Some points are valid, but this looks more like the author (of the image) wanted to highlight as much as possible to confirm their own bias (that it’s not well designed). Maybe I’m being ragebaited, but here we go:
Different font size and styles for main panel header
Yeah, one shows breadcrumbs and the other a title.
First icon is narrower than the rest
First one is the “start menu” button. The tasks could also have text labels on them, of course they can have a different width to an unrelated element.
Content not even remotely close to being vertically centred in its box.
It can show two lines of text (as evidenced by the third item in the same row). It would look pretty bad if every item was centered on their own.
This is absolutely pixel perfect alignment. More like this please!
It looks good, but the red line the author connected from the snowflake to the horizontal line of the “H” doesn’t necessarily back their claim that this is “absolutely pixel perfect alignment” because the horizontal line of the “H” might not be geometrically centered to the line height of the text and you could also have different characters in different languages.
Yeah, some elements like the scrollbars aren’t positioned well (in this screenshot, this is a bit outdated tbh). But there’s also the concept of a visual center as opposed to the geometric center.
Honestly I just want KDE to do the backbone and GNOME to do the designs.
Adwaita apps look just right, minimalistic yet powerful, pinnacle of modern simplified designs. Everything you actually need is close, and the rest doesn’t clog the view.
The rest of GNOME is heavily meh. Customization is next to nothing, and generally any workflow falling outside the one window = one task paradigm is gonna be a pain. Settings are convoluted and sometimes straight up unreachable without additional tools or config edits (and sometimes they don’t even apply).
I guess what unites Adwaita and GNOME project overall is the stubborn adversity to users making it comfy for themselves - it’s the GNOME way, or no way. And while Adwaita is at least actually good in its defaults, GNOME is not.
KDE, on the other hand, is brilliant as a desktop environment, but menus could be so, so much better. So, when I have a choice, I use Adwaita-themed apps on KDE. With proper theming on KDE side of things, they come together just right.
KDE just feels better and more performant. Even if GNOME Shell uses less memory in its own, it doesnt always feel good to use.
However GNOME Shell and Adwaita are beautiful, consistent, and designed through human feedback. KDE is fragmented, too nested, and has so many conflicting designs.
Its not possible to make KDE feel exactly like GNOME Shell but I wish I could.
This is kinda how I feel about gnome too. I haven’t really gave it a full proper try but it’s just so hard to do any kind of customization that I just kind of gave up and switched to kde.
Looks much better to me nowadays, although yes, I am not using the default Breeze theme. But if there are any problems in the theme I am using, they are much more likely to not be present in Breeze.
Some “issues” pointed out in the picture are not issues at all.
The “Different font styles and sizes” for example, because they are used for different things with different scopes and user interaction.
I feel it has gotten much better in recent years. The first time I tried KDE 5 it looked weird to me. But now I acutally quite like KDE 6. Or maybe I’ve just learned to tolerate it…
Pixel perfect doesn’t mean that things will feel aligned. This is a very naive vision of UI design. I’m not saying that things can’t be improved but this is not a valid point
I have a theory that if everything was pixel perfect, centered, perfectly aligned and looked the same, the thing would look too sterile. There’s basically a perfect world, written down in books and texts that is being taught to students and there’s the real world. In many areas, these two do not match and the above image is the result of someone’s text book world view not matching the real world.
Could the discover store have a better UI? Yes. Will a centered, down-anchored, pixel perfect button make it better? Subjective.
Meanwhile kde:
i found the original in reddit, from about four years ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/tffr4l/some_kde_plasma_uiux_problems/#lightbox
(i’m not saying it’s related, but at least people should be able to read the text now)
Thanks, I updated my post.
Some points are valid, but this looks more like the author (of the image) wanted to highlight as much as possible to confirm their own bias (that it’s not well designed). Maybe I’m being ragebaited, but here we go:
Yeah, one shows breadcrumbs and the other a title.
First one is the “start menu” button. The tasks could also have text labels on them, of course they can have a different width to an unrelated element.
It can show two lines of text (as evidenced by the third item in the same row). It would look pretty bad if every item was centered on their own.
It looks good, but the red line the author connected from the snowflake to the horizontal line of the “H” doesn’t necessarily back their claim that this is “absolutely pixel perfect alignment” because the horizontal line of the “H” might not be geometrically centered to the line height of the text and you could also have different characters in different languages.
Yeah, some elements like the scrollbars aren’t positioned well (in this screenshot, this is a bit outdated tbh). But there’s also the concept of a visual center as opposed to the geometric center.
GNOME: Designers trying to Develop a desktop. KDE: Developers trying to Design a desktop.
Yeah there’s no way I could come close to as-good as their UI. I’m just here to watch the CSS nerds fight
All of that and it’s still nicer to look at for me haha.
Honestly I just want KDE to do the backbone and GNOME to do the designs.
Adwaita apps look just right, minimalistic yet powerful, pinnacle of modern simplified designs. Everything you actually need is close, and the rest doesn’t clog the view.
The rest of GNOME is heavily meh. Customization is next to nothing, and generally any workflow falling outside the one window = one task paradigm is gonna be a pain. Settings are convoluted and sometimes straight up unreachable without additional tools or config edits (and sometimes they don’t even apply).
I guess what unites Adwaita and GNOME project overall is the stubborn adversity to users making it comfy for themselves - it’s the GNOME way, or no way. And while Adwaita is at least actually good in its defaults, GNOME is not.
KDE, on the other hand, is brilliant as a desktop environment, but menus could be so, so much better. So, when I have a choice, I use Adwaita-themed apps on KDE. With proper theming on KDE side of things, they come together just right.
Agreed completely.
KDE just feels better and more performant. Even if GNOME Shell uses less memory in its own, it doesnt always feel good to use.
However GNOME Shell and Adwaita are beautiful, consistent, and designed through human feedback. KDE is fragmented, too nested, and has so many conflicting designs.
Its not possible to make KDE feel exactly like GNOME Shell but I wish I could.
This is kinda how I feel about gnome too. I haven’t really gave it a full proper try but it’s just so hard to do any kind of customization that I just kind of gave up and switched to kde.
Looks much better to me nowadays, although yes, I am not using the default Breeze theme. But if there are any problems in the theme I am using, they are much more likely to not be present in Breeze.
Some “issues” pointed out in the picture are not issues at all.
The “Different font styles and sizes” for example, because they are used for different things with different scopes and user interaction.
I am very glad that you have found what makes you happy, keep using what you like- those icons hurt my soul
Those icons are definitely for someone, just not me.
I feel it has gotten much better in recent years. The first time I tried KDE 5 it looked weird to me. But now I acutally quite like KDE 6. Or maybe I’ve just learned to tolerate it…
Oh for fuck’s sake…
Pixel perfect doesn’t mean that things will feel aligned. This is a very naive vision of UI design. I’m not saying that things can’t be improved but this is not a valid point
Actually, I don’t. What am I looking at?
Kde has mostly small padding and alignment issues instead of having a completely random design.
I can live with that.
I have a theory that if everything was pixel perfect, centered, perfectly aligned and looked the same, the thing would look too sterile. There’s basically a perfect world, written down in books and texts that is being taught to students and there’s the real world. In many areas, these two do not match and the above image is the result of someone’s text book world view not matching the real world.
Could the discover store have a better UI? Yes. Will a centered, down-anchored, pixel perfect button make it better? Subjective.
Wabi sabi windows!