Should you use KDE Plasma instead of GNOME?

short answer: yes definetely
long answer: watch the video

Nicco what distro do you thing is better with KDE Plasma and also what distro has lower CPU and Ram consumption ? Thank you!

Its ro right. A would like to have gnome, but with apps from kde. And some settings options form kde. And some ui elements. Basically, I want to kde with something like gnome workflow.

i really like KDE plasma and use it but a have a few frustrations with it.
1. KDE partition manager sets the owner and group as root anytime i format a drive in ext4 even if i set the permissions as everyone so can't manage it in Dolphin. I have to format it in btrfs which isn't a big deal but it's still really annoying since btrfs doesn't have a lot of the features that ext4 has and also lacks in performance compared to ext4.
2. Not being able to open Dolphin as root, i know the Devs say it because of security concerns but their are multiple ways to run system as root through just text files in the terminal and Rubber Ducky's can easily spoof a keyboard and just type your sudo password in the terminal if they have it. It's my computer i should be able to use it and it all the more frustrating when you have bugs like the one listed above.
3. Their is no way to change a owner or group of a driver/file in the GUI.
4. the KDE settings panel is a mess and very overwhelming at first. i will say it's better then GNOME which has a very beautiful settings panel that is almost completely useless, you need gnome tweaks and a few extensions just to make it usable. but a lot of the options that are separated could be consolidated and just hidden behind an "advanced settings" drop down.
5. Discover has some issues with downloading in the background, a lot of times when i minimized discover it will pause my download or cancel it with out ever telling me.
6. when moving a file the progress pop up appears in the farthest right hand corner of the screen which can lead me to not realizing a file it transferring that popup should be front and center. to bounce off that a temporary file should be hidden until it is done transferring. i have had steam deck owners come to me asking why they can't open the file immediately only to tell them that it hasn't finished transferring.
but beyond those nitpicks i really like the desktop and will continue to use it.

me using cinnamon superior mouse functions: you all suck.

Rocking KDE on Manjaro ❤

GNOME extensions crashed my systems and I like customizing. KDE works for me.

KDE Plasma has a lot of these quality of life features, that actually Gnome wants, but doesn't have. Take media controls on the lock screen as an example. Since years, Gnome mockups include these, but no one ever took the time to implement them.

Instead, they sometimes have these flashy concepts, that change everything around and look fancy on paper, but if you balance the effort for developers to implement and the effort for users to adapt against the use that they bring, you'll have to agree that they are not that efficient in increasing usability (I talk about things like horizontal workspaces or the new Mosaic concept).

While Gnome's strategy to achieve stability is minimal options, KDE's strategy to stability is technical conservatism/being careful when changing something. This technical conservatism is not only a bad thing: Notifications in Gnome for example are broken since years. In KDE, they work fine since the early SC 4 days, and they only got better over time.

A. When I install Linux for family and friends. I installed both The GNOME Desktop Environment and The KDE Desktop Environment.

IB. I've found that some KDE applications don't work well under The GNOME Desktop Environment.

C. For maximum software compatibility I install both Desktop Environments.

D. Does anyone else install both The GNOME Desktop Environment and The KDE Desktop Environment on the same Linux installation? If YES. Please leave a reply to this list of comments explaining why you install both Desktop Environment on the same Linux installation.

People say Gnome is opinionated but so is pushing features on the user like KDE does. Kate is a good example, I don’t need any of these features on this text editor since I will end up installing a more powerful editor of my preference. The plain Gnome editor works just fine for very basic things.

Yes ❤ kde its the best

To answer your thumbnail question directly-- HELL YES--- and dump the other trash.. too much time wasted in the rest..

I'm a COMPULSIVE tinkerer so KDE Plasma forever!!!!!!!!!!!!

used to linux mint gnome, tried linux mint KDE and wont get back to gnome. now Im using neon

Two things for KDE: 1) improve stability on Wayland, KWin hard-freezing (and effectively taking the apps with itself) is a no-go 2) the default Breeze theme is very ugly, Gnome's Adwaita used to be as ugly, but it is much better after modernization

Thanks you for the awesome video! I greatly prefer how KDE looks and feels but it's a pity that most distros default to Gnome.
I kind of wish KDE was chosen more as the first DE option on distros (not as a "spin" or "flavor" but the default).

I've been using KDE since 1997 (or may be 1998) with KDE version 1 in Caldera OpenLinux. I switched to Gnome for a while in KDE version 4 but quickly got back to KDE. To me Gnome is too simple, I want something that I can customize to my heart. Also, Dolphin is the best of the best file managers in the world for me. I like something like Finder in Mac but Dolphin trumps them all.

I'm running Pop and my laptop's fan would often scream at me (often all day) when I used GNOME. Since switching to KDE, while it still flares up, it seems to far less stressful to my machine. I also prefer KDE's panel much better than I do GNOME's. I also agree about the GNOME issue, as the last time I had to make an upgrade to it some of my core extensions just didn't work!

I do also like some of KDE's apps more, like I'm using Akregator for my RSS feeds, KOrganizer for my calendar and Kasts for listening to podcasts.

I tried many distros but BigLinux with KDE Plasma was right for me. Super easy Distro for beginners which works for me flawlessly with Steam and great customization of the DE. I don’t understand the argument that it’s too customizable. It’s only as complicated as you want to make it.

I use live anime wall paper, one bar on the bottom for task icons, widgets for cpu, memory, and a launcher for my most used programs. That’s it. It wasn’t hard to set up and once it looks like you want, there is no need to go any further.

In the end though, use what makes you happy. BigLinux was it for me who is a total noob. But you may like something else and that’s perfectly fine.

Oh, and Dolphin is the best file manager hands down and I’d be sad without KDEconnect.

When I started using Linux it was on a 2016 tablet laptop which is the idea use for Gnome with the layout and workflow options but it still felt like a step back and I began distro hopping just to try a variety of DEs without needing any knowledge on it and I loved all of the distros that used KDE and now I use a basic Arch KDE setup on a spare laptop and I'm thinking of completing removing Windows from my life.

I have both on my machine and use whichever suits my mood that day, and I've customized them both to behave pretty much exactly the same way. While Plasma has all the customization options built-in, some of the settings are hidden away in weird places and I actually had an easier time customizing Gnome to my liking. At present, even with all my extensions, Gnome is actually consuming less RAM than plasma (but a bit more CPU). But there's plenty I love about Plasma (looking at you, krunner!). Ultimately I don't think I could pick a favorite and will likely continue to use both (when I'm not using a tiling window manager lol). One of my favorite thing about Linux is the ability to try out a variety of graphical environments, tweak them, keep my favorites, and switch out between them. I've fiddled with a lot of them and for me Gnome, Plasma, and Wayfire WM come out on top.

no

I DO--- I've tried gnome several times-- installed it 4 times- and I just CAN NOT get use to the "flow" or whatever it's called... seems STUPID to me.. and I do NOT like it AT ALL.

No

Status of 2023:
Use GNOME if you want smoothness & performance
Use Plasma if you want more customisation

Currently Plasma feels less smooth as compared to GNOME & also it is slow to start up.

Back in college I preferred Gnome 2 to KDE. When Gnome 3 came out I used it but wasn't really happy with it. It was very inflexible and clearly going in a direction where if you don't like what they are doing, you can't do anything about it. Very "my way or the highway."

After a long gap of no linux, I'm back and finding I really like KDE these days. Plasma feels far better than KDE 3 and 4 did back in the day and I really like the customizability.

I'm a casual user and about a year ago I bought a XPS 13 with Ubuntu pre-installed. It was my first time using Linux after 10 years or so (in school). So I'm defninitly not a pro user and I'm looking for an uncomplicated out of the box expierence without having to fiddle with the system too much. After using Ubuntu for a while I wanted to try something new, so I decided to try Manjaro /w Plasma. Unfortunately, I have to report that for me it wasn't a pleasant expierence at all because many things didn't work as I would expect. Touchpad gestures like pinch-zooming in Firefox didn't work. Many apps couldn't be found in the app store (later found out that I had to activate flatpak manually), couldn't switch between lightmode and darkmode in system tray menu, no pre-installed power management profiles selectable in system tray menu. I also didn't like the windows-like app menu either, showing me useless app categories instead of just a simple list or matrix of apps. The app-store was unintutive to navigate, not good looking and slow to install apps.
However, I must say I liked how easy ist was to customize the UI according to my preferences with on-board tools and that it already looked pretty damn nice without using themes.
I'm aware that most of the problemes mentioned above can probably solved more or less easiliy with some work. But like I said, I don't want to do that, I want it to work straight away as I can expect from a modern operating system. So I dicided to switch to POP OS Gnome/Cosmic and everything looked and worked like a charm right from the start. So my conclusion is that Gnome offers a more straight forward and uncomplicated expierence, especially for casual users, while Plasma requires and offers way more customization and appeals more to pro users or those who enjoy to modify their system a lot.

how is it that KDE is more performant even though it's more complex? I started off with GNOME but found that KDE was more performant on an older i7 laptop. I do feel that KDE is the more natiural DE for Windows users while GNOME is more natural for Mac users. I use all three OSs but Linux with KDE is my preference.

I don't think it's really fair to compare gedit (or it's recent replacement) with Kate. I would say the notepad-ish kwrite is much better comapred to gedit.

I might be one of few going from KDE to GNOME. I am sold on the workflow and it works for me. There are few things that I miss from KDE, and I would love to be able to combine these into GNOME. I do not have that many extensions installed and enabled (like 4 or 5). I think I get the idea behind both DE, but GNOME speaks bit more to me. Both are very good DEs and it comes down to personal preference.

No, it's still a buggy and ugly experience, experience especially when most apps are GTK

We need a search option in thr file opening chooser. Currently i can only search for things in the current directory but not anything else. If time doesnt let you guys do that its fine, but maybe make some time to have that implemented. Maybe with krunner integration

I love the fact, that KDE lets you do (almost) anything. Digging around the settings can be overwhelming, as a new user; gnome is much simpler in that regard. But if like to make your desktop your own, KDE is your tool. My desktop isn't that traditional either, but I can change basically anything. There are a few feautres I'm missing yet, but they are getting slowly implemented anyway.

I find it funny how people say KDE is broken, but extensions on gnome are a nightmare to manage and find what is wrong with them.

did kwin has an option to assing windows to workspaces? im using gnome right now but i think is time to switch to kde after added this new futures at 5.26. They looks very interesing and this tilling in kde is very nice, but assing window to workspace is very important for me

for me. what the deferent?, iall is ok include windows or mac what the deferent for user ?. but but but about driver , you using kde neon then all be perfect, talking about x and wayland kde neon is the master, event kde KaOS it self can not defeat kde neon,. so my six sense tell me that linux is kde neon(ubuntu based) is the linux represented future os. so yeah you must forcing everybody to using kde plasma. for their best

Biggest issue for me in KDE for now is power consumption while playing hw accelerated videos in Firefox: it is just too high compare to Gnome.
But KDE has great power management in other cases, that is so shame((

This is actually a well-balanced overview of these DEs conceptual differences. Didn't expect that. Well done!

I used KDE for ~15 years until I switched to GNOME 4 years ago. Customization is a lot more first-party in KDE compared to GNOME for sure, so if you like extensively customizing things then KDE is a more suitable choice for you — GNOME can be kinda boring for tinkerers. As for myself though, ricing and stuff was fun only for the first 10 years or so, but now I just want to have my work done, so I've switched to GNOME and couldn't be happier with its stability, predictability and productive workflow.

I've used BOTH-- and HATE gnome-- it's just STUPID to me.. waste of space.. LOVE MY KDE... on everything I've put it on. The ONLY time I liked gnome was the POP OS setup--- and I only liked that because of the TILING which I loved-- but hated the rest of it and LEFT POP due to that .

um using both

I use Plasma because I agree with most of its default configuration, I can easily change the rest. I tried Gnome but feel too clunky for me, having install an extension (that might not work anymore after an update) to have the dock on the bottom, can't use number keys to activate task, feel slower in general.

Kate is one of the reasons for me to like Plasma. I know I could install Kate in GNOME, but I like the idea of having it installed with the desktop environment.
I like the customizability of KDE, but this is becoming less important to me.

The GNOME text editor was indeed called gedit, (I've seen it rendered with either a capital G, a capital E, both or neither) then for a while it was labeled as "Text Editor" (at about the same time they started calling Epiphany simply "Web") but now there's a new - and even simpler - GNOME text editor simply called "Text Editor" (I have no idea how to install it - searching for "text editor" in Discover brings up too many results for me to handle). They did the same thing with their terminal application - the original (and rather simpleton) terminal was called GNOME Terminal and the new one, which is even simpler and has less features is just called Console.

gedit is actually not that minimal - it has a file browser panel and a plugin system with some useful out-of-the-box plugins. It is of course no match to Kate for features but if you can get used to its weird find and replace behavior (which should be familiar to EMACS users, a group I was never included in) then it could be quite useful - so they had to strip it down. If you check the GNOME apps website you can see that all the apps there are about "being user friendly" (which in GNOME parlance means "not scarily full with options") and "pleasing default experience" (read: no other experience).

Read about "Tyranny of the default" (which is an expansion of "Tyranny of small choices" that is even worse).

I love this video because it really is a use case thing. I like to create and work, and as a result i love Gnome because the lack of customization allows the desktop to leave me alone so I can work. This ease of use and distraction free workflow is great for the general computer newcomer or for granny.
But KDE is great for gamers who like to rice their desktops. It's a great introduction to the Linux or BSD systems for hard core gamers or power users. Tweaking the desktop is kind of show of creative ability, and what others do can influence future design choices, especially if a particular element is common with users.
But very good approach, sir. Love it!

About Kate how I can improve vim inputs ? for example I press zz it doesn't center the current line (I don't like writing code at the bottom of the file) ?

kde is by far why better

Small correction, you don't need to install a plugin to get a minimize button, it's a configuration that can be enabled graphically through gnome tweaks or manually through dconf.

I think you should absolutely use GNOME if you prefer its basic vanilla workflow, or if you're workflow-agnostic and willing to get used to the GNOME way. It was made for people willing to adapt to its usage paradigm, and it's really good at it--better than Plasma is if you try to replicate its workflow manually. And vanilla GNOME shell is less buggy than Plasma because there's simply so much less of it.

But if you actively dislike vanilla GNOME's workflow, or you're not the kind of person who thinks about computer workflows at all and just wants something that works generally the way you're accustomed to it working, then Plasma is for you. It was made to be intuitive and traditional, to not force you to learn a bunch of weird new things, and to adapt and grow with you when your needs and preferences change.

The fact that both exist is a marvel of the modern world we live in.

There are actually many more apps made by or for KDE compared to apps made by or for GNOME. Fedora's packages + Flathub show me 210 apps by or for KDE, and 167 by or for GNOME.