Did this guys just completely ignore Plasma (KDE)?? I'd say they are the ones ahead on high DPI and Wayland... Seriously, install it, even on old hardware. Plasma is really fast and stable these days. Also, Mate has no problems with High DPI and given the right theme look beautiful with rounded corners all over the place.
Edit: Ok, I may have misread the piece as a critique at first but it's just his way of getting Gnome more functional. Anyway, his assumptions regarding "Gnome being ahead" are outdated and it seems like one is ready for DE switch, if one must lobotomize her/his DE after every install.
Not the author, but I just tried KDE for two weeks, and coming from Gnome, I couldn't acclimate. I found the Plasma experience unpolished, inconsistent, and prone to error. I also ran into quite a few bugs (at one point, Plasma just stopped giving me window previews when alt-tabbing, and not a single alternative alt-tab style from the built-in installer worked for me).
Two examples of things I missed coming from Gnome:
- I really appreciate the gnome-shell's unified "Activities" overview: I tap Super and I get a single experience that combines Plasma's Quick Launch Bar, Present Windows, and Desktop Grid features. I find that to be a faster, more fluid experience than the Plasma equivalents.
- KWin expected me to resize windows by, somehow, hitting a border that's exactly 1 pixel wide. I evidently don't have the motor control to do that quickly or reliably. Gnome adds a ~10 pixel wide invisible border to each window which is quick and easy to hit regardless of input device.
That's not to say everything is all roses in Gnome land, either, but what's there just seems more reliable, consistent, and intentionally designed. Still, there's no panacea. I wish Gnome's screen zoom was half as fast and fluid as Plasma's. I wish Gnome still supported desktop icons. And AppIndicators. And a 2D grid of virtual desktops. I wish Gnome felt as responsive as Plasma.
I'm planning a switch from Fedora to OpenSUSE later this year, at which point I'll give Plasma another shot and be more diligent about recording and reporting bugs I run across.
I have the same small issues indeed, Kwin always opens windows super small at first, no client side decorations irks me for some apps. I am slowly falling in love with Mate though, I'm using it on Solus where it has the Ark darker theme by default (the default look on Ubuntu is truly your grandma's desktop, I really don't understand that move) and it's really snappy and functional. I work in it all day (VM on Windows because company requires Windows...)
IIRC on kde you can also resize windows with alt + right click, without needing to hit exactly the border. (Or maybe its middle click I don't remember. ) this is similar to alt + left click to drag a window without clicking the title bar.
On gnome you can use Super + middle click to resize things and super + left click to drag them
Edit: Ok, I may have misread the piece as a critique at first but it's just his way of getting Gnome more functional. Anyway, his assumptions regarding "Gnome being ahead" are outdated and it seems like one is ready for DE switch, if one must lobotomize her/his DE after every install.