7mo ago

Fedora: GNOME or KDE?

Hey there, folks! I'm about to do my first Linux install and I'm trying to figure out which DE I wanna use. I'm not concerned about how analogous the DE is to any other OS because I'm willing to learn and develop a new workflow. From a performance and overall compatibility perspective, does either GNOME or KDE outshine over the other for this? This is specifically considering the latest non-beta/stable versions of each. Does the Anaconda installer work in the KDE spin of Fedora, or is the install process different altogether? I know Fedora's default is GNOME, does this make for any less stability with KDE?

Edit: I appreciate all of your comments, thank you for taking the time to write them! Initially I was really interested in GNOME for its minimalist design, but it seems KDE can be altered for a similar form without needing to rely much on third party pieces because of how much is already built into it. Although I'm certain the GNOME DE is a really nice one, I think I'm gonna give it a go with KDE simply because it has three customizability already out-of-the-box and it seems to be slightly lighter weight. Of course, there's no reason to ever settle and it's likely I'll try GNOME at some point instead. Thank you! :)

37 comments

Both are great options, but KDE/plasma 6 is my pick.

KDE with version 6 is where it's at. at least for me. youncan use the default or put hours into customizing. gnome is nice, too but bothers me because i want to minimize, maximize and control things like the volume without barriers. but that is personal preference. choose what you Like. if you arent happy or just curious you can always Switch

I gotta say, i love how these comments are civil. Linux often seems to devolve into turf wars. Just made me happy

I might get eviscerated for saying this, but you can replicate the GNOME workflow fairly well on KDE—KNOME if you will.
There's an overview similar to that in GNOME, you can set up shortcuts to mimic the keyboard+one-app-one-workspace workflow, etc.
Good luck trying to recreate Plasma with GNOME though.
- You can, but it always just feels a little janky and missing a couple of Gnome touches
- I tried to do this before, but it did not work out.
  I couldn't make the meta key alone open overview. I also tried to add a dock there, but I can only have a panel when not in overview, which is the opposite of that I wanted. I also liked the notification menu and the quick toggles menu in top right corner.
  I have been planning to get into plasma extension development to fix some of these issues.
  
  Yeah it's not a one-to-one conversion of course. An update few months back allowed meta to open Overview on its own though, fwiw.
  I'd still like the dock in the Overview too, like yourself, but for now I just have a launcher on the bottom like dash-to-dock.

Both are pretty great on Fedora, although Fedora gives Gnome just a tiny bit more attention, and even specifically align Fedora's release schedule with Gnome's.
Gnome will likely be a bit more stable, consistent in UX, and have a workflow that's very different but pretty amazing when it "clicks". Gnome has a pretty great Adwaita app ecosystem that matches the system theme very well. Features can take a little while to come to Gnome, because the devs are pretty anal about getting things implemented perfectly before they're added.
Plasma is more powerful and customisable, most parts of the system, and apps in the KDE app ecosystem, have a load of options you could spend hours going through and customising to your heart's content. Plasma out of the box pretty much operates like you'd expect a Windows PC to work (sans the enshittification of course lol) . Plasma adds features rapidly, and just works out the kinks while in production, so-to-speak.
Both of them are great, albeit very different, which keeps the Linux desktop interesting and varied IMO. I'd try both for a day or two and then make your choice, because it's highly subjective.

Both KDE and Gnome are stable. Anaconda works the same way for both of them, because that stuff doesn't have anything to do with the DE.
It really depends on your preferences. KDE is easily customizaple and has a lot of features and UX improvements. But it can clutter quite easily: these options can be overwhelming.
GNOME follows a very strict workflou design that's more similar to how phones work and helps an ADHD brain, like me to focus more. You can customize it, but you'll do so at your own risk.
Best to try out both in a live system and do some things that emulate your day-to-day workflow. Then you can decide. And you can always change afterwards! If you have a separate home-partition, reinstalling a new DE/Distro is super trivial.
- i always found gnome somehow irritating to use, like the tray area popping up all of the system controls when i just want to change the sound device. or little stuff like trying to paste a file into a folder that is too full to scroll past the bottom. i can't r-click to the background, can't adjust the columns to get empty space on the side. i need to use the menu. or pause fiddling with my noodle and ctrl+v...
  
  Nautilus has empty space on the sides these days to paste.

I used to prefer GNOME, until I started using KDE daily on the desktop, I thought it would just be temporary, but I ended up liking KDE way more because of the features that are built-in, the integration is simply priceless and I'm tired of those GNOME extensions that keep breaking at the next GNOME major release and I have to wait weeks for the poor devs to catch up and fix them up to get the compatibility going again, in some ways that also happens on KDE with the widgets, but, arguably, you will need way fewer of those to extend the already wide functionality provided by the Fedora KDE experience, so you risk incurring in that issue a lot less. Note I specifically mention Fedora both because it's the system you want and because the pool of apps included is the best for a streamlined, but not bloated, experience, which also allows me to use Kinoite without troubling myself to overlay crucial apps that aren't provided (or don't work fully) as Flatpak.
- Widgets and themes broke when version 6 was released but that was a major upgrade which changed the underlying technology (Qt5 to Qt6) and it was announced before-hand. It tends not happen with minor and patch updates.
  
  I see, I guess that's what happened to those that broke for me

Both GNOME and KDE are first-class DEs in Fedora - stability is a non issue. You can install both if you want and select your choice at the login screen to just switch back and forth. The only thing you might want to keep in mind is that both have their own prpgrams, like file managers for example, so you'll have two programs for the same task.
Performance is a wash, really, with a halfway modern setup. Your browser will be consuming way more resources than the desktop by far.
Compatibility is also a non issue nowadays, both implement the Freedesktop standard and are fully compatible with each other.
I'm pretty sure that the installer is the same for all major spins.
Hope you have fun with Fedora!

I used to prefer Gnome before the KDE 6 update due to the rough edges in KDE. After KDE 6 came out I've tried it again, and it's incredible. The team has spent a lot of time on polish for this major release and it allows KDE's suite of more fully featured applications to shine. GNOME apps like gedit, nautilus, and gnome terminal tend to provide the minimum level of functionality, whereas KDE's applications feel like they're trying to work for power users. Kate goes as far as supporting the LSP for code autocompletion. KDE's desktop is much more customizable as well, so you don't really need extensions to get the functionality you'd be looking for in GNOME, stuff like the application launcher are built in. KDE connect is a really useful application you can install on your phone to get file transfers and notification sharing, among other things, between your phone and computer while connect to the same local network. Performance wise they seem pretty equal, even on older hardware, but KDE might have a bit of an edge in terms of RAM usage, YMMV depending on how you customize the desktop. The one thing I miss about GNOME is their "start menu" experience, I haven't found a way to replicate that in KDE, but I haven't looked very hard either. Overall I wouldn't hesitate recommending KDE, plasma 6 makes me actually feel like the Linux desktop is ready for mainstream.

I've used them both in the past, but prefer Xfce now. So I'm probably not too biased either way on Gnome v. KDE. I'd say they're both extremely well-supported, popular, respectable, and safe choices. They're quite different in style though, so odds are you might find you have a preference for one or the other. Go with whichever you like best.

From a performance and overall compatibility perspective, does either GNOME or KDE outshine over the other for this?
Not unless you are doing specific things. Last I checked, but I know Gnome is moving on these fronts too. Things like HDR, VRR, Virtual Reality Games and stuff like that you are going to want KDE for. There was probably some other stuff, but that's what I have off the top of my head. However, if you try Gnome and decide that you really like them. They are making moves on those fronts too, but I'm not sure how long it is going to take.

You can try them both and see which one you like. Gnome is great, and it’s my preference, but KDE is also great.

I've run both. Started with Gnome.
I didn't absolutely love the UI but it wasn't bad.
Installed a bunch of plugins poked it, prodded, tweaked it. Made it exactly what I wanted.
One time I tried KDE and found that it was exactly what I was turning gnome into with all the plugins.
Admittedly, I think the Gnome control panels and tools are nicer.

https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/how-i-customize-fedora-silverblue/127071
I would go with KDE

KDE Plasma has currently better upstream development (a side effect of Steam Deck) but the integration of KDE into Fedora is done by volunteers.
Gnome is integrated into Fedora by Red Hat employees but upstream development lags a bit behind in adopting some newer technologies Red Hat isn't that interested for RHEL.
I used Fedora in the past and found the KDE Spin a little less polished. I don't know the current situation but there was a time Fedora KDE shipped out of the box with three web browsers because the volunteers couldn't agree on one, whereas the RH employees just decided that they want Firefox and not Gnome Web for RHEL, so in Fedora they just did the same. Updates were rolled out in a timely manner (and I heard nothing that indicated anything changed in that regard), so the volunteer squad didn't do a worse job there than the paid Gnome people.

I am a big fan of KDE in general, but I feel like on Fedora, GNOME is more polished. I've tried using KDE on Fedora and it felt like a second-class citizen. Sadly this also applies to Alma Linux.
I use KDE regularly on Debian and Gentoo. I also have tried it on Ubuntu, Arch, and Slackware. So I have some ideas on how good it could've been.
- Agree; Gnome on Fedora is just more polished in general than Gnome anywhere else. So sasy to add another language and that input language works everywhere including Flatpak apps Qt apps, etc. Fedora is winning me over in this regard and I've kind of been a Red Hat hater these days.

I used to only use KDE but fedora made me love gnome

Cinnamon

If it's you're first install go with gnome since it's intentionally simplified.
You WILL get lost in all of the customization options that are available in KDE and most xwindows environments if you have no experience w anything besides Windows or Mac
- All I do in KDE is set it to Breeze Dark, set my taskbar to dock + autohide, and change media keybinds. There's tons of options but you don't really have to touch any of them. Default is fine.
  
  if that were all they touched, it would be fine; but i've lost track of the number of times i setup a linux system for newbies and got emergency phone calls that the install was broken only to discover that they clicked on some kde setting somewhere that they both forgot about and didn't understand.
  it's sort of like people deleting the windows folder on a windows system because they don't think that they use it.

In my experience, KDE has too many features that are buggy and don't work. Like hiding the task bar automatically will break the search shortcut because the search is attached to the task bar, so it won't come up unless you mouse over the task bar
Gnome has no features, yet it's buggy and doesn't work. You alt tab out of a Wine game and it will think the alt button is constantly pressed down when you tab back in.
Choose your poison
- In KDE you can literally just start typing anywhere on the desktop (or set it up to activate with a hotkey), and it'll use krunner to search your PC, and do a bunch of other shit if you want. Never had anything about task bars interfere with it whatsoever.
  In fact, it has saved my ass a few times when plasma shell would crash and I couldn't access a terminal for whatever reason, I was able to use krunner to restart plasma shell. Very useful.
  
  I'm in my browser, but I'd like to not be in my browser anymore (open something else). The shortcut straight up doesn't work sometimes and that's embarrassing
- Not to mention the menu button just doesn't work at all sometimes.

Hear me out .... Embrace the Chromebook easy life.
For your consideration:
Work/Development based?
Project Bluefin 🦖
Gamer?
Bazzite 🎮
Otherwise on Fedora, brush up on RPM Fusion.
Because patent encumbrance is fun.

37 comments