For a sec I read it as a former Gkrellm user

> so that for example ctrl-a will always go to the beginning of a textbox no matter the application

And Control-W will always erase word no matter the application?

This is actually a major reason I use KDE: I can, with some effort, change keyboard shortcuts to avoid conflicting with terminal Control keys. It doesn't solve the textbox problem, though.

(I don't use Emacs bindings, but Control-W erase word came in the ‘new’ TTY driver in BSD2 in 1983 — predating Windows 1.0, incidentally — likely copying TOPS-20.)

There are projects like kinto that achieve very good results at making Linux behave like macOS on shortcuts (cmd instead of ctrl only when it makes sense, etc).

I’m not sure how they do it, i suspect it’s mostly a manual grind for configuring the most common shortcuts and apps, but there might be some idea there that can be reused for the eMacs setup.

On paper KDE's system is more elegant and practical than GNOME's. In practice the keyboard shortcut management via exporting and importing is rather unwieldy. Then again, if you want to go deep into setting up your shortcuts to something properly usable, it's a fair bit more convenient with KDE, where all your shortcuts are in a single place, than with GNOME, where you have to look in all the gconf categories and it's a right pain to find conflicts.

I'm not sure this is the reason or a big reason, but I think this is very difficult to do in Linux, sadly.

What makes Linux great is also its biggest handicap, in my opinion, when it comes to User Experience: the fragmentation of UI frameworks and libraries.

I imagine having this control between Qt, GTK and other UI libraries and electron-type-apps os difficult if not impossible.

omg I found my people. Ctrl+A and Ctrl+E are so engraved into my muscle memory that it always takes a moment to readjust when using non Mac OSes. I didn't know Gnome also uses those as a KDE fan

As I thought: you can set a different shortcut for "Beginning of line" and it will work in Qt input fields but, sadly, not others. I don't know if this is the step you're on.

This seemed like something relatively easy for chatgpt to handle. The response is a bit complicated compared to what it sounds like you are looking for (it's not from the kde settings gui), but still a two minute "fix".

Dropbox works fine on Linux so you should be good. OneDrive has a community developed client, not sure how good it works.

Gaming works great on Linux, arguably better than on Windows. Show stoppers are mostly aggressive anti-cheat or DRM stuff so multiplayer can still suck but for anyone doing single player it is amazing. I have a windows installation I can dual boot into but I haven't in like half a year, I prefer gaming on Linux.

Linux Mint with Cinnamon has a traditional Desktop close to Windows. I highly recommend checking it out.

You can use OneDrive and Dropbox on Linux, but to answer your question: Nextcloud

At work I use OneDriveGUI with no problems.

- https://github.com/bpozdena/OneDriveGUI

I tried recently and unfortunately had to bail out

Gnome UI sucks. It is ugly and non-customizable without plugins, or whatever you call that addon that enables you to put your clock on the right... I'm sure the UI makes more sense on a tablet or a phone with touch controls, but I just want to use it on my laptop with a regular monitor and with a mouse (or touchpad).

KDE has sane defaults and looks and feels like Windows UI from the best era. It just works.

>Anyone want to share why you currently choose KDE over Gnome?

GNOME is like a tool that was designed to fit the average user so if you are not the average user (like you know the joke where the average person has 1 testicle) then you have to mold yourself to fit into GNOME (or try to hack it with unsuported extensions that might make it more tolerable) in KDE you have nobs to tweak it to fit you smoothly (like for example with one checkbox I can make the Left Alt to be a Ctrl button so i do not bend my hand and fingers to use my many Ctrl+keys shortcuts).

IMO use GNOME only if you are the typical GNOME user, that prefer to bend themselves over and not to adapt the tool to fit . Avoid KDE if too many options cause you some anxiety or buffer overflow.

KDE is a wonderful desktop environment. It's been a while since I've used it but from what I've seen it grows and improves every year.

Gnome is more opinionated. There are fewer options overall, the core apps are generally much simpler, and it assumes a specific way of interacting with your computer. You can change this with extensions, but if you are dead set on a specific workflow and need to venture beyond a small set of widely-used and well-supported extensions then it may feel like you're swimming upstream.

I personally prefer Gnome because I don't mind trying out new workflows and it ended up being a good fit. But I understand why many "hacker types" would prefer KDE, and (assuming they've ironed out stability and release scheduling issues) I agree with other comments that KDE would make for a better default experience, especially for people coming from Windows.

Thankfully, both exist and you can try them and see what works for you!

I guess because the defaults suits me better, and the configurability is exposed well and I don't have to load special tools or commands to change stuff.

I used to run complicated setups back in the days, with black/flux/openbox or even enlightenment (16), but now I don't really have the interest or time for tweaking DEs.

> Anyone want to share why you currently choose KDE over Gnome?

Just to give you an opposite perspective...I was a long time Kubuntu / KDE Neon user (almost 10 years) and shifted to Gnome couple of years back (Ubuntu 22.04), now running 24.04. It's been very stable and out of the way. I am not sure why people are complaining about UI, for me it's barely visible on my two screens. All open-source and proprietary apps I use run well and without glitch. It took me an hour to get used to the "Gnome" way when I shifted.

I don't want to install an extension which will break next time there's a new GNOME release just to be able to set my clock to '%A %F %R' format.

I switched from Gnome to KDE Plasma because I find it more stable and more integrated since many of the features I otherwise miss are out of the box in KDE Plasma, and you do not need third party extensions which are quite unstable. Also later found out Plasma is much more configurable and personalizable so I xan really fit it best to my orefered workflow. I also find KDE developers listen to their users much more.

I find that Gnome opiniated workflow can easily get in my way. KDE feels more natural and it really grew on me after using it for quite some times.

Thanks for all the replies! I'll probably try Fedora KDE first in that case :)

Last time I used KDE as my main desktop was v3.x, I switched away once v4.0 was released (at launch it was slow, unstable, and lacked many features). But it seems KDE 6 is likely to fit my personality more than recent Gnome versions.