this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2025
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It's a big abstract to understand, are you trying to say that there are Linux enthusiasts that protest GUIs being made simple and intuitive, and that if they succeed, would-be Linux users will go back to Windows, which is more intuitive?
Maybe for KDE, but just introduce new users to GNOME, that's perfectly intuitive and even looks great!
Maybe I've been using KDE too much, but what's unintuitive about it?
Maybe unintuitive is the wrong word, but for new users the amount of options can be overwhelming, and the UI looks... not very modern by default, lol
How does plasma6 not look modern by default? It's mostly how Windows look like.
Well yeah I know how the defaults look like, really didn't need that reminder?
So what's wrong with plasma6? (Compare it with win10)
Windows 10 wasn't even on my list as it is not a modern OS any more (it has been replaced by Windows 11), but even so it had a better UI, without those weird UI features that just serve to look bad
And of course windows 11 and GNOME improve with even more UI features
Basically, it's not one specific thing that makes KDE look bad, but rather their general approach to design, which seems to be 'we don't care what we're doing, we'll just set the default to something random as we expect users to customise it anyway' which is fine for advanced users, but not so friendly to new users
Clearly, Gnome is the most modern looking of the three.
It might be GNOME or it might be Windows 11 (although of the Linux ones it's still GNOME), but KDE is clearly (subjectively) the most 'programmer art' of the 3
Subjectively, I think, KDE/Plasma would make me unproductive compared to Gnome, maybe not as much as being on Win11 for sure. Both are cluttered and distracting from my point of view.
I am looking forward to niri, because I realized that GTK is the real king that makes Gnome so awesome to use. Niri would make window management even better. (:
A word on new Linux users: I have seen most prefering Gnome, older people tend to prefer the Gnome classic, because they are used to the idea to see which programs are currently running (taskbar). And this makes it easier for me to help them, because it still behaves like a modern desktop.
The KDE/Plasma/XFCE/Cinamon users around me are all long time Linux users. They made a dicision for themselves and know how to use it.
I absolutely love GNOME but had to switch recently due to hardware and software quirks. My primary computer is a Steam Deck and with valve primarily testing their things with KDE and the ability to launch into the Deck mode there was a lot of bugs and quirks happening with GNOME that I got tired of troubleshooting and patch in config files for all the time.
Switching back to KDE, sure I get a better overview of things but I love Adwaita and the GNOME Intuitivity of the UI. Things I needed was there and presented in a very nice non-distracting way. The clean look and the added margins around elements giving a comfortable view of what's necessary is extremely nice to me, all while the rest of the stuff isn't distracting me with buttons and gizmos everywhere. I hope I can one day switch back but the added niceties of HDR and better KDE Connect support that isn't half broken is also quite nice. Loose a little, win a little.
Ok so we went from talking about how intuitive/easy to use it is to how it looks. Looks are much more subjective and also depend greatly on theming even if it's just using a light or dark theme.
Back to the original question of is it intuitive. For a windows user trying Linux for the first time, most would prefer a DE with a start bar on the bottom by default, some might prefer the look of older versions of windows. (Remember that widows 8 and 11 had/have terrible adoption rates). And others really won't care much but will just want to be able to quickly find their apps.
I was a windows user for a long time. I only stopped at windows 10 cause I was sock of ads and candy crush soda saga acting like it was a core component of the OS. When I ran windows 8, the first thing I did was install an app that made the start menu look like windows 7. When I first tried gnome I'm 2012 it was so weird. It felt like if apple had made windows 8 with a side dock and a start button that took over the whole screen and these large buttons with a lot of wasted space with long transitions that my computer couldn't really render.
I switched to XFCE and loved it, thought this was more windows like. It did seem to be lacking some features and didn't look as modern but it was so much easier to use i liked it more. then I switched to KDE and thought this is what windows wants to be. I also loved all the settings that were configurable and how much control I had over the look.
I still use gnome for work (gnome DE is required) and have KDE on my personal and I got to say how much more productive I am with KDE over gnome.
Wait what's wrong with KDE? I'd think a windows user would be more comfortable in KDE than GNOME any day.
idk about others, but for me, KDE feels unpolished. Besides breeze, nearly every theme feels or is unfinished. Now, gnome is also pretty finicky to theme, but in the end i had some pretty uniform and fully featured results which I haven't been able to replicate on KDE. Also extensions on gnome are pretty neatly implemented. The only downsite do gnome is how stingy they are with Wayland (No server side decorations and other important features)
Not just GUI, but that's a prime example. A good one would also be the whole debate about warning measures in apt so it doesn't just happily remove essential system components like xorg. That debate came up after LinusTechTips' video where Pop!_OS became unusable as he tried to install Steam. Good example as countless people blamed him for "executing commands he didn't understand", he as well as System76 were flooded with hate for "making Linux look bad". Which, well, in that case it absolutely was as there were no safeguards or structures preventing either a wrongly configured package to be published in the repo, nor for the user to not remove essential parts of your system with a command that isn't specifically about them (
sudo apt install steam). Anyone who's arguing that more of the Linux software stack should aim to be more stable and accessible usually gets hated on, and people who're new to Linux but also say they don't want to get into PCs but just use it and for it to work are getting alienated and in some cases outright attacked.Windows obviously isn't really more intuitive compared to a fully working Gnome or KDE environment except for people who already know it for decades. That's not what it's about in this case though, but people who expect literally everyone to spend weeks and months learning about concepts, commands and structures in their computer that by now is second nature to them but not interesting to many others. It's xkcd 2501 in a nutshell, but with toxicity sprinkled on top. Common users mostly have to stay in certain corners like the Linux Mint forums to consistently have a good time, and it really sucks.
Linus had to override a warning message so serious that he had to literally type in "Yes, do as I say!" -- including the exclamation point! -- in order to force it. Quit your bullshit.
Should've been more verbose with that argument.
Yes, there was that single safety measure. Will this single thing with the white text next to hundreds of other rows of white text create sufficient awareness to discourage someone who was 1. told by the internet that "this is the solution!" and 2. has no notion about the severity of this action given they've nothing to compare it to except systems (and the web) that constantly cry for attention? Lol no, absolutely not.
There's a good reason fatal warnings are almost always red or yellow and there are literally pictograms of human skulls in warning signs. People will not understand some white text next to a ton of other white text (that's utterly incomprehensible to most of them, raising the tendency of people to disregard all of it) paired with something akin to a captcha as the fatal warning it was meant to be. That is not how (a majority of) humans work. The warning as it was back then provided no sufficient safeguards for newcomers, yet gave people sufficient reason to blame them. Although, and that's the worst part, they have to be applauded for even featuring a warning at all.
The argument that came up afterwards was about exactly this, making the warning adequate and sufficient so even if the information on the internet said they should execute this, people are still being made sufficiently aware so they're more likely to stop despite feeling that whatever they want might be just around the corner. But of course there'll always be some people who prefer to call others stupid for their lack of experience or mistakes, especially if they want to protect something from criticism they identify with.
My previous statement was bad, but I stand with the opinion about the whole debate from back then being a good example.
You are contradicting yourself.
I mean this is the most respectful way possible… You are looking for a walled garden that protects its users. Linux is not that, never has been, and probably never will be. There are other options like Windows and MacOS that fill that role.
There are some extremely toxic members of the community but your complaint comes from the way Linux runs. If you/they don’t like how it runs then why are you forcing it?
I already admitted my previous statement being bad.
No, I don't. There's a difference between a walled garden and a safe environment, the word itself even says it. Windows, iOS etc. outright build closed boxes you can't escape. The Linux community rightfully doesn't like that, but to a degree where we hardly even have proper safety rails next to cliffs and either no or insufficient warning labels next to exposed 11kV powerlines. Yet we expect people who don't know what they see to not hurt themselves and instead stand still and study books for a few weeks. Even worse, in an attempt to keep answers as universal as possible the correct answers often are that "it's easy, just hook up X to the 11kV powerline" (equal to editing grub.conf, xorg.conf, or anything else that could literally kill your system or user-essential parts like the graphical interface).
I'm so fed up with the notion that any change that adds safety rails is seen as building walls. Just because you have to add "--no-preserve-root" to delete your root folder you're not prevented from destroying your OS if you want to (people seriously argued against this change). Improving the apt warning so humans pick it up is not a wall either.
You seem to know a lot. So why not make those changes yourself? If you want bigger flashier warnings then do it. There is nothing stopping you. Depending on your skill you could have had it done in less time than you spent on this meme and thread.
I’m not trying to be argumentative but you sound like you want the linux community to build what you want and disregard their own wants. In addition, you want the community to be extra super nice to you when they do it. The sense of entitlement is astounding.
Whatever you need to tell yourself about people voicing criticism the community culture to shut it down. I'm already contributing to the best of my abilities, so please stop with the "just fix it yourself" nonsense. Not even professionals like Torvalds would have the ability to to all that. Hell, not even companies can; System76 ends up creating a whole new DE because the cultural and structural issues with Gnome were so severe, and they're working on it for years now (arguably they could've moved to KDE, a new DE without old baggage might be a good idea though). Some parts of the Linux community even are so toxic they're famous for ripping each other apart regularly, like the Kernel devs.
It's this whole culture and the bad decisions it causes I'm criticizing. And the only way to change anything about such a thing literally is to loudly criticize it, and to introduce new people with new perspectives. Who unfortunately more often than not get alienated by all the toxicity.
To change the warning? Are you serious? That’s basic stuff. Like really basic.
I don't really have social circles that show of Linux elitism. While on public spaces and have the time and energy I try to help out as best I can in a respectful manner and make sure not to get frustrated or annoyed at peoples need to learn things. While I haven't encountered the elitism myself I can obviously see why it would be extremely off putting to encounter it as a new user and it saddens me a bit to hear about it.
I have a few local friends who wishes to give Linux a go now and decided to hook them up with containerbased systems, in this case since they play video games I chose to give Bazite a go for them specifically for the reason that ruining it with modifying installed packages is going to be harder. I don't mind helping them out myself however and have found the bazzite community pretty forgiving as well luckily.
Gnome 2 sure, modern not so much. I mean when useful features are cut from the GUI it just means it's harder to actually do things. Like removing "open in terminal" made non-GUI stuff more difficult (esp. w/complicated directory).
I'd say XFCE or Cinnamon or anything else like those are better.
What's wrong with Gnome Shell? It looks very sleak and modern albeit really hard to customise.
I guess I would boil it down to: I'm not using Linux on a touchscreen and am unlikely to any time soon. I'm not even sure if/when I'll ever go beyond 1080p (and a small screen at that) because cost.
I don't want a dock or full-screen apps menu. I don't want to fix those (or missing features) using extensions. I do want to customize things*, but otherwise I don't need my desktop to look new or exciting.
* I even made my own hyper-minimal XFWM window theme (which is honestly unneeded for maximized applications due to my XFCE settings anyway, but it does allow me to have a rolled-up music player always visible like an old-internet music widget).
I found gnome so unintuitive that i ended up switching to a different shell to uninstall it because I couldnt figure out how to close that app selection menu thing. (Though maybe I'm just bad at figuring out UX flows that are intuitive for most, seeing how I also despaired as my prof handed me his macbook for my thesis presentation and I didn't manage to open the file, though tbf there I couldn't even try to google it and was already nervous)
I'm sure it's not hard once you know but any UX flow that isn't already familiar can cause issues like that. Which is why KDE will feel much more friendly to the average windows user since it works the same way for the most part.
Did you follow the tour?
Gnome requires a different way of thinking. It works great for some but if you come from a long Windows/Mac background it probably is to much of a culture shock. It is not for everyone and that's ok.
Fully guilty of not even knowing there is one. I kinda just poked around installing DEs until I found one I liked.
It's definitely the windows background for me though, gnome is just entirely different. Not saying it's bad, but the people we're trying to convince to switch usually have just as much of a windows (or sometimes mac) background, and often less willingness to learn.
Honestly most modern Linux software is fine.
I personally like gnome but I think the key with gnome is you need to learn the workflow. If it works for a user it feels very natural and clean but if you want something that's close to Windows or Mac gnome isn't it.
It's hard making things simple, it requires research with focus groups, constant testing, firm guidelines based on the results.
They've done a lot of that in the middle 90s to middle 00s, when after things moving fast most GUIs were so atrocious it was just necessary. Thus classic Windows versions and classic MacOS (till 9) and Amiga Workbench and even Windows XP are very usable. Even OpenLook and Motif are not so bad.
Today we have a lot of network effects and inability to just drop something we hate to use, thus the market incentive for a similar widespread optimization of GUIs doesn't form.
So - both KDE and Gnome today are horrible, but Gnome folks are at least trying very hard. I generally like KDE more, but their ergonomics were always overloading me as an ASD person to the degree of being exhausted by 15 minutes of using it.
Gnome is less overloading, but - use of titlebars to show custom controls for every application is good for wow-effect, but bad when you want to expect only one function from titlebar in every application. And the paradigm of Windows taskbar or Motif icons or something else for hidden windows being indicated and immediately accessible is good. If they don't like taskbars, they could add something like iconbox in TWM or old FVWM or such. And a more Spartan (like usual) application menu.
TLDR, between imitating Apple/touchscreen UIs and ergonomics Gnomers have to make a compromise, or pick one lane. Right now it's quite irritating when in some place they pick the latter and in some the former.
I think KDE and Gnome are much more user friendly than Mac or Windows. They just work and the UI tends to be fairly consistent and clean. I think this is due to foss and not having to worry about saving money by not fixing things.
Than today's Mac and Windows - sure. But take w2k or macos 9 - and hell no. Those are much cleaner and more consistent.
Evil or not, w2k is something everyone should thank MS for, it's really how it should be.