[HN Gopher] KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)
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       KDE vs. Gnome Design Philosophies (2017)
        
       Author : jhvkjhk
       Score  : 30 points
       Date   : 2021-03-25 13:40 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.ocsmag.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.ocsmag.com)
        
       | danans wrote:
       | After years of trying to make either work like I want, I
       | discovered tiling window managers like xmonad and i3 and I
       | haven't looked back, as I've gained so much efficiency in my work
       | tasks.
       | 
       | I still use a traditional desktop environment for most browser
       | and app tasks, but even there I end up tiling or maximizing the
       | windows using keyboard shortcuts. Dragging overlapping windows
       | sucks and I never want to do it again.
        
         | bmn__ wrote:
         | Don't look back, look forward. You don't need to abandon KDE
         | over the perceived lack of a single feature. It's simply not
         | enabled by default because tiling is esoteric.
         | 
         | Run `systemsettings5 kcm_keys` - KWin and (re)assign keys to
         | the window manager actions you need. If that's not sufficient,
         | then run `systemsettings5 kwinscripts` - Get New Scripts... -
         | filter "tiling".
        
           | danans wrote:
           | > Don't look back, look forward. You don't need to abandon
           | KDE over the perceived lack of a single feature.
           | 
           | It's not a single feature, tiling window managers are an
           | entirely different paradigm that fit my programming workflows
           | so much better. The constraints they impose are actually a
           | good thing for me.
           | 
           | I did say that I use a traditional desktop environment for
           | tasks that are not driven by a text-based environment,
           | although in a way that completely hides all desktop
           | environment provided screen widgets, rendering the
           | differences between KDE, Gnome, XFCE, etc moot. I handle
           | window switching with things like Alt-Tab, which pretty much
           | work the same in every environment.
           | 
           | At some point if I switch to KDE, I'll definitely pick up
           | your suggestions though!
        
       | lallysingh wrote:
       | Does anyone know what KDE activities actually are? Is there a
       | concrete description somewhere?
        
         | troyvit wrote:
         | KDE Activities are a little bit like virtual desktops. If you
         | set up 4 virtual desktops you can tab between them and keep
         | specific stuff on each desktop. With Activities you hit a
         | command key and you get a new set of desktops. It's almost like
         | logging into a new, empty session but you can switch back to a
         | previous activity easily.
         | 
         | I used to use the same laptop at work as at home, so I added a
         | Home activity. When I was done with work I'd hit [windows key]
         | tab and work would disappear from my desktop and all my home
         | stuff would be there.
        
         | space_ghost wrote:
         | They're broadly similar to Workspaces, except you can also
         | apply different panel and desktop configurations to each
         | Activity. From KDE: "Activities are a super-set of Virtual
         | Desktops. They don't replace Virtual Desktops -- in fact, each
         | Activity can have its own set of Virtual Desktops if you
         | choose. Instead, Activities are alternative desktops, each of
         | which can have its own wallpaper, icons, and widgets."
        
         | jp_sc wrote:
         | KDE activities are separated instances of all your desktops. So
         | you can have a set of desktops with open applications,
         | background images, etc. for "Work", and other for "Personal",
         | for example.
        
       | kmarc wrote:
       | I found it interesting that they compare CD burning software and
       | a music player. In 2017 I am not sure how relevant these software
       | were...
       | 
       | I myself haven't used CDs for around 10 years now. And apart from
       | my love of ncmpp, I would also suppose the majority of desktop
       | users would listen to music from a streamer service.
       | 
       | I'd rather had a look on the Settings / configuration dialogs,
       | file pickers (as it's been mentioned already) and other stuff
       | that are relevant (and were relevant in 2017)
        
         | simion314 wrote:
         | For HN terminal app comparison would be nice. I am only
         | familiar with Konsole and I am happy with it.
        
         | AdmiralAsshat wrote:
         | To my knowledge there aren't a whole lot of dedicated apps for
         | streaming services. So the comparisons would be:
         | 
         | - How a Spotify tab looks in a browser in KDE vs GNOME.
         | 
         | - How the unofficial Spotify Flatpak looks in KDE vs GNOME.
        
           | cuddlybacon wrote:
           | So compare apps in other categories which have remained
           | relevent: file browser, settings, calendar, reminders, notes,
           | etc
        
       | d0mdo0ss wrote:
       | A few months ago I switched to gnome since it supports hidpi and
       | fractional scaling, and it's snappy enough but somehow feels
       | bloated in everyday use (ubuntu 20.04). I tried to switch back to
       | xfce with a recent fix for fractional scaling, but it looked
       | fuzzy on my screen no matter the resolution, so I had to abandon
       | that for the time being. KDE was the default at my work and I've
       | used it for many years, probably over a decade. The article says
       | gnome is lighter, but that's not my impression, or maybe I'm
       | missing something with gnome?
        
       | mikece wrote:
       | Is it really still an either/or choice between KDE and Gnome? I'm
       | not a Linux expert but I thought there were more options than
       | just these two. The article seems like it presents a false
       | dichotomy.
        
         | approxim8ion wrote:
         | They're still the two biggest DEs on Linux, and also the
         | flagships for Qt and GTK respectively.
        
         | tetraca wrote:
         | Besides KDE and GNOME (and some GNOME forks like Cinnamon),
         | none of the other choices are particularly close to a decent
         | full desktop experience. They are generally either limited in
         | nature or require you to be one of those people that likes to
         | dig around for hours cobbling together scripts and adjusting
         | the minutiae of scattered, poorly documented config files
         | exactly to their specification. I have certainly done all those
         | things, but of all the people I know nobody else actually wants
         | to basically fight with their machine like that. They would
         | rather want a useful suite of easily discoverable applications
         | that they can use right now, and a couple ways to personalize
         | their machine in a cosmetic manner.
        
           | ip34162 wrote:
           | This is not true. Ubuntu MATE works ootb. Linux Mint Cinnamon
           | works ootb. Both have GUI to install apps. Just like KDE and
           | GNOME.
        
             | mustermannBB wrote:
             | Depends on the definition of "works ootb". For the most
             | part I would say yes but a few little things here and there
             | not, IMHO. It also depends on the distro but "ALt-Tab"
             | through windows across workspaces (virtual desktops) often
             | requires an install of dconf and setting it yourself. Just
             | as a minor example. But that perhaps admittedly is
             | nitpicking. Overall Mate works perfectly fine of course.
        
         | gh-throw wrote:
         | 1) They're usually the best-supported by major distros,,
         | 
         | 2) Most other solutions don't present as much system-config
         | stuff as well as they (or Windows, or macOS) do in the GUI, so
         | you're in for more mucking about in config files, writing
         | scripts, et c. with any of the many window managers (not
         | "desktop environments" like Gnome or MATE or KDE)
        
       | AdmiralAsshat wrote:
       | HN hug of death?
       | 
       | Here's an archive snapshot:
       | 
       | https://web.archive.org/web/20210325135037/http://www.ocsmag...
        
         | lelanthran wrote:
         | Thanks, I thought it was just me
        
       | abrowne wrote:
       | (2017)
        
       | gameswithgo wrote:
       | I'm curious is anyone else feels like I do about these things.
       | I've used linux off and on over the years, various distros,
       | various GUIs, sometimes KDE based, sometimes Gnome, sometimes
       | others. I've _never_ noticed any differences that seem
       | substantive. It just seems like a random walk around the usual
       | gui design space. Which I think makes sense as there isn 't
       | really a whole lot to do there.
       | 
       | Is it just me? Do other people feel strongly about any of these
       | differences?
        
         | ud_0 wrote:
         | I switched to Linux/Gnome from macOS about 3 years ago. From my
         | perspective, they're both frustrating in different ways, but I
         | would be okay using either one. Gnome is too simplistic and
         | opinionated, KDE is too heavy and fragile (but I also don't
         | have a lot of experience with it).
         | 
         | Overall, Desktop Linux works well enough for me to live with
         | it. A few years earlier, that was not an option if you wanted
         | to live a relatively normal computing life without missing out
         | on too much or spending an inordinate amount of time on keeping
         | your system alive.
        
         | jrm4 wrote:
         | I'll go a step further and say that these projects end up being
         | net harmful to the Linux space precisely because they're
         | seeking a goal that the last 10-15 years has proven that they
         | are _not good at._
         | 
         | The goal is something like "a unified Mac-like system space,"
         | but as people here have correctly noted, I don't think its
         | possible to bring a bunch of developers together to create a
         | universally "nice" space unless one of them is named Steve
         | Jobs.
         | 
         | What makes it worse is that we have these two large projects
         | with a lot of good history behind them that nonetheless have
         | not really done anything good (in terms of a unified
         | experience, many of the individual apps are great) recently.
         | They have a lot of the mindshare and very little to show for
         | it.
         | 
         | Obviously, developers are free to run their projects how they
         | wish, but my wish is that they'd wake up and realize they're
         | not Apple; but there is something they could do that would
         | actually be helpful. Not try to work on carving out their own
         | space -- but the opposite -- try to figure out how to create
         | modular parts of a workspace that really work well together and
         | across WMs and platforms.
         | 
         | Until then, I'll do what I've been doing, which is Openbox plus
         | the things I need and like. I see cool things in Gnome and KDE
         | that I'd love to have, but then they bring the rest of their
         | baggage that just gets in the way, so no.
        
         | johannes1234321 wrote:
         | It depends a bit on what you do and use. If you primarily use a
         | terminal, Firefox and thunderbird there isn't much of a
         | difference between those. Yeah, taskbar etc look a bit
         | different but not much.
         | 
         | If you switch between KDE and Gnome apps (kedit vs gnome-edit,
         | kmail vs gnome evolution, KDE dolphin vs. Gnome nautilus,
         | kmines vs. Gnome mines game ...) you see more of the
         | differences in App Design principles.
        
         | EdwardDiego wrote:
         | I'm in the same boat. Switched from Gnome on Pop_OS to KDE on
         | Arch Linux and well, they both work, I guess?
         | 
         | I mean, I'm using Linux to work, so as long as I can pull up a
         | terminal, run Zoom, run my browser, and run IDEA, I'm sorted,
         | I'm not overly fussed about what the MP3 players look like, I
         | can just open Spotify in a browser if I need tunes.
        
         | macksd wrote:
         | My preferences aren't religious-strong, but I have enough of a
         | preference that I installed KDE Plasma on Pop! OS instead of
         | the Gnome-base default. And I've struggled to get the network
         | manager working in KDE which has been a nuisance and never a
         | problem on distros who ship KDE as the default - so there's at
         | least some importance in a distro's default, even if others are
         | available. I've been known to pull up a Gnome version of some
         | application in KDE and vice-versa because of individual
         | preferences. But as a desktop / window manager yeah I actually
         | have a strong preference.
         | 
         | The article actually isn't loading for me, so I'm not sure if
         | these are the same design philosophies addressed, but some of
         | the key things are:
         | 
         | * I find Gnome's dock-like things very annoying. I find it
         | easier to get KDE's task bar to take up a very small number of
         | pixels and I feel it stays out of my way more while I'm
         | focusing on other applications. It feels like Gnome takes after
         | Mac and KDE takes after Windows, and I just prefer the latter,
         | UI-wise.
         | 
         | * KDE is far more configurable for keyboard shortcuts. I use
         | the ability to pin a window to the left / right half, or one of
         | the quadrants using they key-binding of my choice all the time.
         | I hadn't been using KDE for very long when I would miss that
         | every time I was on another machine. Even after being back on
         | Gnome for a couple of years I wanted it. There are some third-
         | party add-ons that do it, but they were buggy for me. I'd
         | rather just have KDE out-of-the-box. This is one example, but
         | keyboard shortcuts in general are for more widely used and
         | configurable on KDE.
         | 
         | edit: Clarified a few things, but also have now read the
         | article: yes I like this "completist" philosophy, especially
         | since much of the complexity is hidden away in drop-down menus.
         | I think it's the best of both worlds.
        
           | mustermannBB wrote:
           | My problem with KDE has essentially been the same now for
           | years. To me, it feels too fragile.
        
           | ip34162 wrote:
           | Try KDE Neon. It has the latest Plasma on top of stable
           | Ubuntu LTS.
           | 
           | https://neon.kde.org/
           | 
           | Also KDE Connect is awesome for integration with android
           | phones. It's available in non-KDE distros too. Available on
           | Fdroid too.
           | 
           | https://kdeconnect.kde.org/
           | 
           | https://f-droid.org/packages/org.kde.kdeconnect_tp/
        
         | simion314 wrote:
         | I am familiar with KDE and years ago when I was in the
         | community I know that most of the apps are just a few unpaid
         | volunteers/developers, in their free time add missing features
         | and fix bugs. There was no big ego designer that had to approve
         | if we add a new menu or feature or any study to decide if a new
         | feature might segfault the brain of some user. Each maintainer
         | decides if a feature makes sense and the design was usually the
         | generic Qt/KDE layouts , no freacking custom widgets that a
         | user can't theme.
         | 
         | I would be interested to hear if there is a major difference
         | between GTK apps that are not part of GNOME and GNOME first
         | apps .
        
         | skinkestek wrote:
         | I am opinionated. To each their own, here are my opinions:
         | 
         | KDE is near Windows defaults, maximum configuration (you can
         | even emulate Mac OS X if you want.)
         | 
         | Gnome 2 was Windows-like and somewhat customizable.
         | 
         | Gnome 3 is Mac-like and harder to customize.
         | 
         | Unity is Mac-like and unnecessary hard to customize.
         | 
         | Elementary looks Mac-like but isn't rage-inducing in the same
         | way for me as they have a working application switcher.
        
         | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
         | Terminal. Check
         | 
         | Web browser. Check
         | 
         | They're the same
        
         | eldaisfish wrote:
         | I do not feel strongly about any of this but i've found myself
         | happier with KDE over the years.
         | 
         | Gnome seems to combine the worst aspects of OSX and windows
         | with some things in side panel, some persistent menu bars, some
         | applications with double menu bars... it's annoying is all.
         | 
         | KDE tends to stick to what i understand and what i want is
         | usually where i expect it to be.
         | 
         | I would disagree with you in that the differences are
         | substantive.
        
         | munchbunny wrote:
         | I've used both Gnome and KDE based UI's, and yeah, I don't feel
         | strongly about the differences, but also I've never felt like
         | either one was actually _good_. They both get the job done, but
         | they both feel designed by developers for developers, on the
         | assumption that anything you can 't figure out in the UI you'll
         | Google or open a terminal and text editor to deal with it.
         | Compared to, say, the iPad 2 which felt clearly designed for
         | lay users down to the settings UI. (I feel like the later
         | versions of iOS got more complex and harder to parse, so I'm
         | picking the iteration I liked the most.)
         | 
         | But then again, it's Linux, I'm a developer, I'm used to
         | Googling how to do things, and I play my video games on
         | Windows, so 90%+ of my time in Linux is in the terminal, text
         | editor (or IDE), and browser anyway. So no complaints - the
         | presence of a fully featured UI isn't why I use Linux.
        
           | inetknght wrote:
           | > * they both feel designed by developers for developers*
           | 
           | As a developer, I disagree.
           | 
           | KDE's interface is often broken and/or unintuitive for what I
           | want to do. At least it usually provides the levers if
           | they're hard to use or find.
           | 
           | Gnome's interface is almost always too simplified and doesn't
           | present the powerful levers at all unless you go digging
           | behind the scenes and hope that an update doesn't break some
           | "private" implementation detail.
        
             | ip34162 wrote:
             | KDE recently improved it's interface.
             | 
             | https://kde.org/announcements/plasma/5/5.21.0/
             | 
             | If anyone want to try the latest KDE Plasma, KDE Neon has
             | it on top of a stable Ubuntu LTS base.
             | 
             | https://neon.kde.org/
        
             | munchbunny wrote:
             | > _KDE 's interface is often broken and/or unintuitive for
             | what I want to do. At least it usually provides the levers
             | if they're hard to use or find._
             | 
             | I'm not so sure that we're saying different things. I
             | didn't mean it as a compliment, more as an explanation. In
             | general developers aren't good at designing UX (not their
             | job), and in general developers are used to often byzantine
             | UX, including falling back to terminal rituals, and both
             | UI's feel (to me) like they're 80% of the way there and
             | left that way because of the tacit understanding that
             | there's always the terminal and text configs.
        
       | lelanthran wrote:
       | I dislike comparisons like this; it's very easy to cherry pick
       | the worst examples of A and the best examples of B.
       | 
       | For example, why didn't they compare the file-chooser dialog? Is
       | the gnome one still unable to display a list of thumbnails, and
       | instead require the user to click on each file to show a preview?
       | Good luck if you are looking for a single image in a directory
       | that has more than 50 or so.
       | 
       | That's a common, daily need all users have - pick a file in a
       | dialog, and yet the last time I used Gnome it was broken and had
       | been that way for decades.
        
       | Jonnax wrote:
       | This is quite old. I think Amarok's Qt5 port didn't get finished,
       | and I think Elisa is the new KDE music player:
       | 
       | https://invent.kde.org/multimedia/elisa
       | 
       | Also CD Burning? I think even in 2017 PCs and Laptops didn't come
       | with CD drives.
       | 
       | Personally, I like KDE for the small touches. Like the file
       | browser having an integrated terminal that follows the
       | directories you're browsing.
       | 
       | If you want to see what the KDE's Design Guidelines are look
       | here:
       | 
       | https://develop.kde.org/hig/
       | 
       | And GNOME's is here:
       | 
       | https://developer.gnome.org/hig/stable/
       | 
       | Perhaps it's worth doing a 2021 comparison?
        
         | _ZeD_ wrote:
         | According to [1] there is a "new" amarok in alpha... but I fear
         | that the steam has gone
         | 
         | [1] https://amarok.kde.org/en/node/890
        
         | bmn__ wrote:
         | > I think Elisa is the new KDE music player
         | 
         | Just installed it. Holy fuzzy fuckballs, what a punch in the
         | gut. There are icons, but no buttons and menus. Can't figure
         | out how to add a music file, so the program fails at its
         | fundamental task. Disabled icons are not greyed out and have no
         | tooltips. 20% of the space is taken away by some blue-green bar
         | with a big honking picture of a CD. The separator widgets
         | between the columns don't change the mouse cursor into a left-
         | right double headed arrow.
         | 
         | What were they thinking? This can't possibly be HIG compliant.
         | Is everyone at the helm asleep? This would never have passed as
         | official project during era KDE 3.
        
       | billfruit wrote:
       | Anyone think that ubuntu around 2011, final days of Gnome 2,
       | really had perfected the desktop UI experience, before all the
       | forays into wanton novelty for noveltys sake made it the
       | confusing mess it became later?
       | 
       | To think that a linux distro had the almost ideal desktop UI
       | realised and then squandered it all away, seems puzzling now.
        
         | gh-throw wrote:
         | I thought they started going to hell when they had that botched
         | too-early integration of (resource-sucking, to add insult to
         | injury) PulseAudio, in... '08? '09? I remember it was back when
         | Flash was still big, and opening Flash content on that Ubuntu
         | release would, IIRC, _crash X_ , reliably, because of
         | PulseAudio, in addition to its general bugginess, lots of audio
         | stuff that had "just worked" for years suddenly being fiddly
         | and broken, and absurd levels of memory & processor cycle use
         | for PA (I'm not sure whether PulseAudio ever got those under
         | control, or we just started using faster computers so no-one
         | cares about the audio subsystem sucking up tens of MB of memory
         | while idle, anymore).
         | 
         | Flash was still big enough that there's no possible way they
         | didn't know they were crashing with it. Zero chance no-one at
         | Canonical had tried it, and discovered the problem. Released it
         | anyway.
        
           | prewett wrote:
           | PulseAudio was the last straw that pushed me to get a Mac.
           | When I switched to Ubuntu, wifi worked, sleep (and more to
           | the point, wake) on my T42 worked, and audio worked. Each
           | release after that something would break, and but you
           | couldn't really work around PulseAudio very well.
        
             | gh-throw wrote:
             | Yeah, I had no idea PA was even a thing (and I guess it
             | kinda wasn't yet, which is part of why the release was so
             | rough) so that was a rude surprise when my whole system
             | just... broke, on upgrade, in a ton of ways that they _had
             | to have_ known about. Especially when it was over audio,
             | which was the one part of Linux that hadn 't given me any
             | trouble whatsoever since like 2002. I still kinda hold a
             | grudge against Ubuntu and PA over that (in the case of PA
             | it's also because, I'm pretty sure between that and
             | SystemD, Poettering and I have _very different_ ideas of
             | what an appropriate level of engineering design-quality is
             | for fundamental system components, and what quality design
             | looks like--in fact I 'd say he's the _main_ reason I 've
             | become more distant from Linux over the last ~decade)
        
             | ip34162 wrote:
             | PipeWire (from the guy behind Gstreamer) is coming. Seems
             | like it won't be anything like PulseAudio. The future seems
             | exciting.
             | 
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PipeWire
        
               | majewsky wrote:
               | There was an LWN article about PipeWire [1] a while back.
               | Among the interesting parts of the article was an
               | explanation for the PulseAudio debacle, and why PipeWire
               | likely doesn't have the same problem. Basically,
               | PulseAudio exercised several kernel APIs that had existed
               | in ALSA for a long time, but had not been used widely.
               | Hence it uncovered a ton of bugs in device drivers that
               | were not tested against applications using these function
               | calls before. By now, all those bugs are fixed because
               | PulseAudio is widely used. PipeWire is using mostly the
               | same APIs as PulseAudio and Jack, so it's not going to
               | have the same troubles as PulseAudio.
               | 
               | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26327779
        
         | ptsneves wrote:
         | I disagree. Gnome3 for me is perfect. I think tastes are tastes
         | but gnome 3 gives me the function as well aesthetics.
         | 
         | The zoom out functionality to show all windows open is
         | essential given i have a lot of windows open at the same time.
         | Alt-tab icons are a huge cognitive load.
        
           | dorfsmay wrote:
           | I agree. GNOME 3 stays out of my way.
           | 
           | Good dynamic virtual desktop.
           | 
           | Windows key (or Alt-F1) to see all open windows.
           | 
           | Windows keys + typing to start an app.
           | 
           | I don't understand why Tweaks is not part of GNOME vanilla,
           | but it's easy enough to install.
           | 
           | I have to work on Windows and Mac OS when working for some
           | customers and that is an absolutely miserable experience for
           | me.
        
           | BiteCode_dev wrote:
           | We had all this with Gnome 2, although you had to apt-get
           | install it.
        
             | mixmastamyk wrote:
             | A lot of the compiz stuff still blows things away today.
             | But truthfully, while I liked it, I didn't need it.
        
         | throwaway8581 wrote:
         | If I recall correctly it didn't have a dock. Everyone seems to
         | have settled on the dock being the best paradigm for managing
         | open apps, and launching favorites, for most users. You might
         | disagree, but the ux people at Apple, Microsoft, Google, Gnome,
         | and KDE seem to think it's the best approach for the vast
         | majority of users.
        
           | prewett wrote:
           | Microsoft doesn't have a dock does it? It's not in my Windows
           | 10 installation, which has this weird combo of Awesome Bar +
           | lag and Start Menu. Unless maybe it's an option I'm not aware
           | of (as I actively try to avoid time in Windows)
           | 
           | I don't really trust GNOME and KDE to have done actual UI
           | research. Maybe Google did, but given the Android experience,
           | I strongly doubt it.
           | 
           | So that leaves Apple as believing in the dock, Microsoft with
           | their task bar thing they've had ever since Win95, and
           | everyone else copying Apple. So it might be the settled
           | approach, but "best" seems like it is really overselling it.
           | It seems to me everyone beside Microsoft thinks that Apple's
           | approach is good enough that they can't think of a better
           | one. (Which is fine by me, I like the dock as long as it
           | hides properly)
        
             | throwaway8581 wrote:
             | The Windows task bar these days behaves almost exactly like
             | the Mac OS dock and has since Windows 7. The main
             | difference is if you click on an application with multiple
             | windows open, it pops up a window selector (tip, ctrl+click
             | to cycle through the windows instead) instead of whatever
             | Mac OS does (some combo of bring up the main/latest-used
             | window of the application). You can enable the Vista and
             | earlier behavior--listing all open windows and not grouping
             | by application--but I imagine very few people do.
        
             | wayneftw wrote:
             | The Microsoft taskbar has always had the most prominent
             | feature of the dock: Allowing you to organize and launch
             | apps from a bar on the left/right/bottom of your screen.
             | Prior to Windows 7 though, you could only add shortcuts to
             | the taskbar and when you launched an app from that shortcut
             | a wholly separate taskbar button would appear.
             | 
             | Starting with Windows 7, Microsoft merged the functionality
             | of launching apps into the taskbar buttons. This way, when
             | you "pin" an app to the taskbar and then click on the
             | pinned item, the pinned item became the taskbar button
             | which represented the running app. This is how the Mac dock
             | works. I think that the only major feature of the Mac dock
             | that Microsoft doesn't offer is "recent apps" but I could
             | be forgetting something since I haven't used Windows for
             | work in a while.
             | 
             | In the end, as per usual, Microsoft lets you have it both
             | ways. If you want a dock you can leave the taskbar
             | configured as default (grouping taskbar buttons and
             | collapsing them into a single button) or you can turn that
             | off and have the original taskbar functionality. If you add
             | something like 7+ Taskbar Tweaker you can even ungroup
             | them, drag and drop taskbar buttons to re-organize them and
             | enable "middle click" to close the window represented by
             | the taskbar buttons like you would with browser tabs.
             | 
             | When I moved my workstations/work laptop all to
             | Manjaro/XFCE I was happily surprised to find that XFCE
             | taskbar has all the features of 7+ Taskbar Tweaker. I don't
             | know what XFCE's design philosophy is, but if I had to
             | guess it's "Implement all the desirable features of Windows
             | in a minimalist fashion and add features for power users."
        
           | ip34162 wrote:
           | Ubuntu MATE, which looks like GNOME 2, has option to enable
           | dock.
           | 
           | https://ubuntu-mate.org/features/panel/
           | 
           | Linux Mint has a MATE flavor, so it too might have it.
        
         | mixmastamyk wrote:
         | Yes, at that point it was approaching Windows 2000 with a much
         | better terminal experience. A "workstation" experience. We all
         | know how things went after tablet mania took over.
         | 
         | I still use Ubuntu Mate today, closest I've found to the
         | earlier peak and still supported.
        
         | ip34162 wrote:
         | Ubuntu MATE has the GNOME 2 look. Linux Mint has a mate flavor
         | too I think.
        
         | rodelrod wrote:
         | I agree that was a local maximum, but I'd say peak Linux-on-
         | Desktop was Ubuntu 16.04 with Unity 7. I'm hoping that Gnome 3
         | + Pop Shell will take us to the next peak, but except for the
         | awesome tiling we're still below the 2 previous maximums in the
         | "everything-just-works" department.
        
         | pantalaimon wrote:
         | Gnome 2 got forked as Mate, you can still have that very same
         | Desktop Experience in 2021, complete with Compiz.
        
         | nycticorax wrote:
         | This. One million times this.
        
         | garaetjjte wrote:
         | >To think that a linux distro had the almost ideal desktop UI
         | realised and then squandered it all away, seems puzzling now.
         | 
         | Hard to say how much truth is in this story, but there was some
         | speculation that this was caused by Microsoft. They started to
         | make some noise about Linux desktop infringing their patents,
         | and while Novell (who was contributing to KDE) signed patent-
         | sharing deal, neither Red Hat nor Canonical (big contributors
         | to GNOME) did, presumably choosing redesign instead.
         | 
         | https://www.theregister.com/2013/06/03/thank_microsoft_for_l...
        
         | BiteCode_dev wrote:
         | I'm still on Unity, and will probably delay update for a long
         | time because I just cause use Gnome 3.
         | 
         | It's not for lack of trying, but it requires to many plugins to
         | be just usable, and then they break, some features is missing
         | in nautilus or other shit.
         | 
         | I don't want to fight with my desktop manager. I have work to
         | do.
        
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