back to article Not a GNOME fan, and like the look of Windows? Try KDE Plasma or Cinnamon

Right after the latest release of the KDE Frameworks comes the Plasma Desktop 5.25 plus the default desktop for the forthcoming Linux Mint 23. Plasma 5.25 has a funky new floating taskbar option, very much like the one in the Deepin Desktop Plasma 5.25 has a funky new floating taskbar option, very much like the one in the …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    All this fuss about the desktop......

    .......makes me wonder about the sense of proportion in the chattering classes.......

    .......some of us are focused on DOING STUFF........using APPLICATIONS......

    .......and some of us get by PERFECTLY WELL with XFCE!

    .......or even using terminal sessions and bash.....

    1. Lon24

      Re: All this fuss about the desktop......

      Yes XFCE is perfectly adequate. I used it on low RAM devices back in KDE's bloat days because I had too. But they are chalk and cheese.

      I'm a SysAdmin for a network of Debian servers doing real and complex work and where the desktop and the servers are an integrated system. I can cut'n'paste anywhere on the network visually as though it was two different disks on my desktop, oh and dropping seamlessly into bash for nano or a GUI file editor on any of them.

      That's using Dolphin and the Fish protocol together with kDE's integrated application tool set.

      I chose KDE by chance back in the Vista days because the menu system resembled Win2k. Since then KDE have, like, microsoft, 'improved' the desktop. Great thing is, unlike, microsoft, KDE makes the desktop extremely configurable so it just how I like it for maximum productivity rather than KDE's default.

      However, KDE's ultimate flexibility and power can be overwhelming for the newcomer still trying to grasp Linux fundamentals - so these days I wouldn't recommend it for starters. Linux Mint Cinnamon is probably the easiest way in. XFCE & LMDE are probable the best for low powered devices.

      If they do the job for you then, sure, stick with them. But if their limitations become your limitations then the joy of Linux is there are places to go. The real problem is being spoilt for choice and wasting time trying to find the best.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: All this fuss about the desktop......

        Serious question: how is this different from ssh plus X11 forwarding?

        1. unimaginative
          Linux

          Re: All this fuss about the desktop......

          The difference is that you are using software installed on your desktop.

          Its close to seamless: for example you can have a local directors and a remote one open in different panes of a split window in a file manager and drag and drop between them.

          You do not to need to have the software installed on the remote machine. You can use anything you have installed. You can edit a text file in a GIU text editor you have installed locally. You can view an image in a viewer you have installed locally.

          You can use it on machines on which you cannot install software, or where you do not want to install everything you need for a GUI.

          This is not unique to KDE, but it works a lot better in KDE.

      2. unimaginative
        Pint

        Re: All this fuss about the desktop......

        Yes, KDE is flexible, but most distros make it look like Windows to start with (which is the reason for the rather misleading article title) so I think people can start with it and learn incrementally how to configure it.

        I recently switched back from XFCE to KDE and while there is nothing wrong with XFCE (which is also very configurable) I find KDE works more smoothly (at least now, there was a time when it was less reliable) and is more productive (not massively, but noticeably) for me for much the same reasons you do.

  2. theOtherJT Silver badge

    I know it's the pettiest gripe ever...

    ...but is anyone else put off by how painfully ugly the KDE logo is? I always liked the visual style of the plasma desktop, but every time I Install it I end up spending an hour pulling the thing apart and finding all the files related to that logo and replacing it with something less hideous.

    1. devin3782

      Re: I know it's the pettiest gripe ever...

      I was always put off by the weird default animations and the bouncing icons and general icon clutter in menus. The cinnamon developers do seem to have taste and has consistent UI (I've been using cinnamon on fedora for the last 3 years, replaced xfce)

    2. Zolko Silver badge
      Linux

      Re: I know it's the pettiest gripe ever...

      As first step after install, I always replace the KDE logo in the start menu by .... Tux (the penguin). Very cute. And explicit.

      icon, obviously

    3. James Anderson

      Re: I know it's the pettiest gripe ever...

      Nope -- even pettier gripe it sounds like CDE.

      I had the misfortune to work with the early unix CDE desktop and what a mess of obscure config whiles it was.

      The unix bods seriously believed they could compete with windows desktop and were totally deluded.

      I can never contemplate KDE because the spelling (if nothing else) is so similar to CDE.

      1. cyberdemon Silver badge
        Devil

        Re: CDE

        You have shown the grey of your beard!

        Maybe you should try NsCDE: https://github.com/NsCDE/NsCDE

    4. cyberdemon Silver badge
      Linux

      Re: I know it's the pettiest gripe ever...

      Nothing wrong with the K-cog logo IMO, but the newer "three dots and a triangle" "Plasma" logo does annoy me a bit.

      But you're right it is the pettiest gripe ever. KDE 5.x + is great. KDE 4 made me try Trinity and XFCE, but I switched back since KDE 5 - they have fixed all the issues IMO. KDE 5 in terms of power and reliability is now here KDE 3.5 was, but with all the modern bells and whistles. Printers just work, better than they do on windows (which isn't saying much I suppose) bluetooth (mouse, headset etc.) just works, most VPNs just work (many of which you would need third-party clients for on Windows), and KDE Connect is so good that they ported it to Windows.

      Mine's the one with the border-less Konsole (no menu bar, tab bar or scroll bar. Of course I still have tabs, but I cycle through them with ctrl+arrowkey, spawn them with ctrl+shift+N, and close them with EOF i.e. ctrl+D)

  3. Natalie Gritpants Jr

    Is this even remotely discoverable? Four finger swipes! What about accessibility? KDE used to be good at that.

    1. theOtherJT Silver badge

      As long as it's not the only way of doing it that's not really a problem is it? I agree that discoverablity... if that's even a word... is really important in a UI, but shortcuts are... well... shortcuts. As long as they're well documented I'm not sure that's a problem.

      1. wub

        Unintended consequences...

        What I find annoying about GUIs is the feeling that they assume that I'm going to intuitively understand all the gestures they have thoughtfully provided for me. I suppose that I could go find a tutorial, or some sort of documentation that teaches me how to take advantage of all these features, but doesn't that go against the very nature of a GUI? Isn't all this supposed to be obvious and intuitive?

        What I really have a problem with is when I inadvertently invoke one of these lovely gestures without realizing what I have done. Sometimes something miraculous occurs: maybe even something that I would like to have happen, but I have no idea: a) how to do that again, if I want to and b) how to undo that if it is something I definitely don't want (like switching my default language to Mandarin).

        1. C R Mudgeon Bronze badge

          Re: Unintended consequences...

          c) how to avoid doing it again, repeatedly and infuriatingly, when I'm just trying to get stuff done and don't really want to be distracted by a wild goose chase looking for a (quite possibly nonexistent) way to turn off a gesture I frequently do by accident but will never, ever do on purpose (e.g. summon up Android's voice-assist spyware).

      2. PRR Bronze badge

        > discoverablity... if that's even a word...

        It is a Wikipedia article. (*)

        I was using the concept, in web design, in 1997. I may not have discovered the word until a year or so later, when I "discovered" used-interface guideline books.

        But it clearly goes way back past those cheat-strips we put above our keyboards for Word Perfect (DOS) key-strokes. I just pulled out a "LEXIS at a glance" quick-start menu dated 1989 but apparently older. I remember (but can't now find) Compuserve's starter-booklet for their highly undiscoverable teletype interface (and it even had some HELP text, unlike many services of the day).

        (*) Article is more words than information. TL;DR

  4. VoiceOfTruth Silver badge

    Similarly, if you have a touchscreen

    I have never understood the call for a touchscreen on laptops or desktops. They may be useful in certain information kiosks, but that's about it. Bank cashpoints don't use them, they have buttons alongside the displayed options. Ticket machines at railway stations have them. But for home or office use? No way!

    I don't want a load of inevitably greasy fingerprints all over my screen. And on larger screens the whole touchscreen mode of work does not work at all. I have a 27" screen placed a bit more than arm's length away. Swiping-type actions using a mouse requires me to move my hand a couple of inches. The same thing if I used a touchscreen would be about 2 feet. No thanks. I confess that I have never used a touchscreen on a laptop so perhaps I just don't "get it". That could be true, but I don't think so.

    1. Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese Silver badge
      Boffin

      Re: Similarly, if you have a touchscreen

      I have never understood the call for a touchscreen on laptops or desktops

      I've got a touchscreen laptop (basically because the non-touchscreen version was out of stock, and the shop were happy to sell me the touchscreen version for the same price) so I was in the position of having a solution in search of a problem.

      Use case number one - working on a train/plane it's not convenient to use a separate mouse and use of the trackpad is a bit iffy if bouncing around a bit...just jabbing at the screen is a little bit easier

      Use case number two - some image editing is a bit more precise using a finger (or touchscreen-friendly stylus) on the actual screen compared to a mouse, and I don't want the cost or hassle of buying a separate stylus/tablet thingy

      Were those use cases improved by having a touchscreen? Yes. Would I have paid extra for a touchscreen just because of those? No

      Just my experience, YMMV, etc., etc.

      1. captain veg Silver badge

        Re: Similarly, if you have a touchscreen

        My mileage does indeed vary, considerably.

        I use a folding bluetooth keyboard/touchpad combo with my 10" tablet in preference to jabbing at the screen and hitting something randomly proximous to the actual target.

        I do, however, have notoriously fat fingers.

        -A.

    2. Liam Proven (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

      Re: Similarly, if you have a touchscreen

      [Author here]

      Like I said, I don't have any myself. I don't even use a tablet (although I do have one).

      But what I do have is a 2¾YO daughter. And it's been interesting watching her watching videos on her mum's laptop. Before 2Y she had worked out that her parents poked at our phone screens. Put a laptop in front of her and when the video ends, she pokes at the screen trying to start another one.

      It's innate. Monkey see, monkey do. We use our hands; indirect manipulation (screen, keyboard) is less natural, and must be learned.

      Given that we are basically all now accustomed to finger-pokey phones and tablets (and, yes, cash machines and so on), then if it doesn't cost much more to put it on a laptop as well, why not? You don't have to use it if you don't want to. But even my partner instinctively taps at the screen of her elderly MacBook Pro sometimes. Why *shouldn't* it work?

      Linux is, historically, bad at this. I am happy to see it getting closer.

      I'd be happier if we'd got Unity 8 instead of GNOME, to be perfectly honest, but hey.

      1. captain veg Silver badge

        Re: Similarly, if you have a touchscreen

        Hmm. My mileage here varies too.

        My first phone was a Handspring Treo. You were supposed to prod the screen with a stylus, but I found that the nail on my little finger worked just as well. Then Blackberries were issued to the directors, the early ones with a jog wheel and no kind of screen touch sensitivity at all. I was asked to set them up. Kept on jabbing at the screen, even though I knew it wouldn't do anything. Couldn't help myself.

        And yet I've never done that with a laptop. In fact on the rare occasions I ever used one that had a touchscreen I was constantly amazed when touching it caused something to happen.

        -A.

        1. Gene Cash Silver badge

          Re: Similarly, if you have a touchscreen

          And yet I've never done that with a laptop

          I've done that with my desktop after a long session with the phone... and felt like a complete tosser

          I've also tried to rotate the camera in Kerbal Space Program screenshots and been momentarily puzzled when it doesn't respond to the mouse swipe.

      2. PhilipN Silver badge

        Finger-pokey

        Was it Stevie J or someone else at Apple who veered towards fingers?

        He it was who said (about a forthcoming possibly rival product) words to the effect "If they have a stylus we know we've won".

        True - easy to say now - but how did he know that since we had stopped using fingers in kindergarten?

      3. Updraft102

        Re: Similarly, if you have a touchscreen

        "It's innate. Monkey see, monkey do."

        Indeed, but if the monkey had seen the older monkey using a touchpad or mouse, younger monkey would be imitating that instead.

        "Given that we are basically all now accustomed to finger-pokey phones and tablets (and, yes, cash machines and so on), then if it doesn't cost much more to put it on a laptop as well, why not?"

        And there is the issue. For the record, I would not accept a touchscreen on a PC even if there was zero cost difference. It adds weight, screen reflection, and power consumption, and if I am not going to use it (and I'm not), why should I accept the burden?

        The real cost, though, is not in the hardware. The cost is in the UI compromises that have to be made to accommodate touch. Windows went from having a very good GUI to that horrible "I don't know if I am a phone or a PC" mess that came with Windows 8, and it hasn't gotten much better in Windows 10.

        Touch capability means the UI that is carefully crafted to work with a discrete pointing device is upended, and suddenly everything shifts to the touch paradigm, with its lack of hover effects, huge controls, and disappearing UI elements. What used to take a few clicks now takes many, and the useful toolbars that used to have single-step functionality for all your most-used features are hidden away behind hamburgers, and that lack of intuitive information scent slows you down, as does the greater effort to get to those things.

        Everywhere you look, compromises are being made for touch that have negative effects for those of us who use pointing devices that actually make sense on a PC form factor (mouse or touchpad). Firefox recently got rid of its "compact" UI mode in favor of their touch-friendly, pixel-hogging versions, only to have the feedback be so resoundingly bad that they (in a rare turn of events) reversed themselves, but only if you edit the hidden pref to enable it first, and even then they felt the need to put "not supported" in the UI density dropdown, to passive-aggressively let you know You're Holding It Wrong. Ah, Mozilla... you can always be counted on to let your users know just how inconvenient they are.

        That's the harm touch causes. A UI cannot simultaneously be optimal for touch and mouse, and if it tries to be, it will end up being crap on both of them. I am no Apple fan, but Tim Cook got it right when asked about this.

        One thing I have always liked about my chosen desktop environment (KDE Plasma) is that it makes no compromises for touch, but there are signs that even that may be succumbing, with several changes coming along that are all about benefitting touch. If these things were beneficial to mouse users, one might wonder if they would have been added when mouse users were the only consideration.

        1. Jamie Jones Silver badge

          Re: Similarly, if you have a touchscreen

          When I'm over my mums, I often use her chromebook which has touch and a detachable keyboard.

          With the keyboard attached, the UI is more "desktop" like, and as soon as you remove it, the UI reverts to that of a "tablet". It's ridiculous. Handy quck presses like "X" to close a window, and the ability to quickly windowise a full screen app, and move it around etc. disappear. All quick on screen icons also disappear.

          In fact, it's far easier to use as pure touch with the keyboard still attached, but that makes it clunky if you want to use it somewhere where you'd use a tablet (lying in bed, for example)

          Many "desktop" features actually work well with touch, so it's annoying that google turns a keyboardless chromebook into an android tablet.

        2. KSM-AZ

          Re: Similarly, if you have a touchscreen

          Totally disagree. I was touch scrolling thru this forum on my onemix netbook running Plasma, then I dropped to the keyboard to type this response. I've found, that when doing work that requires a keyboard, I want a mouse, but when just scrolling around in say Emby or Plex on a browser, or reading thru a forum like this I much prefer to ue the touchscreen.

          And any argument for weight gain or power usage from touch hardware is silly.

        3. timrowledge

          Re: Similarly, if you have a touchscreen

          Windows ever had a good UI, not ever. Mac is ‘Least Bad’ but still not good.

          1. Richard 12 Silver badge
            Unhappy

            You mean

            "I know some of the macOS shortcuts, I don't know the Windows ones"

            Until they both lost the plot and started trying to confuse everyone in the name of "design", they were pretty much equal for usability.

            As a Mac user, you probably have a very good idea as to when that decline started in OSX.

      4. weladenwow

        Re: Similarly, if you have a touchscreen

        Re: "."Linux is, historically, bad at this. I am happy to see it getting closer."

        We are used to the Windows paradigm (the way it does things). Windows is the kernel AND the desktop, and never the twain shall part.

        Linux is a kernel. Linux is bound to no desktop. What you get on the desktop is your choice (by choosing a particular desktop).

        We can say "Cinnamon is getting better at that." We cannot say "."Linux is, historically, bad at this."

        Pip pip!

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Similarly, if you have a touchscreen

          We all know that, Mr. pedantic., but let's play along.

          > We cannot say "."Linux is, historically, bad at this."

          Yes we can. The Linux kernel is, historically, bad at this.

    3. Ian 55

      Re: Similarly, if you have a touchscreen

      At least one bank here has touchscreen ATMs.. Santander?

      A complete pain to use, but...

    4. illiad

      Some Bank cashpoints have touch screen...

      yes, Santander! better than searching for the right button - I don't have a problem with it???

    5. Manolo
      Stop

      Re: Similarly, if you have a touchscreen

      "Bank cashpoints don't use them, "

      Where you live, maybe.

      My experience is almost all ATM's have both options these days.

    6. Man inna barrel

      Re: Similarly, if you have a touchscreen

      There might be something wrong with my fingers, but I find touchscreens extremely unreliable. I hit the right spot maybe slightly better than 50% of the time. When typing text on a mobile's fake keyboard, this success rate implies a slow convergence toward the intended output, with many deletes and retries. Though I have not proved this, I think a success rate of less than 50% would imply that convergence is impossible. Bear in mind that "delete" is a "key" like any other. I do not have hefty fingers.

      Even worse are LCDs that have a touch screen capability, but you have no idea how it works. For example, I am showing a waveform on an oscilloscope to a colleague, and inadvertently touch the screen. I Did Something. I have no idea what, but it messed up the display. So I reset the instrument, and navigate back to where I was, using "proper" buttons.

      As an engineer, I realise that touchscreens solve a major problem with complex man-machine interfaces. It is quite a major problem to provide enough physical buttons to select all the required functions. An early solution to this for complex electronic instruments was general purpose buttons around the edge of the LCD screen. The LCD displays the function for each of the keys. Large menus would extend over several screens. I rather like this type of interface. At least you know what button you are hitting, and regular tasks can rely on a bit of muscle memory. That certainly is not the case with a touch screen (with my fingers) where you have to check what you just did on every press.

  5. Jonathan Richards 1
    WTF?

    Thank you so much...

    ... for that screenshot with the window almost totally obscuring the sickeningly lurid sddm login screen background which has arrived with the default theme (Breeze). It looks like something a five-year old on acid would generate, and was the first (and so far only) thing I've changed since KDE Neon punted out the new release.

  6. Ian 55

    Cinnamon vs MATE

    I went for the latter when Linux Mint became the goto for Ubuntu users who hated Unity, and stuck with it when Ubuntu MATE happened and Linux Mint had annoyances of its own.

    Where's a good guide to the differences now?

    1. Liam Proven (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

      Re: Cinnamon vs MATE

      The differences between MATE and Cinnamon?

      Hmmm. Could do.

      Straw poll: is this something more people would like to read?

  7. ICL1900-G3
    Headmaster

    Thusly

    'Thus' is already an adverb and can manage quite well on its own, thank you.

  8. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge
    Joke

    Feature Request

    Two-finger swipe up to terminate application

    1. C R Mudgeon Bronze badge
      Joke

      Re: Feature Request

      That would need i18n treatment: in my part of the world, a one-finger gesture would be more fitting. Of course, then there's the technical problem of recognizing which finger...

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