I understood Matthew's position as "this should be discussed in the Workstation WG first", not as a "no":
in favor of the process outlined above (tl;dr: talk to the Workstation WG, and if that does not come to a satisfying outcome, file a Council ticket for next possibilities).
It also seemed more likely that they would promote KDE without demoting Gnome.
But was there a follow-up on that (e.g. in the Workstation WG)?
I understood Matthew’s position as “this should be discussed in the Workstation WG first”, not as a “no”
And later he said it's not up to the community but the Fedora Council which at least partially consists of unelected Red Hat-appointed people and all decisions need to be on a consensus-basis, so a single corporate-appointed person can veto everything. FESCO (Fedora Engineering Steering Committee) is democratic, Fedora Council is not.
I'm not sure I follow... Did the Fedora Council actually take a decision?
The Fedora leadership is elected the the community. Also most the community does not want to deal with KDE. KDE is great for power users and people who like customization. Outside of that most people want stability and simplicity both of which KDE is not.
The other issue is the installer and the enterprise. If Fedora switched to KDE by default then the downstream distros would need to as well as Fedora is the testing ground for RHEL, Rocky and Alma. I can't imagine anyone wanting to run KDE on a server or corporate workstation.
To be fair, there is and has been a KDE spin. I can see an argument for gnome, as it's overall the simpler environment. Simple defaults has been fedoras thing for a long time.
I can see an argument for gnome, as it’s overall the simpler environment. Simple defaults has been fedoras thing for a long time.
They could make that argument then and not just close the topic by declaring it a trademark issue.
I don't understand the simpler argument. Installing and using extensions and gnome-tweaks to change basic settings is not simpler. And I strongly dislike a large number of defaults.
With KDE Plasma, defaults make more sense to me so I barely have to change configuration. If I really need to, the setting is there and easily used.
Since KDE changed to dbl-click by default, the only thing I change is Numlock on boot. 10 seconds to fix, and I know it'll stay changed because KDE is allergic to removing user settings.
True, Plasma is very usable out of the box. Well, if you like floating panels.
Look, we knew Fedora wasn't going to drop Gnome. Gnome is almost entirely a Redhat project, it's there for the paying corporate market so it doesn't confuse the drones by offering "choices", and Fedora is the proving ground of any changes that might affect said drones. I can't even argue with the logic.
Lots of Plasma-Fedora distros out there, like the spin and Nobara/bazzite that frankly are better starting places for most power users anyway, since you don't have to get around the repo/codec issues yourself.
Look, we knew Fedora wasn’t going to drop Gnome. Gnome is almost entirely a Redhat project, it’s there for the paying corporate market so it doesn’t confuse the drones by offering “choices”, and Fedora is the proving ground of any changes that might affect said drones. I can’t even argue with the logic.
The project leader could just be honest about that instead of making BS up.
I used to use Gnome all the time but I have to install a bunch of extensions for it to be usable. This one addon, I think it was called window list, is the most important and invaluable one of them all. There is no way I can use Gnome without it and I don't understand how other people have the patience to deal with not having that. The number of times I updated Gnome and found out window list was so out of date the only way I could get it working was if I download the source code and fix the issue myself, is too damn high. That addon should be part of Gnome by default.
Now I use cinnamon or kde depending on which one works better in that respective distro's repository. Some installations of your favorite desktop environment come with better configs than others. For example last time I tried KDE on Ubuntu, it was a broken buggy annoying mess to the point it was was less functional than Windows 11's ui. On Arch, KDE is the epitome optimization and polish. On Arch, cinnamon is respectably borked out of the box. Cinnamon on Ubuntu usually only comes with a few bugs however I rarely end up finding a way to fix said bugs.
LXDE is the same across distros usually but I only use it if running Linux on an absolute potato. That lack of a start menu search is awful, I don't miss those pre-search bar era uis. I need a search bar dammit.
On Arch, KDE is the epitome optimization and polish.
Cannot relate. At all.
Last friday I re-installed Arch with KDE this time instead of GNOME for a change, and in these two and a half days I've already encountered more bugs and crashes than I did the entire time I was on GNOME. Kinda regretting the decision already. All that with stock applets and widgets and shit that come bundled with the DE. I don't want to imagine what things would be like if I started to mess around with third party stuff.
I guess it's just a roll of the dice on how borked the config files in the repository package were that month.
Have you tried Trinity instead of LXDE?
With Q4OS for example.
Is Trinity using... maintained software? I will try it in a moment, but the KDE Plasma people only really maintain what is in Plasma today. There are tons of abandonware like Konqueror (which Trinity supposedly uses?). Falkon is hardly maintained, Amarok was resurrected.
Lots of great software, interesting, unique. But I dont know if I would use it for actual work.
I'm glad Fedora comes with the most usable no-bs/out-of-the-way (in my subjective experience) DE by default. Yes I do run it with Tweaks and a few extensions, but otherwise I have no need for extensive customization for customization’s sake (which seems so many ppls problem with GNOME, smth that I couldn't find more irrelevant), since everything about its UI/UX is so intuitive. I understand if people don't like its opinionated workflow, but it's just right for me personally...
I don't get the proposal either way bc Fedora has always been the spearhead of vanilla GNOME and there is an official KDE spin iirc
I don't really get what people mean when describing Gnome or any DE as "out of the way". I've never felt like KDE was "in my way".
I really couldn't find a better way to describe how it feels to use gnome. I am used almost all tiling window managers through the years. I always got lost in configuring my setup. I know I didn't have to, but there was almost another step of optimization that was available to me. This is not a bad thing in and of itself, of course. I have been using gnome o arch for the past few years, a plank/dock extension, a system tray, and a clipboard manager. That's it, there is nothing to fiddle with, to distract me. It is entirely personal. I just can't stop myself from trying to optimize my desktop/workflow if there are still ways to optimize it. Before gnome I was using my WM/DE and then the applications necessary for my actual work. Now, the DE is "out of the way" and I just do what I actually have to do. But again, this is entirely personal.
Or you can run OpenSuSE which comes with one of the best Kde versions by default.
It's another enterprise type distribution that's rock solid. It also has a rolling version.
1lso it's based in Europe, which some see as a plus.
I also really like the GNOME workflow and try to recreate it currently, but the missing menu is kinda making that hard.
I like workspaces and want to use them. But I also like a bottom bar where I can add all the small things I need. Not much, but currently CPU load and temps, weather, workspace indicator, a few spacers, rest default.
I like the powerful apps where there are no alternatives on GNOME. Dolphin (the absolute best, cant use anything else, pcmanfm-qt is bearable), Kate/Kwrite, Okular, Gwenview.
GNOME literally ships Loupe, which doesnt have a single editing function. Use GIMP for the rest?? For rotating or cropping images?
While I really like the workflow, there are sooo many things (like a clipboard manager) missing that it is not worth it for me.
the Gnome devs are undeniably metaphorically tweakers on heroin tho
What proposal?
To make KDE Plasma the new default Desktop environment for future Fedora Workstation releases in place of Gnome.
Yeah that was never going to happen
Thanks
I'm glad Fedora has GNOME as default. The KDE spin appears to be well-maintained enough for those interested to enjoy it.
Fedora atomic with kde (kionite) has been amazing on my laptop so far (recently moved from mint)
Same for me. KDE is so much better than Cinnamon. For Filemanagement, pcmanfm-qt (from LXQt) is the next best option. It is minimal, can be installed anywhere etc. Nemo lacks so many needed features.
For package management, a CLI upgrade from some old version of Mint to the current one worked kind of. But all the GUI stuff failed. I wrote a post about that.
And the desktop changed not a single bit. So many things that are missing, it is simply so traditional.
But they wana change the default to kde, I readed from a news recently
No the many KDE devs want the appreciation for their work, through Fedora offering the KDE variant as second workstation.
There will be 2 workstations. And I agree, even though I would prefer uBlue Kinoite as Workstation :D
Use Bazzite or Aurora if you want an amazing, Fedora Silverblue/Universal Blue-based KDE experience, it's much better than normal Fedora anyway
How does Bazzite differ from Kinoite? I use the latter but have been hearing about the former for a while now, and was curious what exactly sets it apart from what I use and what benefits I'd have switching to it.
By default it uses KDE instead of GNOME, you have the choice though. It makes some stuff easier for new users. Bazzite is also optimized for gaming and in some areas tries to mimic the Steam Deck experience pretty closely. It also includes all the Universal Blue goodness like ujust (basically a collection of scripts that is very helpful for quickly installing and setting up various things on your system). It also includes some quality-of-life improvements in the Terminal. You could compare it to Nobara, but built on top of Fedora Atomic (Kinoite). Check out their website for more information: https://bazzite.gg/
Bazzite is based on Kinoite but adds A TON of rpms to the base.
Rather than using WINE through Flatpak (Bottles, Lutris, Cartridges + ProtonUpQt) it is on the system. This has some performance benefits and makes using it way easier, but you now run random Windows software unsandboxed. If it wants to it can do whatever it wants.
And some more.
https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite/?tab=readme-ov-file#about--features
True that. Even though Ptyxis is not needed on Kinoite as Konsole profiles do literally that.
Oh I never really noticed. Excited to try it out.
I just wish their websites reflected to show all their available spins. It feels like you have to go out of your way to get to the spins site because the main page only shows Gnome.
I get that Gnome is RedHat's main thing, but like at least make a button that says "See other excellent DEs". The only thing they have is a button for alt downloads that shows stuff for net install and rawhide.
I get that Gnome is RedHat’s main thing, but like at least make a button that says “See other excellent DEs”.
SUSE only supports Gnome on SLED but the big DEs are treated equally on openSUSE.
Official spin isn't enough. Oh no....
