KDE developer thinks they will become the 'Windows or Android' of the FOSS world

What makes KDE bloated?

I obviously can't know what others speak to, but I personally find their settings / control panel to be a bloated mess. Many articles I have read point out the wish for a Basic / Adanced mode toggle.

A good example of this is the clock settings. In Gnome, you can change it in the settings -> Date & Time. It lists 'Automatic Date & Time', or you can manually change it. And Time Zone. And 24 hour or AM/PM.

Then it is smart enough to do the reast based on location.

KDE on the other hand (which it looks like it is better, is still terrible)...
Settings -> Regional Settings -> Date & Time Or Time Zone (they are on separate tabs).

It has too many layers for doing just simple things. I had to use the search function to find even the control panel, because there are System and Settings menu entries...

It isn't that it is bloated in the requirements, it is bloated in how you have to navigate things. It is bloated in features. Some people like to just boot and launch what they want to work on. While you can eventually get there with KDE, it has a bloated feel out of the box. It is like going to a restaurant that people have told you is really good, but never mentioned a particular meal to try. Then when you get there, they have this massive menu....

Once I've actually encountered a KDE distro that fits my taste in workflow, I fell in love with it.

The main issue for me had always been that the KDE default is clunky, and customizing it is clunky with all the panel, dock, widget, and window settings until you learn how it works.

The distro defaults help with that, especially if they follow Feren's step of multiple desktop layout (which is becoming more of the norm on the gtk side it seems, from what I saw on Manjaro-GNOME, Zorin OS, and Ubuntu Budgie)

Of course, I've encountered problems on both KDE and GNOME. But my experience with KDE have only improved in past year or so, while GNOME has always had issues with extensions. I can adapt my workflow, but ultimately, I do need a bunch of extensions with GNOME for my optimal workflow UX, and as long as that remains terrible experience, I'm only going to use it just to keep up with it but not seriously.

That said, the recent integration of some Tweaks into GNOME's system setting is a cause for hope. But man, is all these drama with GNOME is just exhausting.

A good example of this is the clock settings. In Gnome, you can change it in the settings -> Date & Time. It lists 'Automatic Date & Time', or you can manually change it. And Time Zone. And 24 hour or AM/PM.

Then it is smart enough to do the reast based on location.

KDE on the other hand (which it looks like it is better, is still terrible)...
Settings -> Regional Settings -> Date & Time Or Time Zone (they are on separate tabs).

Right-click on the clock widget -> Adjust Date and Time.

Easy to see why Valve would go with KDE on something like the Deck, where it can be tweaked and kept in the background. But barring some massive changes to the landscape I'd never, ever use it on the desktop. Just far too clunky, buggy, and ugly.

Good god, when was the last time you tried it? It's not clunky any more, although editing the panel should be easier, I admit. Buggy? I've not experienced a single bug. Not sure how prevalent bugs on DEs are - can't imagine they last long after being reported. [...]

I tried to install a Manjaro KDE edition in a VM like a week ago, and I have to agree with Mily: I also find it buggy and clunky as well (like every time I gave a chance to KDE, on various distros). I quickly changed again to the Cinnamon edition, which is said to use more resources, but feel nice and slick, even in a VM without hardware acceleration.

It's kind of bloated

I'm gonna start sounding like a rabid KDE fanboy here, but I'm really curious by the language people use when talking about it. What makes KDE bloated?

I get your other point, sure. There's definitely a little more "interface" showing in KDE apps, than gnome. Not much though, in my experience and the more I use KDE apps like the file manager and the PDF viewer, the more I realise how much extremely useful functionality I've been missing thanks to all my years on Gnome.

Like Dolphin - I launched Nautilus every single day of my life and every time, I had to move the window to its location on the bottom left, navigate quickly to my Downloads directory, then open a new tab and navigate that to Documents. On Dolphin, all of that happens when I launch it (it remembers its window position and its last-opened tabs). Miraculous.

But back to "bloated". How so? What would you change to unbloat it?

(I've heard rumours that KDE is lighter in RAM/CPU than Gnome these days, so presumably it's not that kind of bloat we're talking about, but interesting if it is!)

No problem, that's a legitimate question.

In my experience, I never felt KDE had a big memory footprint, even at the time I was using KDE 3.

It is more that it feels bloated. There are a lot of tools installed with it for every use case, lots of options, widgets, desktop icons, system tray icons, etc.

I definitely approve that KDE apps have more interface showing, too much if you ask me. It got better for some apps like Dolphin or Calligra Office, but most of the time it is still very rich visually.

The example you give is a very good one. I don't want my file manager to do that.

I do use quite complicated software on my computer but messing with the desktop is time-consuming for me. I am also not interested in theming, that's the very thing that will become buggy in the very app you need the day you have to work on something important and you've got to fall back to default. No big deal, I know, but my sick mind hates when my DE gets in the way.

I don't know, I tried KDE many times in the recent years and did just recently again. It feels so amateurish at so many Levels, compared to Cinnamon what I use, that I couldn't even use it for a single day without having to tinker at so many things, that I gave up.

KDE Plasma is making some pretty fast improvements so it seems like they will get there sooner then some others.

I still haven't moved to Wayland as its yet to tick off all my minimal requirements list.

Interested to see what System76 comes up with because I'm not a fan of GNOME, at least in flexibility to customize the desktop (without broken plugins and scripts)...


Last edited by TheRiddick on 16 Nov 2021 at 7:48 am UTC

Too be quite frank, since plasma matured there is little to no reason for choosing almost any other DE.
Plasma is fast as hell while being fully customizable and having more than enough eye candy, you can mimik the behaviour of almost any other DE while being either more performant or more feature-rich. Plus, the KDE-Apps are among the very best in most cases imho.
So i tend to agree with Nate ^^
Given, i'm not saying the other DEs don't deserve to exist, it's always nice if someone has passion for something and thus can bring out new great ideas! But from a standpoint of choosing a "default-DE", KDE probably is the best bet for vendor-customization while keeping compatibility.

And with new funding from Valve, it can only get even better :D

This is why I love Linux, if you want something like MacOS get elementaryOS if you want something customizable get KDE, if lightweight is your thing XFCE is a good one to use

I also find it buggy and clunky as well

Can you be specific? What bugs did you encounter? How is it clunky?

I loved Cinnamon and still have three of my four devices (for my wife and two sons) running Mint in the house. But after using KDE on my own machine, I've found my new home. And the reason for the change remains - xrDesktop doesn't support Cinnamon - it only supports Gnome and KDE, so those are my choices. Gnome is great (with enough extensions), but I'm blown away by KDE.

Too be quite frank, since plasma matured there is little to no reason for choosing almost any other DE.

There is plenty of people who don't like the amount of options plasma throws at them and prefer minimalist desktops with very few choices (gnome). Also I don't know if Plasma is setup for touch screen stuff out of box as gnome, so if your into touch screens then gnome probably still a good choice.


Last edited by TheRiddick on 16 Nov 2021 at 10:52 am UTC

Just a question to the KDE users, is it still not possible to use multi monitor wallpapers? Last time I checked someone on a forum suggested to cut the wallpaper in half and add it manually to each monitor. This sounded pretty insane to me for a modern desktop back then. Overall I liked the look of plasma though.

Right-click on the clock widget -> Adjust Date and Time.

BTW, what I couldn't believe Windows doesn't do - but it in fact doesn't:
Mouse wheel on speaker icon for changing volume.

I obviously can't know what others speak to, but I personally find their settings / control panel to be a bloated mess. Many articles I have read point out the wish for a Basic / Adanced mode toggle.

Avoiding basic/advanced modes is one of the lessons that KDE folks have learned over the years:
https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved/Design/Lessons_Learned#Basic.2Fadvanced_modes

There are a number of reasons outlined why they generally avoid having basic/advanced settings separation, but this stood out:

Users who doubt their technical prowess will fear entering the advanced view, while users of great ego will find the basic view insulting even if it meets their needs better than the advanced view.

I've seen the last half of that sentence in particular happen with all kinds of software over the years and there are pretty good chances that it will happen again sometime after this comment.

Also, that wiki page in general gives a lot of insights into what KDE has learned over decades of designing user interfaces and their design philosophy. Well worth a read for anyone interested in all that.

Is there such a thing as a KDE based simplified desktop?

I really do like the look and feel of KDE, but I admit that Gnome's simplified menus is to my liking. Aside from switching wallpapers, I don't really care about customization, but KDE has features that I need and can't find anywhere else... That's another reason why I look forward to SteamOS 3.0.


Last edited by Mohandevir on 16 Nov 2021 at 1:47 pm UTC

I've seen the last half of that sentence in particular happen with all kinds of software over the years and there are pretty good chances that it will happen again sometime after this comment.

"I know about computers; of course I should use Arch rather than this 'beginner' distro. 'Remove essential packages'? Do as I say!"

I had already experimented with Linux in 2006/2007. That was still SUSE Linux 6 and 7 and there was KDE as a standard interface. I could handle it well. But since gaming was very important for me at that time, I returned to Windows for the time being.

In my catch-up studies (2009 to 2012) I then have Ubuntu and Unity on my study laptop. I got quite warm with it. But after my studies, the benefit for Linux was gone for me for the time being.That's why I went back to Windows again. Again because of gaming.


Then in 2017, when MS refused to support new CPUs (Ryzen) for Windows 7, I switched completely. In the meantime, you can already play quite well under Linux with Proton. My choice fell on Linux Mint with Cinnamon, because I read that it is easier for Windows migrants. And that's where I'm currently still at.

Well, I'll have a look at a Manjaro with KDE in Virtual Box. Maybe I'll switch the distro at the same time, if I like KDE. Or I still wait for the full release of SteamOS 3.0. Let's see.


Last edited by KuJo on 16 Nov 2021 at 2:19 pm UTC

Too be quite frank, since plasma matured there is little to no reason for choosing almost any other DE.
Plasma is fast as hell while being fully customizable and having more than enough eye candy, you can mimik the behaviour of almost any other DE while being either more performant or more feature-rich. Plus, the KDE-Apps are among the very best in most cases imho.
So i tend to agree with Nate ^^
Given, i'm not saying the other DEs don't deserve to exist, it's always nice if someone has passion for something and thus can bring out new great ideas! But from a standpoint of choosing a "default-DE", KDE probably is the best bet for vendor-customization while keeping compatibility.

And with new funding from Valve, it can only get even better :D

I've tried to like KDE ever since 1.0. Part of the reason I haven't liked it is that it feels awfully close to Windows. Now I do find it amusing that KDE how it sits now came out before Windows 7 and 7 felt like it'd full on copied KDE for once. But one of the reasons I've always liked Gnome (even running it from pre-1.0) was that it was rather different in how it did things. Then again the first thing that got me to run Linux was Enlightenment's power of theming. It was wonderful, and I'd likely use it today if there were a suite of applications for it that used EFL...

I obviously can't know what others speak to, but I personally find their settings / control panel to be a bloated mess. Many articles I have read point out the wish for a Basic / Adanced mode toggle.

Avoiding basic/advanced modes is one of the lessons that KDE folks have learned over the years:
https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved/Design/Lessons_Learned#Basic.2Fadvanced_modes

There are a number of reasons outlined why they generally avoid having basic/advanced settings separation, but this stood out:

Users who doubt their technical prowess will fear entering the advanced view, while users of great ego will find the basic view insulting even if it meets their needs better than the advanced view.

I've seen the last half of that sentence in particular happen with all kinds of software over the years and there are pretty good chances that it will happen again sometime after this comment.

Also, that wiki page in general gives a lot of insights into what KDE has learned over decades of designing user interfaces and their design philosophy. Well worth a read for anyone interested in all that.

Ha, so their decision to not be practical (or to clean up all the extra cruft) is based upon feelings instead of good design requirements?

I have great technical prowess (at least I like to think so), I just want a better, more logical layout of options, and some clean up of things that aren't used by a lot of people. Unfortunately without enabling analytics (which we all freaking hate), I don't know how they can really judge on what is useful to have and what is not. Maybe they should do more user polls?

A good example of this is the clock settings. In Gnome, you can change it in the settings -> Date & Time. It lists 'Automatic Date & Time', or you can manually change it. And Time Zone. And 24 hour or AM/PM.

Then it is smart enough to do the reast based on location.

KDE on the other hand (which it looks like it is better, is still terrible)...
Settings -> Regional Settings -> Date & Time Or Time Zone (they are on separate tabs).

Right-click on the clock widget -> Adjust Date and Time.

Ha, I perhaps should have used a different example. But hopefully my point is still relevant to many of the other system settings. Also... why have System menu, and Settings menu, then have System Settings? Should be called Preferences or something...