Introducing
The Slant team built an AI & it’s awesome
Find the best product instantly
Add to Chrome
Add to Edge
Add to Firefox
Add to Opera
Add to Brave
Add to Safari
Try it now
4.7 star rating
0
What is the best alternative to Openbox?
Ad
Ad
KDE
All
20
Experiences
Pros
14
Cons
6
Top
Con
Perceived clunkyness and slowness
Compared to other options, KDE is still perceived slow. Especially, the desktop takes a few seconds to login. Mouse pointer can feel sluggish, or laggy, on older systems
See More
Top
Pro
Highly customisable
There are many customization options and possibilities to tweak the desktop, including widgets.
See More
Top
Con
KDE is awesome but it is overcomplicated for newbies for sure
Way too many options for newbies to digest before the learning curve is over.
See More
Top
Pro
Integrated components
Plasma Desktop generally comes packaged with a full set of applications to get users started, including a file manager (Dolphin), advanced file manager and browser (Konqueror), image and document viewers (Gwenview, Okular), the Calligra office suite, CD and DVD authoring (K3b) and dozens more. The desktop can be installed and used without these applications, but they add significant value for many people.
See More
Top
Con
Interfaces are inconsistent and ugly in 4.x
While parts of KDE in 4.x can be very good looking, a common opinion is that the style is too hobbled together with inconsistent icons and styles clashing with each other.
See More
Top
Pro
Looks beautiful
The design of the three built-in desktop themes; Air, Breeze, and Oxygen, are very beautiful to some.
See More
Top
Con
HiDPI support is spotty
The log in screen as well as some other components of the OS do not scale properly under HIDPI. Everything in the log in screen will be displayed too small, as well as some areas of the OS.
See More
Top
Pro
Open source
See More
Top
Con
Stability problems
Under certain conditions, most of KDE's components can be highly sensitive to race conditions, which leads to KDE applications frequently crashing, and, on rare occasion, kdeinit itself locking up.
See More
Top
Pro
Has a file manager that provides a good balance between power and simplicity
Included file manager provides several icon, list and detail views to choose from along with features such as tabs, bookmarks, tagging, previews and metadata, network file access, bluetooth file transfers to/from devices and excellent removable storage integration while remaining fast and easy to use.
See More
Top
Con
Poorly named app menu with too many apps starting with "K"
This is better in KDE Neon with minimalist apps, which indeed in itself points out the problem.
See More
Top
Pro
Integrated advanced search
Plasma Desktop comes with an integration search system that makes it easy to find local files, emails, contacts, events and more. The file manager supports tagging and rating files as well as full-content searching and the KRunner command window and the Milou desktop widget makes searching for files, emails, applications and other content by name, subject, category, tag, fulltext, etc. very simple. It does this with essentially no noticeable interference with day-to-day usage of the computer, thanks to the scheduling built into the backend system (Baloo).
See More
Top
Pro
Uses the Logo key (aka Windows key) for menu functionaly
Logo key is used for features such as the "start" menu, which will be familiar to migrating Windows users
See More
Top
Pro
Keyboard friendly
Nearly all actions can be driven with keyboard commands. Window management, including effects such as desktop overviews, can be triggered with a keyboard control (or mouse gesture) and some even support filtering results (such as windows shown) by typing. The KRunner tool (default keybinding: Alt+F2 or Alt+Space) provides searching local files, online sources, unit conversions, math and more all from a keyboard driven interface.
See More
Top
Pro
KDE is an evolution on the classic desktop model
KDE 4 is a great evolution on the classic Win95/Gnome/XFCE approach. It's moving in innovative directions while respecting the classic metaphors.
See More
Top
Pro
Active development
See More
Top
Pro
The session manager works perfectly
This is a much better session manager compared to solutions from other Linux desktop environments.
See More
Top
Pro
Bunch of coherent applications
What make plasma so nice is the galaxy of apps, sharing same look and feel, configuration and behaviour.
See More
Top
Pro
Adheres to standards
Standards adherence allows for interoperability and shared technology for X Window System desktops, with similar Wayland support being worked on. Applications not written with Plasma in mind work very well in Plasma as a result. The development team has also been instrumental in standard creation and adoption such as NETWM, X11 clipboard, icon themes, mimetype handling, application menu standardization, system tray protocols and notifications and more.
See More
Top
Pro
Multi-Device "Convergence"
Plasma Desktop provides seamless "zero config" integration of your Android device with your laptop and desktop machines via KDE Connect. Phone calls, SMS messages, cross-device copy and paste, media remote control, cursor control and more are supported. The technology that Plasma Desktop is built on, simply called "Plasma", also provides interfaces for phones, tablets, netbooks, and media centers in addition to the desktop. These additional interfaces use the same underlying frameworks and therefore work well together and have a unified feel to them. They also support a common set of applications across them which adapt to the input methods and screen sizes.
See More
Hide
See All
Experiences
Get it
here
154
23
Gnome
All
16
Experiences
Pros
12
Cons
4
Top
Pro
Easy to use
GNOME 3 has been designed to make it simple and easy to use. Press a button to view your open windows, launch applications or check if you have new messages.
See More
Top
Con
No taskbar by default
GNOME doesn't have a taskbar by default, and might be confusing to people migrating from Windows for that reason. It is however possible to install it through http://extensions.gnome.org.
See More
Top
Pro
Very productive
With a clean layout and well-thought keyboard shortcuts, Gnome 3 is simply the best for people looking to be productive with their computer.
See More
Top
Con
Some areas are unpolished and lack features
Some aspects are still unpolished and lack features - the gnome design team works well, but seems to not be taking input from the outside world.
See More
Top
Pro
Online account management
GNOME 3 integrates with your online accounts, so that all your data can be accessed from the same place.
See More
Top
Con
Extension system is basically unsupported
Backward compatibility is not guaranteed and extensions seems like second class citizens in the GNOME environment.
See More
Top
Pro
Adheres to standards
Allowing for interoperability and shared technology for X Window System desktops.
See More
Top
Con
It tries to reinvent the wheel
It isn't a traditional interface. Very different to adjust to.
See More
Top
Pro
Does not get in the way
GNOME 3 lets you do the things you want without getting in the way. It won't bother you or badger you with demands, and it has been designed to help you comfortably deal with notifications.
See More
Top
Pro
Great for high dpi displays
Adjustable scaling factor makes it great for high resolution laptops and far away TVs.
See More
Top
Pro
Powerful search
A powerful search feature lets you access all your work from one place.
See More
Top
Pro
Fallback mode offers a classic look
For people looking for older, more classic looks, Fallback mode offers just that. Ubuntu users can have this option by installing a package called "GNOME-Session-Fallback." In the future to be released GNOME 3.8, the Fallback Mode will not be included, so this is really not a long-term solution.
See More
Top
Pro
Easy theming
Changing the look (and feel) of Gnome Shell is easy, shell theme, icon, windows and graphical elements (gtk). individually for each user. Mostly its installing some packages or unpacking some archive to a themes folder and using selecting the new theme in e.g. gnome-tweak-tool. There a lot of really good theme on deviantart.
See More
Top
Pro
Customizable with easy-to-install extensions
With the right plugin enabled in your browser (comes with Firefox by default) you can browse and install with two clicks the many Shell Extensions available from http://extensions.gnome.org. These are listed automatically based upon the version of Gnome Shell you currently have installed.
See More
Top
Pro
Touchscreen friendly
It works well with any touchscreen-enabled system, including newer laptops, even to the point of including a well-designed on-screen keyboard.
See More
Top
Pro
Keyboard friendly
It's (mostly) usable without touching a mouse, so you can keep your hands on the keyboard. Shortcuts can be defined in the gnome setting. There are even more shortcuts available when using the gesetting or dconf tool, e.g. switch to desktop 5 to 9.
See More
Hide
See All
Experiences
178
36
Hyprland
All
8
Experiences
Pros
5
Cons
2
Specs
Top
Pro
Smooth
Animations smoother than you can imagine.
See More
Top
Con
Early development stages
It has a few bugs and missing features.
See More
Top
Pro
Uses wlroots
The best Wayland compositor library built on standards.
See More
Top
Con
Difficult setup
It has a lot of dependencies which is difficult to find and build in Debian. Also most dependencies are not found in the system repository.
See More
Top
Pro
Beautiful
See More
Top
Pro
Plugins
Has a plugin system.
See More
Top
Pro
Easy to customize
Has a nice wiki which makes customizing it very easy.
See More
Specs
License:
BSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised" License
Type:
Tiling
Programming Language:
C++
Hide
See All
Experiences
Get it
here
60
6
Emacs
All
41
Experiences
Pros
30
Cons
10
Specs
Top
Pro
Keyboard-focused, mouse-free editing
Emacs can be controlled entirely with the keyboard. While true, I often find the mouse and menus handy for those lesser-used commands. An aide-memoir.
See More
Top
Con
Learning curve is long
While it's better than it used to be, with most functions being possible through the menu, Emacs is still quite a bit different from your standard editor. You'll need to learn new keyboard shortcuts.
See More
Top
Pro
Total customizability
Customizations can be made to a wide range of Emacs' functions through a Lisp dialect (Emacs Lisp). A robust list of existing Lisp extensions include the practical (git integration, syntax highlighting, etc) to the utilitarian (calculators, calendars) to the sublime (chess, Eliza).
See More
Top
Con
Sometimes the extensibility can distract you from your actual work
If I ever want to lose half a day, I'll start by tweaking my .spacemacs config file.
See More
Top
Pro
It's also an IDE
You can debug, compile, manage files, integrate with version control systems, etc. All through the various plugins that can be installed.
See More
Top
Con
Keyboard combinations can be confusing for new users
For example, for navigation it uses the b, n, p, l keys. Which for some people may seem strange in the begging. However they can be changed easily.
See More
Top
Pro
Works in terminal or as a GUI application
You can use Emacs' command line interface or graphical user interface.
See More
Top
Con
Documentation is not beginner-friendly
Although lots of good built-in documentation _exists_, I have after four years of Emacs as my primary editor not figured out how to actually make use of it, and rely completely on Google / StackOverflow for help.
See More
Top
Pro
Self documenting
Emacs has extensive help support built-in as well as a tutorial accessed with C-h t.
See More
Top
Con
User interface is terrible
I was using Emacs in the early 1980's, before there were GUIs. In fairness to Emacs, its original design was conceived in that context and is rather good at some things, like flexible ability to bind commands to keyboard shortcuts. Unfortunately, it didn't keep up with the times and fails to take advantage of the entire world of GUI design that's revolutionized computer science since then. So Emacs does 5% or what an editor should do quite will, and is surprisingly under-powered and old fashioned at the other 95%. To this day, it lacks or struggles with very basic things, like interactive dialogs, toolbars, tabbed interface, file system navigation, etc., etc. The things I just mentioned, are all present in some limited and inept form, but falls far short of current standard of good user interface design. For this reason, I would not recommend Emacs to anyone who is under 50 year old, or who needs power user capabilities. For casual, unsophisticated applications by someone who grew up with green screen character based computers, it's probably OK.
See More
Top
Pro
Free
Licensed under GNU GPL.
See More
Top
Con
Emacs lisp is very poorly designed
The language that's used for user customization, extensions, and for much of the basic editor functionality, is Emacs lisp, or elisp for short. I actually like lisp in general, especially Scheme, but unfortunately, elisp is one of the worst versions of lisp ever created, barely meriting being called lisp. It's very slow, impoverished in features, inconsistent, and rather inelegant in design. Elisp needed to be overhauled 20 or 30 years ago, but the Emacs developers were not willing to do the work. I believe this is one of the major reasons Emacs is so buggy, lacking in features, development is so slow, and consequently almost nobody uses it (or should use it) anymore.
See More
Top
Pro
Great documentation
With 30+ years of use the Emacs documentation is very thorough. There are also a lot of tutorials and guides written by third parties.
See More
Top
Con
Very poorly maintained
It's not clear to what extent Emacs is still supported. There's still some development taking place, but so slow that it's almost an abandoned project. There are numerous bugs in Emacs, many these days associated with start up and package management. When you search the Internet for solutions, you often find many posts, sometimes going back months or even years, with no clear fix.
See More
Top
Pro
Vi keybindings through Evil mode
Evil mode emulates vim behaviors within Emacs. It enables Vi users to move inside the Emacs universe.
See More
Top
Con
Hard customization
For customization, you need to learn Lisp.
See More
Top
Pro
Provides org-mode
Advanced planning and publication which can start as a simple list.
See More
Top
Con
A lot of jokes in this serious software
See More
Top
Pro
Enormous range of functionalities (way beyond simple "text editing")
Through its programmability, a very broad range of functionalities can be integrated in emacs, turning it even into a "single point of contact" with the underlying operating system.
See More
Top
Con
Using Emacs on a new machine without your .emacs file
See More
Top
Pro
Cross-platform
Works on Linux, Windows, Macintosh, BSD, and others.
See More
Top
Pro
Integrates planning in your development process
You can jump straight from your org-mode files to programming tasks - and back - and build a seamless workflow.
See More
Top
Pro
Versatile
Emacs is great for everything.
See More
Top
Pro
Mini buffer
You can pass complicated arguments in the mini buffer.
See More
Top
Pro
Ubiquity
Fully compliant GNU-emacs is available on many platforms, and they all understand .emacs configuration files.
See More
Top
Pro
Rectangular cut and paste
Emacs can select rectangularly.
See More
Top
Pro
Lisp customizations
With lisp customization, any behavior of Emacs can be changed. Update with pre-release patch can be also applied without recompiling the whole Emacs.
See More
Top
Pro
Visual selection and text objects with Evil
Evil is an extensible vi layer for Emacs. It provides Vim features like Visual selection and text objects.
See More
Top
Pro
dabbrev-expand (Alt-/)
Dynamic word completion.
See More
Top
Pro
Support multi-line editing, multiple frame, powerful paren, crazy jumping style
Review the "Emacs Rocks" video.
See More
Top
Pro
Has been widely used for a long time
The first verion of Emacs was written in 1974 and GNU Emacs in 1984.
See More
Top
Pro
Helm plugin adds even more power to Emacs
Powerful commands, search, and more with the Helm plugin.
See More
Top
Pro
GTK+ widgets support
Since version 25 you can run GTK widgets inside Emacs buffers. One of these is the WebKitGTK+, which allows the user to run a full-featured web browser inside Emacs with JavaScript and CSS support among other things.
See More
Top
Pro
Excelent tutorial to get you started
The tutorial you are presented with at startup shows you exactly what you need to get started and teaches you how to use the built-in help yourself later.
See More
Top
Pro
Interactive Shells
Emacs has a number of shell variants: ansi-term, shell, and eshell.
See More
Top
Pro
Emacs provides magit, the best and most complete GIT interface
Complex git history editing become a breeze with very few keystrokes. And simple ones are quickly stashed in muscle memory. Git becomes an direct extension of your brain thanks to Magit. Cherrypicking, blaming, resetting, interactive rebasing, line level commit, spinoff branches... you name it, magit already has it and has typically all those 5 to 10 git CLI commands of higher-level patterns also tide to one simple shortcut (want to amend a commit three commits away ? forgot to branch out and you've got already N commits on master ? ... etc... ).
See More
Top
Pro
Gnus
Managing several large mailing lists has never been easier using Gnus. The threading commands and the various ways of scoring articles means that I never miss important messages/authors, etc. A joy to use.
See More
Top
Pro
Eshell is cross platform
You can use the underlying operating system shell as a terminal emulation in an Emacs buffer. Don't like the default shell for your configuration? You can change it to your liking.
See More
Top
Pro
Excellent Lisp editing support
Built-in packages make editing Lisp source code feel natural.
See More
Top
Pro
Use-package and org-mode
Missing some neural package that predicts actions, maybe in the next release ...
See More
Specs
Platforms:
Unix-like, macOS, Windows, Cygwin
License:
GPL-3.0-or-later
Multi Language Support:
Yes
Auto Complete:
Yes
See All Specs
Hide
See All
Experiences
FREE
846
176
Built By the Slant team
Find the best product instantly.
4.7 star rating
Add to Chrome
Add to Edge
Add to Firefox
Add to Opera
Add to Brave
Add to Safari
Try it now - it's free
{}
undefined
url next
price drop