Basic question: KDE apps on GNOME and vice versa
05-21-2023, 07:35 PM
It is legit. You may find that native applications (i.e., ones written for the desktop environment you use) integrate better, both look&feel-wise and when it comes to interoperability features, but in principle, the applications should all work fine. (On Plasma Mobile prior to September 2022, there was a showstopper KWin bug that made many GTK applications not or not fully work, but that has been fixed in KWin 5.25.5 in September 2022.)
It is just that on desktops/notebooks (including the Pinebook series), it is often not necessary to use non-native applications, unless you need niche applications like, e.g., GIMP and/or Krita (those both operate on bitmap images, but with a very different focus, GIMP on photo editing vs. Krita on drawing artwork from scratch). The situation on mobile devices such as the PinePhone is different, because even basic applications can be available (as mobile- and touch-friendly applications) only for one of the desktop environments. E.g., Plasma Mobile does not ship with an e-mail client, so Geary (which comes from GNOME and was made mobile-friendly by Phosh) is the one that works best. Phosh, on the other hand, does not ship with a native web browser, so either you use the desktop version of Firefox with tweaked settings (what most Phosh distros ship, even though its mobile-friendliness is limited), or you can install Angelfish from the Plasma Mobile project.
It is just that on desktops/notebooks (including the Pinebook series), it is often not necessary to use non-native applications, unless you need niche applications like, e.g., GIMP and/or Krita (those both operate on bitmap images, but with a very different focus, GIMP on photo editing vs. Krita on drawing artwork from scratch). The situation on mobile devices such as the PinePhone is different, because even basic applications can be available (as mobile- and touch-friendly applications) only for one of the desktop environments. E.g., Plasma Mobile does not ship with an e-mail client, so Geary (which comes from GNOME and was made mobile-friendly by Phosh) is the one that works best. Phosh, on the other hand, does not ship with a native web browser, so either you use the desktop version of Firefox with tweaked settings (what most Phosh distros ship, even though its mobile-friendliness is limited), or you can install Angelfish from the Plasma Mobile project.