I use a Linux distro with kde, so I have a lot of customization available. I like trying other distros in VMs, but stuff like windows (no need to copy really kde is similar by default) and Mac is a pain in the ass to use that way. so, I want to know what your os does that you think I should copy using kde’s customization. I’m looking for Mac in particular (bc I haven’t used it before) but any OS or desktop environment is fair game.
I meant more like not taking up shit tons of hard drive space, memory, or CPU, not having a billion dependencies, starting instantaneously, low cognitive load, etc.
It was kindof a sarcastic dig at KDE. I deserve downvotes.
KDE Frameworks used to be a single package (I think with KDE 4?) that people complained about because it contained unnecessary features for the software they want to use. They split it into different packages because of that, so software could only depend on the part of Frameworks that it actually used. And now people complain that KDE software has “a billion dependencies”. Unbelievable.
in my experience plasma 6 and gnome (idk what the newest one is but I’ve tried the newest in the last couple days on a couple distros) both boot just as quick and use about the same amount of resources.
Yeah, Gnome is far to bulky for my taste as well. I use Sway. It’s one single process. And it’s a Wayland compositor, so I don’t have any separate process for the X server. And Sway is currently using less than 90MB of RAM on my computer. With nothing else running but a minimal terminal emulator, htop, SystemD, and various daemons, my whole system is using less than 480MB of RAM.
And that all makes me happy, of course, but just seeing small numbers isn’t really the point either. Aside from resource usage, I spend less time fixing, fighting with, upgrading, configuring, and otherwise maintaining Sway than I would KDE or Gnome or XFCE, and more time using my computer for the stuff I want to do on it. (As an aside, Sway’s tiling model is absolutely baller. I rarely have to think about where I want my windows, and when I do have to think about that, I don’t have to go to the mouse to position/resize them.)
KDE and Gnome are two different varieties of seven(-hundred?)-layer bean dips of dependencies atop dependencies. I like that my entire graphical system is one process with comparatively few dependencies that I can wrap my head around pretty easily. (And, honestly, Sway is a step up in bulkiness/heaviness/complexity from dwm, which is what I used previously.)
I just switched employers, and had to go from using Sway to using Mac os full-time.
God damn do I miss the simplicity of organising windows with sway.
Mac os’ Window Management is absolutely horrible. Especially the useless cmd+tab bullshit that only shows one instance per app, even if it has multiple windows open. Literally can’t alt+tab through browser windows without installing software for it.
Sorry that kinda turned in to a small Mac rant, I just hate this system so much.
I know the pain. I’ve worked at Windows-only places and places where the options were Windows or Mac but you were strongly encouraged to use Mac. Honestly, when I started at the latter place, I hadn’t touched Windows or Mac in like a decade, so as far as what I was familiar with, Windows and Mac were about the same for my purposes. And since most of the team used Mac, I just went with Mac.
The graphical system was terrible (to the point I even looked into what it would take to replace the default Mac graphical system (was it called “Aqua” or something? Don’t remember.) with something X11 based, but that’s like 100% impossible), but the thing that I hated the most was the touch bar. The Siri “button”(/“icon?”) on the touch bar was like one millimeter away from the backspace key (which is called “delete” in Mac for some reason, even though it acts like backspace). I’m sure I wasted so much time just closing Siri dialog boxes.
All that said, I’m not saying Windows would have been better than the Mac I had to use there. I probably would have been just as frustrated with Windows.
I’m lucky enough now to be working for an employer that lets me use Ubuntu. I disabled all the default desktop environment stuff. I unfortunately can’t get away with Sway because I need to use Zoom and desktop sharing doesn’t work with Sway, but I use i3 which acts virtually identically (and does support desktop sharing).
fair enough
I feel the sentiment though, my daily driver is built off of ubuntu-server headless. I find it’s just the right amount of “has searchable solutions for near everything” and “is properly minimal” to base my workstation off of. I run X11, pulse, awesomewm, firefox, lxterm… fairly standard stuff but without gdm, gnome/kde even installed it’s pretty lightweight. The entire os uses ~780mb of ram (+23gb for firefox tabs lmao). It gets the job done, keeps my skills relevant maintaining the automation that builds it, is dead simple to troubleshoot, and has very few black boxes.
this kind of angst is valuable; I had considered looking into KDE until I read your comment and now I’ll pass on it
I’d still recommend trying kde. on my system it idles at around 3.7 GB of ram without steam and discord running, and 6-7 GB with them. gnome people like to pretend other things don’t run very well but the truth is that their lack of certain features does not make them any faster, the setup of a particular system does.
Funny thing is that KDE actually takes up remarkably little resources. You don’t have to install all the apps that come with it and the memory footprint is surprisingly small.