# kde & gnome desktop feature



## Alain De Vos (Apr 23, 2021)

What feature in gnome or kde make this your desktop of preference ?


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## Crivens (Apr 23, 2021)

None?


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## diego (Apr 23, 2021)

Waiting to test "gnome40" on FreeBSD some day 
The new features with the touchpad reminds me MacOS !!


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## tuxador (Apr 23, 2021)

Plasma 5 /KDE is the best desktop environment in my humble opinion, the user experience is intuitive by default, 

you can tweak almost everything whithout the need to have a CS degree. 
The integration between apps is great.
The default theme BREEZE and BREEZE DARK are beautiful.
Many cool apps made me love GNU/Linux and thus FreeBSD like K3B, amarok (QT3 version), Dolphin, akreggator...


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## Logicien (Apr 23, 2021)

I have try Gdm to boot Gnome and I got 'Oh no something went wrong'. I have try to boot Gnome using Slim and I got the Gnome desktop, why? I don't know. But I know that it take a long time to rich the Gnome desktop from the window manager so, there must be a lot of things to load. After this things have been normal but I use Openbox mainly for the moment with FreeBSD 13, it boot fast. Kde have been abandoned by me, I hate the task bar manager.

A good point with FreeBSD 13 is that Xorg modesetting work with i915kms. It was not working with 12.2. I have gain many FPS using glxgears with modesetting compare to scfb and intel Xorg modules. A drawback is that I can only load i915kms from /etc/rc.conf with FreeBSD 13. With FreeBSD 12.2 I was able to load it from /boot/loader.conf. The time difference when it load is not significative.


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## mtu (Apr 23, 2021)

KDE is _truly_ configurable, down to the order of buttons on your windows, the layout of the desktop pager in the panel and the width of window decorations by the pixel.


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## Geezer (Apr 24, 2021)

Gnome tries to be Mac.
KDE tries to be Windows.


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## tuxador (Apr 24, 2021)

Geezer said:


> Gnome tries to be Mac.
> KDE tries to be Windows.


KDE is much more than macos and windows, and is really fast comparing to gnome and even to xfce.


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## hwpplayer1 (Apr 24, 2021)

I offer KDE to speed up development of FreeBSD with KDE and Qt framework, because it is more ready for embedded devices, and commercial purposes


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## obsigna (Apr 26, 2021)

I choose GNOME 3 over KDE 5 because of Epiphany, which is a web browser with a slim interface to the full fledged original WebKit engine.

I mean the real one, not this blending Blink stuff.


I mean the one with options you need and not the one where you need to turn off tons of options which you don’t need and never did asked for.


I mean the WebKit which shows the pages how it were meant to be displayed and without adding additional stupid frames inside buttons and other elements like Firefox does.


I know Firefox got neither Blink nor WebKit, but its font rendering is the most ugly one anyway, and it takes always at least half an hour to find all the new tracking switches which you want to have turned off.


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## Alain De Vos (Apr 27, 2021)

qutebrowser is not bad


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## hwpplayer1 (Apr 27, 2021)

With Qt almost we can handle any issues, but needs some attention for mobile operating system to run native kernel command line interface


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## Alain De Vos (Apr 28, 2021)

Budgie desktop is also not bad. It like a slimmer version of gnome3


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## sig (May 2, 2021)

KDE Plasma which uses KWin wm is sleek and clean. It is very easy to customize and with "latte-dock" you can have a dock loaded with tons of features. KDE uses Qt.


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## garry (May 5, 2021)

Alain De Vos said:


> What feature in gnome or kde make this your desktop of preference ?


*Plasma* offers a top panel with a global application menu and allows maximized windows to automatically switch to no-titlebar (the window control buttons move into the panel).  (This works well with click-to-focus but not so well if you want a hover focus.)  Check the screenshot for Plasma on this page to see what I mean.  I like the global menu and the good session management with activities (it's easy to resume work on a task and have all of your documents for that task open where you left off).  Plasma supports a systray.  The tiling script for kwin works well enough for me.

Gnome  is ok with the HideTopbar extension and a tint2 panel on the right (see the vertical theme on this page) showing (1) a button to pop up the "activities" overview, (2) a button to show the full-screen application dashboard, (3) a compact group of icons for launching frequently used apps, (4) a systray with quick access to xpad notes and zim notebooks and music control, (5) all windows organized by workspace, (6) a button to open a "shelf" with icons specific to the current workspace -- there is then nothing to see of gnome  

I sometimes run Plasma on FreeBSD since it runs very well but I usually run a more productive desktop using fluxbox + rox-filer panel(s) and file manager.  I use a hover focus and rely on quick access to my xpad notes and zim notebooks via the systray, and ability to open/close a shelf of icons for the specific task of that workspace.  Fluxbox does on-demand left/right tiling.


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## Menelkir (May 5, 2021)

tuxador said:


> Plasma 5 /KDE is the best desktop environment in my humble opinion, the user experience is intuitive by default,
> 
> you can tweak almost everything whithout the need to have a CS degree.
> The integration between apps is great.
> ...


It's pretty sad what they did to amarok, fortunatelly there's alternatives like audio/clementine-player and audio/strawberry (the later is a fork, more actively updated with more features).



obsigna said:


> I choose GNOME 3 over KDE 5 because of Epiphany, which is a web browser with a slim interface to the full fledged original WebKit engine.
> 
> I mean the real one, not this blending Blink stuff.
> 
> ...


Or when you see a broken element and thinks that website is broken, but it opens fine in any other browser.


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## Alain De Vos (May 5, 2021)

strawberry is a good player. It also plays flac.


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## astyle (May 12, 2021)

I don't like Dolphin, but combining it with Konqueror makes for very usable file management.


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## Wens (May 15, 2021)

sig said:


> KDE Plasma which uses KWin wm is sleek and clean. It is very easy to customize and with "latte-dock" you can have a dock loaded with tons of features. KDE uses Qt.


how to enable global menu?


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## garry (May 15, 2021)

Wens said:


> how to enable global menu?


 Add the "Global Menu" widget to the left end of the (top) panel.  It's easier than you thought?


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## debguy (May 16, 2021)

a long time ago when I used to use desktops i liked GNUStep, but used KDE the most GNOME less.  Gnome was slower, less features, behind the times, harder to set up.  that was way back.  I used UEK linux which had gnome3 i think - vesa support - very slow and buggy (not all the point/click worked righ).

i now use no desktop unless "i must".  i use a terminal to launch apps.  done.

but PC are way more complicated than they used to be due to countless hardly supported PCI hardwares frivolously put into the wild:  you can't compile a real PC from real scratch your PC might not even fit all the electrical wiring designs on it.  you wouldn't want all the electrical designs it'd be a burden.

I don't like the "cheap cards without bios will make computing cheaper since software (unfairly distributed software) can drive them ERA of computing".  I don't.

You can only build so much from scratch.  There are things you don't WANT to build even though for security sake you should.
KDE v. GNOME ?

i've never seen gnome beat KDE except for maybe Gnome 1.x.  i admit i haven't thoroughly run down each current version

Gnome 1.x had LISP integrated but that was canceled (didn't GNUStep do that some?) which was canceled.  Gnome 1.x was a little buggy but fast and simple.  People like 1.x over KDE at the time because "it was smaller and smarter and fast and from Sun" and KDE was more "win98 like, larger, etc".  there was an initiative to "resist gnome2/3" and stay with gnome 1.x by some linux community that didn't like new changes like "stuff like invasive DBUS libs required not optional, available from RH only".  not that KDE didn't do the likewise.

I like video and sound working and 0 buttons 0 gadgets.  The apps I use all have integrated widget systems which work whether or not a desktop is run.


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## Alain De Vos (May 17, 2021)

I use lxqt. It feels like KDE without baloo.


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