I don’t mean for this to become a KDE vs GNOME post. I’m looking at switching to Fedora (because Arch is a pain), and it seems that GNOME is more supported. I use KDE on Arch. What features would I be losing if I were to switch? (ex: toolbar management, KRunner, etc.)
What is painful about using KDE in Arch? Fedora supports KDE as well, just look up “Fedora KDE Respin” it’s just not the default DE.
Any Linux distro that you choose will almost always support any DE that you choose, the difference between distros isn’t that much anymore.
I don’t really use KDE, and if I forgot some really crucial information thanks to correct me.
You can use the KDE spin version of Fedora with plasma 6, or if you love the rolling release of Arch you can try openSUSE Tumbleweed with KDE (you choose you desktop environment at installation).And for what you going to loose if you go to GNOME :
- HDR (you can enable HDR experimental on mutter but not working for me).
- VRR (it’s experimental on GNOME and work for me).
- You need extensions to customize your desktop, its not really a problem but some people don’t want to many extensions (like me).
- Customization in KDE that you don’t find in gnome, even in extensions.
- For Krunner you can use
metabutton to open gnome overview and start typing to find app.
And if you want to try GNOME try to stay the most “vanilla” possible. Some extensions I use :
- Blur my Shell
- Just Perfection
- Rounded Window Corners (need to do some search for each gnome release to find the new version)
I’ve got 20 extensions enabled. There’s no drawback so far. PaperWM is probably the most important one for me.
What I meant was that if he wants to try out Gnome, he should install only few extensions to have a vanilla experience. Then he can install the extensions he wants. I would have said the same thing for KDE or any DE.
“Try first without tweak and when it’s work and you like it, try modify” something like this.
GNOME extensions pick up a lot of slack if you want a dock or something. I also use a quick search/run popup launcher (ulauncher) so I don’t have to dip into the overview unless I want to see all of my open windows or drag things between workspaces.
I’m not really into the whole “which DE is better” thing. I think if you like one or the other you should just use it and get on with your life - trying to prove that one or the other is outright better is a waste of time, DE choice is entirely down to preference.
That said, I really like GNOME - it largely just gets out of the way and allows you to focus on what you’re doing. The overview and workspace handling in GNOME is top notch IMO and everything I want to launch or find can be accessed quickly with hotkeys or other shortcuts. My main beef with KDE is that it’s both too customizable and not quite customizable enough, when I try it every couple of years I inevitably spend a couple of days configuring settings to suit, get annoyed that I can’t quite get it to do what I want and promptly relog into a GNOME session.
Speaking of - OP, if you want to compare the two just install KDE on Arch and start a KDE session from your login manager. You don’t have to pick one or the other, you can try both and compare them before you make your distro switch.
This extension is also great https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/5489/search-light/. It provides the overview search bar without moving everything around like the regular overview.
What you are losing is what you are gaining ; I for one embrace the minimalism of Gnome (even macos feels, looks bloated next to Gnome). There’s only 2 extensions that I add, and they are the vainest ones: the Spinning Cube and the Wobbly Windows.
No, there’s one more: the gnome implementation of kdeconnect, so useful to link your phone to your PC.
Of course KDE has great, great software out there, you shouldn’t be loosing anything by switching, so that’s where I use flatpaks, to not have to pull all of KDE libs on my system over the gtk ones: kdenlive comes to mind.
Embrace the zen. Drop the very idea of spending a week to fine-tune your Desktop to your liking - a gnome install is finished in about 5 minutes, including setting up the best wallpaper ever, the competition-winning KDE 6 Peaceful Tree default background.
Or just install the Fedora KDE spin, really.
The only thing i missed was some KDE apps since they look butt ugly on gnome so you have to find alternatives. Krita comes to mind.
You don’t have Krunner, but when you press meta/start button, you get a text field in the overview that works similar. I used krunner only to start the apps and gnome overview gave me exactly the same functionality. So the thing that changed is keyboard shortcut: instead alt-f2, you would use meta/start and just start typing.
Just try it out and see if there is something you miss.
If you do switch, try to use it as meant by gnome ux, do not force it to be something it is not. This is what I did initially and after suffering for a while (I missed the start menu so used extensions etc) I dropped all extensions and tried to use it vanilla. After a month or two, workflow really stuck and I prefer it to windows and kde. Simplicity of it works for me since I don’t use it for anything but starting other apps: browser, terminal, files, vscode… Also, when you add apps to dock, you can start them with alt-number (this works in kde and windows as well), so even the dock I find irrelevant.
You also get something more in functionality, apps and stability (not that you only lose stuff moving off kde). E.g. accessing Samba shares with smb:// works well in gnome, where you can open movies from the share directly. While you can open the share in dolphin, you cannot open the movie directly from the remote location, you need to copy it first. (At least my experience before plasma 6, maybe it changed…). Another example is gnome boxes for VMs which is great.
Edit: one thing I do miss - systray.
I’m also going to echo the sea of comments praising KDE support on Fedora. I just switched to Kinoite/Fedora Atomic KDE (for the Fedora 40 release) after using Fedora Workstation for about 5 years, and I’ve loved the experience. My only gripes have been from adjusting to an atomic distro, and have had nothing to do with KDE implementation. It seems that Fedora works very well with KDE, though I suppose I don’t have a whole lot of experience with other distros using KDE.
If you want to use KDE with a standard desktop experience, just use the KDE spin (the standard mutable version). If you’re interested in atomic distros (not trying to convert you, it’s very much a personal preference), then they have the atomic KDE spin as well. I don’t think you’ll be missing anything by using KDE on Fedora, and unless you wanted to experiment with GNOME, there’s no reason to really switch. Workstation and the KDE spin are both maintained at about the same level.
Kinoite is looking really nice since my Linux is bugged (again).
It is certainly helpful in preventing issues caused by packages updating, as the whole base image should remain consistent (and you could always just roll back to the previous update from grub if necessary and revert a commit that broke your system). Since you were using Arch, I made a baseless assumption that you would want the ability to modify the root filesystem for configuration, but it was a baseless assumption, so if that is not the case, then atomic distros are great for users that don’t want to tweak tiny things in root directories like /usr. Granted, you can still overlay stuff if you wanted, so it’s not as if you couldn’t tweak stuff in immutable directories, it just requires a bit more work to do on atomic distros.
If what you’re looking for is a standard desktop KDE experience with a distro that is more resistant to breakage, I’d highly recommend Kinoite. It requires a bit of learning, but not a whole lot. For instance, the typical order of priority for installing packages is flatpak (mostly GUI stuff) > toolbox (terminal-based packages like neovim that aren’t already installed) > overlay with rpm-ostree (basically the equivalent of installing through your package manager). The fewer overlays you have, the better your protection from spontaneous breakage is. Of course, there are packages you will have to overlay depending on the situation (like the proprietary Nvidia drivers), but almost everything I need was available as either a flatpak or was practical to install in toolbox (basically a containerized mutable root that lets you install stuff with dnf instead of rpm-ostree). You can add aliases to your .bashrc so you don’t have to type “toolbox run <cmd>” every time, as well. Just be aware that packages installed in toolbox live in a container, and they aren’t intended to be able to break out of the container (so if you open a terminal in neovim, which is installed in a toolbox container, it will open a shell inside the container, not on your host). Containers can access your home directory and a variety of different directories in your system, so this often isn’t an issue, it’s just something to keep in mind (for instance, you can’t enable systemd services on your host from inside a terminal).
