Long time Cinnamon user that has recently spent some time in KDE Plasma here.
Going from Cinnamon to Gnome, I often feel limited because Gnome has no problem saying “You can’t do that.” Nemo has more functionality than Nautilus does. Gnome applets are often minimum viable or less, Cinnamon is usually most things you need, most of the time. Cinnamon’s USB image writer is still my favorite.
Even though I often describe KDE’s interface and applets as being full of options and settings and capabilities, switching from Cinnamon to KDE doesn’t feel as freeing and enabling as switching from Gnome to Cinnamon. Options you never need don’t make you feel more free. It often feels overcooked. Compare how you customize the panel in Cinnamon and Plasma, KDE just has…more. It’s not more because it does more, it’s more because they didn’t stop making things.
In some cases I think KDE is technically more capable but Cinnamon is more pragmatic. Also I’m a lot more used to Cinnamon. I know how to do things the Cinnamon way.
There’s some functionality I don’t use like KDE Connect which looks cool but I’ve already got things like Syncthing in use.
I do sometimes end up wandering through KDE’s settings menu trying to find the thing I need because I don’t know exactly what to call it. Like, I’ve noticed that it has kind of a sticky effect when you try to move the cursor slowly across the boundry between two monitors, like it’s trying to be helpful and keeping you from overshooting. Except invariably I was reaching for the scroll bar, overshot, and now it’s “helpfully” keeping me from slowly reaching back across to the second monitor. If there is a check box somewhere to turn that off, what would it be labeled and what category would it be under? Mouse? Display? Desktop? Windows? I come across things like that more on KDE than Cinnamon, again possibly because I’ve been on Cinnamon for 10 years and know what most of the options do.
I have had some deal breaking issues but I’d blame them on Fedora rather than KDE. Long rant shortened there’s just less software available for Fedora because the .rpm repositories are empty, Flatpak is deeply imperfect and no one writes compiling instructions for Fedora. If you try translating the apt-get commands for installing prerequisite libraries to dnf commands often it fails because that library isn’t in the repos at least not under that name. So if the software manager lets you down, which it does more often on Fedora than it does on Mint, the hike through the desert to get what you need is longer and along rougher trails.
Long time Cinnamon user that has recently spent some time in KDE Plasma here.
Going from Cinnamon to Gnome, I often feel limited because Gnome has no problem saying “You can’t do that.” Nemo has more functionality than Nautilus does. Gnome applets are often minimum viable or less, Cinnamon is usually most things you need, most of the time. Cinnamon’s USB image writer is still my favorite.
Even though I often describe KDE’s interface and applets as being full of options and settings and capabilities, switching from Cinnamon to KDE doesn’t feel as freeing and enabling as switching from Gnome to Cinnamon. Options you never need don’t make you feel more free. It often feels overcooked. Compare how you customize the panel in Cinnamon and Plasma, KDE just has…more. It’s not more because it does more, it’s more because they didn’t stop making things.
In some cases I think KDE is technically more capable but Cinnamon is more pragmatic. Also I’m a lot more used to Cinnamon. I know how to do things the Cinnamon way.
There’s some functionality I don’t use like KDE Connect which looks cool but I’ve already got things like Syncthing in use.
I do sometimes end up wandering through KDE’s settings menu trying to find the thing I need because I don’t know exactly what to call it. Like, I’ve noticed that it has kind of a sticky effect when you try to move the cursor slowly across the boundry between two monitors, like it’s trying to be helpful and keeping you from overshooting. Except invariably I was reaching for the scroll bar, overshot, and now it’s “helpfully” keeping me from slowly reaching back across to the second monitor. If there is a check box somewhere to turn that off, what would it be labeled and what category would it be under? Mouse? Display? Desktop? Windows? I come across things like that more on KDE than Cinnamon, again possibly because I’ve been on Cinnamon for 10 years and know what most of the options do.
I have had some deal breaking issues but I’d blame them on Fedora rather than KDE. Long rant shortened there’s just less software available for Fedora because the .rpm repositories are empty, Flatpak is deeply imperfect and no one writes compiling instructions for Fedora. If you try translating the apt-get commands for installing prerequisite libraries to dnf commands often it fails because that library isn’t in the repos at least not under that name. So if the software manager lets you down, which it does more often on Fedora than it does on Mint, the hike through the desert to get what you need is longer and along rougher trails.
Very helpful, thanks!