I am an avid Ars reader, and as such was happy to see the 4.9 announcement being made there. However the comments that ensued were not so nice:

http://arstechnica.com/information-tech ... mments-bar

Most of the Ars users complain about KDE being ugly. One user had this to say:
"It's amazing how, release after release after release, KDE continues to look like it was slapped together in about five minutes. They announce a new update, and what do they choose for a screenshot? Something with text misaligned, the bottom of words cut off, and those awful, awful buttons that remind one of 1995. "

To be fair, it is a horrible screenshot, with the now playing widget showing off buggy display, the taskbar text cut off. That said I have to agree with some of what was said:

"Much like Android's "Project Butter", it seems like KDE needs a "Project Padding", where they run through the entire codebase and fix the litany of issues with horizontal and vertical padding that make the whole system look as unpolished as it does.

The file browser looks like it has a solid 40 pixels on any side of the files themselves dedicated to, well, nothing in particular, while the input fields have text bumping right up against the borders. This hasn't just been an issue with this version of KDE; it has been apparent that padding was an issue since at least two major versions of KDE ago. "

Once again, this one is harsh:

"That's one of KDE's biggest problems (the other being the lack of attention to detail that results in things like misaligned text).

The defaults need to be sane and not look like complete ****. Customization is great and all, but users shouldn't need to spend time changing themes, rearranging window decorations, removing useless buttons, etc just to get to something that doesn't make one's eyes bleed."

There were definitely some good opinions too, but this is troubling. There are definitely some look and feel issues in KDE in general, but what do y'all think about it? I wanted to bring this to the attention of some of the KDE folks to see what opinions around this are.

My KDE looks just fine.

Indeed font rendering was always an issue but not anymore, especially with Gtk apps. Though I have my own workarounds.
I never like defaults anyway. And Gnome by default on Fedora or Debian looks really ugly too.

I suppose the devs put the screenshots on some of the official pages and devs IMO have no idea about looks.

That said I use Debian and Debian comes always with the ugly vanilla looks. But this time Debian Wheezy gained even some nice themes.

The web is full of slanted exaggeration, child like trolls and people who genuinely hate on anything, including anything open source. Some also resent what they perceive to be arrogant, condescending Linux users who look down on MS and Apple products and output.

I can give you an example of a guy I know who only keeps a dual booted Ubuntu set up specifically so he can pick fault with it and come out with spurious claims, half truths and ridiculous, and obvious, FUD. And I'm absolutely no fan of Unity or the Shuttleworth circus.

The truth usually falls somewhere in the middle, between "KDE is ugly and unusable" and "KDE is perfect the way it is". There is always room for improvement in most things, especially large projects but I think KDE is the one DE that's on the right path (atm) and can achieve great things for end users if it doesn't pander to excess, stays focused and tries to respond to what it's users tell them, want and need. Tough juggling act but hopefully doable with rewards at the end for all concerned.

Recent SMBC strip says it all.

By the way, image in article differs from image on official KDE announcement. Is this KDE who change image to something better, or guy who wrote article just didn't make his best?

I myself am not a fan of oxygen. I think its too overstated and bold. Im using produkt with an elementary OS icon set. One problem that I definitely have with KDE Icons is that they are too bright. But shouldn't KDE look good by default?

I too am a developer, and from experience I can say that many developers are NOT good at front-ends, but simply because that is not their focus. If you put some time and serious thought into things, answers will come.

I understand that the internet is one giant troll cave, but as a huge KDE fan for years now I want KDE to become the standard. Plasma and friends provided the perfect environment(IMO) for something like unity, yet it was built with other technology, which I think is sad.

Mionio: I think KDE changed the image. I see the one on there now has a much higher resolution.

I Think the KDE forum looks very good, but it too could do with a complementary colour. I think people perceive duo toned things as "warmer", but that is just my opinion.

Out of all the icon sets I've tried I always come back to default Oxygen, I think it's the most professional and consistent looking, sure I can see things that would improve it but then I've got the problem of articulating that into pictures when I'm not a particularly brilliant designer.

I think they got Oxygen + Air plasma theme about right for a default option but things like icon sets can always use a professional freshen up, but then you figure something like KDE has a lengthy priority list.

One thing I do wish for to go along with an Oxygen + Air default, is a professional looking default dark (carbon and black) theme, as nothing I've tried so far cuts it (IMO o/c). Which I would also say is probably one of the hardest things to do and get right.

In my opinion: At it's best, KDE looks far better than any other DE setup I've used, and at it's worst, can look worse than almost any.
I've been hopping around various distros and environments (mostly *buntu and Fedora, because of Macbook support,) and I keep coming back to KDE because of certain visual design elements.

Personally, I actually like the font rendering in KDE better than any environment (Of course, this being very distro-dependent. I like it under Kubuntu, Linux Mint, and OpenSUSE at the least.) I find it quite similar to OS X, to be honest. (I dual boot Linux and OSX on here, albeit I never use OSX.) I like that slightly blurry look and the Ubuntu font. I also like Droid Sans. Unfortunately, it looks the slightest bit off in GTK apps, which I don't particularly like.
Also, the font size is very sane to me. I don't know the exact terms/technicalities, but I like the large amount of data I can fit onto the screen. I find it similar to OS X, again. I like the window titles being in a small non-bolded font. Under Gnome-shell and Unity, I hate how a simple window like Update Manager fills the whole screen vertically. I've had issues with windows going off the bottom of the screen, simply because of the very large font size and liberal spacing.

I like the coloring and the widget set, and the overall glossy/glassy feel. I absolutely love the network manager popup. I don't think oxygen widgets are overdone. The fade in and fade out of the glow is done well, and the widgets are not too big.
I always turn off images on buttons, since I think it looks better. You'll notice that Windows and OS X don't generally use images on buttons (IIRC.)
As for icons, I DO like Gnome icons better by default. I usually switch to KFaenza, and I think they look alright. It's not that I dislike Oxygen icons, but some of the application icons are really messy/ugly to me, whereas Gnome is more consistent.

Now where KDE fails IMO is consistency. I sorta agree with the Project Butter point (Btw, I have not tried Jellybean, but ICS is super smooth for me, even in unstable alpha form? Haha). Some default apps look great. But then I see things that are just ugly. Okular has big ugly icons in it's sidebar when you first start it. I don't like how some Plasma popups are transparent, while system tray menus are just plain opaque menus, I.E. the volume menu compared to the network manager or calendar.
The tray icons are all monochrome white, but Akonadi is blue? Those sort of things.
I constantly see dialogs cut off text in text fields. It should be sized to not have the text cut off by default. I have yet to see a KDE distro where the "Support KDE" tab wasn't cut off in the About KDE dialog.
Also, I absolutely hate the default KDM look. It looks too bubbly to me. I haven't really looked into any themes, so I shouldn't complain too much. I do like the way OpenSuse does it.
The padding is sometimes perfect, but sometimes it is just off. I'm trying to think of good examples, but of course my mind is blank. Just looking around, printer configuration has just way too much blank space. For an environment that I believe often uses space to it's fullest, I hate seeing all that blank grey space in dialogs.
I'm also not sure across distros, but right now on Kubuntu, the Help Center has super ugly font settings by default. Sometimes in other applications, I see a bolded title somewhere that looks off.

Sorry for the long post, just trying to throw in my input. I am primarily a GTK DE user, FWIW (Huge fan of XFCE.) If they were to work on that, and GTK apps looked better font-wise (Perhaps beyond their control), I would have no issues visual-wise with KDE. Of course there are some non-visual design considerations I have for KDE, but that is not for this post.

@Mode7 :

I agree with you on many of the things you mention. Another issue is that KDE simply is different. Most DEs nowadays have dark redish themes, KDE has a light blue theme. I personally prefer a dark desktop theme. I cant say why, I just do.

I use the produkt plasma theme, and the elementary os icon theme, together with a dark colour theme(plumbum). It looks decent, but there are plenty of small visual glitches in KDE.

Just for the lulz, my KDM setup, default on Debian Wheezy, in my case I have the Debian logo in the bottom right corner too:

http://www.eshat.de/blog/wp-content/upl ... m_joy3.png

KDE looks are mostly fine for me aside from the fact that default window background is gray with gradient which looks horrible (at least that was the default at the time, not sure if it's changed by now) and monochrome tray icons which give me problems with lighter themes (light on white).

Padding has been a point on which I have been thinking. Is it possible to adjust it while packaging KDE? Or is it something only a developer can do?

I had another thing with the height of buttons being connected to the font size. if you reduce the font size then the corresponding buttons also will reduce in height so that sometimes they become too narrow.

KDE is not ugly, no, and that screenshot certainly exaggerates the problem. Unity and Gnome Shell don't look so bad but there's not really much the user can configure out of the box in comparison with KDE, and anyone who's work with responsive web design can tell you that the more you add configurability and fluidity, the greater potential there is for visual consistency errors--you can't possibly test every combination. The default installation isn't bad, and there's a lot to love, and it has a lot of potential. The configuration possibilities are amazing, and the ease of downloading themes, icons and colour schemes right from System Settings is pretty easy to use. Here's what I've done with my desktop: (http://i.imgur.com/4wJ6S.jpg, http://i.imgur.com/cAz6r.png).

However I'd like to reiterate the need others have expressed that KDE has for a "one hundred papercuts" or "project padding" effort. For all of its gloss and polish, there are many things that, for new users trying to configure their system, shows a lack of polish or good graphic design sense. Sometimes there's just too much damn gloss. Padding and text alignment is a big one, especially when resizing text or panel widths. The system tray is too cluttered and the icons are often inconsistent. The notification center is usually a gad-awful misaligned mess. It's hard to see and/or read anything in the plasmoid drop-downs when using a translucent theme like Air. After I resize a panel all the content inside the panel gets all glitched out. Sometimes the install buttons for themes lead to HTML pages with tarball downloads that most users won't have a clue what to do with. It all adds up to an unprofessional and messy experience, and visual consistency details matter a lot more than gloss. If we want widespread adoption from non-geeks, the out-of-the-box system needs to be perfect, and small tweaks that a non-technical person might attempt to make need to work flawlessly. Although, I suppose, much of the OOTB experience is up to the various distributions to configure properly.

An initiative to address minor UI design bugs or deficiencies has been created;
http://community.kde.org/Getinvolved/Extra_Mile
Everyone is encouraged to actively report areas needing more attention.

It is encouraging to see that this is being addressed. I love KDE, but I hate to see people ragging on it. Its especially bad If I feel some of their frustrations with it. I agree that KDE can be customized quite a bit, in fact I have done just that, and I think mine looks pretty neat (in my eyes at least):

https://plus.google.com/115505958823790 ... nkPFdLWoe7

I really like waht you have done with your KDM dusanic.

I think its great that we can be honest about what we think about KDE without holy flame wars breaking out, which was my fear when posting this. I agree with everything said above. It seems there are many little irritations and nothing big causing problems, but solving the little things will be great. In that respect the Extra Mile project could be just whats necesary.

Although perpetually unfinished, http://getkde.org/ might be an interesting way to market KDE to your friends. It's a personal effort of mine as I have similar gripes with padding and lack of interface polish on certain parts of the KDE desktop.

However- KDE's visual polish if anything has been _improving_, not degrading, with every release.