GNOME vs KDE Plasma in 2024: which one is better for Linux beginners?

Go to to to know where your news is coming from. Subscribe through my link for 40% off unlimited access this month. Grab a brand new laptop or desktop running Linux: # 👏 SUPPORT THE CHANNEL: Get access to: - a Daily Linux News show - a weekly patroncast for more personal thoughts - polls on the next topics I cover, - your name in the credits YouTube: @thelinuxexp/join Patreon: Or, you can donate whatever you want: Liberapay: 👕 GET TLE MERCH Support the channel AND get cool new gear: 🎙️ LINUX AND OPEN SOURCE NEWS PODCAST: Listen to the latest Linux and open source news, with more in depth coverage, and ad-free! 🏆 FOLLOW ME ELSEWHERE: Website: Mastodon: @thelinuxEXP Pixelfed: PeerTube: Discord: #linux #gnome #kdeplasma #linuxdesktop #linuxdistro Timecodes: 00:00 Intro 00:55 Sponsor: Ground News 02:34 Design Principles 04:40 Customization 07:21 Modern feature support 10:41 App Ecosystem 12:01 Stability and Bugs 14:07 What should you pick? 16:14 Sponsor: Tuxedo Computers 17:06 Support the channel KDE goes for “simple by default, powerful when needed“, as in: the default layout of your desktop is very simple, and apps tend to only show the most used features, but when you dig a bit deeper, you have a ton of features. GNOME, on the other hand, goes for “super accessible and simple“, meaning they make conscious choices to not include a lot of options and to not clutter the interface. From these design principles, you can easily infer what the views of each desktop are, in terms of customization: KDE can be turned into anything, GNOME is, on the surface, a lot more rigid. Just in terms of looks, KDE lets you apply themes for everything, out of the box. Change the icons, the look of the buttons, the colors of every part of every window, the accent color of your desktop, the shape of your titlebars, the entire layout of the desktop can be tweaked. You can turn KDE into a macOS clone, into a GNOME clone, into a full blown Windows replica, or create your entirely new way of working with your computer. GNOME doesn’t give you options by default to change the layout or the look. You need a third party app to handle this. GNOME doesn’t have accent colors yet, they’ll get them in their next release, GNOME 47, which at the time I’m recording this, is 2 and half months away. BUT with the GNOME Tweaks app, and the Extension Manager app, you get a LOT of possibilities. In the end, if you like to tweak, change things, customize the visuals and just completely morph your desktop, chances are KDE is what you want. it might take a while to land on something you like, but in the end, it just has more options, and these mechanisms are officially supported** But what about support for more modern features, and future proofing? Let’s be honest, KDE has an edge over GNOME. HDR is officially supported on KDE, GNOME only has an experimental command line to toggle HDR, and right now, it’s not fully baked. Both desktops are also waiting on a fully defined color management protocol for Wayland, so none of them have full support, but KDE is more advanced for now. Same goes for variable refresh rate, KDE has it by default, built in and stable, GNOME only has experimental support for it right now. On the fractional scaling front, Plasma supports it better than GNOME as well: Plasma has it natively, in the settings, where GNOME still considers their implementation experimental. In the end, the current state of things is that KDE has the lead on these features, and is going to be a better choice right now if you want to take full advantage of recent hardware. Now, on the topic of applications, GNOME has the upper hand. GNOME, by making a very clear and defined platform for developers, ensured that a lot of people developed apps using their guidelines. The end result is that virtually everytime you see a new app pop up, it’s designed to integrate with GNOME. Now, as per stability and bugs, this will really depend on the distribution you use, how well they package these desktops for you, and even your hardware. KDE often has the image of being buggier than GNOME. KDE, since it has a lot more features, also has a lot more potential compatibility problems between these features, that can introduce bugs. Chances are GNOME will be more stable for more people, because it has a lot less options, and thus a lot less chances of having an untested edge case that breaks everything.