thinking of switching from (wm)niri to (de)kde, is it worth it?

Posted by ciellia-@reddit | linux | View on Reddit | 23 comments

so i've been using niri for a while now and i love how it looks, like a wm can get so pretty, but honestly the config fatigue is starting to hit, every time something breaks or i want to change something small it's just another rabbit hole and i'm tired lol

a de just seems so... complete? like everything works together out of the box and i don't have to think about it, part of me feels like i'd miss the aesthetic control a wm gives you but another part just wants things to work without me having to touch ten different config files

has anyone made this switch and actually been happy with it, or did you end up missing the wm life, also is kde on wayland actually stable these days or is it still a bit rough around the edges?

open to other de suggestions too if anyone has thoughts, i just want something that feels polished but isn't gnome lol

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NotQuiteLoona@reddit

I've tried a lot of WMs. I was always returning to KDE Plasma, just because it's so feature complete... I'll sacrifice cute animations for that. It may not be what you want, but you asked for opinions, so...

kde on wayland actually stable these days or is it still a bit rough around the edges?

It is stable. Never seen a bug.

has anyone made this switch and actually been happy with it, or did you end up missing the wm life

I in general keep WMs when I want to rice something, but I mainly use Plasma. I somewhat miss tiling.

You may try COSMIC. It has tiling mode, and also does a lot of what a DE does. It's a nice golden mean between DE and WM.

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ciellia-@reddit (OP)

oh i didn't know cosmic had tiling, that's actually really interesting, might be worth trying before fully committing to plasma, thanks for the suggestion!

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eduard14@reddit

You can even use the cosmic DE with Niri as the WM https://github.com/Drakulix/cosmic-ext-extra-sessions

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pomcomic@reddit

you can add tiling to Plasma via Krohnkite as well. Here's a handy dandy guide on how to do it (don't focus too much on the AI voice, the guide itself is solid, used it myself.)

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Competitive_Knee9890@reddit

cosmic is still in beta (feels more like an alpha tbh), so I wouldn’t recommend it yet

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nathris@reddit

You might want to check out Gnome with the gTile extension. I daily drive KDE because at the end of the day I just need something that works the way I want and isn't needlessly opinionated, but man do I miss gTile.

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papy66@reddit

Tilling shell on gnome is wonderful as well. That's the extension which make me stick to gnome

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FryBoyter@reddit

Niri and Plasma are very different in terms of how they are used. Whether switching is worth it therefore depends on the individual user. So, in my opinion, it’s not possible to answer your question objectively.

also is kde on wayland actually stable these days or is it still a bit rough around the edges?

I've been using Plasma with Wayland for quite some time now without any problems.

As for configuring Plasma, I’d like to point out that there’s a lot you can customize if you want to. So if you’re the type who likes to tinker, you might find yourself in a similar situation to Niri.

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ciellia-@reddit (OP)

that's a fair point, i didn't think about it that way, and yeah i get what you mean about plasma being just as configurable, i guess i was hoping switching would mean less rabbit holes but it sounds like i'd just end up in different ones lol, maybe i'll stick with niri for now

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FryBoyter@reddit

In my opinion, Plasma's default configuration is very good, so there's little to no need to customize it. I myself have only made minor changes.

But there are just some users who feel the need to configure things simply because they have the option to do so. With some vim/neovim users, for example, I have the feeling that, to put it slightly exaggeratedly, they spend more time configuring the editor than actually using it. So you should consider whether you’re prone to this or not.

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ITafiir@reddit

I’ve switched from bspwm to gnome some years ago for exactly the same reason, I just wanted things to work in my de so I could get work done and use my spare time to tinker with other stuff I enjoy more. In my case I noticed that I barely used the tiling the wm provided because I only ever have Firefox on one workspace and a terminal on another, all I do is in fullscreen, and that’s something both gnome and kde can do, too. It’s been >5 years and I haven’t looked back.

Now for KDE specifically I‘ve never used it but I hear good things, especially it being very customizable in case you ever miss the tinkering.

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ciellia-@reddit (OP)

this is actually really reassuring to hear, like maybe i'm overthinking how much i actually need tiling, and the fact that you haven't looked back in 5 years says a lot, i think ill give DEs a shot

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ITafiir@reddit

Yes, give them a shot, keep your niri config around somewhere in case it doesn’t work out for you. Hell, my bspwm config still is in my dotfiles repo after all this time.

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ArtlessAnarchy@reddit

Have you tried a shell like DankMaterialShell or Noctalia?

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ciellia-@reddit (OP)

yes im using dms rn

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ArtlessAnarchy@reddit

I was in the same boat once but I rarely find myself opening configs now that DMS is doing the work for me.

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ciellia-@reddit (OP)

same, i wish noctalia was as complete as dms tho lol i really like noctalias design

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