Funny, back in 2006ish, KDE development was stalled, and it was a janky, inconsistent mess. Everyone hated it and used Gnome, which had a simpler design and was far more stable and smooth.
KDE3 languished and lost a lot of users because they were so focused on the KDE4 migration. Then KDE4 came out and it was resource heavy and "overly aesthetic" so even more people jumped ship.
Meanwhile, GNOME did the exact same with GNOME3 even harder, but people had in their mind that the community would fix it or that KDE just had to be worse.
KDE kept trucking along; optimizing things, cleaning up and addressing complaints, not ballooning resource usage, etc. So now they're the refined and lighter option, while GNOME is overly opinionated and resource hungry. The only complaint I hear from non-user's today is that it feels old/last gen. But that's the appeal to me, I don't want "new gen" if it means touch oriented interfaces and dictated themes with overly simplistic applications.
Yes it was. It was in fact the reason I initially tried Gnome and didn't even consider KDE when I moved away from Mac.
After spending ages finding extensions to make everything work the way I wanted to an upgrade appeared and some of them broke. I then tried KDE Neon as a live image and I was like wow, this is nice right away. And what's better, I can really make it my own, configure it the way I want to. Without having to install any extensions. That feels so welcoming after using Mac for more than a decade.
However yes in the early '00s it was an inconsistent mess I'm terms of UX. Very similar to early Android in fact. It was why I moved to Mac back then.
A lot can change in that amount of time and apparently has. Also, as you're very likely aware, KDE runs on macOS, though idky anyone would want to do that. It certainly wouldn't draw anyone back from FreeBSD. The best and worst parts of macOS are BSD — best because there is a BSD userland, and worst because it's inexplicably outdated.
deaddodo|2 years ago
Meanwhile, GNOME did the exact same with GNOME3 even harder, but people had in their mind that the community would fix it or that KDE just had to be worse.
KDE kept trucking along; optimizing things, cleaning up and addressing complaints, not ballooning resource usage, etc. So now they're the refined and lighter option, while GNOME is overly opinionated and resource hungry. The only complaint I hear from non-user's today is that it feels old/last gen. But that's the appeal to me, I don't want "new gen" if it means touch oriented interfaces and dictated themes with overly simplistic applications.
wkat4242|2 years ago
After spending ages finding extensions to make everything work the way I wanted to an upgrade appeared and some of them broke. I then tried KDE Neon as a live image and I was like wow, this is nice right away. And what's better, I can really make it my own, configure it the way I want to. Without having to install any extensions. That feels so welcoming after using Mac for more than a decade.
However yes in the early '00s it was an inconsistent mess I'm terms of UX. Very similar to early Android in fact. It was why I moved to Mac back then.
Maursault|2 years ago