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GNOME vs KDE Plasma in 2024: which one is better for Linux beginners?
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this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2024
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I'm team Plasma, but mostly just because every time I touch Gnome it feels like I'm using a really bad copy of OS X that they got bored of copying halfway through and said fuck it, good enough.
Granted, yes, you can tweak it and blah blah blah, but Plasma ships and feels complete and functional right out of the box, and Gnome feels incomplete the more I use it.
I daily drive macOS and Android. GNOME is more like Android to me. Feels too touch focused, where Plasma feels like something actually made for a desktop.
I absolutely love Gnome, but only when I have a touchpad/touchscreen. It blows KDE out of the water in that regard. However, it loses its shine for me when transitioning to a traditional KB+M, and KDE takes the cake there.
Basically, KDE for my main desktop, Gnome for my laptops, tablets, etc.
I don't know, I recently got a 2-in-1 laptop, and was surprised to see that KDE works great. Got Onboard as on-screen keyboard. Screen rotation works great. Glad I didn't have to run Gnome on that machine.
I think the defining feature for me on Gnome is the workspaces. It's just so fluid in a way i personally haven't found KDE. Not saying KDE is trash on touch or anything, I just prefer Gnomes feel.
I'd say it's non-mouse focused. Heavy touch or keyboard focus work pretty well, but the mouse really isn't intended as anything more than a helper.
I like Plasma, and it's my go-to, but I'm a bit excited to see what System76 does with Cosmic.
I've only ever used GNOME. What am I missing?
Personally, I particularly find all the included applications more useful. GNOME's definitely aren't bad, but KDE's are often best-in-class, particularly for power users. Like, Okular is the PDF reader I recommend even to Windows users. Dolphin is IMO the best file manager out there. Kate is my favorite text editor.
The customizability regarding the workflow is also important to me. It took a few years of experimenting to figure out my preferred workflow, but I'm now often much better organized than my coworkers, just because this workflow is so helpful for me.
I use a few apps intended for KDE on my GNOME system and its clear that there's a different design philosophy with them. In general I need to have things be very visually uncluttered, so I think it's just as well that I landed on a distro with GNOME. I have found that the KDE apps that I do use tend to have more functionality/tweakability though. For me it's a balancing act and I love that Linux gives me these options. Something I also love is having learnt to do things in the terminal. Being able to use a bash alias or keybinding to launch a script or an app in exactly the way I want feels super tidy.
Nothing. I heavenly used both. You can customize kde through the in built settings tools and with GNOME you have to install another app to do it. Same outcome. A user can customize kde a bit more. It's both still linux with the same underlying system.
I just really like KDE, been between that and XFCE for years. Ubuntu's version of gnome when they went to that side bar layout that looks like it's meant for tablets turned me off of trying it again (though probably be great on a tablet). KDE's super customisable too, totally done a faux osx look for my laptop and use more or less stock KDE on my shop computer. I didn't mind older gnome though, isn't that what cinnamon or mate are meant to feel like?
Yeah, MATE is a direct fork from GNOME 2, so pretty much identical in its workflow.
Cinnamon forked from early GNOME 3, because they weren't too happy with the new design direction, but they actually ended up building almost a carbon-copy of the Windows desktop (albeit more customizable and lightweight). Even the keyboard shortcuts are basically identical, which is helpful for newbies switching from Windows to Linux Mint.