Gnome UI sucks. It is ugly and non-customizable without plugins, or whatever you call that addon that enables you to put your clock on the right... I'm sure the UI makes more sense on a tablet or a phone with touch controls, but I just want to use it on my laptop with a regular monitor and with a mouse (or touchpad).

KDE has sane defaults and looks and feels like Windows UI from the best era. It just works.

"It just works" is the important part. The style doesn't matter a whole lot if things aren't working right. Is this other guy's comment about GTK not a real problem? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45581866

I don't understand that comment. The K-suite of apps is just as comprehensive as the G-suite of apps - most people don't really care or notice anyway. No, I did not notice that Firefox uses GTK - seriously, who cares, and it is even shipped as a snap or flatpak. (I would even say that Qt is far more capable and developer friendly than GTK, so I'd pick Qt over GTK _any time_.)

There is one app that I installed recently, that used GTK and I noticed it - the ProtonVPN Connect UI, it looks a bit funny, but integrated seamlessly in the whole system (KDE) including the tray icon. It just works. What is the problem?

I guess because the defaults suits me better, and the configurability is exposed well and I don't have to load special tools or commands to change stuff.

I used to run complicated setups back in the days, with black/flux/openbox or even enlightenment (16), but now I don't really have the interest or time for tweaking DEs.

I find that Gnome opiniated workflow can easily get in my way. KDE feels more natural and it really grew on me after using it for quite some times.

>Anyone want to share why you currently choose KDE over Gnome?

GNOME is like a tool that was designed to fit the average user so if you are not the average user (like you know the joke where the average person has 1 testicle) then you have to mold yourself to fit into GNOME (or try to hack it with unsuported extensions that might make it more tolerable) in KDE you have nobs to tweak it to fit you smoothly (like for example with one checkbox I can make the Left Alt to be a Ctrl button so i do not bend my hand and fingers to use my many Ctrl+keys shortcuts).

IMO use GNOME only if you are the typical GNOME user, that prefer to bend themselves over and not to adapt the tool to fit . Avoid KDE if too many options cause you some anxiety or buffer overflow.

I switched from Gnome to KDE Plasma because I find it more stable and more integrated since many of the features I otherwise miss are out of the box in KDE Plasma, and you do not need third party extensions which are quite unstable. Also later found out Plasma is much more configurable and personalizable so I xan really fit it best to my orefered workflow. I also find KDE developers listen to their users much more.

I don't want to install an extension which will break next time there's a new GNOME release just to be able to set my clock to '%A %F %R' format.

> Anyone want to share why you currently choose KDE over Gnome?

Just to give you an opposite perspective...I was a long time Kubuntu / KDE Neon user (almost 10 years) and shifted to Gnome couple of years back (Ubuntu 22.04), now running 24.04. It's been very stable and out of the way. I am not sure why people are complaining about UI, for me it's barely visible on my two screens. All open-source and proprietary apps I use run well and without glitch. It took me an hour to get used to the "Gnome" way when I shifted.

KDE is a wonderful desktop environment. It's been a while since I've used it but from what I've seen it grows and improves every year.

Gnome is more opinionated. There are fewer options overall, the core apps are generally much simpler, and it assumes a specific way of interacting with your computer. You can change this with extensions, but if you are dead set on a specific workflow and need to venture beyond a small set of widely-used and well-supported extensions then it may feel like you're swimming upstream.

I personally prefer Gnome because I don't mind trying out new workflows and it ended up being a good fit. But I understand why many "hacker types" would prefer KDE, and (assuming they've ironed out stability and release scheduling issues) I agree with other comments that KDE would make for a better default experience, especially for people coming from Windows.

Thankfully, both exist and you can try them and see what works for you!

Thanks for all the replies! I'll probably try Fedora KDE first in that case :)

Last time I used KDE as my main desktop was v3.x, I switched away once v4.0 was released (at launch it was slow, unstable, and lacked many features). But it seems KDE 6 is likely to fit my personality more than recent Gnome versions.