Thats why “easy to use” is very subjective.
Gnome is sure easy but if things mess up and i need to reinstall? I had to hunt and reinstall my extensions and enable the right settings. That could take like 30 mins or more, after reinstalling the distro.
In minimal setup like sway? I can literally git clone and then stow all my dot files. No more than 5 mins. I could do it with 10 beers at 3am in.
Guys chillax, there is only one respecting winner here; Thumbs down, XFCE.
Customising (not gonna say the racist word)? XFCE. Lightweight? XFCE. Can look like the other two? XFCE. Can be debloated even in the settings? XFCE. Supports both X11 and wayland (if that matters)? XFCE.
written by: (hopefully) fellow XFCE glazer.
P.S. Yes I mean that sarcastic/non-sarcastic. Yes I’m in my own bubble. Yes I use systemd free systems (and waiting for a good glibc-free one too!). Yes I’m autistic.
Isnt xfce less lightweight than KDE? Just because it looks like shit doesnt make it efficient.
KDE wins again
gnome was horrible to use, even simplest things that make life easier were missing. fucking TRAY ICONS so you can more easily access some running programs?!
made me feel like its system for bunch of elitist that can act snooty when scrubs like me cant handle their minimalist perfection.
Tray icons? You had to use Gnome Tweaks for the most basic things, like adjusting fonts.
i dont understand who likes to use gnome, its just plain awful and even if you customize it there is always a chance update breaks some crucial part of your ui
It’s somewhat decent on touch screens. I use it on an old convertible Lenovo. But on my main system i still prefer KDE.
for touchscreens i can understand it, on those all the ui stuff that normally makes life easier doesnt help that much
Ehh, I loved Gnome with the bottom panel hidden and tiling manager installed via gnome shell extensions. KDE just feels like it hasn’t substantially changed in ~15 years and just feels dated and like a halfway attempt at recreating Aero. I’ve moved over to Cosmic and I yearn for my gnome days but it’s getting better with each release.
why change something if it works though?
i took a look at cosmic and it looks nice, maybe i’ll try it too at some point. How much do i need to think about stuff not working on it? I can play and run what I want on mint with steam and wine, is it the same with distros that use cosmic?
Gnome tries to be Apple but even worse
Calling Gnome simple and straightforward is quite a funny joke actually
But ar least it’s without features that
fewpeople are going to use, so there’s that.
Haha I’m so glad I’m not the only one who fucks up his hand doing this for no reason, one of the best things about transitioning to Linux
Kde’s mouse growing big is actually useful though.
Ever lose your mouse? Just a wiggle- which is an action I take anyway to find it- and it gets easier to find, for a moment.
Lets me make the mouse tiny.
It’s also a nice time waster to try and see how big you can get it before whatever it is you’re waiting for is done
KDE - We added a neat accessibility feature.
Gnome - THIS GOES AGAINST EVERYTHING WE STAND FOR AND ANYONE ASKING FOR IT SHOULD FEEL BAD!
I turned it off. I never need it or want it. But I won’t hate anyone else who uses it like gnome devs do.
Yes, and the low-resolution pointer when you do this excessively is just unacceptable. I’m glad they’re finally addressing this pressing concern.

The just added a high res image or whatever rather than scaling it up. Someone probably fixed it in their spare time.
What? Why isn’t it just a vector graphic?
Because it uses the XCursor format, which is a quite old standard. Getting apps to switch to a newer standard that has vector graphics is already hard enough. Getting them to do so without burning your GPU is basically impossible.
No it doesn’t it just uses metadata compatible with XCursor themes, see e.g. this discussion.
The fix was needed because the render code just used to have a maxScale: https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kwin/-/merge_requests/9176
You have to re-render vector graphics when you zoom in. Otherwise they have the same pixels stored in memory as when they were first opened.
You are always viewing a bitmap image because you have a bitmap display and it makes sense they don’t load a full size cursor into memory to get rendered.
I’d be curious as to if they’ve rendered a full size image to sit in memory, or re-render the vector image directly as it grows.
Given the way games work re-rendering would be trivial for any computer running KDE so I’d take that bet.
Theoretically speaking, you could draw directly from vector data instead of generating a texture as an intermediate step. Or you could use a signed distance field to sample from instead of a regular bitmap.
Would it be absolutely bonkers and utterly incompatible with any legacy software? Suuure, but you would get a perfectly crisp cursor after all that wiggling.
They re-render it, but that used to be capped with a max size: https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kwin/-/merge_requests/9176
I would assume they replaced it with an SVG that is rasterized on demand instead of a very high resolution rasterized image.
In terms of coding effort, just replacing a PNG is the easiest, but it’s also the least correct solution, imo.
I went and read the commit descriptions.
Previously it was using whatever cursor the theme had loaded and just scaled it up. Now it references the full set of resources for the theme and picks the appropriate one for the size.
So they went with the most correct third option: defer to the standard set by a more authoritative source. :)
Perfect. Thanks for being curious enough to actually look 😜
That’s coincidentally also what I do when I can’t find my dick
When you have a great product, like say a fork, there is only so much you can improve, apart from keeping it clean and not rust, to justify your job.
I have fun with that cursor. Win for KDE
I don’t need this feature even a little bit.
In lieu of this, I have consistently used this feature at least twice a week ever since I found it by accident. It adds a little joy to my day.
I think it’s more “I found a thing that’s technically wrong and fixed it” and that shit pays dividends down the road when technology changes and people forget this was ever an issue. They solved it now so they don’t have to solve it later.
KDE remains the superior choice.
Honestly I really love KDE, but I’m stuck on Mint, so I have no choice but to settle for Cinnamon.
Why stuck ?
It just works and I don’t want to jumble around anymore.
I use KDE, but Cinnamon is what Gnome should have been. Cinnamon has just enough customization to make a person happy but it’s not so overwhelming a KDE can be for beginners.
I do have high hopes for COSMIC after a few more iterations. They have something good cookin’ there.
You know what doesn’t get bigger when you shake it?
Babies.
JFC, lol
JFC, lol
Unknown file formats
Lol. It’s been so long since I read one of these that made me laugh.
Someone discovered shake cursor…
Wait until they discover wobbly windows and The Cube.
Compiz 4 lyfe
Or Wayfire. I confess to having wobbled windows as fast as possible until my graphics driver crashed.















