Having the choice between desktop environments is one of the luxuries of using Linux, but it's not as simple as changing toothpastes. It's not that it's difficult to install a new one, but it takes time to get used to the new environment as you build muscle memory and tweak settings to your liking. Despite the hassle of starting over again, the hype surrounding COSMIC got to me, and I ditched GNOME to give it a shot.

After trying to get used to COSMIC, I ended up switching again, but this time it was over to KDE Plasma. That's where I've been now for the better part of a year, and I don't have any intention of switching again anytime soon. It was an awkward journey from GNOME to KDE, with a detour to COSMIC, but I've finally realized why the first two desktops didn't stick.

COSMIC is great for a certain type of user

Unfortunately, that user isn't me

COSMIC is one of the newest desktops for Linux and it's from the developers behind Pop!_OS. This distro is always making a buzz, and my frustrations with GNOME had started to accumulate, so I thought their new DE might be the answer. The main attraction with COSMIC is its tiling system. You can set individual workspaces to tile mode or float mode independently, which is a clever feature. Everything worked cleanly during the time I used it.

The tiling workflow itself, which seemed like the most important feature offered by COSMIC, didn't end up appealing to me the way I thought it would. On paper, it sounded great to have per-workspace tiling, but the reality didn't match up for me. My workflow has always been to just have a few open windows that I switch between. I'm not the type to keep tons of tabs or windows open, so simple window floating serves me fine. Even though the tiling options were sitting there available to me, I never found myself reaching for them.

The app ecosystem was also too immature to turn this into my daily desktop. COSMIC has some native apps, like Files, Edit, Term, and its media player, and these feel right at home. But everything else feels like a guest on the OS. A lot of GTK apps that I commonly use don't fully inherit COSMIC's settings. Some recent updates have smoothed this out, and given windows consistent corners and shadows, but there's still a pretty obvious difference between native apps and others.

KDE Plasma exceeded my expectations

It's no longer the cluttered mess it used to be

When I installed Plasma 6, I wasn't expecting much. My earlier impressions were formed during Plasma 5's middle years, which felt like a desktop that rewarded tinkering and punished anyone that just wanted to use it out of the box to get some work done. I distinctly remember settings that would multiply when you opened them, and visual inconsistency that was more jarring than anything I'd experienced on COSMIC.

To my surprise, a default installation of Plasma 6 felt polished enough that I didn't feel compelled to reconfigure anything in the first week. Everything was working smoothly out of the box, including some features that I've grown to rely on, like custom keyboard shortcuts and independent taskbars on each display. For someone migrating from GNOME, and the disjointed extension ecosystem that comes along with it, it's nice to have so many features permanently fused into the desktop, knowing they won't break with updates.

Krunner is the one feature that became integral for me after a few weeks. It's too convenient to give up now, with so many things being only one keystroke away: searching for apps, doing unit conversions, calculating inline, jumping to a specific system settings panel, or opening a recent file. Accessing all of that from the same box, with fuzzy matching that actually works, is a perfect example of the kind of native features that keep me on Plasma.

GNOME still isn't a bad desktop

But I'm glad to be off of it

The lack of configurability in GNOME is an intentional feature. The philosophy is to minimize choices so that users can focus on what they're actually doing. That's a valid approach, and I could appreciate it until small frustrations added up over time. KDE Plasma feels like endless configuration menus compared to GNOME, which for some people isn't a good thing. After feeling walled in by GNOME for years, Plasma was the perfect medicine.

While it's easy to get lost in configuring Plasma for hours, it's no longer essential to do it. Choosing GNOME for its simplicity doesn't feel necessary, as you can mostly achieve the same effect by using KDE with the discipline to leave most settings alone. If you don't want to configure things, then just don't. GNOME takes the choice away from you entirely, whereas KDE Plasma at least gives you the option.

Three desktops later, KDE is where I stopped looking

Going from GNOME to COSMIC to KDE wasn't a straight path, but it helped me understand what I was looking for in a desktop. COSMIC clarified what I was missing with GNOME, and KDE delivered it (and then some). If you haven't given KDE another chance since earlier versions, it's worth taking a second look. I'm glad I did.