Kinda weird that they’re calling it an OS, but ig they’re just trying to cater to the windows audience
KDE neon is what they’re selling
Selling as in advertising, I might add. Neon is free
Neon is more of a testbed than a proper distro (they don’t actually even use that word).
Is this “the KDE distro”?
Nope. KDE believes it is important to work with many distributions, as each brings unique value and expertise for their respective users. This is one project out of hundreds from KDE.
It’s a proper distro, that’s just saying it’s not THE official one
Windows 11 takes your money, gives you ads, sells your information and ignores your bug reports and feature requests
KDE is free, ad-free and open to contribution
I think we have a clear winner here
But can it run proprietary software used in the industry? From Excel to Photoshop, if you are in a collaborative professional environment, you can’t run away from those, and don’t tell me you can use the alternatives in Linux, because no, you can’t. This is not linux fault, but it’s still an issue you can’t handwave.
I love linux, but you can’t expect people to adopt it just because it’s objectively better than windows.
Wine can run most of those, not all. You can still dual boot Windows if you need to (VMs are an option, but they aren’t always the best).
I mean, that’s what I do. Will I be able to convince my 60 yo colleague that had been using the same workflow for decades? No, not a chance.
There are enough web based office instances running for Linux to be functional in that regard.
Photoshop on the other hand…
GIMP will be great once it no longer needs to dodge patents
Audio players work great now MP3 is out of patent (before that MP3 was really only available if you were willing to ignore the patent)
List of things to consider
- There are alternatives
- You can use wine
- You can run a windows VM and install it there
- Dual boot windows
- Microsoft has built a proprietary moat around their operating system. The reason why it’s hard to switch from Windows is by corporate design. A mix of early adoption, network effects, and just plain cold hard cash makes them dominate the operating system market. Of course it’s infeasible for your 60yo coworker to switch; but KDE presents an alternate reality, an opportunity, for people fed up with big tech’s bullshit. Yes, figure out how to run and use alternatives you fucking nut. Way to go disparaging countless volunteer hours spent on open source projects so that people like me can switch to linux.
Comments like these make me irrationally angry. Why complain about open source software and give bad PR? It’s open source; contribute.
Read my other replies. 1 and 2 don’t really work, the performance of using wine, or the alternatives, is just not there, if you do amateur work, maybe that’s fine, but for professional collaborative work, good luck using freecad instead of autocad.
Personally, I use 3 and 4, but you have to understand that the regular user is not going to go through that much hassle to set up a virtual machine.
@desconectado @glibg10b Wine exists… And that’s all I have to say. There is a good installer in lutris for creative cloud that works pretty good if you own it. And if you have a NVIDIA graphics card, it works even better, almost like on windows. It’s not 1:1 but we’re getting close. For excel you have wine again or a great free alternative is WPS or softmaker if you want to buy it.
I wish Wine worked well enough to use Excel. We are not talking about adding up numbers in a cell. Once you include macros, or a reference manager in Word, Wine is not good enough. The same can be said about propietary software, like autocad, or software used to control equipment. Also, good luck convincing a regular user to get familiar with wine.
WPS is great for simple files. Again, not good enough for complex files, especially if it is a corporate collaboration environment. I have lost count on the amount of ppt files that didn’t display well when it used WPS.
Every other year I try all the alternatives you mention, hoping they got better, and I always come back to use a dual boot or a virtual machine, which is not a thing your regular user wants to do.
You just gotta make an effort. The one who are too lazy will never be free of Microsoft’s clutches. Which probably just means pretty much everyone will stick to windows.
That’s my point, I use linux as much as I can, but if 80% of your colleagues use Windows… You don’t have much choice.
It depends on your industry. I’m in an agile development team, working in AWS in Java. I’m not a dev, so my work is in spreadsheets, word processor documents, web utilities like Azure Dev Ops
All that is platform independent, though we have to work on the organisation’s computers, so we work in the office on windows PCs or from home on whatever, remoted into a windows machine or VM
The devs work in VMs which are variously windows or GNU/Linux depending on what the person’s previous project was.
Not to mention free as in freedom.
Also free as in beer.
“But can Linux install things via a single .exe file? HAHAH EAT IT NERD!”
- 10’ish years ago past me, before discovering the magical wonders of the package manager
I found since people are used to app stores, I’ve had a much easier time convincing people to try out Linux. My mom even said that she always wished her windows PC had a proper app store.
I think it’s still important to explain the key difference between an “app store” and a package repository: the latter isn’t a “store” because everything is free.
True but it helps get the concept across so much.
Thst might change with Flathub’s ambitions to become an actual app store though
Did I just heard that right? Flathub wants to charge for software?
Yes. Flathub wants to become a platform where people and companies can sell their software
Well hey, as long as these participating devs maintain that their software remains FOSS, I’d pay up. They do a lot of good work, can’t do it all for free.
But Windows does have an app store, and has for ages now.
Yeah but it’s awful, and can only install UWP apps which are just plain bad
When is the last time you’ve used it? Microsoft opened it up and now you can find all types of non UWP apps in it.
With app images it’s easier than installing. Although the chmod step will deter the typical windows user
What chmod step?
When I clicked on new app image, the OS told me, that program /name of app/ will be launched, I clicked “Continue” and it runs! No meddling with “chmod” or anything like that.
Same, I love AppImages for that. I just wish they also had way to contain configurations instead of putting it on the system. That would make it even more portable.
With file managers, for example in thunar, you can select Properties -> Permissions -> Allow this file to run as a program
Plasma is not a system, but I see how they didnt want to confuse people here
It is a desktop environment system.
But no operating system
So basically ever since I first tried Windows 7 I held it as the “Gold standard” for desktop OS’s. Half my tweaks to Windows 10 were trying to get it as close to Win7 as I possibly could.
When I finally start experimenting with Linux early this year KDE quickly got me to reconsider my “Gold standard” and finally switch my main machine fully to Linux.
No regrets and certainly ain’t switching back even if Microsoft gave me updated Windows 7 with every extra feature I wanted back then.
I’ve been a Linux user for a decade and a half now, but still use Windows on my corporate laptops. Honestly, it’s baffling how Microsoft seem to consistently manage to miss the mark with the UI design. There’s lots to be said about the underlying internals of Windows vs Linux, performance, kernel design etc., but even at the shallow, end user, “is this thing pleasant to use” stakes, they just never manage to get it right.
Windows 7 was…fine. It was largely inoffensive from a shell point of view, although things about how config and settings were handled were still pretty screwy. But Windows 8 was an absolutely insane approach to UI design, Windows 10 spent an awful lot of energy just trying to de-awful it without throwing the whole thing out, and Windows 11 is missing basic UI features that even Windows 7 had.
When you look at their main commercial competition (Mac and Chromebook) or the big names in Linux (GNOME, KDE, plenty of others besides), they stand out as a company that simply can’t get it right, despite having more resources to throw at it than the rest of them put together.
To me it’s absurd how Microsoft gets beaten by a free desktop environment when windows is like their main product. They have billions of dollars. How do they manage to not do better?
windows is like their main product
TBF it isn’t really - only about 12% of their revenue. It’s more of a means to lock people into their other products.
Well, that’s the thing, it’s the core part of their entire business. The glue that sticks everything together. Or at least used to be until Azure.
It seems like a big company’s problem. They have a well-paid design\marketing department that can do whatever they want to create the best-selling interface for the new version of Windows, but before it’s released, no one tested it yet for anything but bugs, and who’d argue with a flock of top designers anyway? Add here the board of directors who are here to sell them ideas and who won’t use it either – I’m sure they applauded to the idea of unifying mobile and desktop experience with WinPhone&Win8, but especially Tablet-Laptop transformers they saw as the future. It sounds great on the paper, right? At that time it could’ve even sounded obvious for their business. And so it happened like it did.
Linux counters it by constant feedback and competition between easily switchable DEs, users being prepared even to jump distros; Apple has a fetish for style and experience (that’s a half of their pricetag), they build their business model about looking and feel nice, so you’d build an ecosystem of their products, you can’t even see error windows here and their garden is gated af; and ChromeOS\Android aren’t shy of looking what others do (like iPhone’s design findings) and conservatively taking what works, also having tons of vendor-created restyles\forks on their own platform as a testing ground for new ideas to make them then a standard. MS lack all of it, and their creative process is guided by external interests and ideals, it’s just an afterthought. And as they have their stable market share, they probably won’t even care. It took whole internet’s screams to return their traditional start menu in win8.1, then w10.
That’d probably stay the same until their new CEO would happen to be an art college graduate - like the current one pushed for accessebility and building special controllers because she has a child with a disability. A top-down signal. I won’t bet on it anytime soon.
Almost all my desktop gets used for anymore is gaming. The windows only anti cheat shit leaves me not messing with splitting what I boot up for.
Linux is the modern OS and windows is just a bunch of old shitty technology in a trench suit.
This is kinda how I feel about Windows these days. It’s interface, directory structure, shudder the registry, user specific apps (from MS Store or Winget), buttons being inserted into the menu bars on some apps, but not others, button sizes being different sizes, some parts still using the Metro interface. The whole thing either needs a re-write, or should be dropped and something new to replace it. Don’t even get me started on things like the eventvwr hanging for 20 seconds after it opens, event tracer API, their in-house abandonment of powershell modules once powershell was open sourced, Windows containers being a disaster, etc.
The problem is that so much critical infrastructure around the world relies on ancient Windows software. I’m pretty sure their backwards compatibility is one of the reasons there’s so much inconsistency in Windows, and every iteration seems to just add more bloat on top.
There was a TCP/IP bug that shared it’s exploit on versions of windows from windows for workgroups 3.11 (which you ran from the DOS prompt by typing ‘win’) through to windows 7 (which was the new hotness at the time)
That’s a bug conserved from the very first Microsoft implementation of TCP/IP through to the state of the art at the time
People were surprised at the time that it wasn’t a windows NT bug
That’s surprising, as I think the first Windows TCP/IP stack was ported over from BSD by Spider Systems (pretty sure that’s why it still has things like “/etc/hosts” - albeit under System32). Wonder if the bug was in BSD and never backported (cross ported?).
Yeah, but that old technology is what still lets me run a 13 year old version of Adobe creative suite. If that ever changes I will have to learn something new!
We will perhaps never beat adobe but nowadays there are some amazing tools!
… Which are developed for windows as well. Haha.
What’s plasma ? Is it a browser? Sorry, I dont understand computers
Unlike Windows and MacOS, the Linux ecosystem is a lot more modular. For example, graphical user interfaces. There are a few types, ranging from ruthlessly simple tiling window managers to more complex desktop environments that more closely resemble the Windows or MacOS experience.
Linux users may take their pick between about a dozen desktop environments (DEs), including Gnome, Cinnamon, Mate, xfce and LXQT.
KDE (once standing for Kool Desktop Environment, now merely KDE) is a community/organization that produces open source software. They made Krita, a raster art program, KDENLIVE, a video editor, and many other such utilities. They also make the Plasma desktop environment, which is often referred to simply as “KDE” by distro maintainers. For example, you might download Fedora GNOME or Fedora KDE.
KDE Neon is an operating system maintained by KDE which features the Plasma desktop.
KDE Plasma is an desktop environment.
The kind of thing you interact outside of installed app/programs. Like the panels, window decorations (titles, close buttom, maximalize button), the way windows float and behave, system settings, etc.
Unix systems (like Linux) are very modular and you can install different desktop environments if you want. And even within those desktops are modules, like you can install different “start menu” or file manager on KDE Plasma.
an linux operating system made by the KDE team
Since when has KDE been an OS?
raises pendantic finger Ah-hem, sorry, but KDE Plasma isn’t an OS. It’s a desktop environment. For an OS bundled/built-around Plasma then Kubuntu or KDE Neon are both Linux distributions that would better fit that description.
Well, if you bothered to read the text on the image, you would have found your answer.
No wonder lemmy user base Is dropping with holier than comments like this. Let me guess, you use arch too?
Oh sure, defending people who aren’t even willing to read the text of the post while also attacking the one who complains about that circumstance is better, right?
Well, although usually it’s a good idea to read the original post first, in this instance the original post is at best misleading because it refers to Plasma as an “operating system” rather than a desktop environment.
(Or for those who want to use even more precise terminology: its full name is either “Plasma Desktop” or “KDE Plasma Desktop”, because KDE also has some non-desktop environments such as Plasma Mobile and Plasma Bigscreen… none of which are as popular as Plasma Desktop, though, so usually Plasma Desktop is colloquially called just “Plasma”.)
I never said anything regarding the truth of the original posts claim; it’s just irritating when people start asking questions without even reading what was initially written.
Because I need Windows to run old C&C games. Get Generals world builder working on Linux and I’ll delete my dual boot
And you can’t get de-crufted Win11 outside Europe! Another win for Plasma!
You can, but it takes a little effort
To be fair, forcing a bunch of software on the machine users own was never a good move, and in my opinion, not a new normal.
It was a good move when people had no idea what they were doing and needed defaults to get started.
I like QubesOS better.
Microsoft will probably never truly catch up with KDE
Plasma 6 is approaching fast
So is Windows 12… /s
Approaching at $9.99/month.
In the newest windows, it is even possible to hover the volume icon and change it with the mouse wheel!!!
But you still need to get at the audio settings to tell it that it should use your microphone for a microphone, not the USB camera
Do Android next!
Try LineageOS
I’d prefer a solution out of the box. I am well aware of alternative OSes.
https://murena.com/ (no affiliation, do not own one)
Just skimming through the website, I noticed they use their own Drive solution. Quickly glancing at the images, and it seemed oddly familiar.
And holy shit it they use the exact same setup I set up at work - NextCloud with OnlyOffice integration.
This seems nice.
Yeah like they (the Windows sheeple) celebrated a CLI package manager as if it was their best invention since sliced bread. Every Linux user was like yaaawwwn… “finally”
Who in the world celebrated that?
Like, I get the self-reinforcing bubble that Linux communities exist in and all, but… nobody did that.
The vast majority of Windows users are random people that never touch anything beyond the Start menu in their entire computing lives. What segment of the Windows userbase is out there celebrating any features, let alone command line anything? This is not a thing. At least not in numbers large enough to matter.
Sorry, I try not to get involved in these arguments. Frankly, grown adults taking sides on operating systems of all things like it’s Sega vs Nintendo in a 90s playground seems very strange but I don’t begrudge people finding communities wherever. It’s just… you know, come on.
