The final release of the GNOME 45 desktop environment is expected on September 20th, 2023.
Not long to go now. :)
I always look forward to new Gnome releases, and I still switch back and forth between Plasma and Gnome all the time…
KDE: we have compositor crash recovery in testing
Gnome: we broke the extension interface, again
Apparently so, but I’m happy to say it’s never given me a reason to care.
There isn’t an extension interface beyond load/unload. It is arbitrary JavaScript injected into the shells process. No stable api existed.
You can dislike that but it’s also why extensions can do literally anything and are very powerful.
I was always a GNOME guy. Not sure why really, maybe it was the state of KDE3 vs GNOME2. Never really looked at KDE again and assumed there is a reason all the popular distros pick GNOME. then 3 years ago I tried KED, and was blown away. Now I’ve completely flipped my position on it.
And it look until like 5.14/5.15/5.16 for Plasma 5 to finally be stable enough IMO.
The memes of Plasma being unstable and buggy were very real.
Comparing the first Plasma 5 release to 5.27 would be night and day, it went from being straight up unusable trash to a competent, powerful, mostly stable experience. Such a massive improvement.
I’m glad they’ve postponed Plasma 6 again so they can get things right. Plasma being buggy for so long is what caused Gnome to supplant them in the first place, they’re right to try to shake that image.
Gnome provides a more consistent user experience because Gnome apps usually have fewer features and don’t offer many customization options by default. KDE apps usually have a lot of settings and customization options, but the user interface might be a little less intuitive or you may have to search in a settings menu to find what you’re looking for.
In my experience Gnome is pretty, intuitive, and well integrated, but I tend to settle on KDE Plasma because KDE apps often have more advanced functionality and more options for configuration. If you’re the type who likes to explore device/app settings to configure things exactly how you want, then consider KDE Plasma. If you’d rather have a minimal but consistent experience out-of-the-box without any tinkering then Gnome is probably the better choice for you.
Honestly for me it’s very subjective. With GNOME, I need to install and configure a lot of extensions to get it to work the way I like. I was surprised how many of these small tweaks and features are already part of KDE. Out of the box it’s a lot closer to what I want and the rest of the small customizations I want are just right there in KDE as options.
With GNOME extensions I always have to wonder “which crappy extension broke now, and what is the new one everyone is moving to/how to fix it”.
Just generally a lot less headache for me. I also could swear it’s more performant and generally feels snappier, but it’s so hard to tell on modern fast hardware anyway.
GNOME = iOS where they make decisions for you
KDE = Android where it’s completely customizable
Based on my (limited) experience, Gnome is especially well suited for people new to Linux or inundated with too much to worry about customizing a DE.
Personally, my desktop runs KDE and I’ve spent hours researching/customizing it, while my laptop which is a glorified web browser, runs GNOME
KDE: we have compositor crash recovery in testing
I’ve been using GNOME on Wayland for over 5 years and I can’t recall it ever crashing. Hangs and freezes, yes, but not a full crash. I guess the fact that users feel the need to track “crash recovery” as a feature is indicative of KDE’s stability.
I’ve been on Gnome for few a months now, and have already had plenty episodes of it freezing, or crashing, or not coming back out of sleep, or dropping to the login screen with all my programs gone.
KDE is nowhere near as bad as it used to be for bugs and instability.
Don’t get me wrong, IMO Gnome is still substantially more stable and bug-free, but you’d be surprised how much more stable Plasma has become over the past year.
And unlike with Plasma 4 and early Plasma 5, for Plasma 6 KDE actually seems to want to have it be a fairly stable system on release. They’re moving in the right direction.
The other day I was on KDE on steam deck desktop mode and could not wake from sleep, not sure if it’s a KDE thing or steam os thing though.
If you need to use extensions that completely break your user experience each GNOME iteration, just don’t bother using it.
