KDE developer Nate Graham, the same person who recently said they may become the "Windows or Android" of the FOSS world is back again with more thoughts - this time about keeping it simple.
The Plasma desktop is pretty darn powerful, that's for sure and it has a massive amount of customization options for practically every little thing. For many people this is great, however it can also have a detrimental affect on the experience by new users and users less comfortable with computing. So what's the answer? Graham thinks they need to keep things simpler out of the box.
Pictured - KDE Plasma on my own desktop.
What this doesn't mean is Plasma is going to get "dumbed-down". Sounds like they're not going to be targetting people in the lowest category of computing skill with their thinking. Noting that they would likely never be happy with KDE and that "GNOME and ElementaryOS can have those users".
Instead, the plan sounds like it's more a case of ensuring every part of Plasma comes with sane defaults "Essentially we need to fully embrace Plasma's motto of 'Simple by default, powerful when needed' [for] all KDE software, not just Plasma".
As an ending note, Graham mentions how some of this is already happening like "our simple-by-default Kirigami apps gaining power and customization opportunities, and our powerful-by-default QtWidgets apps gaining better default settings and a streamlined appearance".
What are your thoughts?
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Sane defaults are critical for a desktop environment that holds your hand and doesn't give you much choice (MacOS). The product would fail otherwise.
Sane defaults are wonderful but not critical for a desktop with a wealth of customization options, like Plasma for example. But they sure would be welcome.
And hey, you can never win them all. "Sane" defaults will always annoy somebody, so DO NOT go the way of Windows 10 and try to hide all the computer settings behind walls. You could be a power user in Windows 7 but then they treated you like an ignorant bafoon in Windows 10. So if Plasma wants to take more time thinking about user experience and presetting the most popular options, cool. Just don't make it any more difficult to find those settings.
Kallestofeles Dec 8, 2021
Probably you're not daily driving it on Arch.Maybe one day, in a perfect world, KDE would finally become stable enough to daily drive it. But I guess that's besides the point.
Running it daily for many, many years.
Don't know what you're talking about.
Probably you're not daily driving it on Arch.Maybe one day, in a perfect world, KDE would finally become stable enough to daily drive it. But I guess that's besides the point.
Running it daily for many, many years.
Don't know what you're talking about.
Debian stable (in the last years).
Might make a difference. ;)
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