Running Plasma instead of Gnome for the first time in years

gnome user getting confused by customization, seems about right lol.

Plasma is so good nowadays compared to some years ago. I remember suffering a lot in those early times too.

I have a colleague, who's super deep down the Linux rabbit hole and he always ran GNOME. I was never quite sure, if he actually prefers it, or if he just does not care, because he's doing most things in a terminal anyways.

Recently, our IT department made a change, which accidentally switched him over to KDE. He could easily switch back, but he's been checking KDE out instead, and yeah, it's been super interesting.

He definitely has some of that GNOME workflow baked into him. For example, under GNOME you can use Alt + the key above Tab to switch between windows of the same application. In KDE, that shortcut exists, but the default keybinding isn't exactly usable.
Another minor complaint was, for example, that using Meta + arrow-keys doesn't move windows between screens automatically when you press it repeatedly. That's a separate shortcut under KDE, with Meta + Shift + arrow-keys.
EDIT: Apparently, I misunderstood him, his complaint was that Meta + Shift + arrow-keys moves the window between screens in a weird way. It just picks some kind of order for the screens and then goes between them as previous/next, even though you press the left/right arrow keys. There even is the more appropriate shortcut key for left/right, but it's just not the default binding.
Meta + arrow-keys does work for moving windows between screens.

He's aware that he may need to relearn some of his workflow, but yeah, will have to see, if he sticks to it. His emotions are nigh impossible to read, unfortunately. 🙃

Welcome, make yourself at home! Want to put files on your desktop? You can do that here! We'll still make fun of you for doing it, but you can do it.

I will never not up doot an Over the Hedge meme, so underrated in both meme ability and as a movie lmao

I just installed plasma and I love it. I have no experience with it before this year.

I used to be a huge fan of Gnome, back before they switched to whatever this mobile-first nonsense design is. Looks like something you would see on a tablet designed for children. They destroyed Gnome!

I'm tired of fighting GNOME 3 to make it feel like GNOME 2. My next reinstall is going to be KDE. I just want a traditional desktop metaphor. 😩 Next major overhaul Kubuntu here I come!

I have been a GNOME 2 and then MATE user for over a decade. Now I use KDE since that’s what SteamOS comes with and it’s fine.

Welcome back to the land of the living usable UI

I've never been a real plasma user (played around with it sure but never more than a week or something) and have been using GNOME since ~3.10 the whole workflow is just ingrained in my mind and simply works. So I'd be happy to hear how you're doing on Plasma even if I don't see myself switching anytime soon.

So went frivolous, and installed KDE after years of Xfce.

Wierd interactions everywhere, ctrl f4 doesn't close windows, the terminal is called "Konsole" lol

Would not recommend, i m going back.

KDE + Arch is such a great combo. I'm using it on a 10yo laptop (though admittedly it's a rather beefy lappy for it's gen, a 2014 ZBook g2, with 32 GB ram)

KDE can be slow on lower spec devices but it is so great to use and it was trivially easy to alter keyboard shortcuts, default application, startup behavior, etc.

I installed cosmic the other day. Uninstalled it like 5 minutes later but I enjoyed its vibe. I am excited to see it come out of alpha

i hadn't used kde (on my own systems) in over twenty years. i downloaded a bunch of ISOs over the last month or so, mainly looking to see what installs easiest and runs best on some old systems here. among them were several with plasma 6.

one of those kinda 'stuck' in my head and i had to go back through several until i 'found' it again. been messing around with it now for a couple weeks trying to figure out what i'd want for a 'working' setup. might just end up switching one of my 'working' desktops over.

How is it??

I last used it a little while back but there were some issues with polish. I'd like to come back and check it out again now that there's been a major update if I remember right

I love the GNOME user experience and apps (I know many don't, that's fine) but don't so much love the way GNOME as a project often struggles to play nicely with others 😅

Just looks like windows to me and I don’t want it

I think that's the window environment on SteamOS. I honestly really enjoy it on my Deck. It feels light and fresh.

The couple of times I have decided to switch to Plasma I somehow get pulled back to GNOME. Like, I tried out earlier Plasma 5 on my system76 laptop and then s76 announced Pop!_OS. Then I tried again when I came across Nitrux which was essentially a heavily customized Plasma. Then I got a Librem 5 which uses phosh, based on GNOME.

I really liked it though, and have thought about trying Plasma Mobile.

been meaning to try it again forever now

Got used to the Steam OS Desktop on my steam deck. I used Ubuntu a decade ago and went with Kubuntu on my gaming rig which won’t support windows 11 but I wanted the same desktop like my steam deck.

More than 6 months and no regrets. Since 24.10 you even get wayland natively. Even my old NVIDIA 1080 Ti works good.

How close to plasma is Cinnamon?

Takes literally minutes to try with 0 install and no risk for your data : https://distrosea.com/start/kubuntu-24.10-default/

I'm not saying you should enjoy it (even though I do, Debian stable with Plasma for a while now) but it's so convenient to give any distribution with any desktop environment a try that IMHO it's wrong not to spend few minutes and see what you might be missing.

I last tried KDE when it was KDE3. Then Gnome, xfce, and finally settling on i3/sway

But I got given an old Windows tablet so decided I’d see what is usable as a tablet and I was pleasantly surprised by KDE.

So much so, I’ve ostree-rebased all my machines to it.

The tiling could be better (and it sounds like it was, then wasn’t?), but it’s passable. And simple stuff actually seems to work. Unlike the gnome+sway kludge I have now.