I’ve been recommending KDE Plasma to a few friends who are new to Linux, and it feels like the overall experience has improved quite a bit compared to a few years ago.
Installation seems smoother, hardware compatibility appears better, and many everyday tasks feel more intuitive than they used to. Features like Discover, Dolphin, and the System Settings application also seem easier for newcomers to navigate.
For those who have been using KDE for a long time:
Do you think Plasma has become more beginner-friendly?
What improvements have made the biggest difference?
Is there anything you still think could be simplified for new users?
I’d be interested to hear how long-time KDE users see the project evolving and what advice you’d give to someone installing Plasma for the first time.
There have been many massive improvements - most of them sneak in under the radar.
However, the biggest difference in useability came when I had to stop driving the desktop with the mouse and resort mostly to the keyboard - that’s not so much a KDE choice, it’s an issue with Mouse Gestures on X11 not being ‘ported’ to Wayland.
There’s talk of some work going on, and the return of mouse gestures would be a thick layer of icing on this cake
in my limited experience (3yrs), plasma has always been good and is constantly improving.
often times in starts and stops where every two steps forward comes with a step backward before the bugs are cleared, but the over all trend is toward ease of use and accessibility.
plasma 6 was a complete rewrite and while some significant improvements were made, it took some time for the new version to become reliable with all the features from plasma 5 that ppl rely on ported over (still a work in progress).
but version 6.6 now available in the Kubuntu LTS track i would estimate that new version is on par with plasma 5 in terms of lingering bugs but now with all the new features of plasma 6 on top, and i’m looking forward to moving to plasma 6 soon.
Quick correction here: it definitely was not a complete rewrite. Many parts changed, but probably at least 85% of the code didn’t change from Plasma 5.27 to Plasma 6.0.
I have never understood the argument that Plasma somehow should be harder for new users. I switched from Windows six years ago and tried both xfce and gnome and I can tell you, if I hadn’t eventually tried KDE, I would have gone back to Windows.
I’ve been using KDE Plasma since 2011 – that’s 15 years now.
It gets better with every new version.
I think GNOME has some nice features, such as the exposed view for tabs or the header bar, which could be incorporated into KDE, but not to the point of making me switch to GNOME.
Apart from a few frustrating bugs with Akonadi and KMail, I cannot recommend it highly enough to a Linux beginner.
I do think there’s a limit to ‘how easy’ you should expect it to be - there’s a balance to how much you want to do with it and how dumbed down it should be.
But then you’ll complain that it’s easy to use, but it won’t do anything the way you want it to.
Well it is a valid criticism - but sure, you don’t have to buy into it.
It is generally designed to ‘just work’ pretty much out of the box… different distributions tweak various options in advance, but otherwise it’s pretty friendly.
Simple by default, powerful when needed
This is how it’s supposed to be - there should be ‘too many settings’ but they’re what make Plasma cater for a wide range of users.
Someone wants ‘middle click to paste’ turned off - there’s an extra feature.
I’d rather have this built in, rather than ‘bolted on’ as it is with other environments. I want advanced custimisation - I still miss the option to tweak the mouse parameters.
However, the second issue here: Trust the User is always problematic.
Plasma assumes you’re intellgient and capable of managing your own system - and this seems to be the core issue with a lot of complaints.
Simplification is a very complicated affair, even now if you try to open ‘themes’ you land on a ‘quick settings’ page and would then have to click the ‘Global Theme’ button to get the full range of theme options landing on the Global Theme page with the left tab listing all the other modules.
So in a way I do BUY the ‘too complicated’ argument, but the issue is removing un-necessary complications from the casual user and tucking them away somewhat whilst still making them discoverable.
That will always be an insoluble issue - hence the endless job of polishing to take off any sharp corners.
