[alphazard]

I remain fascinated that we can have whole communities of people like r/unixporn building many user experiences that look great, but the two biggest linux desktop environments (KDE and GNOME) look like fingerpainting compared to macOS.

Clearly there are people who know how to write the software that makes the user interfaces, and clearly there are people good at designing beautiful interfaces, and all of it is FOSS for anyone to copy or build on, but for whatever reason no one can manage to put these two together, such that the big DE's look as good as macOS by default.

[cosmic_cheese]

In my view, the primary issue is that the FOSS world has a distinct lack of design-minded engineers, which has been the group that's been responsible for the high quality, well designed botique apps that macOS has become known for. That world is much more skewed towards folks that are near-exclusively "nuts and bolts".

There's nothing wrong or bad about that but it manifests quite clearly in the software that gets produced.

Design-minded engineers are great for UI-focused projects because they're the most capable of striking that balance of form and function, or better yet coming up with designs that serve both. By comparison, non-technical designers and fully technical engineers are both at a disadvantage; the designers can make things nice looking but don't have a grasp on what's practical to implement while the technical engineers struggle to design UIs that are appealing to anybody but other technical people.

It's a bit of a self-reinforcing problem. The FOSS world can't attract design-minded engineers because they have such little presence in that culture.

[SebastianKra]

There's a reason why unixporn only ever shows a terminal and a handful of applications in very specific states.

MacOS was (because it sure as hell isn't anymore) so great because it had multiple talented third-party designers all building on the same consistent design system.

[hysan]

For the most part, I agree. But sometimes you come across ones like this that clearly go into the actual UX elements of an UI: https://old.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comments/1l5ll27/hyprland_...

[quitit]

There's a great deal of bikeshedding in the world of design.

Sure everyone can design, but there is value in having a team of people who specialise in design, and then having that enforced across the OS.

Design also means giving up on my wonderful ideas for how I think an app should work and subscribe to mimicking how the OS functions: not because this is the optimal design, but because it's going to be the most intuitive for the -user-.

The strength of OSS is the huge amount of experimentation that can go on by having everyone execute their own ideas, this however is not conducive to a unified harmonious design.

[willis936]

I hadn't heard of unixporn before, thanks. I've modified some rainmeter scripts over the years for a cozy and dense performance readout that I bring with me. I've recently ditched windows everywhere I possibly can and have been missing these overlays a little bit. I did find btop and it is about 95% of the way there, but I would like better hooks into UPS power usage and a dense per-core frequency, usage, and temperature display.

[thefz]

> I remain fascinated that we can have whole communities of people like r/unixporn building many user experiences that look great, but the two biggest linux desktop environments (KDE and GNOME) look like fingerpainting compared to macOS.

Opposite view, macOS for me looks like a toy UI I can do no real work with.

[veeti]

A few years ago I would have agreed with you 100%, but OS X design really went downhill a while back. I think it looks more like some bad knockoff from unixporn than its former glory now. And Tahoe/Liquid Glass? Even some Gnome 2 Nautilus screenshot from decades ago looks more consistent than whatever this is:

https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/liqui...

[jorvi]

Those riced setups look great on screenshots but they usually have terrible visual distinction, the colors work badly with Night Light (orange filter), and they carefully select applications that can be themed or fit the theme.

Once you step outside the facade it'll look disjointed. Applications won't have blur. They'll have square blur corners with rounded window corners. Icons will look glitchy with blur. Etc.

[kiddico]

Sounds like you didn't finish your last rice lol

[jorvi]

Sounds like you are rather unknowledgeable lol

[kiddico]

Damn, I was making a joke.

Sounds like you're a bit of a twat lol

[Danjoe4]

Because those setups are too opinionated and mix too much stuff which makes them unstable. If you want a cohesive desktop experience, Mint Cinnamon is what you're looking for

[wredcoll]

Like most things, because actually doing it is a lot of hard thankless work that involves saying no to people a lot.

Linus is basically famous for saying "no", there's a reason for that.

[alphazard]

It strikes me as a just a question of taste. No one has to do any significant extra work. Someone just has to recognize e.g. why white space matters, or wasted space, or contrast matters, and then make the necessary changes to the defaults.

It's not like we are arguing about the subjectivity of favorite colors. The basics that macOS, r/unixporn and even Windows get right and GNOME gets wrong are better understood as facts about the human visual system, and how the typical human performs when confronted with the interface.

[bigyabai]

Iunno, I write GTK4 apps and don't have any real gripes with the toolkit. My biggest issue is the color scheme, besides that I think the Libadwaita look is much easier-on-the-eyes than post-Big Sur macOS. Certainly makes a better use of screen real estate.

[wredcoll]

> Someone just has to recognize e.g. why white space matters, or wasted space, or contrast matters, and then make the necessary changes to the defaults.

I mean, this is work, but the issue is getting every single program to do it and then keeping it "correct" for the next 10 years as other people try to change.

[adastra22]

Linus has zero relevance to the Linux desktop user experience.

[hokumguru]

Yes Mac might always reign supreme (given the latest design changes though I’m not quite sure…) but both DEs will still probably be head and shoulders above Windows forever.

[TiredOfLife]

MacOS looks like fingerpainting compared to KDE

[surgical_fire]

Funny you say that, when MacOS is atrocious. I have to put up with it for work, but I wouldn't touch that crap for personal usage. If Linux was not an option, I would rather handle fucking Windows 11 than MacOS