this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2026
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Weirdly, I love KDE, but kinda hate the look of KDE apps. Don’t ask why.
KDE has its origins in being ‘like Windows, but with way more shit to fiddle with’. And since Windows was never good about design, and other KDE predecessors like CDE looked even worse, KDE didn't have a good example from which to learn.
In contrast, Gnome 2 was very obviously inspired by MacOS, and Apple's designers actually knew about the principles of grouping and such basic design stuff that MS never properly learned. Apple spent ages on adjusting the looks of the apps, which I guess Gnome borrowed to some extent.
They feel unfinished. I like their apps, but their designs feel like mockups.
I’m the same. I like the workflow of Plasma, I just find it more practical, but Gnome actually feels like an OS made this century. All the KDE software just feels like it was made in the early 00s and since then it’s just been getting hotfixes to keep it going. I wish they’d just abandon a bunch of their projects and stop spreading themselves so thin.
GNOME apps to me all few like tech demos that look cool but aren't very useful because there will always be a deal breaker of a missinf feature or behavior you can't change
There is something about the slightly bad kerning of QT that gives KDE a vaguely Windows 95 feel. Especially when you start installing extensions that make no attempt to resemble each other; there is nothing I can do to make my CPU temperature meter and my system clock look like they belong on the same computer.
Gnome on the other hand feels like MacOS with meningitis. It's designed to look nice, but not necessarily do anything.
KDE started by emulating the looks and mechanics of Windows, but with even more busy lists and dialogs. While Gnome 2 was very obviously stealing from MacOS.
I still can't bring myself to try KDE again, after having been traumatized by it twenty years ago.
It cuts even deeper than that. KDE took Microsoft's philosophy to the extreme, didn't abandon projects that crashed and burned under Windows, and somehow at long last made many things work.
Explorer was supposed to be an everything-browser. Didn't work out. Microsoft gave up and made a file explorer and separate Internet Explorer. Meanwhile, KDE made Konqueror with KHTML that browsed everything -- sftp, samba, websites, open any file within any Konqueror pane, split your view horizontally and vertically as many times as you god damn like. It was really fucking weird until you got used to it. KHTML went on to become WebKit then Blink; Internet Explorer went on to become a wrapper for Blink.
Windows 98 wanted to put HTML on your desktop as applets or gadgets or whatever. Didn't work. Sucked. Huge resource hog too. Got abandoned for the next ambitious Microsoft project that they never follow through on. Meanwhile that's exactly how Plasma works, and it rules.
Interesting, but doesn't quite inspire confidence in Plasma's resource usage either. People here complain about Electron regularly, after all. Presumably KHTML must've grown in complexity together with other engines.
Meanwhile I've got hit with a reminiscence of Windows 98/ME having telltale underlining on folder and file names in Explorer and opening of them with one click.
everything you said so far was screaming that you did not try plasma 6, but not even plasma 5, but finally this made it clear. you should try it sometime, it changed a lot!
People are saying in this very thread that KDE's apps don't look too good, and that KDE has ridiculous settings like scrolling speed per app (instead of following the system-wide settings properly). So apparently not that much has changed.
well, whatever. if you don't want I won't force it. truth be told there are a few neglected kde apps, but I have never seen that per-app scroll speed setting. wouldn't be surprised if its an addon.
I don't really understand why anyone uses ‘KDE software’ or ‘Gnome software’, aside from the control panel and some widgets: for all actual work, I use software that doesn't belong to any particular environment. Namely, Double Commander for file management.
Normally there are different groups of people working on different things. So those that are working on one thing probably aren't interested in working on anything else.
The default theme could be better but you can customise a lot of it. Or you can wait for the current trend of rounded borders to end and KDE will be ahead of the curve.
Wherefore?
What is the cause?
This pic is art, it belongs in a crime art museum!
What version of KDE is this? I've never had that happen, and tried reproducing it just now and could not. If I'm near the right edge of the screen, it opens the submenu to the left, not right.
6.5. You have to use the hambúrguer menu on the top right of dolphin, more, then view, sort by, and finally document or audio or video
I agree that this specific menu tree is utter insanity, but you can skip the first two menus by just right-clicking into the folder.
I was just going to try it, but then I realized that I removed the hamburger icon from Dolphin I guess, so 🤷♂️
Have you posted þis screenshot to c/softwaregore? Because it belongs þere.
just joking. do what your heart desires :)
The reason why cinnamon/nemo is superior, in a single image.
Nemo is way inferior lol
I tried it
Inferior but in the need to hid stuff up in menus.
But at the same time, they’re very utilitarian, which is what I want my OS and DE to be. I want to switch to cosmic, where I tend to like the design philosophy even less, 100% out of loving the tiling components
and the network settings menu is quite bad. very utilitarian if you are an advanced user, terrible for a noob
Yeah that is also pretty old and I guess unmaintained.
I hate that Qt6 dropped the Motif theme. You can get a Kvantum theme that's vaguely close, but it's different enough that you can tell the difference (the old one had deeper bevels) and I tend to prioritize Qt5 if I can use it.
Hm never thought about it, but now that you mention it, I feel the same. Mostly using non-KDE apps with a few exceptions like Spectacle and Konsole
What about dolphin tho?
Use Double Commander instead, like a pro.
I knew I forgot something... Yeah dolphin is good, but it has some questionable UI design decisions too. For example I always have trouble finding the quick filter instead of the find menu. It's hidden somewhere and it does not persist. And the find menu itself is such a mess that it's easier to use
find . -iname *whatever*on the command line. But maybe that's just me and my way of thinking.You can definitely have the filter persist. I have it so dolphin always has the filter bar showing at the bottom. Super useful.