FWIW, I installed the KDE version of Linux Mint on my desktop machine the other day (Cinnamon was still a little too rough around the edges) and I've been quite pleased. The only trouble I've run into is that KDE is still rather resource-intensive, and this machine is quite old. I absolutely hated KDE 4 when it was first released, and I didn't love it when I gave it another shot about a year ago. But it may have finally converted me now!
The ability to configure things is important to me. However, what is more important is an efficient workflow that makes simple things quick and easy. I don't want a giant, full-screen, tablet-style main menu on my desktop or laptop. In fact, what I want is a Windows 95-style menu, even the "enhanced" Vista/7-style menu is too bloated and weird to use. The default menu in KDE is awful, but, and here's where configuration comes in, I can change it.
> The third option is managing activities. I think the set of users that make any use of this features tends to zero
Hell yeah! Does anyone know how to effectively use KDE's activities?
When I tried to use it, I was expecting something that would remember opened apps and the placement of their windows, which is what my intuition said "activities" should be like, a set of programs and an arrangement of their windows that represents a particular "activity", like having a PDF of SICP opened on half of my screen, a Racket repl on the other and a browser with some specific tabs on my other display, but if KDE's activities can give me this, I haven't figured out any way in hell to get it to do this. And if it's supposed to do something else entirely, then no documentation or tutorial ever managed to explain to me what it does in a way I could understand. Don't get me wrong, I love KDE and it's the single Linux DE I can stand besides xfce, but it has a bunch of "wtf" features that I just stay away from, and they made them attract the attention of new users in a way that makes them go through hours of WTFs before finally abandoning the feature and deciding never to touch that part of KDE again.
It's strange, because your first description is exactly what it does. In each activity you can add a set of widgets and use certain applications, you can even configure the way the desktop is shown (Search and Run, Folderview) differently for each view.
I usually use two different Activities named Work and Fun. In Work I have my text editors, konsole with multiple tabs, a couple of widgets related to those apps, my work email and maybe some books for reference. In Fun I have the web browser, Ksudoku opened and widgets with jokes, rss feeds, email, weather information, etc.
It's easy to notice what I have configured: a distraction-free environment to focus on my work and a distraction-full one to relax; just two clicks between the them! Couple this with the Pommodoro technique (25 minutes, 5 minutes play) and KDE has made me a very productive and happy worker.
I like the review. I did not read the KDE part, but I read through the Unity part because I use it and am wondering if it is just me or if others are annoyed by some weirdness of Unity. It turns out the author remarked immediately the ergonomic gaps. I couldn't say it better so here the quotes:
"[..] Unity takes a very weird stance when it comes to Windows management: if there’s more than a single instance [of a process/window] it will throw you into an exposé-like view with the corresponding windows (the rest fades out). [..] It’s a very disorienting interface that requires to travel long distances with the cursor. Why is it disorienting? The position of the window preview you selected in the exposé-view is not entirely related with the actual position of the window, moreover, all other Windows pop back adding even more noise.[..]" - this is exactly what I experience. And using Alt-Tab is NOT better if you have several terminal windows opened!
"[..] Remember I mentioned Unity’s approach to menubars being like Apple’s? It only appears on hover. Isn’t that a little cryptic? Moreover, it automatically makes it impossible to know if there’s a menubar to begin with. Anytime a user installs a new application he/she is forced to check manually if there’s a menubar. It also makes it impossible to aim for the desired menu, you got to move your mouse to the top, wait for the menubar, and then visually search for the menu you want, then move your cursor again and then click on it.
Why hide it? Is not like Canonical is doing something with all that space[..] It also cuts down the name of the application. Considering there’s no visual link between the menubar and the app it corresponds to (let alone the window), isn’t that just the exact opposite of what makes sense?[..]" - And some applications do not follow the menu on the top and instead show the menu in the window (LibreOffice, which I rely on daily).
I do not want to complain about customizability of Unity. Most of the things I like. The standard experience just works. But the two points above are just irritating. And because I am using only the LTS of Ubuntu I hope these issues will be fixed in 1204 LTS.
When I make a new instance of a window, I don't find that I am 'thrown' into an expose-like view. The window comes up as it would in any case. If I click on the dash icon for a program which already has multiple windows, I actually find it helpful to be presented with a choice between them, which is what this does.
Use alt-` to switch between windows of the same program, without using that feature. With this minor adjustment from the Windows routine it is more pleasant.
I agree it is a little cryptic, and overly concerned with space saving, only to show menu bars on hover and otherwise to show the window title. But, I think it is not an actual problem after a few seconds seeing how it works.
On the other hand: I still have problems with dash coming up very slowly, and with windows nondeterministically moving to the wrong monitor, and with power usage on laptops. It isn't as though it's perfect. But I think the design is basically OK and Ubuntu is having more trouble on the technical end of things, with endless technical papercuts that never get addressed but always get their issues closed.
Instead of Alt-tab, use Alt-` to switch between the several terminal windows opened.
Also, for the menus there's the Hud. It's a keyboard interface for all menus on top. So press Alt, release the key, and then type 'Save as' when the Hud appears. It's the same for all other menu entries.
You can install compizconfig-settings-manager and tell Expose (or whatever it's called, I forget) to use "natural" position instead of "normal" and it causes the window positions to map to their original positions on your workspace. The KDE folks are talking about the algorithm for managing that type of view for PW2 and mentioning algorithms that are over my head for arranging windows best.
Man, KDE has come so, so, so, so far since a year or two ago. With a bit of tweaking, with a few different Plamsa theme, Oxygen, and Oxygen color schemes, you can customize it if you like and it looks great out of the box even if you don't. Between that, Qt5, SDDM and plans shaping up for KF5, I'm really excited about the direct of KDE Plasma.
KWin has more features than Mutter and is more stable than compiz. It has several interesting features related to the application menus, Plasmoids are actually fairly nifty and useful if you're into that sort of thing. And to top it off, a default Kubuntu install uses a little less than .5GB of RAM at the plasma desktop.
