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A comment on The Decline of Usability. Parent comment

Re:The Decline of Usability by brabel on Saturday April 18, 2020 @04:58AM (#22906307)
I was on the same boat and decided to install KDE Plasma. Very very happy with the result, the UI dark theme is very beautiful and all shortcuts and UI elements work the way "old" UIs did (unlike freaking Ubuntu 18 and 19 which changed everything for 0 reason).

https://kde.org/plasma-desktop

It was quite easy to install and everything worked out-of-the-box. I just customized some widgets, the dark theme, icon colors and now it looks amazing. Best Linux desktop I've used so far.

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Re:The Decline of Usability by tannhaeuser on Saturday April 18, 2020 @06:10AM (#22906650)
I've been on the brink of installing KDE many times over the years. What held me back was that screenshots always displayed bulky window decorations which I have no use for on a 13/14" notebook. Also, for space efficiency, I want global menus period. I think Ubuntu pre-18 with Unity got a lot of things right - a lean UI getting out of your way and yielding space to actual apps. I can do without the collection of desktop apps for either Gnome or KDE - on Gnome the file manager is particular anemic, on KDE it seems too Windows-y for my taste. And I don't use Gnome's mail app or video player but rather "best-of-breed" apps like Thunderbird and VLC anyway. So I guess I'll be looking at lightweight DEs/non-"DE"s going forward (but I'll give KDE a try for sure).

It's sad because gnome worked very well for me so far, and I've actually seen Ubuntu becoming the mainstream choice for freelance dev teams at many places over the last couple of years. I do feel guilty to criticize other people's hard work given for free to me without constructive criticism but as far as I'm concerned gnome shoots for a future and audience of desktop users that just isn't there when IMHO the goal should be to preserve what precious free desktop apps we have and not making app development any more difficult or gnome-centric.

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Re:The Decline of Usability by sirn on Saturday April 18, 2020 @10:25AM (#22907968)
You can create a Unity-like look and feel in KDE Plasma 5 relatively easily[1]. Although the look and feel is only part of the experience, KDE Plasma 5 is very customizable that I'm sure it could be adapt fit to most workflow.

Despite its bad reputation in early days, KDE Plasma 5 nowadays is very lightweight. As in, the resource usage is pretty much on par with Xfce.

[1]: https://userbase.kde.org/Plasma/How_to_create_a_Unity-like_l...

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Re:The Decline of Usability by brabel on Saturday April 18, 2020 @05:49AM (#22906539)
Just to make it clear: after I posted this , I did some research and it turns out I am using KDE Cinnamon actually... I installed KDE, and now I have options when in the login page to select which "session" I want: Ubuntu, Unity, Plasma, Cinnamon, Wayland... I have Cinnamon by default, and it is indeed my favourite... Plasma seems very cool, but too different from what I am used to... I might play with it later when I have more time though.
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