GNOME versus KDE Which Is Better

One of the most frequently asked questions from new Linux users is: "GNOME or KDE...which should I choose?" Well, there's quite a number of things to consider when making this choice, so let's discuss!
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[@smisheduprog]

KDE as an entire project is another testimony to ambitious open source projects.

[@mistermistero652]

I will not like this for the sake of keeping the *nice* like count

[@jGRite]

It's surprising how KDE is still so similar to how it used to be even though it's changed so much.

[@LanceD188]

@@new-lviv I do miss all those funky abstract wallpapers KDE 1 had back in the day!

[@talkysassis]

That's a smart UX choice. Windows and MacOS keep their layout for the same reason.

[@omegaman7377]

@@4tado You just to look the level of customization to realize that they other way around. Windows is stealing idea like workspace and tiling.

[@B5152g]

@@4tado really? win 11 looks like a rip off of what KDE has been for 10+ years just with apps center, an example menu (that stinks), and options removed.. even the application theme engine looks like it was dropped in striped and customized to run windows apps..

[@hellowill]

"I see you're running Gnome...You know I'm on KDE myself"

[@hemanthkumarar]

Tyrell Wellick (from Mr. Robot). Guess that's makes me Elliot Anderson. 😀

[@SprunkCovers]

This debate is why I love Cinnamon, is sort of a middle ground between Gnome and KDE in terms of personalization and customizability

[@hiddenspirit9180]

Try budgie desktop Especially ubuntu budgie is very good looking out of the box And u should also try Mate desktop especially Ubuntu Mate .

[@vicca4671]

KDE's been my main DE for ages, and even after testing loads of other DEs (Budgie's really neat, easily my second pick) I always come back to KDE. It getting lighter on performance was just the cherry on the top it needed

[@jvapr27]

Do you run into any of the issues others report(and i have experienced) when disconnecting external monitors or trying to get integration working with Gmail services online accounts? How do you deal without having virtual desktops be dynamic? Gnomes usage patterns is more of a two apps per virtual desktop. If you need more, you dynamically spin up more virtual desktops. How do you do this in KDE? Or maybe you do not use these features. If not that's cool. Just curious if you and you found a workaround, what was it. Thanks

[@caseyjp1]

I was a Gnome user for a long time. I did NOT like KDE 4. I left Gnome about two years ago after finally giving up on broken extensions. KDE has been the main desktop since the '5' release and I'm very pleased with performance, and everything mentioned in the video. I also use I3wm on two laptops and like the low memory footprint for those older machines. I'm not an 'uber-ricer', but customization that doesn't break between point releases has been nice and a big selling point.

[@akhilmalasar6085]

which distro is best for kde?

[@terryforsythe8083]

Once I was running Gnome on Arch with a bunch of Gnome extensions to get it optimized for me. A Gnome update came through that was incompatible with many of the extensions I was using. After rebooting I landed on a completely blank desktop - not a single panel, menu, nor icon - just nothing. I rebooted again and the same thing. Luckily I could launch terminal with key commands. I did that and installed KDE.

[@thierrybo6304]

@@akhilmalasar6085 gnome has fedora and kde has ... no reference DE, except kde neon perhaps.

[@prabhakarkumar8976]

does touchpad gesture work in latest kde ?

[@terryforsythe8083]

@@prabhakarkumar8976 supposedly. There are some KZbin videos on it. I use KDE on a desktop, so I haven’t tried it.

[@zaph1rax]

Gnome is really nice on a laptop where you mainly use the touchpad, all other cases I prefer KDE.

[@robhymers9149]

I like gnome, but grew tired of extensions breaking everytime it updated. kde has a lot of options to tinker with and once you learn the tweaks it's great

[@zachbroad5001]

yeah this is exactly why I switched too

[@divyanshbhutra5071]

I feel the exact same thing but can't switch because of how amazing gnome app dock is, how amazing the homescreen is. I just adore it far too much to care about some extensions. It's our possible to get something like that on KDE? If yes, I'm switching the first thing tomorrow.

[@chrisxdeboy]

​@divyanshbhutra5071 you can set KDE up to look and work like GNOME. IDK why you'd want to, though.

[@YourPoopDealer]

Ironically, that's what made me dislike kde6. Nothing substantial seemed to change but latte-dock stopped working and even halted development as a result. The standard panel sucks too much for me to wanna use it too.

[@stephenwilson0386]

For me it's GNOME by a mile, primarily because of stability. Every time I try to use it, KDE is always prone to visual glitches and things just not working correctly. Plus the way workspaces work on GNOME is top notch.

[@tabletaccountforyoutube]

I agree with KDE being glichy and it really does have stability issues. I'm running the LTS version on Kubuntu and honestly it's not too bad. Yes there are still some bugs but so far I'm actually pretty happy with it. I will say though, as much as I dislike using Gnome, it's probably the most polished and solid experience you can get on linux.

[@phoenixrising4995]

@@tabletaccountforyoutube For me it’s sway or if I’m using X11 it’s openbox

[@stephenwilson0386]

@@tabletaccountforyoutube The only time I've ever had KDE running somewhat stable is completely vanilla on openSUSE. If I start trying to theme or customize it, especially with transparency and blur, it starts glitching and having a mind of its own, changing settings back to default on reboots, things just randomly breaking, etc. My PC is all AMD too, so it's not an issue like Nvidia or something.

[@tabletaccountforyoutube]

@@stephenwilson0386 KDE is definitely super ambitious when it comes to giving you the ability to customize it, but I tend to leave it mostly vanilla to have a good experience. I more or less just set the dark theme and remove a couple things I like hot corners and I'm set. So far so good. One thing I will say is that wayland is still a mess on KDE and a good reason to use Gnome would be the excellent wayland support. Heck, I would be happy to just switch to Gnome if they had a little more customizability to achieve a more traditional UI.

[@luisortega8085]

KDE is not only very buggy, but very ugly as well

[@maximofernandez196]

didn't know that krita was part of the kde suit. Love it, it feels so amazing to use, even to draw with a MOUSE

[@maximofernandez196]

@@Batwam0 yeah, but I had no clue

[@df3yt]

Then my dad is part of the KDE suite cause all his replies are "k".

[@maximofernandez196]

@@df3yt This kind of response doesn't even have language barriers

[@ArniesTech]

I simply can NOT decide. Sometimes I feel like using one, and then like using the other 😁

[@anon_y_mousse]

Sometimes I feel like a nut, sometimes I don't.

[@puspamadak]

Same here. For me, something like "KNOME" will be a good thing.

[@maverick7592]

Same mate, I am literally staring at my monitor to the point that I feel it's staring back lol. I am installing endeavours OS both gnome and kde plasma look sick on it

[@send2gl]

My original Linux introduction was with Mandrake in the early 2000s, from memory that ran KDE. Then got involved with Ubuntu and gnome. Early this year back with KDE on Linux MX. I love the ease of initiating desktop special effects on the KDE - wobbly windows, exploding windows, paper airplanes, genie in a lamp. Adds a bit of bling to the desktop.

[@MaxUgly]

I used to prefer xfce too but am too addicted to all the plasmoids and comfy with all the knobs and buttons I spend hours tinkering with on KDE. If I was limited by my hardware I might give xfce another go but vanilla minimal KDE is pretty lightweight at this point. I also really prefer dolphin over all the other file managers at this point. Gnome is solid but doesn't allow me to shape it as much as I would like. Like DT, I prefer most of the KDE programs to Gnome's. I would not tell anyone to use it because I do but I do tell any friends trying Linux to pick an Ubuntu based KDE distro if they want their computer to "look like mine" and want me able to be able to be tech support. I am proficient with apt and KDE, no other reason.

[@jgaming2069]

Does anyone remember Mandriva 🤔

[@send2gl]

@@jgaming2069 Wasn't that a fork of Mandrake? Free version when Mandrake split like Redhat and had a free community supported version and a corporate version.

[@robhymers9149]

I started with mandrake as well. I really miss it

[@jgaming2069]

@@send2gl Yeah based on Mandrake. That was the first linux os I used and quickly learned it corrupted ntsf format drives jaja 😅😂🤣

[@ChristianParpartDev]

Accessibility on KDE? Being severely visually impaired myself, KDE (due to kwin's desktop zoom feature) is THE way to go. No other alternative came close to it (except OS/X's desktop zoom, which is awesome, too) ;-) KDE (kwin)'s desktop zoom is way to underrated. I can't use it without, regardless of formfactor I'm using KDE on.

[@fred-youtube]

It also allows you to change the font size for everything too, have you looked at that?

[@ChristianParpartDev]

@@fred-youtube it's not just text that one might want to enlarge to see better. It also sadly sometimes looks really bad if you want a convenient font-size for your eyes but the rest looks very well unproportionally bad. It's sadly easier to simply shortcut-zoom in and out for the things than trying to configure all the sizes larger. A lot of applications are not made for visually impaired people in mind. Sadly. (think about all those webapps that even forbid pinch-zooming by design. I could crank out each time. Too many narrow-minded people think they're doing any good with that, it's hurting more than it's helping. oh dude, i'm so sorry, this got me triggered. it's not about you, all good. but I think you can feel the frustration out of this from the point of view of someone with less vision. :-)

[@fred-youtube]

@@ChristianParpartDev KDE and Gnome have a scaling feature which enlarges everything by a certain percentage, like running the screen at a lower resolution without losing clarity

[@alx8439]

Kate is far more advanced thing, than just an editor. Kde suite of apps also include Digikam. It simply has no competitors. Kde also has KDE Connect - a phone companion app. You can use it with anything, btw :) Someone with good problem solving skills should look inisde of gnome to see why on earth it takes the whole 1+ Gb of ram. But I love dwm most of all, because of memory footprint :)

[@aquaponieee]

Also remember, although KDE allows infinite customisability, you don't necessarily need to customize the desktop and it will never get in your way or take time from you if you don't. It's simple by default and powerful when needed.

[@morpheon_xyz]

For me it's a "set up and forget" situation hence I use KDE cuz I can always make it look "fresh" when I want to. I legally love how Gnome looks tho, but unfortunately it's window borders between different apps doesn't look cohesive enough in my opinion, especially if it's not Gnome native apps. I mean it's the same with KDE especially when I use the Gnome Files app, although it's only one that's not fitting in compared to half of all my apps I use 😅

[@ANGELRA]

I used both gnome and kde, both are great. Right now I use Nobara with a sweet themed KDE environment.

[@skudnu5462]

Recently switched from KDE with X11 to Gnome with Wayland and man is it nice to use. KDE has always been laggy and stuttery for me but gnome works so well it's a joy to use. I have an Nvidia GPU btw

[@crumbae1248]

I really like KDE but ever since I have used GNOME with the material shell, I just can't live without it. Productivity, workflow and almost everything is on another level with this material shell.

[@canodepvc2837]

I used material shell, and it broke my system

[@rafaelpacheco3129]

I really enjoy the tweaks KDE provides natively, however, I find Gnome waay more polished. KDE still have some bugs or behaviours that I find weird sometimes. The menu bar keeps going nuts after I disconnect one of the external displays, sometimes windows freeze graphically, etc. But maybe that's the tradeoff between a polished DE and a highly customizable DE. :)

[@AndersJackson]

I remember when Gnome decided that needing to change an option to get working environment was a Bug. It helped the stability, as developer would have to motivate their defaults, not like before (and in KDE). You can still make lots of choices in GNOME, but they are not be as accessable as in KDE.

[@hjf3022]

@@AndersJackson instead people have to download extensions to change basic settings in Gnome.

[@baldpolnareff7224]

I used to hate GNOME, now I love it. I just need a pretty, simple and elegant desktop, with very little extra functionalities I can get from a few extensions, like blur my shell, Pop shell, Pano and top bar widgets. The rest of my interaction with the system is either directly with programs I use or the terminal. I need focus and GNOME is better for me in that

[@sillyness3456]

I like both, they each have pros and cons. In terms of optics, I prefer Gnome, as it looks less cluttered OOTB, usability is more on KDEs side. But my Linux machines usually run TWM, currently Debian Testing with Awesome.

[@prometheus95]

Really good job covering the comparison between these two, very thorough, and I like that neither side of the discussion was given preference. Neither is objectively better, but subjectively, I prefer KDE because I like to tinker and customize and rice it beyond all recognition (or RIBAR as I like to call it).

[@nikoraasu6929]

I love GNOME's desktop look but I prefer KDE because I can achieve the same look with KDE while getting nice functionalities that KDE offers

[@anon_y_mousse]

Ever RIBAR so hard that it became FUBAR?

[@ChristopherCompagnon1AndOnly]

I felt in love with Gnome 3 because its simplicity and clarity. And its design. No extra stuff. Efficiency. Each time I use KDE, I spend 10 minutes to find what I am looking for. Gnome : I want a file manager --> I type «files» and the application is called «Files», no doubt possible. no application weirdly called «k» something. I want a disk manager --> I type «disk» and the application is called «Disks», no doubt possible. All the desktop has been designed to fit exactly the way my mind works and apprehends the space.

[@louistournas120]

The file manager that often comes with KDE is Dolphin. it took me a week or 2 to remember it since I come from a long Windows background. And if you do come from a Windows background, most likely, KDE will feel at home for you. After about 3 months on Kubuntu, I was pretty use to it and I slowly replaced my knowledge of Windows with KDE.

[@furycd001]

Been using XFCE full-time since 2002. Solid DE that never gets enough love. Long live XFCE !!!!

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

Yes, XFCE was my "saving grace" when GNOME 2 finished and I really couldn't deal with that GNOME 3 nonsense. I went to MATE for a while but that was so buggy in its early days that I soon moved to XFCE and stayed there for a long time. These days I have moved over to tiling window managers but I have a few machines with GUIs on them and all of them are XFCE.

[@slim_2280]

My absolute favourite is Xfce, but this week for gaming I installed Manjaro KDE and left my Manjaro Xfce daily drive last night to run Manjaro KDE. I have Icy Docks on all my computer builds, enabling me to dual boot Linux. I must say KDE wins hands down for me, especially the fall apart when closing windows effect, that had me hooked and played that game for hours, opening Nemo (I don't like Dolphin file manager, so set Nemo as default.) then closing it again watching it break into pieces, was up till 03:00hrs doing so. Little things in life keeps me entertained. 😄

[@Nyah420]

You might want to check out "Burn My Windows". A series of special effects to open/close windows that started on Gnome but now also works on KDE. Though last I saw, they kind of broke on the last update from a couple weeks ago... 🤔

[@loucipher7782]

dont give two shit about open/close effect even on my windows i disable all effects XFCE is the way to go with Manjaro i uninstalled KDE right away, its annoyingly buggy AF

[@slim_2280]

@@loucipher7782 Yes it is buggy as hell. I use Xfce as my daily drive too. The latest Manjaro on my new NVMe 1TB drive. Flying along it is. Still using Manjaro KDE for occasional gaming.

[@basicdays]

Really curious to see where SteamOS goes with KDE.

[@spht9ng]

I hope Valve contributes to the project.

[@MyurrDurr]

@@spht9ng Valve have already contributed to plasma You can watch this year's kde convention talks about it!

[@spht9ng]

@@MyurrDurr Oh wow that's great. KDE is the future of Linux desktop no doubt

[@popvit8569]

I too was struggling with this question when I moved to Manjaro and after trying both versions I finally settled on cinnamon

[@catholic_zoomer_bro]

Krita and KDEnlive are great, but you can almost always use them with gnome anyways

[@Chertograad]

Agreed. And about KDE having professional grade apps like Krita and KDEnlive... All I can say is: what about LibreOffice and Gimp that use GTK and not Qt?

[@jesse7631]

Nice video discussion Derek. I used to be way into customization many years ago, and I think 15 years ago I would have loved all the options there are in KDE Plasma. I still like customizing, but have found that KDE Plasma is still pretty glitchy, and there are some options that don't work like I expect them. I am currently on GNOME in Fedora 36, and with the extensions that I am using, it's perfect for me.

[@FoWDarthLi]

As a power user I found gnome to be too restrictive. After 7 years on arch and i3, I needed something more stable that "just werks", so I switched to Ubuntu and gnome. It's good enough, but I needed more power user stuff, so I ended up with a balancing act between stable, just werks and bleeding edge, power user. I'm now using Kubuntu with KDE backports + flatpak, some ppas and guix. This works very well, hadn't had any issues in months and I'll probably continue using this setup for a long time. The one gnome utility that is vastly superior to the KDE alternative is simple-scan. Infinitly better than skanlite. I just use the flatpak version of simple-scan so no problem there.

[@Deathcon2040]

This video was very helpful and easy to understand which was much apricated since I just started looking in to Linux today and wanted to know what the difference was between Gnome and KDE. I think I might go with KDE Plasma just because of the customization and not having to worry about extensions braking every time I update. Thanks, and I hope to see more from you in the future.

[@MasterPJ86]

I love gnome 42, mostly the Ubuntu variation, KDE is somehow overwhelming for me. But I always have an eye on Cinnamon as well, I think it's very underestimated: it's very solid, functional, easy to use but customizable at the same time.

[@rfdiego777]

Totally agree, I find gnome more elegant and functional out of the box, but kde is definitely fun to customize! Personally lately I prefer gnome (it saves me time and works great)

[@XeroLinux]

Oh wow ! Thanks for mentioning XeroLinux.. That means a lot .. Great video as usual ;)

[@vitormelo22]

I really like KDE mainly because most native apps are very customizable, especially in editing shortcuts. In KDE it is quite easy to export the main system configuration files and import them in another one. In Gnome I have no idea how to do it in a simple way.

I often find KDE ugly out of the box, while I like GNOME aesthetics a lot as well. But I have to admit that the KDE suit of applications is actually very very good. Specially Dolphin. Right now I'm using GNOME 42. About the extensions breaking, that's a real issue, and I often research how solid the people supporting the extensions are before adding them to my GNOME desktop.

[@jaunie8217]

I agree. Is there a way to make gnome use dolphin by default?

[@EffectualPoet]

*especially

[@kumarj6301]

wonderful explanation, i hated gnome only for a small time when they switched to gnome 3 and started liking mate for some time, and then always gnome is my favourite forever, and now i know why i like gnome - for its simplicity, minimalism

[@distant6606]

I mostly use twms but if i had to use 1 desktop environment to work with it would 100% be kde, by a huge margin.the amount of tweaking you can do with great ease is beyong phenomenal! thnx for the vid dt :)

[@greatestcait]

I feel the same way. I have KDE installed on my system alongside Xmonad, but that’s mainly just as a fail safe in case my Xmonad breaks or something and I don’t have the time to fix it.

[@vaisakh_km]

Yes I too have KDE and twm installed... kde for changing setting and troble shoutting, and trying out therevnew things, twm for actual work :)

[@distant6606]

@@greatestcait cool

[@distant6606]

@@vaisakh_km nice one dude

[@luxdalet]

Thank you for the awesome and informative video! Am leaning towards KDE :D Thank you for all in the team in making this video.

[@meowses1472]

Both Gnome and Plasma have come over a long way

[@methanoid]

KDE FTW IMHO 😄. Super configurable without needing extensions. Now I just need to decide what to base on: Debian, Kubuntu, Arch or Fedora

[@crazycatman4171]

KDE for my professional customers and myself, Gnome (Zorin OS) for my private customers. Has been working fine this way for years now.

[@DaniSpeh]

I use only distributions that have a default KDE environment (for desktop, for servers it's not important and I mostly use Debian). In my experience the best KDE distro and a big contributor is Suse, so my daily driver is tumbleweed. I recently tested Arch KDE distros. Yes, they are good as well and because of the better software support I may switch. But a lot more testing if it's stable enough is required. I have an pretty old, 15 years, notebook, using it for network pentesting. xfce worked fine but KDE was better. Lagging about half a second when you want to shutdown or restart is the only thing that's slower than xfce. Everything else is the same or KDE is faster. Even the core developer of xfce said at the moment KDE is better optimized than XFCE. Boot time feels the same if you use a SSD. Using a mechanical HDD, KDE may be pretty slow in comparison to XFCE since it reads more smaller files on startup. I didn't measure anything because I use my OS to work on it and not test it, so it's a strictly subjective feeling

[@yahiamuhammad5388]

I tried both in multiple versions. I found KDE plasma to be brilliant but really distracting, sometimes a lot of options can be overwhelming so personally i use Gnome I'm more familiar with the tweaks and extensions of gnome. meanwhile defiantly I'd recommend KDE plasma or Cinnamon for a new user

[@rodrigosouto9502]

Thank you KDE and Gnome devs! Thanks DT!

[@classicrockonly]

I much prefer KDE. There’s extras in KDE that simply don’t exist in GNOME and it’s a real dealbreaker for my workflow. But, there is something to be said about GNOME’s simple design. It is definitely much more polished than it used to be. I’ve switched to i3 now though lol

[@anon_y_mousse]

Does i3 provide these things that you said were a deal breaker, and if so, what are they?

[@ioneocla6577]

@@anon_y_mousse you Can Do basically everything you want to do with a window manager

[@anon_y_mousse]

@@ioneocla6577 "Basically" everything? Are there things that you can't do and if so what are they? Even if it's just a tiny complaint I'd like to know.

[@ioneocla6577]

@@anon_y_moussea window manager isn't for everyone. It takes time to configure because you need to code. Every setting is written in a config file and it makes them really flexible (check the r/unixporn subreddit) i3 is good for beginners because it uses a custom text syntax so it's easy to configure. Other choices include dwm (configured in C) Xmonad (configured in Haskell) awesome( configured in lua) and qtile (configured in python)

[@anon_y_mousse]

@@ioneocla6577 So basically it can do all the same things, just requires more work. In which case dwm would sound like the thing to try for me. Maybe once I've finished unpacking and setting up the new house I'll have to look into that. I could add it to the list of things to pursue when I finally do LFS for the first time.

[@raulgrangeiro]

For me Gnome is the best DE off all systems we have on computers. It just works. If you need something it doesn't come natively, pretty sure there is an extension which will do it quite simple. Its lightweight, fast, focused on what you're doing, clean and simply beautiful.

[@peterschmidt9942]

Although I've dabbled with Linux on and off for 20 years, it's only been the last 2 years where I finally took the plunge and pretty much use it full time for everything. I suppose the reason it took so long was due to the desktop environments as I really didn't understand that from the beginning. What tipped the scales a few years back was trying Zorin OS with KDE. It felt polished and stable to me. Even trying other DE's, I was always coming back to KDE as I could make it look and do whatever I liked transitioning from Windows. Using Gnome I was always underwhelmed with being able to tweak it (without the extra effort of adding plugins). And as you said DT, KDE seems to have the right suit of apps out of the box on most distros (well for me anyway)

[@drzomboland]

Great video DT! I made the switch to Linux 5 months ago after using Windows all my life, and after briefly trying out a couple DEs, GNOME stuck with me the most. Like you said it's very good for people who just want a system that works good out of the box. Coming from Windows, the workflow took a little bit of time to get used to, but I'm digging it now, and I'm way faster than I was on Windows. I don't mind GNOME not being as customizable as KDE, it's nice and simple and plenty enough for me. It took just 10 plugins, a new system theme, and a new system font to level up my experience. There's just one thing that stops my experience from being perfect, and it's definitely the file manager 😂

[@drzomboland]

@@fred-youtube Looks promising, I'll have to check it out. Thanks for the suggestion!

[@shabang71]

The file manager is simple following the GNOME guide-lines. But it has a killer feature (at least for me). Did you try to select a file and then to press the space bar? You will obtain an immediate preview of documents , images, video and audio files

[@wclifton968gameplaystutorials]

imo KDE Plasma is better, more usable than GNOME 40 series but if you want to pick between the two, use KDE Neon and then select either GNOME 42 or KDE Plasma 5.26 from the SDDM menu as a session in either X11 or Wayland display server. The fact that GTK may only now get a thumbnail view in it's file picker is why KDE Plasma 5 series is better than GNOME since the QT file picker has many more options and features on Linux, BSD..

[@IanHaver]

Gnome always reminds my of my works macbook pro, so for my personal Lenovo Thinkpad i use and love KDE Neon distro and use the KDE desktop and made it look the way i like. :)

[@sourcastic]

Something that's not directly related to the DE (plasma) itself, but something a lot of people overlook is that KHTML was a KDE Project and that's what a lot of modern browsers (Chromium, Safari) base their engines on! KDE Plasma isn't for everyone, but the KDE project has done wonders for Linux and for everyone as a whole. Their creative suite of applications are also the best we have on Linux with Krita going mainstream even beyond linux.

[@AssociateMinisterReserveDeacon]

A. When I install Linux for family and friends. I installed both The GNOME Desktop Environment and The KDE / Plasma Desktop Environment. B. I've found that some KDE / Plasma applications don't work well under The GNOME Desktop Environment. C. For maximum software compatibility I install both Desktop Environments. D. Does anyone else install both The GNOME Desktop Environment and The KDE / Plasma Desktop Environment on the same Linux installation? If YES. Please leave a reply to this list of comments explaining why you install both Desktop Environments on the same Linux installation.

[@naga_serpentis]

Starting with Ubuntu 22.10, gedit is no longer included out of the box with Ubuntu. It is now gnome-text-editor.

[@jfftck]

I have found KDE much easier to break but the KDE team has been focusing on fixing many of the issues that lead to the desktop being unstable. GNOME’s extensions are prone to failing after an update, but they also tend to not bring down the whole desktop (avoid any extension that modifies the compositor to do effects in GNOME as they will often be the exception to what I just said about not killing the desktop). I use Pop!_OS, and can’t wait for the new desktop environment that they are creating. My hope is that it is memory efficient and that the System76 team makes components that are not directly tied to other components so the user can choose to add the functionality to other window managers or desktop environments.

[@phrtao]

I am a KDE user and I have a very highly modified KDE desktop but I struggle to think of a distro that actually ships with desktop that deviates much from the standard KDE Neon layout and functionality. This is a real shame since so much can be done with all the customisation options in KDE. I doubt most people even go to the appearance settings and download new themes, let alone tick the box to apply the desktop layout. There are also window scripts, add ons, widgets, rules and shortcuts that can be applied to make amazing things happen to your desktop. It would be nice to see a KDE distro that put these options up front in one of those welcome apps to showcase the range of things you can do, Many of the features that I use have been discovered by years of constant customising and are very well buried in the KDE eco system.

[@fred-youtube]

What features do you use and why? I'm currently using KDE Neon with the panel on the left side and a few desktop widgets.

[@InfernalMonsoon]

I personally love KDE Plasma but it sadly doesn't love me back in return as I've had a mountain of massive issues ever since I've started going Linux full-time, exacerbated further when using a rolling release distro, but while I don't use the desktop environment anymore I still love and regularly use numerous KDE applications. Gnome I really like also but I've not really used it enough to say if it's something I love, but I would certainly like to try it more. Personally the desktop environment I've found works best for me is actually the Cinnamon desktop so far, sure it has a couple of bugs on rolling release distros but it's been rock solid stable and reliable in my experience, and has just enough customization and eye candy to keep me happy.

[@terryforsythe8083]

I use Cinnamon and KDE Plasma. Cinnamon is my favorite. I run KDE on Arch, but software regressions are problematic, especially at the rate at which updates are pushed out in Arch. It seems like I am constantly troubleshooting issues that pop up with updates. I also run KDE Neon, which has been a much smoother experience.

[@guss77]

Regarding text editors: the Plasma simple text editor is actually KWrite and not Kate. Kate is the "KDE advanced text editor", i.e. programmer's text editor - and as such its not really comparable to gEdit as it has tons of programming QoL features that gEdit lacks, such as projects, git integration, find and replace in files, many many many syntax highlighting features, language server integration, symbol reference lookup, word completion, block highlighting and folding, multiple cursors and so much more. That being said, gEdit isn't really a simple text editor either - that task was assigned to the new "GNOME Text Editor" (that's its name - GNOME have apparently taken a leaf out of Microsoft's book and are renaming all of their apps by the generic category they are supposed to fill), but gEdit as a programmer's text editor is sorely lacking and has gained no new features in the last 10 years. If you want to look at a GNOME programmer's text editor - check out Geany, which while not officially a GNOME application (Geany claims to be cross platform and support all Linux desktops using just GTK+3), it is the closes you can get.

[@lukashavel7690]

KDE is flashy, cool. I like GNOME and its approach more. I would choose GNOME over most DEs. Perhaps except Cinnamon, which I also like. Zorin GNOME though seem like a good mix between the two.

[@ngoudar5862]

I always use qtile. Between KDE and gnome, I prefer kde.

[@wissemyahiaoui8854]

I really like the video and it was containing almost all majors points to make the comparison consistent . KDE is the greatest DE and if someone could port it to Windows or MacOS a lot of users will use it definitively instead of the default one. GNOME is adopted by the biggest distro because of its documentation and its simplicity to maintain which it the downside of customization in Plasma. Moreover, users in rolling distro experience terrible bugs sometimes with the KDE which gives another point for GNOME. It is also to mention that the adoption of GNOME by the biggest distro lead into GNOME is more supported and also that GNOME possesses better workload in Wayland. I still use KDE because of the DOLPHIN, customization and certainly because of the Plasmoids which weren't mention in the video

[@JTCPingas]

Every time I try to use another DE, I always go back to GNOME.

[@infinitycoffe]

I can't decide, both KDE and Gnome are awesome!

[@herrberg8962]

I have been an Xfce user for ages and switched to Gnome a week ago. It took me about a day to get used to it, and now it feels very comfortable. The only extension I really need is the auto hide of that top panel.

[@lolitbairiganjan2940]

Tried both. Fedora/Ubuntu's Gnome and Manjaro's KDE. Liked the minimalistic and eye candy look of gnome but I prefer the blurry/glassy/futuristic look of kde better.

[@terryforsythe8083]

Very good description of Gnome vs KDE.

[@Codename1Alice8]

KDE is overloaded with stuff. Thats cool.

[@Lestibournes]

In short, it's about personal taste.

[@miguelguthridge]

I love KDE, but it currently has a pretty massive bug where it deletes all my desktop settings every time I disconnect or reconnect an external display, which has made it effectively unusable for the past year or so. Gnome is nice, but the fact that I need to go through 4 different apps (settings, tweaks, extensions, then the registry editor equivalent) just to find the setting I want to change has been a major source of frustration. It feels like in order to get a streamlined UX, Gnome completely lacks so many essential features - and sure there are extensions, but they break every 6 months with each major update since there isn't a stable API for them. That being said I absolutely love the activities and the overview (and I hope KDE reaches that level of polish with their overview feature soon too)

[@alexsocop]

Recently I moved from Cinnamon to KDE and the experience with Plasma is just awesome!

[@torsten.breswald]

to the question 'GNOME or KDE?' hasn't the answer always been xfce???

[@Azmodaeus49]

I'm a KDE guy and love KDE neon, which is my main OS.

[@magpinybo7524]

Thanks for the insights, I love Gnome I have used XFCE and Cinamon before. One day i'll try KDE

[@yomaldiaholson4577]

"if you love customization then KDE Plasma is definitely the desktop environment for you" Thanks, that's all I wanted to confirm lol

[@jonbob9872]

When people discuss how heavy desktops are they invariably focus on RAM usage. Personally I'm not bothered about a couple hundred extra meg; what I am more interested in is CPU usage. Plasma is on par with XFCE in this respect which is very competitive.

[@simulify8726]

If I had to chose. I would recommend Gnome to a user who wants a simple workflow and not much customization and a desktop which integrates well with laptop. I have Fedora Gnome on my laptop and I have no issues with it. But for my desktop, I will be choosing kde simply because I like using the windows like layout on my desktop with customization

[@danamurray735]

This Is Such A Great Video. I really like KDE. But I Love Gnome. KDE applications are extremely good for lightweight usage. The Falkon Web Browser, Yakuake Terminal Emulator, and Calligra Suite for office related tasks and art work, they're all more than proficient. I even tried the Rekonq Browser just for laughs (not bad). However, Gnome is what I love. The WEB Browser (Epiphany) is OK. Not exactly the browser for power users. But it's still OK. Other than that, I think this video is absolutely great!

[@lorensims4846]

I prefer Xfce. It's light and capable. Doesn't clog my user experience with a ton of overhead.

[@perjalananwaktu7181]

from fedora user perspective using KDE is really pain in the ass since KDE development was based on Ubuntu which is deb package while fedora use rpm that often cause some disintegrated package when fedora update plasma-desktop meanwhile some dependency wasnt available in rpm repository. for me its was feel like completly a joke when they provide plasma-desktop package but without proper dependency that suit its version

[@gotchaxp]

I went for gnome because of issues I had with KDE that I never got fixed despite all the documentation I read. But in terms of used default programs, desktop design and workflow, KDE. I even tweaked my gnome desktop to look like KDE as much as I could

[@serang]

KDE was my first and was my favorite DE (started with KDE 3) . But Ubuntu's Gnome simplicity is my fav today.

[@unicorn_tamer]

KDE, obviously! I have been using it for about a year, before switching to dwm, and I had a great time.

[@osamaanees8406]

I would say KDE has become more popular because of the Steam Deck

[@Herminafried]

GNOME with Material Shell. Fine and beautiful keyboard-driven workflow.

[@eusamuel]

8:15 Being a person with low vision I´d say that KDE comes with zoon in/out ON by default, all you need to do is Hit Super - =+ / Super - - whilst in gnome you have to activate this feature before you can use it. I also came to the conclusion that the Window composor in KDE leaves you with a better experience in terms of smoothness and performance for this feature where the gnone counterpart tends to have micro user-interface hickups and lags, there's even a bug where the mouve will quickly teleport to top left of the screen at random. Now I myself am not a KDE person by anymeans I hate how cluttered and confusing KDE is but I might just jump into it for those reasons.

[@DrDiemotma]

KDE anytime. I moved from Gnome 2 to KDE 3.5 to Xfce To KDE 4 to Unity to KDE Plasma to Gnome 3 to Budgie to KDE Plasma again, and now I am settled here. The initial Windows-style look is atrocious, but this can be changed in five minutes. Gnome has broken my workflow one time too often (and that was in Budgie, weirdly enough).

[@Bhakt-TheDevotee]

I've been using MATE. With the help of Compiz, the window animations are very smooth. I have no problem with file manager, I wish it had "new tab" option which would make work easier. The only thing I hate is the taskbar, there's no "icon only" option. Every task opens with its icon and name beside it. If you open two windows of same application then there are two icons with two name beside them which is annoying. But compiz made task selection easier, I just have to move the cursor to the top left and all the active windows show up by tiling themselves on the desktop and you just have to click on the windows that you want to work on.

[@Nyah420]

Is Compiz still being developed or is that using the old version? I remember Compiz from ~2008 and even Windows users were amazed by it; but then it seemed to be abandoned. Or maybe distros just stopped including it. Either way, it's been a while since I last saw it.

[@Bhakt-TheDevotee]

@@Nyah420 It's development has stopped but surprisingly it still works great and is stable only my Linux mint MATE.

[@tonyt.r.5313]

Thank you! I was looking for a RAM, etc comparison but in the end the first few minutes of your video answered my question. I LOVE POSSIBILITIES! KDE for me, please. Now I'll look for a KDE Neon vs X, Y, Z in your videos-list to see what I can find.

[@sk.sourov]

Finally! A proper GNOME vs KDE video.

[@iabconsulting]

I have several KDE apps in my Gnome emvironment. They work as intended. What Linus does is add the proper Libtary files so both will run.

[@haquire]

Neither. Everyone has their own preferences of DE, and some even solely use window managers.

[@maximofernandez196]

I'm sure this is for new people that have no idea how to use a vm and do not want to bother with that, as they are also learning a whole new OS.

[@pranze3484]

I've been using debian since 1998 and I've tried KDE about once per year since then, and always reverted to mate or cinnamon quickly after bumping into bugs after 10 minutes. But now I feel it has reached a usable/stable state fortunately.

[@waynesbigw2305]

I like that you know how to pronounce Gnome linux properly. It's not a garden statue, and not pronounced the same, either.

[@RenderingUser]

for me, its KDE cause it breaks less often than gnome and when KDE breaks, its predictable also i hate the gdm3 it really messes up usage of window managers

[@m.m.z.5858]

My good old laptop with 2nd gen Intel CPU used to struggle and heat up a lot trying to run Ubuntu (GNOME). Then in 2017, I installed KDE neon on it and everything's been buttery smooth ever since.

[@_-martin-_]

Gnome is for users that want to be productive in a standardized modern desktop environment. KDE is for users that want that classic Windows experience and to customize everything into oblivion.

[@EBee92]

I started using Linux back in February of this year, and have used a whole bunch of distros. Starting with Mint, then PopOS, Fedora, then Kubuntu (that being where I discovered KDE Plasma). I then went back to PopOS, used it for a few weeks, then went to Fedora and used it for awhile. Also went back to windows several times. It wasn't until this past month that I dived in to Arch based distros, after PopOS got bricked. I played around with Manjaro several months ago, with me running Arch Linux for awhile, but EndeavourOS is the one that sold me on Arch. No matter which distro I've used, KDE was always the desktop environment I went with. I've tried so many times to give Gnome a shot, and I genuinely hate it. Not saying that it's bad, but for me I hate it a lot. I find the software that comes with KDE to be significantly better. I consider PopOS my favorite Debian/Ubuntu based distro that I've used, but I hate the Cosmic desktop environment, and how even when I was using KDE on it, there was a lot of Gnome bs baked into the OS that I couldn't get away from.

[@seanpaul7069]

I find Plasma has matured quite well and it’s both traditional and modern. I find Gnome keeps stripping away the features and users rely on extensions to make it work. I feel some of those extensions need to be default vs having users to go through an extra step. Plasma is what I replaced on my machines which is even better with ram and better than XFCE now days. Gnome gave me weird font rendering issues on Arch running Evolution Mail app and Plasma had no issues.

[@madandu]

I've been using KDE, Gnome for more than 10yrs. KDE has so improved to be default DE, extremely stable on endeavourOS. Second option is XFCE.

[@ArniesTech]

Although I love Debian/Ubuntu and I love GNOME, as a German, I am always attracted to the killer-combo OpenSUSE + KDE.