Trying Plasma for a bit to see how green the grass is as a longtime Gnome user. The last time I ran Plasma on my main desktop was version 5.11, I think? It's been a while...
this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2025
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How is it??
I last used it a little while back but there were some issues with polish. I'd like to come back and check it out again now that there's been a major update if I remember right
I love the GNOME user experience and apps (I know many don't, that's fine) but don't so much love the way GNOME as a project often struggles to play nicely with others π
I'm amazed by the level of polish overall, I've encountered very little jankiness that used to be super common with Plasma when I last tried it. Plasma feels like a really mature desktop now, which is awesome. I'm running Plasma 6.2 at the moment, and I think 6.3 is right around the corner as well.
My problems so far are more subjective. Gnome may be a very opinionated desktop, but I happen to agree with most of its opinions. Gnome's workspaces feature is miles better than Plasma's virtual desktops, which feel tacked on in comparison. I'm still trying to tinker with this to make it work for me, but honestly this seems like the thing that will push me back to Gnome if I don't find a workflow I like.
KDE obviously has more features overall though, HDR support happens to be the one that I'm interested in at the moment since I've been toying with the idea of buying a new monitor.
As a long time KDE user I have to agree with you.
I hated the turn things took from Gnome3 onwards but I really like the "workspaces per demand" feature of it. It makes much more sense than having a static number of virtual desktops.
Though I concede KDE did not do much about virtual desktops but concentrated on activities instead - but it seems like with Plasma 6 they are backpedalling on that as it would require integration from everyone, most of all non KDE apps to make it make sense.
Do not even get me started on not being able to set a different wallpaper for each virtual desktop.
I recall there was a kwin script somewhere to emulate the dynamic virtual desktops thing, but that would be much better if it was an upstream feature.
Plasma's Activities are more like workspaces than virtual desktop is.
Virtual desktop doesn't segregate running applications and all the rest of the things you can configure in Activites like wallpapers and themes. I much prefer it for organizing my, well, activities when I have a bunch of tasks on the go. I can run an activity for coding that's distinctly different from personal tasks and I don't see the programs in the task list from other activities.
It's almost like running another plasmashell on an alternate TTY but I can move running applications between Activities or have them show up in multiple Activities, or always have them open on a certain Activity that I've dedicated to that app. And I can distinguish between them easily at a glance because I might have an entirely different Global Theme, ~~panels~~ and widgets applied to that Activity
Protip: set a shortcut for switching activities to Meta-Tab and it makes it way more likely to use.
Better?
We have fixed the internet.
am i doing it right?
too late to stop it now.
the things I wanted to do required a non-standard dock (latte?), but made activities so much nicer.
my dock only had icons on it that reflected the current activity, my backgrounds were different, all the tools for the specific activity that I was doing were immediately available, but weren't cluttering up the dock when I switched to other activities.
activities really are sweet, I'm sad to hear KDE is backpedaling on them.
That said, I've been using Gnome because the blended workflow of interacting with desktops, searching for applications, and working with open applications in the overview is just as sweet as it comes.
Well, they haven't let it go yet, I think it really just takes people keeping up usage and following up bug reports. Latte dock wrapping up did put a wrench in things, because panels aren't Activity unique, unfortunately. You might be able to bodge something with widgets that works since those are per-activity still.
And I just can't swing Gnome, there's so many things about it that piss me off within minutes of booting into it. If Plasma went away tomorrow, I'd probably have to make do with XFCE or Mate.
I believe there's an extension for plasma to automatically create and destroy desktops based on need like gnome but I haven't used it.
I haven't really used them since I don't have any reason to, but perhaps Plasma's "activities" would be a better substitute for workspaces?
Thats honestly really exciting to hear, I'm curious to give it another try again. No idea if I'll ever switch from GNOME, but it makes me happy to see the project doing well
How is it? Well it feels like an environment where developers actually care about users. I love it.
Happy for y'all! I'll have to give it a try again sometime soon