First impressions count, something many vividly remember from the KDE 4 days. How is the K Desktop Environment performing out of the box this time?
A bit about my background: Been using Macs, Windows, Linux, BSD, and KDE during various periods of time, most of the time concurrently. Passionate in all things user interface design, my gold standard against which I measure desktop user interfaces are the Apple Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) from the 1990s , which I still consider unmatched by any other desktop operating system (some details below). I wish every desktop user interface designer would use System 7 for a month.
Reality is that probably most Linux power users don’t live in a Linux world 100% of the time, at least when they also work in a (large) company, have family and friends, etc. For this reason, I think we should think desktop environments in a “cross platform” way for users. So that users who are constantly moving back and forth between Windows, the Mac, and Linux don’t have to constantly apply different mental concepts. For example if all other systems use double-click, then double-click it is.
From the outside
Saw that a new “KDE” version is out. Yes, I know — KDE is actually the name of the community, not the product. But everyone I know calls KDE, well, KDE. Speaking of the community, my impression is that it is a very friendly and welcoming community in which user voices are actually heard, even if they are different from the opinions of the core developers. I find this a very welcome change from some other open source desktop projects. Point in case: Double-click is the default again, just like users (myself included) want. When they say “KDE is not a big company; it’s an international volunteer community, and its software is made by people like you donating their time and passion” that’s not just empty marketing speak. It really shows, and it does make a difference!
Live ISO
Immediately headed over to https://neon.kde.org/download. I really like that they provide an official Live ISO with a reference distribution that contains the KDE software in exactly the way the KDE team wants it to be delivered. This way, I can be sure to see the original configuration as intended by the designers and developers.
Why the ISO doesn’t have the name “6” in it puzzles me, though. I keep lots and lots of Live ISOs over the time, how am I supposed to know a few years down the road that neon-user-20240229–0716.iso is the one with “KDE 6.0"?
Size
KDE neon User Edition comes in at 2.7 GB. I still fondly remember the times when Kubuntu fit on a 800 MB CD-ROM. Since then, size has more than tripled — why? It may be feature creep and the sheer size of KDE, it might be a large dependency trees, or a bloated base operating system. Most likely, a combination of all three. This is not a KDE specific issue, though. All Ubuntu flavors were shipping on CD-ROM once. I think that was a good forcing mechanism for developers to think harder about what is actually needed, and how to do it efficiently.
First boot experience
You can’t replicate first impressions, they say. For me, the total end user experience is what counts. That’s why I like to write down my first impressions whenever I switch something on for the first time. So here we go with “KDE 6” a.k.a. neon-user-20240229–0716.iso.
Plasma
Maybe it’s just me, but every time I read “Plasma” I am reminded of the dreadful switch from the excellent KDE 3 to the strange KDE 4, where the desktop was replaced with strange desktop widgets called “Plasmoids”, the assumption was that users would be using projection tables rather than a screen and mouse, and would be interested in rotating everything in strange angles. No one I know is using their computer this way. From that time onward, I keep thinking “KDE would be really great without this Plasma thing”. Nowadays they are using “KDE Plasma” as the name fo the desktop environment as a whole, the thing most people used to call just “KDE”. Maybe “KDE Desktop Environment” would be the most fitting name. Oh well, the “DE” in “KDE” already stands for “Desktop Environment”.
Simple by default
The welcome center claims that “Plasma is designed to be simple and usable out of the box. Things are where you’d expect, and there is generally no need to configure anything before you can be comfortable and productive”. I applaud this philosophy very much! This is really welcome, especially when compared to other desktop environments that seem to take pride in putting things into unexpected places (e.g., hiding the Dock behind an icon, etc.).
However, the statement is pretty much true for switchers coming from Windows: Menus are inside windows (rather than at the top of the screen where switchers from the Mac would expect them), windows are closed with Alt-F4 (rather than with Command-W), you need to use the Ctrl key (rather than Command), the default button in windows is on the left hand side (rather on the right), to continue searching you have to press F5 (rather than Command-G), the buttons in the window title bar are on the right hand side (rather than on the left), and so on. So if you are coming from the Mac, then this doesn’t equal mean that “Things are where you’d expect”. It would be super awesome if the “Simple by Default” screen in Welcome Center would ask whether the user is coming from Windows or from the Mac, and configuring things in line with user expectations.
Welcome Center could ask whether the user is coming from Windows or the Mac, in order to make sure that “Things are where you’d expect”. I think this would be in line with the KDE philosophy and would increase usability for switchers a lot.
Powerful when needed
Welcome Center points to Vaults, where you can “store sensitive files securely”; Activities, to “separate work, school, or home tasks”, KDE Connect to “connect your phone and your computer”, KRunner to “search for anything”, and Get New Stuff to extend the system with add-ons.
I am one of those users who are typically impatient and don’t read introduction texts in assistants like the Welcome Center. We are missing out, as this one really contains some gems, like being able to launch KRunner by pressing Alt-Space. Sounds very cool! If it actually worked. Instead I get an error message. Oh well. (As a switcher coming from the Mac, I’d look for some kind of “magnifying glass” icon in the menu bar to find this kind of feature.)
As part of the Welcome Center, various applications are showcased. The selection of example applications is a testament to the fact that the KDE community puts the user above politics: It showcases powerful, cross-platform, real-world applications, no matter where they are coming from or which toolkit they are written in. Contrast this with some other desktop environments which seem to pretend that every application should be written specifically for a certain desktop environment.
The Welcome Center asks users to share anonymous data to improve KDE software. They give reasons, show their privacy policy, and let users opt-into the data collection, describing exactly what is being shared. This is how you do it!
It’s improving
KDE developers are listening to their audience, and are willing to correct design decisions when they prove to be unpopular with users. This is a big factor why I think KDE is way ahead of some other desktop environments.
Finally, clicking on an item on the desktop or in the file manager selects the item, as on every other desktop operating system. This is a “proper desktop” and not a phone or tablet, after all, so great to see that finally we have double-click to open again, just like we expect from a desktop. Great!
Alt-Tab works as expected and the annoying Command-Tab (something about workspaces, a concept I never started to embrace) is gone by default (who wants it can get it back easily). Good!
Icons on the desktop work more in line with expectations than in the past. No more confusing plus and minus buttons on icons (I still haven’t figured out what these are for, on a mouse-operated system). Unfortunately, the file manager behaves inconsistently vs. the desktop. In the file manager, we still have those extraneous icons:
I can only suspect that this is a leftover from the time when you couldn’t select an icon by just clicking on it.
Cosmetic idiosyncrasies
In some areas KDE has been defaulting to strange defaults I find quite annoying but could be fixed very easily:
- Shape of the cursor. This shape just doesn’t look right. It looks like a christmas tree about to fall over, not like an arrow as it should. Compare it to the shape of cursor in virtually every other operating system.
- Jumping icon in the cursor when an application is launched. Personally I find this very annoying and distracting. The dock icon should be animated by default, not the cursor.
- Inconsistent, too large text in some places, e.g., the time in the dock should be the same size as the rest of the user interface, especially the same size as the date. Headlines in Kirigami (a KDE GUI framework on top of Qml) should not be larger than the rest of the user interface, and should especially not be larger than the text in the window title bar.
Some dialogs are unnecessary and too busy
When I insert a storage device, I’d expect its icon(s) to show up on the desktop. After all, this is how the desktop has been working since at least 1984. Instead, when I plug in a USB stick, KDE shows a “Disks & Devices” popup with no less than 11 clickable icons in it:
- A “<” (back) icon
- A “hamburger” icon (my least favorite of all icons because it feels like “random unsorted mess” is in there)
- An arrow icon next to it (as if the hamburger icon alone wasn’t enough — but the two confusingly do the same thing)
- A settings icon
- A pin icon
- A CD-ROM icon (for the Live ISO I am running) — I have not inserted that one right now
- An Eject icon for the CD-ROM (I just attached a USB stick, why should I want to eject the CD-ROM now?)
- An arrow icon with some random applications inside it
- A USB stick icon for the USB stick that I just attached
- A folder icon
- Another arrow icon
Eleven icons. And an entirely unnecessary popup.
I point this out because this is actually a big thing. KDE feels unnecessarily overcomplicated in places. Its developers probably want to make things easy, but just adding more and more stuff actually achieves the opposite. “Simple by default, powerful when needed” — make the simple thing the default. Let power users change it if so desired.
It could just “do the right thing” and show the icon for the device on the desktop, like this:
No popups. One icon for each storage volume. On the desktop. Simple by default!
One application menu is enough
Note that as a switcher from the Mac, I have configured my desktop to show the global menu bar at the top of the screen. Why does the file manager have a “hamburger” icon which yet another menu then? And even worse, why does the “hamburger” menu have another (dotted) “hamburger” which seems to duplicate the exact same menu that we already have in the menu bar at the top of the screen?
It’s stuff like this that may seem like unimportant details, but actually determines how polished the product appears overall. Could be more simple by default.
Form over function?
In some areas, a lot of complexity has been introduced presumably to make things look “nice” (which of course is subjective), resulting in unnecessary amounts of code and visual inconsistency. Check the menu bar at the top of the screen, and the Dock at the bottom of the screen:
As soon as you maximize a window, things become normal again:
This is not only causing unnecessary code complexity (probably took the developers a lot of tie), but unfortunately also creates the perception of “wasted space” and visual inconsistency. Can we please have a consistent user experience where Menu bar and Dock are aligned with the edge of the screen all the way, where users expect them, all the time?
When showing just the desktop (without an application open other than the desktop itself), the global menu is empty. It should be populated with roughly the same menus as when a file manager window is open, since the desktop has the same functionality as the file manager but for ~/Desktop.
Key “desktop-y” features still missing
There are some aspects in which most open source desktop environments are still trailing beyond commercial desktops from the 80s. I’ve been wondering for a long time why this is. To me these omissions are really puzzling. These are not unimportant details in my opinion; having them would really make a big difference for open source desktops.
Some prominent examples:
- Persistent icon position in file manager windows: While Dolphin remembers window size, position, and most properties, it doesn’t let us freely position icons in the window, and persist their location (also between different machines). Some Mac users meticulously arrange icons in icon view in a way that makes sense (e.g., README file centered on top, application icon below it, everything else down below).
- Icons on binaries: Opening /usr/local/bin, all executables are missing their icons. On systems like Windows and Classic Mac (and on Haiku OS), icons are resources built into the application executables themselves (rather than separate files that must be moved around and associated with clumsy XDG .desktop files), and hence can always be shown in the file manager (instead of generic application icons).
- Custom icons on items in the file manager: A super simple way to paste custom icons into the file manager for documents and folders (without having to edit any text files).
- Support for application bundles: Application bundles (such as .app or .AppDir) are really useful, because they allow applications to be used just like documents, without the need to install them first. It would be nice if they were embraced more universally, e.g., in the Dolphin file manager.
- File creator codes: If I create one .txt file in VSCode and another one in Kate, chances are that I always want to open the one file in VSCode and the other one in Kate. On the classic Mac, the default is that the application that has created a file gets to open it when it is double-clicked. In KDE, whatever happens to be the default for a certain file type will be launched, no matter which application actually created any particular file. Worse, it seems not even possible to manually define which application is going to open a specific file (only all files of the same type, which doesn’t really cut it).
Open source desktops have largely ignored the need for features like these, making them (in my opinion) still not on par with what commercial systems already had 40 years ago.
How hard can it be?
Will the open source desktop ever catch up?
Configurability
A strong point of KDE is that you can configure almost everything to your liking. It can become a weak point if it gets overwhelming. There are some changes I always make immediately when launching KDE, and I wish could either be made the default or could at least be set in “I am a switcher from the Mac” mode.
- Right-click on the Start icon, Show Alternatives…, Application Menu. A big “thank you” to the KDE developers for providing a relatively easy way to get a global menu bar working at the top of the screen!
- Right-click on the desktop, Enter Edit Mode, Add Panel, Application Menu Bar.
- Right-click on the desktop, Icons, Align, Right.
- Right-click on the desktop, Icons, Arrange, Top to Bottom.
- Right-click on the desktop, Configure Desktop and Wallpaper…, Plain Color, some unobtrusive solid color like a muted blue. (What is important on a desktop are the icons of the items on the desktop, not the background picture.)
- Right-click on the global menu bar, Edit Mode, Add Spacer. Then move tray icons to right-hand side of the global menu bar.
- Start, Settings, System Settings. Unfortunately it does nothing at all, except show the ugly jumping icon cursor for a while. I would like to change: No icons in menus, no icons on buttons, default buttons blue and in the right-hand corner. Window close/minimize/maximize buttons at the left hand side of windows. Alt-W to close windows instead of Alt-F4 (and similar).
Under the hood
There are quite many changes under the hood of “KDE 6”,
Qt 6
Qt, the framework KDE software is built with, recently moved from Qt 5 to Qt 6. While this is a pain for all developers involved (and I hope that Qt won’t do major version jumps anymore anytime soon), it is only logical for KDE to eventually switch over to it. The timing seems right and Qt being Qt, I don’t expect mayor issues resulting from it, apart from the time it took the KDE developers to make it happen.
Wayland
This is the controversial one. Wayland is an incompatible alternative to the widely used X11 windowing system that we have been using since, well, basically forever. It breaks a lot of stuff by design, due to its nature of not being designed as an API compatible nor feature compatible drop-in replacement. Its developers are known for discussing even the most basic features (that have been working on X11, Windows, and the Mac forever) for an eternity (e.g., the ability for applications to set icons on windows, or the ability for applications to freely position their windows at pixel-precise locations on the screen — the list goes on and on).
Unfortunately, KDE is hopping into that bandwagon big time now, making Wayland the default. This means that a lot of existing software will be broken to various degrees. At least, users largely don’t notice major interruptions from the move to Wayland as long as they stay within the KDE ecosystem. Quite an achievement which must have cost KDE developers a lot of time and effort.
Does performance on Nvidia, screen sharing and screen capturing (with sound) work reliably though? Will have to test this on another day. In case it doesn’t, I’ll blame it on Wayland (the concept), not KDE (the software). After all, getting things to work at all under Wayland must have been a giant undertaking for the KDE project, just to get things (roughly) into a state no worse than before the switch. Imagine if all that developer time could have been spent on the missing "desktop-y" features...
Summary
Overall, I am optimistic about the future of KDE. The “dark times” of KDE 4 are really over, and some “controversial” decisions (like single-click to open) have been reversed. This shows that the project is driven by a community that actually cares about its users.
If I share some criticisms of “KDE 6”, it is not because I think that it is bad software. Quite to the contrary, it is in the hope that this kind of feedback is taken as constructive input by the developers, helping them to turn the K Desktop Environment into an even better place to be.
Pros
- Made by a welcoming and friendly volunteer community, not dominated by a big company
- Live ISO available for download from https://neon.kde.org/download
- KDE community listens to its users — double-click is the (sane) default again
- “Simple by default, powerful when needed” philosophy “designed to be simple and usable out of the box. Things are where you’d expect”
- Relatively easy to get a global menu bar working at the top of the screen
- Users largely don’t notice major interruptions from the move to Qt 6
- Users largely don’t notice major interruptions from the move to Wayland as long as they stay within the KDE ecosystem (even though Wayland breaks many things in incompatible ways) — with occasional exceptions (e.g., applications don’t show proper icons on all windows)
Cons
- KDE neon size: 2.7 GB for the (compressed!) neon-user-20240229–0716.iso Live ISO
- No 64-bit ARM version of the Live ISO yet
- Made the immature Wayland the default rather than the proven X11, causing breakage in existing software
- “Things are where you’d expect” not entirely true for Mac users
- Some dialogs are unnecessary and too busy (e.g., what happens when you attach a USB stick)
- Sometimes seems to put “form over function” (e.g., Menu bar and Dock not always aligned at the edge of the screen), causing unnecessary code complexity and visual inconsistency“
- Fra still missing, e.g., persistent icon positions in window manager windows, icons embedded into binaries, custom icons in the file manager, application bundles, file creator codes, allowing to open certain files always with certain applications)
Ideas for (quick?) fixes
- Put “KDE 6.0” in the name of the ISO
- Welcome Center could ask whether the user is coming from Windows or the Mac, in order to make sure that “Things are where you’d expect”
- Fix Alt-Command to show KRunner on the Live ISO. t shows an error
- Fix System Settings on the Live ISO. It does not open
- Fix cosmetic idiosyncrasies that could easily be fixed (e.g., shape of the cursor, jumping icon next to the cursor when launching applications, inconsistent, too large text in some places)
- Remove “hamburger” menus from applications when global menu bar is present
probono is passionate about desktop usability (see his series on #LinuxUsability (part 1, part 2,part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6), has introduced the AppImage format for distributing portable applications on Linux, has started the helloSystem desktop operating system, and is a casual contributor to hundreds of open source projects.
