also why does KDE allow you to customize how much your volume will go up/down when you press the volume buttons but not how much your screen brightness will go up/down when you press the brightness buttons :(
The answer is hardware, volume adjustments tend to be supported in fine grained way. But not the brightness, different hardware have different grading. My laptop has 7 levels, some other have 10. It just simply not the same and can't be unless you want to have 7 steps of volume :D
It seems to be one focus of Plasma 6 to improve those. I'm not aware if they are working on their customization, but currently you are right. It could be better
That's normal, given that KDE gestures are one to one. Gesture customizations (like Cinnamon does) wouldn't feel as good as the default gestures, though an option to do so would be good
@@yogurtmilk3912 Cinammon is (currently) limited by the fact that it's using Xorg, and Xorg makes touchpad support a nightmare. They are on/off, there is no transition between gesture start and end.
It's because they just added one to one gestures for Wayland. The KDE team usually adds basic functionality first, then adds customization and UI improvements later.
Shortcuts will be rewritten in Plasma 6. Default overview effect should be meta+tab in my opinion ;). Overview is like alt+tab but a bit different, so it's natural to trigger it similarly. I use that way and it works. I learned quickly how to use alt+tab (switching to previous window) or meta+tab (switching to other window) depending on what I intend to use.
Also Ctrl+O is usually "Open file" in many applications since like 90s. So not that great suggestion, if you are already familiar with keyboard shortcuts from decade ago... :D
Great video, I'm a KDE plasma user and I can agree with what you said, of course many things are been worked for Plasma 6, but that's in the future and your criticism is valid and it felt objective, not just complaining for the sake of complain.
I enjoy both Gnome amd KDE. But for me Gnome is to ridgid and KDE has too many option at the cost of refinement and vision. I think both could learn a lot of eachother.
@@cloudwolf3972 Let's hope it is a succes. We can always hope that Valve's involvement with kde will push for more refinement. Then again it easy for us to criticise when most of us at best give a few bucks in donations and even that is far from a given.
Looking forward to watching this video, nice to have a channel that makes streamlined videos from a users perspective, I as a normal user can relate to
Removing downloadable parts (modules) is tricky, because this feature is a legacy feature, meaning, it was never intended to be managed like packages, only manually, like many things from many years ago. Time has changed, and now it is expected from the system to do all automatically and seamlessly, while back in the dark Linux era, it was all very manual. Now, when you install a theme or module/widget, the system knows where to place it and that it needs to be unpacked there. However, when doing it reversely, the system would have to track down the proper files and folders, but how would it know which one are the proper ones? Basically, we would have to have a database of all installed content, sort of like a package manager but for Plasma add-ons. This is a more complicated feature and no one dared to create it, as there would be probably many, many issues to solve and the whole system would be unnecessarily more complex and prone to errors, because Plasma add-ons are following (or not) various guidelines. Anyway, this is a thing that won't be implemented quickly. An idea would be to have an index file in the add-on itself that would be read by the system, but how would you force all add-ons to have that? Anyway, this is a problem that hasn't been solved yet. Plasma devs came to the conclusion that it's still better to have it like now, then not have it at all.
The best thing about KDE Plasma is that it can mimic the Windows 7's awesome look. That's why it's my DE of choice for a Gaming PC. It reminds me of the good old times.
3:08 The actual reason is that Gnome does not support server side decorations (SSDs) on Wayland. SSDs are when the compositors draw the titlebar, buttons, and shadows of windows. Qt software typically relies on SSDs, but on Gnome Wayland, it falls back to client side decorations (CSDs) that mimic the older Gnome titlebar. Client side decoration is when the application itself draws those elements.
Plasma uses a hybrod approach, they use a mixture of server side and client side decorations. It's the best of both worlds *but* requires developers to be wise and consistent with it. And as we know, that isn't the case
@@max_im_um Plasma uses SSD when application doesn't have CSD. Gnome doesn't want to implement SSD on Wayland for silly reasons (while almost everyone else on wayland support them)
KDE is good for customization but sometimes it will boam bard new users, so need a basic and advance options. Basic that do 80 % with 20% options and in advance have niche or high user options
I agree. Also when I tried KDE years ago... I could break it in less than 10 minutes by just changing settings. lol I wonder if it's changed much since then.
Last week I gave KDE a shot after a few years on gnome; I absolutely loved the easy customizations at first, especially coming from gnome where extensions are a hit or miss. Many extensions on gnome seemed to break some parts of my system, and simple things were a bit hard to do and its way easier to do it on KDE. Long story short, I used it for a week, and the only thing I learned is gnome is a better option for me. A) You can work hard to customize everything one miss click or "let me try this theme" misses up everything I did, and there was no way to go back to what I did, and I had to start from scratch. B) hotkeys, as you said, are easily customizable, but its tedious, I found the default hotkeys in for example, pop OS way more intuitive. C) The deal breaker: multi-monitoring, I found this part to be horrible compared to gnome, sometimes it works perfectly other times it crashed my system when I plugged/unplugged a monitor, other times it messed up my theme customizations, one time all my panels just changed place, and window tiling wasn't great also. So i decided that i would rather sacrifice easy customization for gnome's simplicity and stability.
@@folksurvival From the ones you mentioned, I tried cinnamon on mint. It was ok, but it reminded me too much of Windows. I love XFCE, especially on my older machines; however, it looks outdated out of the box. I know I can customize it to make it look better, but still, out of the box, gnome has been king, especially on newer machines with more RAM and CPU power. I will give MATE and Budgie a shot later on. Thanks for the tip.
I switched to plasma few months back because I wanted to be able to really rice up my desktop (I used cinnamon before). Unfortunately as you have said many of the settings for customization are rather confusing. Another thing that confuses me is not being able to choose the font for a lot of widgets (some of which come preinstalled on plasma) like clocks as well as not being able to make the background of some elements translucent. The panel/taskbar should have an option to make it translucent (without having to install a specific theme that does that or making the icons on it translucent too).
Half of what you mentioned I didn't even know. But that's okay because most I don't even use. Settings is indeed a clusterf*ck, but like I said most I don't use anyway. I chose KDE because I'm a traditional user. Taskbar on the bottom with everything I use pinned on it. And you can pin almost anything on it even without it having a launcher like Thunderbird and Firefox tarball. I do make launchers for them though with Menu Editor and add them to favorites. Widgets I don't use use except for Panel Transparency Button to make the taskbar fully transparent.
I am using KDE again as my daily Linux desktop since KDE 4.4 or so which was when they fixed most of the mess cursed by 4.0. But damn, those system settings are so cluttered and confusing, I often find myself searching for certain functionality when going there. Also the way Plasma so far handles multiple monitors (no matter if X or Wayland) is bottom line terrible since it never remembers my arrangement, so I ended up recently using arandr instead. Those are my biggest issues with the Desktop, otherwise I am fine with it.
Interesting. I used to have issues with multiple monitors in the past, whereas fullscreen windows got scaled to the height of the vertical monitor, which was just out of bounce on the main one. Since 5.27, I didn't experience any issues anymore.
Tearing/VRR is the exact reason why i use Plasma, but i have to say that Plasma sucks on Notebooks because of how bad the touch gestures are. Desktop > Plasma Notebook > GNOME for me :) also design wise i really prefer GNOME, but as said it lacks many features.
If i understood you correctly, there's a wiki page somewhere explaining why they don't want to place lots of "advanced" buttons everywhere, or even one big one which would switch Settings between a simple/advanced mode. I also wish kde had a simple desktop layout selector as part of the first time wizard like Zorin has it, because currently you have to do lots of small tasks which could be automated. The point about enforcing or at least heavily pushing a single design for their ecosystem is very on point, ecosystem and a single look is where Gnome shines.
I've always thought about what you say, and I believe that the settings section should be "super easy" by default and let's say we can have a "toggle button" called "Super Powers" (title is debatable) wich gives us access to all the features we know so that more experienced users can tweak their desktop however they want, I think it would be a little more friendly for "new users", I also think that if we want to improve the end user experience and get new users For our community there needs to be a simpler way to set customizations..
I believe so. The entry barrier should be low, since that is what will turn everyone down before they can actually dig in. First impressions and all that
Many settings does not correspond to many setting entries. Yes, you should be able to configure most stuff with the GUI, however not every setting needs to be exposed on the main page or one beneath. You could easily hide advanced settings under a button, and leave the rest of the interface clear and understandable.
I've been using plasma (kde neon) for a while now and I've gad a few issues. - making shortcuts is tedious - themes panel crashing - global proxy refusing to be set to "none" (makes discover and package managers fail) - having to track down which keybind was being used by something else because it prevented me from pressing esc in games (needed to hold ctrl too) - desktop editor is buggy and stops working without closing so I need to manually exit edit mode and enter again - (dolphin) you need to install additional software to have thumbnails for a lot of media - screen tearing Maybe more, i forget.
Dolphin thumbnail issue? I've never had that issue before. Infact, I've had more files than ever with previews. I was shocked to see I could literally preview .blend files
Plasma isn't perfect, but it's very much my favourite DE. It took some fooling around, but I've made _it_ adapt to _me_ -something I've never *fully* achieved in any other DE. Plus, for me it's been running so reliably on Manjaro for years, it makes Ubuntu hit-and-miss.
6:48 You definitely can bind the Meta key in GUI, as long as it isn't bound by Kwin too. There is a workaround, you have to bind Meta+F1 in the GUI, which gets processed as just Meta. This breaks when kwin configs use it, so you have to undo that if it was pre-configured.
You can add the hotkey to a different action that's true, however the application menu will still trigger every time you press the key by default. Like you said, if it isn't configured, then yes.
All the different settings is why I chose you use KDE Plasma. They're there for you to play with if you want, and if you don't want too, then fine. But I can't do the things in gnome that I can in plasma. I like to tweak the look of my system and the appearance animations are great fun. I'd be ok if they reorganized some settings, but I don't like the advanced button stuff, you never know what's behind that and have to click it. KDE is the only desktop that is really built for advanced users that I know of, don't get them to take that away from us who like to tinker. All Linux distros aren't for new users just as all desktop managers shouldn't be. When I was a beginner I started with the old gnome that looked more like kde back then; then went to cinnamon when it came out but got board with it pretty quick and moved on to kde. Linux to me is all about choice and progression if you choose. There are plenty of user desktops for new users. Not to be long winded but same with distros I've moved up to arch and love it and play with Nixos a little now.
Hi Michael, I'm really getting into Linux these days. Especially KDE Plasma. I love to tinker. A requirement for most Linux Distros. But I love the customization abilities in KDE and it seems, at least for me, more intuitive than other DTE's. I think it's pretty clean and, its super quick. I have a new Ryzen 6900 HX mini PC running both Win11 Pro and MX 23.2 KDE. MX is way more snappy than Windows. Windows seems very sluggish now. Anyway, thanks for your videos. Keep them coming. I'll keep watching and learning.
A long time ago, I could break KDE in 10 minutes or less but just tweaking the settings. I've never tried it since. But I don't like Gnome either. Budgie, Cinnamon, and XFCE are nice though.
I love KDE Plasma, it really makes Linux feel like MY linux. I do have to say apps wise I'm 50/50 with Gnome. Simple is sometimes better but it depends on the app. Gnome calculator is the best VS kcalc but Krita is better than GIMP in my mind.
I tried Krita and I really liked it. The one thing that makes it unusable for me though are cutouts. Removing the background is still a hella lot easier with Gimp
KDE Plasma however is a nightmare to use on touch devices. I had tried multiple DE to find which works the best for my Fedora linux-based Surface tablet, and the only choice is Gnome. I still would like it to allow for PIN login and better support for windows 8-like charms. Overall it appears that out of desktop systems only Windows and Gnome are made also for touch experience in mind.
I agree. It's the main reason on why I use Gnome on my Surface. For a portable Tablet-like device, those big buttons, top bar and overall navigation make it way easier and smoother to use than Plasma
@@MichaelNROH hope you can tackle the very low focus of most if not all DE vendors in regards to touch devices. For me lack of PIN unlock in Gnome's GDM and binding users only to passwords, where Microsoft allows a multitude of ways to login to their system is a kind of bad joke. I sometimes feel, like Linux community have never discovered that today even cheap laptops may have touch displays.
New users dont need to fiddle around in settings much. If they feel they can try. Best way to encourage ppl to have some custom setup they like. So you are wrong on that one.
7:25 and what happens when you try to open the overview with ctrl+o while in an app that uses the ctrl+o combo (which are a lot)? Same goes for other ctrl+ combos.
Great overview. I agree the settings is a bitof a mess for new users. Looking forard to seeing how it changes in Plasma 6. BTW: What is the Wallpaper at 8:56?
After using hyprland for a bit the coming back to kde as hyprland wasn't as complete at the time... KDE really needs a tiling windows version. My god tiling windows are amazing
As a long time gnome user i must say KDE looks pretty good, only thing that bothers me on KDE is tons of options thrown into file manager and settings..if they improve flaws and focus on certain things people will use the most, and simplify things up. Windows as bad as it comes still looks better than kde cause it is more simple, but hey its windows so goodbye:D They need to do some survey and put in only things that has best votes..
I"ve got kde6 here on CACHY OS...and it's BUGGY-- but getting better every few days. I "update" every day-- because they are constantly working on it and it IS getting better every time!!! HOW can I get the tiling to work? I do the META +T and it makes the grid with the background blurred- but NOTHING IN IT.. I can't get it to work for real with working screens.. ???
I don't know you mention it in video or not I don't finish the video yet. But Konsave is great for saving themes before messing up with it. Thanks for the video.
I have found that 000 blk theme with windows 11 icons and folders is the best you will ever get. Kde gives me a modern system the way I want it. Minimal and simple. I will never use gnome. Dolphin is fast and better. Anything can be customized to your liking. Why would you ever leave a perfect custom setup the remains the best even in 2023.
@@RenderingUser It shows all the windows open on the current desktop visualized as a stack of cards and as you hold alt and tab through the list it cycles them like you're flipping through that stack of cards. It's fairly useful for looking at what you have open.
As you know, I am fan of Linux Tablet. So I have a 2 in 1 touch Lenovo laptop and have Linux on it. The only Linux Desktop that support touch feature, is Gnome! So although I love KDE but stay with Gnome for it's intuitive touch experience.
RUclips is funny. It’s showing 907 views and 26k likes right now lol I agree with this video. I like KDE. The settings menu is really frustrating. I like the design, not the organization
I have SPIRAL OS (GNOME) and CACHY OS (Kde6) on ONE disc now and use both. I"m trying to learn to use GNOME (which I've basicallyhated for years).. and find myself using ONE screen and simple min/max of each thing I'm working with. All that stupid sliding screens around is BS- and just doesn't work- gets in the way- and is CONFUSING. I'm trying though in cse KDE doesn't turn out as good as it use to be...(they screwed up a LOT of what I liked about it)..
Yes, but it makes sense from the learning side of things. Usability is a hard thing to nail down, since the most "usable" approach from the operating side is often not the right choice for the consumer themself. E.g. Virtual Desktops on Windows. Microsoft is collecting a ton of data, and Win+Arrow Keys was the winner even though it is actually terrible to use.
@@MichaelNROH id argue the opposite. It makes no sense from the learning side of things to learn and get used to inefficient keyboard shortcuts and workflows. It's always better to learn the more efficient combination of keys that are both fast to use, and make decent sense To add to the other point, mod+w does make sense cause the overview shows different Workspaces. + even then this is a detail insignificant enough, that if it bothered you, you could very easily change the global shortcut. Additionally, kde plasma is really good with convenient keybindings. An example of this is mod+left/right mouse drag to move/resize a window
I like KDE but I tend to move away from it after sometime, just like from Firefox to Chrome. I don't know but on my laptop (16GB RAM + AMD 5626U) KDE apps launch a bit slow when compared to GNOME apps. GNOME in general is too fast to resist I can say.
Interesting. I felt that the apps were opening slower as well, but from my personal tests, it was identical after I opened them at least twice. My theory is, that it's essentially just their loading icon which makes it feel slow.
Can a 2013 MacBook Air with 4 GB of RAM (And an Intel CPU) handle the latest KDE? I know I can always test it with a live USB drive but I haven't even bought the MacBook yet.
Spec wise yes, however it is still a very old computer and you will notice some slowdowns on it nowadays. Old laptops just become slower, since they can't hardware accelerate new technologies anymore
@@MichaelNROH/videos Checked this, on my Tumbleweed Plasma 5.27.9 both are animated on X11 (will change to Wayland on holidays). There were a lot of bigger changes in 5.2x, maybe a clean install could help. I hope they get rid of those multiple places to adjust the same thing, which is confusing and prone to errors.
The number #1 problem of KDE is performance. Still. Those people who claimed that KDE is nowadays comparable to Xfce in performance... Nothing could be further from the truth.
It depends a lot on how you run your PC. In idle and small local tasks, XFCE can slighlty outperform Plasma. Then you open a browser and that difference becomes neglibigle. Programs just take what they need, and if the OS has more free resources to work with, then they take it too as long as no other program needs them.
@@MichaelNROH My experience is totally different. The current version of KDE crawls with many browser tabs being opened in succession, and Dolphin takes half a second or more to launch. With more instances it becomes worse. Whereas with Thunar in Xfce, you can open 50 windows and there is no problem and they launch instantly. I don't think my hardware is that old either; 11th Gen Intel i5-1135G7 (8), integrated Intel Tigerlake GPU. I think there's something about the structure of KDE, be it the Qt code base, or the compositor, that seems to have performance issues. I use this laptop for mostly audio editing, but even with the basic 'browser & office' usage the experience with KDE was unacceptable.
What distro was you using in your video also what distro would you recommend for gaming on KDE ? - I am thinking fedora kde but unsure as Fedora mainly a gnome distro there again I could be wrong as I linux noob :)
Fedora is a good choice, even the KDE Spin, since they strike a good compromise between updates and reliability in my opinion. I'm on Debian 12 currently, but it's mainly for work nowadays
Idk for me KDE was always buggy and feels like half-baked. Gnome is acceptable but Cinnamon is real desktop. Never have problem with cinnamon and second favourite one is XFCE.
I really want to love KDE Plasma and tried it many times with different distros but it always ends up breaking sooner or later. Never had stability problems with Gnome, XFCE, LXQT, Cinnamon, Mate or other DEs but Plasma always kind of breaks after a few updates or customization changes. Maybe its because of my Nvidia Card idk.
I'm in the same situation with Gnome :( Tried it recently on my work laptop (been using KDE at work) and it would regularly crash, making me log in again. I think it might've been because it was the Wayland edition, but I remember having similar experiences back in the day. Looks like everyone has their own nemesis environment!
KDE settings is fine. If you get scared of too many settings, stay on Gnome. By suggesting they change it, you're trying to ruin it for all of us that love it like it is.
I was wondering about that actually. I've been using an NVIDIA card one year ago, and the experience wasn't bad on Plasma. Nowadays a lot of issues are fixed from what I can tell.
settings organization could use some work, but there is no such thing as too many settings exposed to the user. that is a myth pulled out of gnome's ass that makes for a horrible userexperience that causes the user to need to trick their computer into doing what they want. gnome devs must think users are the dumbest people on the planet, this is not the case with KDE and is a major reason why kde is much better than gnome
@@WildVoltorb KDE just feels more polished under OpenSUSE. The only thing that was annoying is that you can't use KDE's easy printer set-up and need to use YaST instead, which is more complicated. Other than that KDE seems to "just work" under OpenSUSE and there ist a video of a KDE dev here on RUclips who talks about the different distro integrations of KDE and he himself, while never using OpenSUSE before, said that he heard KDE works the best under it.
Flatpak theming has always been my biggest headache on KDE. It is possibly to make Brave follow the breeze dark theme, but it requires unnecessary steps.
@@RenderingUser It depends. I really like some flatpak applications for the work that I do. Especially in java engineering, having everything containerized is a huge plus.
@@WildVoltorb I like how Dolphin looks also but the ability not to have root access with it is a none deal for me. Have to use a different file manager with I'm working with root files.
its literally not a problem at all. if you have a file that needs root access just right click on it and open as admin. it will open up a new dolphin window with root access
@@Xiefux Right? I never understood the fixation some people have with this root thing on file managers. One should rarely (never?) be touching system files with the file manager but should the need arise for whatever reason, the option is there. It is just conveniently tucked away as a reminder that one should not do it willy nilly.
I agree to disagree, I think KDE is very well organized settings wise but there is a lot of them. Gnome has a bare minimum set of options and doesn't really need that much design to display them but it isnt bad looking for sure.
@@hopelessdecoy kind of agree with this. But look people like simplify things. And if you want to customise then you have gnome tweaks. Completely another app.
ganz ehrlich, deine art zu sprechen is ne katastrophe. red lieber normal und laß das gesinge und das geschwollene betonen. keine ahnung, was du damit darstellen willst. vermutlich willst du andere kopieren. versuch lieber du selbst zu sein. deine aussprache ist schon nicht die beste.
also why does KDE allow you to customize how much your volume will go up/down when you press the volume buttons but not how much your screen brightness will go up/down when you press the brightness buttons :(
It's missing a streamlined experience yeah.
The answer is hardware, volume adjustments tend to be supported in fine grained way. But not the brightness, different hardware have different grading. My laptop has 7 levels, some other have 10. It just simply not the same and can't be unless you want to have 7 steps of volume :D
linux has more brightness levels than windows on my laptop lol
It's a feature on plasma 6 now XD
I find it weird given their focus on customization, they don't extend that level of customization to touchpad gestures.
It seems to be one focus of Plasma 6 to improve those. I'm not aware if they are working on their customization, but currently you are right. It could be better
That's normal, given that KDE gestures are one to one. Gesture customizations (like Cinnamon does) wouldn't feel as good as the default gestures, though an option to do so would be good
@@yogurtmilk3912 Cinammon is (currently) limited by the fact that it's using Xorg, and Xorg makes touchpad support a nightmare. They are on/off, there is no transition between gesture start and end.
It's because they just added one to one gestures for Wayland. The KDE team usually adds basic functionality first, then adds customization and UI improvements later.
does xbindkeys have that features?
Shortcuts will be rewritten in Plasma 6. Default overview effect should be meta+tab in my opinion ;). Overview is like alt+tab but a bit different, so it's natural to trigger it similarly. I use that way and it works. I learned quickly how to use alt+tab (switching to previous window) or meta+tab (switching to other window) depending on what I intend to use.
Also Ctrl+O is usually "Open file" in many applications since like 90s. So not that great suggestion, if you are already familiar with keyboard shortcuts from decade ago... :D
Great video, I'm a KDE plasma user and I can agree with what you said, of course many things are been worked for Plasma 6, but that's in the future and your criticism is valid and it felt objective, not just complaining for the sake of complain.
I enjoy both Gnome amd KDE. But for me Gnome is to ridgid and KDE has too many option at the cost of refinement and vision. I think both could learn a lot of eachother.
Let's pray that cosmic will be the middle term
@@cloudwolf3972 Let's hope it is a succes. We can always hope that Valve's involvement with kde will push for more refinement. Then again it easy for us to criticise when most of us at best give a few bucks in donations and even that is far from a given.
😂 such an enlightening comment
@@cloudwolf3972 i'm hoping for this too
I hope Gnome can catch up the HDR implementing progress with KDE.
Looking forward to watching this video, nice to have a channel that makes streamlined videos from a users perspective, I as a normal user can relate to
Removing downloadable parts (modules) is tricky, because this feature is a legacy feature, meaning, it was never intended to be managed like packages, only manually, like many things from many years ago. Time has changed, and now it is expected from the system to do all automatically and seamlessly, while back in the dark Linux era, it was all very manual.
Now, when you install a theme or module/widget, the system knows where to place it and that it needs to be unpacked there. However, when doing it reversely, the system would have to track down the proper files and folders, but how would it know which one are the proper ones? Basically, we would have to have a database of all installed content, sort of like a package manager but for Plasma add-ons. This is a more complicated feature and no one dared to create it, as there would be probably many, many issues to solve and the whole system would be unnecessarily more complex and prone to errors, because Plasma add-ons are following (or not) various guidelines. Anyway, this is a thing that won't be implemented quickly. An idea would be to have an index file in the add-on itself that would be read by the system, but how would you force all add-ons to have that? Anyway, this is a problem that hasn't been solved yet. Plasma devs came to the conclusion that it's still better to have it like now, then not have it at all.
Thanks for the insight
The best thing about KDE Plasma is that it can mimic the Windows 7's awesome look. That's why it's my DE of choice for a Gaming PC. It reminds me of the good old times.
That;s cool but what I don't get is why is there so much effort by the community to make themes that emulate modern Windows or Mac.
3:08 The actual reason is that Gnome does not support server side decorations (SSDs) on Wayland. SSDs are when the compositors draw the titlebar, buttons, and shadows of windows. Qt software typically relies on SSDs, but on Gnome Wayland, it falls back to client side decorations (CSDs) that mimic the older Gnome titlebar. Client side decoration is when the application itself draws those elements.
Plasma uses a hybrod approach, they use a mixture of server side and client side decorations. It's the best of both worlds *but* requires developers to be wise and consistent with it. And as we know, that isn't the case
@@max_im_um Plasma uses SSD when application doesn't have CSD. Gnome doesn't want to implement SSD on Wayland for silly reasons (while almost everyone else on wayland support them)
Yo! KDE dev + fellow youtuber here. I'd be happy to chat about the feedback :)
Sure, I'm down 👍
6:04 - that was exactly first thing that happened to me in KDE. Took me 20 minutes of googling to get it back.
KDE is good for customization but sometimes it will boam bard new users, so need a basic and advance options. Basic that do 80 % with 20% options and in advance have niche or high user options
I agree. Also when I tried KDE years ago... I could break it in less than 10 minutes by just changing settings. lol
I wonder if it's changed much since then.
@@Nurse_Xochitl If that was version 4, it's no surprise. They released it before it was ready.
@@haplozetetic9519 IDK what version it was, all I know is that is was broken as fck and I never tried it again since.
@@Nurse_Xochitl I eventually dropped KDE and went to Openbox due to glitches with my monitor setup, but that's reported to have been fixed in ver 6.
Last week I gave KDE a shot after a few years on gnome; I absolutely loved the easy customizations at first, especially coming from gnome where extensions are a hit or miss. Many extensions on gnome seemed to break some parts of my system, and simple things were a bit hard to do and its way easier to do it on KDE. Long story short, I used it for a week, and the only thing I learned is gnome is a better option for me. A) You can work hard to customize everything one miss click or "let me try this theme" misses up everything I did, and there was no way to go back to what I did, and I had to start from scratch. B) hotkeys, as you said, are easily customizable, but its tedious, I found the default hotkeys in for example, pop OS way more intuitive. C) The deal breaker: multi-monitoring, I found this part to be horrible compared to gnome, sometimes it works perfectly other times it crashed my system when I plugged/unplugged a monitor, other times it messed up my theme customizations, one time all my panels just changed place, and window tiling wasn't great also. So i decided that i would rather sacrifice easy customization for gnome's simplicity and stability.
Try MATE, Cinnamon, Budgie or XFCE.
@@folksurvival From the ones you mentioned, I tried cinnamon on mint. It was ok, but it reminded me too much of Windows. I love XFCE, especially on my older machines; however, it looks outdated out of the box. I know I can customize it to make it look better, but still, out of the box, gnome has been king, especially on newer machines with more RAM and CPU power.
I will give MATE and Budgie a shot later on. Thanks for the tip.
Multi monitor support shouldn't be a problem since it was completely reworked in february
I switched to plasma few months back because I wanted to be able to really rice up my desktop (I used cinnamon before). Unfortunately as you have said many of the settings for customization are rather confusing. Another thing that confuses me is not being able to choose the font for a lot of widgets (some of which come preinstalled on plasma) like clocks as well as not being able to make the background of some elements translucent. The panel/taskbar should have an option to make it translucent (without having to install a specific theme that does that or making the icons on it translucent too).
Half of what you mentioned I didn't even know. But that's okay because most I don't even use. Settings is indeed a clusterf*ck, but like I said most I don't use anyway. I chose KDE because I'm a traditional user. Taskbar on the bottom with everything I use pinned on it. And you can pin almost anything on it even without it having a launcher like Thunderbird and Firefox tarball. I do make launchers for them though with Menu Editor and add them to favorites. Widgets I don't use use except for Panel Transparency Button to make the taskbar fully transparent.
I am using KDE again as my daily Linux desktop since KDE 4.4 or so which was when they fixed most of the mess cursed by 4.0.
But damn, those system settings are so cluttered and confusing, I often find myself searching for certain functionality when going there.
Also the way Plasma so far handles multiple monitors (no matter if X or Wayland) is bottom line terrible since it never remembers my arrangement, so I ended up recently using arandr instead.
Those are my biggest issues with the Desktop, otherwise I am fine with it.
Interesting.
I used to have issues with multiple monitors in the past, whereas fullscreen windows got scaled to the height of the vertical monitor, which was just out of bounce on the main one.
Since 5.27, I didn't experience any issues anymore.
I haven't had any issues with multiple monitors but I started on 5.24 of plasma
Tearing/VRR is the exact reason why i use Plasma, but i have to say that Plasma sucks on Notebooks because of how bad the touch gestures are.
Desktop > Plasma
Notebook > GNOME
for me :)
also design wise i really prefer GNOME, but as said it lacks many features.
Ironic often Windows that has taken designs from KDE Plasma
indeed
If i understood you correctly, there's a wiki page somewhere explaining why they don't want to place lots of "advanced" buttons everywhere, or even one big one which would switch Settings between a simple/advanced mode.
I also wish kde had a simple desktop layout selector as part of the first time wizard like Zorin has it, because currently you have to do lots of small tasks which could be automated.
The point about enforcing or at least heavily pushing a single design for their ecosystem is very on point, ecosystem and a single look is where Gnome shines.
I've always thought about what you say, and I believe that the settings section should be "super easy" by default and let's say we can have a "toggle button" called "Super Powers" (title is debatable) wich gives us access to all the features we know so that more experienced users can tweak their desktop however they want, I think it would be a little more friendly for "new users", I also think that if we want to improve the end user experience and get new users For our community there needs to be a simpler way to set customizations..
I believe so.
The entry barrier should be low, since that is what will turn everyone down before they can actually dig in.
First impressions and all that
there is widget called plasmaConfigSaver that can help with back button for customizations
Thank you for this video ❤❤
I've never find problematic to have many settings. When wanting to change something it's so nice to be able to change it and with GUI.
Many settings does not correspond to many setting entries.
Yes, you should be able to configure most stuff with the GUI, however not every setting needs to be exposed on the main page or one beneath.
You could easily hide advanced settings under a button, and leave the rest of the interface clear and understandable.
My favourite thing about plasma is to customise my panels perfectly 👌, just to login next day and everything is gone 🙌
I've been using plasma (kde neon) for a while now and I've gad a few issues.
- making shortcuts is tedious
- themes panel crashing
- global proxy refusing to be set to "none" (makes discover and package managers fail)
- having to track down which keybind was being used by something else because it prevented me from pressing esc in games (needed to hold ctrl too)
- desktop editor is buggy and stops working without closing so I need to manually exit edit mode and enter again
- (dolphin) you need to install additional software to have thumbnails for a lot of media
- screen tearing
Maybe more, i forget.
Dolphin thumbnail issue? I've never had that issue before. Infact, I've had more files than ever with previews. I was shocked to see I could literally preview .blend files
thumbnailers missing is an issue with your distro not including them, unless you uninstalled them
Plasma isn't perfect, but it's very much my favourite DE. It took some fooling around, but I've made _it_ adapt to _me_ -something I've never *fully* achieved in any other DE. Plus, for me it's been running so reliably on Manjaro for years, it makes Ubuntu hit-and-miss.
6:48 You definitely can bind the Meta key in GUI, as long as it isn't bound by Kwin too.
There is a workaround, you have to bind Meta+F1 in the GUI, which gets processed as just Meta.
This breaks when kwin configs use it, so you have to undo that if it was pre-configured.
You can add the hotkey to a different action that's true, however the application menu will still trigger every time you press the key by default. Like you said, if it isn't configured, then yes.
All the different settings is why I chose you use KDE Plasma. They're there for you to play with if you want, and if you don't want too, then fine. But I can't do the things in gnome that I can in plasma. I like to tweak the look of my system and the appearance animations are great fun. I'd be ok if they reorganized some settings, but I don't like the advanced button stuff, you never know what's behind that and have to click it. KDE is the only desktop that is really built for advanced users that I know of, don't get them to take that away from us who like to tinker. All Linux distros aren't for new users just as all desktop managers shouldn't be. When I was a beginner I started with the old gnome that looked more like kde back then; then went to cinnamon when it came out but got board with it pretty quick and moved on to kde. Linux to me is all about choice and progression if you choose. There are plenty of user desktops for new users. Not to be long winded but same with distros I've moved up to arch and love it and play with Nixos a little now.
Hi Michael, I'm really getting into Linux these days. Especially KDE Plasma. I love to tinker. A requirement for most Linux Distros. But I love the customization abilities in KDE and it seems, at least for me, more intuitive than other DTE's. I think it's pretty clean and, its super quick. I have a new Ryzen 6900 HX mini PC running both Win11 Pro and MX 23.2 KDE. MX is way more snappy than Windows. Windows seems very sluggish now. Anyway, thanks for your videos. Keep them coming. I'll keep watching and learning.
A long time ago, I could break KDE in 10 minutes or less but just tweaking the settings.
I've never tried it since.
But I don't like Gnome either. Budgie, Cinnamon, and XFCE are nice though.
I love KDE Plasma, it really makes Linux feel like MY linux. I do have to say apps wise I'm 50/50 with Gnome. Simple is sometimes better but it depends on the app. Gnome calculator is the best VS kcalc but Krita is better than GIMP in my mind.
I tried Krita and I really liked it. The one thing that makes it unusable for me though are cutouts. Removing the background is still a hella lot easier with Gimp
KDE Plasma however is a nightmare to use on touch devices. I had tried multiple DE to find which works the best for my Fedora linux-based Surface tablet, and the only choice is Gnome. I still would like it to allow for PIN login and better support for windows 8-like charms. Overall it appears that out of desktop systems only Windows and Gnome are made also for touch experience in mind.
I agree.
It's the main reason on why I use Gnome on my Surface. For a portable Tablet-like device, those big buttons, top bar and overall navigation make it way easier and smoother to use than Plasma
@@MichaelNROH hope you can tackle the very low focus of most if not all DE vendors in regards to touch devices. For me lack of PIN unlock in Gnome's GDM and binding users only to passwords, where Microsoft allows a multitude of ways to login to their system is a kind of bad joke. I sometimes feel, like Linux community have never discovered that today even cheap laptops may have touch displays.
New users dont need to fiddle around in settings much. If they feel they can try. Best way to encourage ppl to have some custom setup they like. So you are wrong on that one.
I wonder how much mentioned here will change with version 6. They're doing quite the overhaul.
I Just got too used to gnome workflow to switch to plasma. But Is so much better with Wayland :c I wanted to use It
Me too, though you can get it quite close actually.
I'm missing my smooth animations though 😔
7:25 and what happens when you try to open the overview with ctrl+o while in an app that uses the ctrl+o combo (which are a lot)? Same goes for other ctrl+ combos.
Great overview. I agree the settings is a bitof a mess for new users. Looking forard to seeing how it changes in Plasma 6. BTW: What is the Wallpaper at 8:56?
The wallpaper was part of a theme. Maybe it was Andromeda but I can't remember since I remove old themes once I settle on one
I really like the application launcher you're using.
After using hyprland for a bit the coming back to kde as hyprland wasn't as complete at the time...
KDE really needs a tiling windows version. My god tiling windows are amazing
And have kvantum stuff under appearance settings. To need a completely different app for transparency settings is stupid.
As a long time gnome user i must say KDE looks pretty good, only thing that bothers me on KDE is tons of options thrown into file manager and settings..if they improve flaws and focus on certain things people will use the most, and simplify things up. Windows as bad as it comes still looks better than kde cause it is more simple, but hey its windows so goodbye:D They need to do some survey and put in only things that has best votes..
I"ve got kde6 here on CACHY OS...and it's BUGGY-- but getting better every few days. I "update" every day-- because they are constantly working on it and it IS getting better every time!!! HOW can I get the tiling to work? I do the META +T and it makes the grid with the background blurred- but NOTHING IN IT.. I can't get it to work for real with working screens.. ???
What is that rofi like menu appearing at 5:15 in the video ?
Answer: it's named mckLauncher and currently has problems on wayland sessions
I don't know you mention it in video or not I don't finish the video yet. But Konsave is great for saving themes before messing up with it.
Thanks for the video.
Yeah it's not bad but this functionality should be integrated
Good evening! 👋
Good evening to you as well
I have found that 000 blk theme with windows 11 icons and folders is the best you will ever get. Kde gives me a modern system the way I want it. Minimal and simple. I will never use gnome. Dolphin is fast and better. Anything can be customized to your liking. Why would you ever leave a perfect custom setup the remains the best even in 2023.
They really need to bring back flip switch. Imagine my disappointment when I've just upgraded my OS and KDE is missing the flip switcher.
What's a flip switch?
@@RenderingUser It shows all the windows open on the current desktop visualized as a stack of cards and as you hold alt and tab through the list it cycles them like you're flipping through that stack of cards. It's fairly useful for looking at what you have open.
@@anon_y_mousse isn't that just task switcher?
Maybe find the correct theme?
@@RenderingUser Unfortunately no. You may have to find some video on RUclips to see what I'm talking about. My description is most likely inadequate.
The theming is Plasma is broken and doesnt work correctly most of the time.
the best is the apps i love the dpf reader photo viewer and most other apps compared to gnome and have made kde apps default in my gnome de
As you know, I am fan of Linux Tablet. So I have a 2 in 1 touch Lenovo laptop and have Linux on it.
The only Linux Desktop that support touch feature, is Gnome!
So although I love KDE but stay with Gnome for it's intuitive touch experience.
Yeah, Gnome is superior on Touchscreen, I agree
RUclips is funny. It’s showing 907 views and 26k likes right now lol
I agree with this video. I like KDE. The settings menu is really frustrating. I like the design, not the organization
07:00 another thing there is no gui to configure: weather ksudo uses su or sudo
I have SPIRAL OS (GNOME) and CACHY OS (Kde6) on ONE disc now and use both. I"m trying to learn to use GNOME (which I've basicallyhated for years).. and find myself using ONE screen and simple min/max of each thing I'm working with. All that stupid sliding screens around is BS- and just doesn't work- gets in the way- and is CONFUSING. I'm trying though in cse KDE doesn't turn out as good as it use to be...(they screwed up a LOT of what I liked about it)..
pretty good points made here... but...
7:27
so basically turn a 1 hand shortcut into a 2 hand one?
:I
bruh
Yes, but it makes sense from the learning side of things.
Usability is a hard thing to nail down, since the most "usable" approach from the operating side is often not the right choice for the consumer themself.
E.g. Virtual Desktops on Windows.
Microsoft is collecting a ton of data, and Win+Arrow Keys was the winner even though it is actually terrible to use.
@@MichaelNROH id argue the opposite. It makes no sense from the learning side of things to learn and get used to inefficient keyboard shortcuts and workflows. It's always better to learn the more efficient combination of keys that are both fast to use, and make decent sense
To add to the other point, mod+w does make sense cause the overview shows different Workspaces.
+ even then this is a detail insignificant enough, that if it bothered you, you could very easily change the global shortcut.
Additionally, kde plasma is really good with convenient keybindings. An example of this is mod+left/right mouse drag to move/resize a window
Make a video about the apps ypu use on your desktop its the best way I discover good apps without having to try them myself.
kde plasma makes windows 11 looks like a design from befor 10years :D
at the time discover get perfect i need no flatpak anymore :D
I think I ever use discover, I just always use dnf from the command line
I like KDE but I tend to move away from it after sometime, just like from Firefox to Chrome. I don't know but on my laptop (16GB RAM + AMD 5626U) KDE apps launch a bit slow when compared to GNOME apps. GNOME in general is too fast to resist I can say.
Interesting.
I felt that the apps were opening slower as well, but from my personal tests, it was identical after I opened them at least twice.
My theory is, that it's essentially just their loading icon which makes it feel slow.
@@MichaelNROH yup that's one reason that I am aware of. I tried to turn the loading icon off completely but it had no effect.
I hate it when we can't make plasma panel transparent & look like dock 👎🏻
You can through themes though. As themes are natively supported it's possible
@@MichaelNROH I think only few themes support it. The default panel settings should allow us to do so
Yeah. Inconsistent DE. Shame that Nobara Official goes for this. But it also makes sense, because KDE introduces new things earlier.
Can a 2013 MacBook Air with 4 GB of RAM (And an Intel CPU) handle the latest KDE? I know I can always test it with a live USB drive but I haven't even bought the MacBook yet.
Spec wise yes, however it is still a very old computer and you will notice some slowdowns on it nowadays.
Old laptops just become slower, since they can't hardware accelerate new technologies anymore
My biggest issue was the kde animations. They just don't feel as smooth as gnome or cinnamon to me...
I agree with this.
They are also very inconsistent, like maximizing a Windows is animated, but docking the to the sides is not.
@@MichaelNROH/videos Checked this, on my Tumbleweed Plasma 5.27.9 both are animated on X11 (will change to Wayland on holidays).
There were a lot of bigger changes in 5.2x, maybe a clean install could help.
I hope they get rid of those multiple places to adjust the same thing, which is confusing and prone to errors.
always feels some bugs, Elementary is solid de
The number #1 problem of KDE is performance. Still. Those people who claimed that KDE is nowadays comparable to Xfce in performance... Nothing could be further from the truth.
It depends a lot on how you run your PC. In idle and small local tasks, XFCE can slighlty outperform Plasma.
Then you open a browser and that difference becomes neglibigle. Programs just take what they need, and if the OS has more free resources to work with, then they take it too as long as no other program needs them.
@@MichaelNROH My experience is totally different. The current version of KDE crawls with many browser tabs being opened in succession, and Dolphin takes half a second or more to launch. With more instances it becomes worse. Whereas with Thunar in Xfce, you can open 50 windows and there is no problem and they launch instantly. I don't think my hardware is that old either; 11th Gen Intel i5-1135G7 (8), integrated Intel Tigerlake GPU.
I think there's something about the structure of KDE, be it the Qt code base, or the compositor, that seems to have performance issues.
I use this laptop for mostly audio editing, but even with the basic 'browser & office' usage the experience with KDE was unacceptable.
What distro was you using in your video also what distro would you recommend for gaming on KDE ? - I am thinking fedora kde but unsure as Fedora mainly a gnome distro there again I could be wrong as I linux noob :)
Fedora is a good choice, even the KDE Spin, since they strike a good compromise between updates and reliability in my opinion.
I'm on Debian 12 currently, but it's mainly for work nowadays
What is the app launcher that you are using?
It's called Andromeda, though it can be a bit buggy if you have similar ones installed (e.g. MMcK Launcher).
The icons don't load properly sometimes.
@@MichaelNROH Thank you, appreciate the fast answer
Plasma 6, Plasma 6, Plasma 6
I'm an impulsive customizer, and KDE is besdt with me.
Idk for me KDE was always buggy and feels like half-baked. Gnome is acceptable but Cinnamon is real desktop. Never have problem with cinnamon and second favourite one is XFCE.
Can you recommend a good tablet that I can run linux? I was thinking of getting an IPad but i want to try linux.
What version of KDE is this by the way? I saw the debian logo, so I am guessing it's a little older?
Probably 5.27, that's Debian 12 to my knowledge so not really that old at the moment
Yeah, exactly.
Which keyboard launcher are you using (at 5:13)?
Andromeda
how you did that menu bar at the top????? like macOS i want it!!! i find it really usefull
I just dragged it up there in edit mode.
On Plasma you can place them anywhere you like.
wanting an kde plasma customization and tweaks video
I think that isn't really possible, since I could only show a how to achieve a single theme, and there are already plenty of videos about that.
Which application launcher did You use?
Andromeda
I really want to love KDE Plasma and tried it many times with different distros but it always ends up breaking sooner or later. Never had stability problems with Gnome, XFCE, LXQT, Cinnamon, Mate or other DEs but Plasma always kind of breaks after a few updates or customization changes. Maybe its because of my Nvidia Card idk.
I have heard that Plasma doesn't work too well with Nvidia cards. I use an AMD card with it, and I never have problems which I didn't create myself.
Nvidia+AMD iGPU on Plasma Wayland here. It's a night and day difference it's unbelievable.
I'm in the same situation with Gnome :( Tried it recently on my work laptop (been using KDE at work) and it would regularly crash, making me log in again. I think it might've been because it was the Wayland edition, but I remember having similar experiences back in the day. Looks like everyone has their own nemesis environment!
Have recently installed Kubuntu 23.10 with a Nvidia Quadro K620 video card, worked out of the box with no issues.
KDE settings is fine. If you get scared of too many settings, stay on Gnome. By suggesting they change it, you're trying to ruin it for all of us that love it like it is.
This guy looks like he’s gonna sell me something I don’t even need
how do you get rounded widgets?
With rounded Window Decorations
Plasma feels old and unpolished to me. I stopped using it last year. I was using it for 5 years before I stopped using it.
That's a valid point.
It's usable, but not as polished as others
I still use gnome 45, i was never a big fan of KDE
I love it but i have been facing a lot of issues with it and my NVIDIA card.
On Wayland or X11?
I was wondering about that actually.
I've been using an NVIDIA card one year ago, and the experience wasn't bad on Plasma. Nowadays a lot of issues are fixed from what I can tell.
settings organization could use some work, but there is no such thing as too many settings exposed to the user. that is a myth pulled out of gnome's ass that makes for a horrible userexperience that causes the user to need to trick their computer into doing what they want. gnome devs must think users are the dumbest people on the planet, this is not the case with KDE and is a major reason why kde is much better than gnome
OpenSUSE does the best implementation of KDE
Please elaborate
@@WildVoltorb KDE just feels more polished under OpenSUSE. The only thing that was annoying is that you can't use KDE's easy printer set-up and need to use YaST instead, which is more complicated. Other than that KDE seems to "just work" under OpenSUSE and there ist a video of a KDE dev here on RUclips who talks about the different distro integrations of KDE and he himself, while never using OpenSUSE before, said that he heard KDE works the best under it.
Flatpak theming has always been my biggest headache on KDE. It is possibly to make Brave follow the breeze dark theme, but it requires unnecessary steps.
Flatpak itself is an unnecessary step imo
@@RenderingUser It depends. I really like some flatpak applications for the work that I do. Especially in java engineering, having everything containerized is a huge plus.
Gnome for me , the best Linux with minimalist & simple UI.. :)
I hate Dolphin File Manager, it should be up to myself to decide to use root or not.
I like dolphin, it's my third favorite FM, after vifm and Thunar. I like how directories have thumbnails of their images, just like windows
@@WildVoltorb I like how Dolphin looks also but the ability not to have root access with it is a none deal for me. Have to use a different file manager with I'm working with root files.
@@robertpettit6619you can use F4 terminal opens up do anything that requires sudo
I know that's not an ideal solution but for me that's enough
its literally not a problem at all. if you have a file that needs root access just right click on it and open as admin.
it will open up a new dolphin window with root access
@@Xiefux Right? I never understood the fixation some people have with this root thing on file managers. One should rarely (never?) be touching system files with the file manager but should the need arise for whatever reason, the option is there. It is just conveniently tucked away as a reminder that one should not do it willy nilly.
I didnt like KDE because it looks like windows...
Then change it to look like literally anything, that's the point of KDE and it's custom nature.
In my opinion the biggest problem of kde is lots of features. But it's not organised. Or well designed like gnome.
Yeah, but it seems like their efforts are going more towards that direction nowadays
I agree to disagree, I think KDE is very well organized settings wise but there is a lot of them. Gnome has a bare minimum set of options and doesn't really need that much design to display them but it isnt bad looking for sure.
@@hopelessdecoy kind of agree with this. But look people like simplify things. And if you want to customise then you have gnome tweaks. Completely another app.
ganz ehrlich, deine art zu sprechen is ne katastrophe. red lieber normal und laß das gesinge und das geschwollene betonen. keine ahnung, was du damit darstellen willst. vermutlich willst du andere kopieren. versuch lieber du selbst zu sein. deine aussprache ist schon nicht die beste.
since it is a fairly technical channel, who cares
I tried switching to KDE Plasma, but I ultimately gave up and went back to GNOME.
Gnome is not a bad choice in my opinion. It's just different and I actually prefer its workflow
KDE = Bloat
😂
And ironically it runs way faster than GNOME on the same hardware... Go figure!
Then use the terminal!