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'.
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 had always been about adding 100 more features, 20 more toolbar buttons, etc. (and let that sink in)
I suppose some power users like that they can really do everything with it.
And yet the out of the box experience has substantially fewer than 20 buttons.
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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 I just installed the KDE Fedora on a new laptop and it's basically just feels like a sparse Windows 10.
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.
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.
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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'.
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KDE does tiling really well and conventional window management really well. Doing both well is unique to KDE, AFAICT.
That sounds like polish and bugfixes to me. It's good that they do that though.
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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.