Plasma needs stability
Yeah, let's not mention Gnome breaking every peace of itself every update, along with abandoning APIs and hating QT apps. How can I use a DE, if I can almost certainly be sure that half of my extensions won't work after another update? Or that all of my QT apps will look weird (if they'll work at all)?
And I don't hate Gnome. It's cool and stuff, but you can't call it stable, 'cause KDE/XFCE/LXDE/[insert DE name here] will be far more stable than Gnome.ITT: people make up fake desktop war drama between gnome, KDE, and window managers
Listen, its FOSS. Gnome and KDE can have different design philosophys, if they didn't why even be different. You can mix and match what you want and need from both quit a bit. The devs do!
All software has bugs, if your not paying devs or summited merge requests all you can do is ask nicely and fill helpful bug reports.
Kinda rich dissing KDE for its "unstability" and putting GNOME as its paradigm, the very DE well known to break every major version.
Sometimes this kind of posts/"content" make me feel like I must be the only person in the world who hasn't had major issues with KDE and it's been absolutely flawless lately, specially since 5 - but I then realize people without issues don't complain. It's the people who have issues with something that make the noise and make it a very big deal (and I'd argue most cases are of the PEBCAK type).
If the need is for something simple and stable I'd shoot for something like Xfce - but putting GNOME as the example of "stability" is nothing but laughable.
I've been using KDE on Fedora for work for a few years now. Several system upgrades staeting from Fedora 36. Recently upgraded to plasma 6 and fedora 40. It is rock solid and very reliable.
And i do use alot of widgets, 3rd party apps, flatpaks, etc.
Plasma has been pretty stable for the last several years I've been using it, especially X11. Wayland is buggier, but not terribly so, and it gets better all the time.
I've switched over to Wayland with Plasma now because it is stable enough for me now, I'm on Nobara.
I don't really use Gnome, so I can't speak to that experience.
If I were to vouch for a DE that is rock stable, it would be Cinnamon. I've never had any problems with Cinnamon. It's not super pretty, and it's a bit clunky, but if I want a DE that just works and gets out of my way, Cinnamon is my first choice.
It's what I use for my business laptop, LMDE with Cinnamon, rock solid.
I should also add that I've always used fully AMD hardware, CPU and GPUs, and never brand new. Always a year or two old, so the Linux kernel has time to address bleeding edge bugs and such.
I think we have to step back once in a while to get a wider perspective.
Both GNOME and Plasma are not just simply desktops. Oh no. They are entire stacks, complete with SDKs, for the user and desktop applications to use. They are orchestrated collections of libraries, services and apps, that together combine to make huge projects.
All of this requires contributions, all of this requires developer time. And in this economy? Open source is taking a kick to the pants.
You also got feature creep and tech debt galore, as well as needing to replace various bits and pieces when things become outdated, deprecated and unmaintainable.
Let's put it plainly though: there's a reason GNOME is reorganising, and why it's all about the money, dum-dum-didi-dum-dum. I think that it would be great if GNOME managed to restructure to facilitate more developer time, because the lofty goals they have set means having to put some elbow grease in it. The same goes for KDE.
Yes, it's the funding issue again. It's all about prioritization. With the economy being what it is, money doesn't stretch that far anymore either.
With all this in mind, I think we should all show some appreciation for the good work of the folks who make GNOME and Plasma. We are given two great options, with each their approaches, that show us what true competition looks like, and they are really giving it their all - despite what some people may be saying.
We should do better to remind ourselves this
If you want stability you can choose Xfce. You'll don't need extensions because of easy configurability.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/watch?v=chPHOJTPWzI
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
It was stable for awhile, but I'm having issues with freezing now.
Sure it has a couple of bugs but it has been super solid. I'm on KDE Neon which is the least stable Plasma distro and I barely notice bugs. Once a month Plasma crashes but it does a full recovery with windows in the exact same places.
Gnome is currently the least stable major desktop. By far. It's an absolute disaster crippled by tons of little bugs that creep in when you least expect them. Even if you don't add anything to it and use Gnome as vanilla as you can get it, it's still going to be problematic.
Plasma has some small bugs here and there -- and there was a point a few years ago when Plasma seemed like they didn't care about bugs and instead just threw out a ton of shiny new pointless features every release instead -- but recently it is incredibly solid in general and more usable than anything else in Linux, by far. One of the only things I find "buggy" about Plasma is when someone tries to over-rice the desktop with tons of widgets and other things everywhere.
Man.... I'm doing to switch to Linux full time soon. I really love the Windows 10 desktop interface. (Don't judge me) It's flat. It's fast. It's intuitive. It's got good ergonomics.
KDE allows me to reproduce that to a certain point using third party extensions. However, KDE plasma has way, way too many configurable options. And I've had my whole interface break just by changing the themes to the ones provided by default. There's too much stuff to configure. It breaks easily too and trying to come back often means nuking your whole home directory and start over. And when you go use someone else's PC, you're almost certain they've modified their desktop to a point you can't even recognize anything.
Gnome is simple to a fault. What you see is what you get. The user is limited to what they can configure but your environment stays the same and you get the same experience from one PC to another. You know what to expect. And it just fucking works.
This is what Linux needs. One single user experience for all. It needs a champion to sell it to normal less tech savvy people. As much I love KDE and QT, Gnome is the way to go.
The YouTuber really grew up. KDE is for Kids. GNOME is for Grownups. Once you realise GNOME is the only professional DE out there, you stop looking back, you stop hopping around like a frog.
To the idiots claiming GNOME breaks or extensions break, I have a few extensions that do not break GNOME, and those extensions are always up to date.
Colorblind Filters, Color Picker, Dash to Panel, GTK Title Bar, Lock Keys, Resource Monitor, Tactile, True Color Window Invert
I will add that KDE is one of the worst DEs as far as performance goes, only second to the likes of Deepin. I have used GNOME, KDE, LXQt, XFCE, LXDE, TDE and few others. GNOME is only second best to LXQt and XFCE, while looking great and not needing to turn off animations or compositor.
Edit: these downvotes tell me Lemmy is simply filled with irrational counter culture normies who live in the delusion that they are the rationalists.
