I recently installed Ubuntu on my main desktop, finally switching away from Windows 10! I’m not a complete Linux newb, but most of my Linux time has been on servers via SSH.

I ran apt install kubuntu-desktop^ so I’ve been trying out both the default Ubuntu GNOME, and Kubuntu’s KDE Plasma 6.4.5 (sorry I don’t have the new 6.5 yet, maybe I’ll revisit once I get that). I’m still using gdm3 as my display manager, I haven’t tried any others. As for the included apps, I’ve been enjoying some mix-and-matching. If you just want KDE Plasma you’re probably better off installing a different distro like Bazzite or Kubuntu or something. Here’s my thoughts after a few days.

Desktop

I’m really enjoying the KDE Plasma desktop more, with a slightly customized taskbar. I don’t like how GNOME has a permanent top bar. It’s really cool that the login screen lets me choose between GNOME and KDE Plasma.

System Settings

This one really depends on the user. KDE’s settings are expansive, you really need to make use of the search. GNOME’s settings window is clean and simple, GNOME is generally much better for non-technical people and I’ll be keeping my dad on GNOME, and eventually my mom too. Weird issue though, GNOME’s settings didn’t have my S/PDIF audio as an output that I could select, I needed to use the KDE settings to choose my audio output. Once I did that, my audio still worked even switching back to GNOME.

KDE Partition Manager vs Disks

Disks looks better and I think it does everything the KDE one does? Maybe Gparted is better than both anyways?

Discover vs App Center

Discover makes it easier to see if an app is available as a Snap package or just a .deb package, which is nice if you want to avoid Snaps.

Dolphin vs Files:

Files is the winner for me currently, it just looks cleaner. And a small thing but when you make a copy of a file in the same folder, Dolphin will ask what to name it, and Files will just append a number which is great when I just quickly want to make a copy.

GNOME System Monitor vs System Monitor

The GNOME one is nice, I don’t usually need more than that. The KDE one is good once you customize it, but I don’t think the defaults are good. GNOME has no way to show GPU utilization, so that’s a win for the KDE monitor.

KCalc vs Calculator

I didn’t see a way to make KCalc do digit grouping (the commas in 1,000,000), so Calculator was the winner for me.

Konsole vs Terminal

I have no opinion here lol, both seem the same to me.

Disk Usage Analyzer

I think this is from GNOME, doesn’t seem like KDE has a similar one or at least it wasn’t included in kubuntu-desktop. It’s really good, reminds me of WizTree for Windows. Better than running du -h / | sort -h

Haruna

Seems like a pretty good video player. I remember VLC having super slow startup times when I installed it via Snap and I had to install it via apt instead. But Haruna seems good enough anyways. I can’t remember what GNOME uses as a default video player.

Emoji Selector

KDE Plasma has this emoji selector that’s kinda like Windows, you hit Super+. (Windows key and period) to open it, you can search for emojis and it copies them to your clipboard. Not as convenient as Windows, but I don’t think GNOME has anything similar to this so it’s a winner.

Clipboard History

In KDE you can hit Super+v (Windows key and v) and it’ll open your clipboard history like in Windows. I don’t think GNOME has something like this.

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Anyone else running a mix of both like me? Or have you installed individual programs from each instead of the full desktop? Which pieces do you favor of each? I’m looking forwards to getting lots of comments correcting everything I said 🤣 (yes I used KDE’s Emoji Selector here)