back to article KDE releases ice-cream coloured Plasma 5 just in time for summer

Plasma 5, released last week, is a major redesign of the Unix KDE desktop environment and underlying frameworks. Perhaps the most notable difference is the visual changes, which see KDE embracing a more streamlined, "flat" interface, but it's also the first version of KDE to be powered by Qt 5 and the recently released KDE …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    KDE always struck me as a tad ... childishly nerdy ...

    Konquerer, Kate, Konsole, Kontact, Kings Bollege Baimbridge ...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: KDE always struck me as a tad ... childishly nerdy ...

      Only a tad...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: KDE always struck me as a tad ... childishly nerdy ...

      In the Linux world there are different desktops and applications are written for different desktops. Since integration is better if you use a desktop-native app I always found the K useful.

      1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
        Thumb Up

        Re: KDE always struck me as a tad ... childishly nerdy ...

        oK!

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: KDE always struck me as a tad ... childishly nerdy ...

      Well, don't fucking use it then.

      And it's "Konqueror", btw.

  2. Dave 150

    Wow it looks awful

    1. phil dude
      Linux

      but...

      it does work...

      Although another family member is a gnome user which is much prettier...I am happy with a multi-monitor desktop that just stays stable...

      Of course, this being linux months of uptime is not news.

      Now, let's see if they can get Wayland incorporated....

      Then again, I'm still on opensuse 12.2.

      I'll reserve judgement until I get a new opensuse install....

      P.

      1. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

        Is there any evidence that Wayland is an improvement?

        There have been dozens of attempts to replace X11 with something more streamlined, without the network overhead. In the past, these projects have fizzled when the developers discovered the slowness came from the biggest applications that used X. X dates back to 1985, so it had to be efficient to run on the computers of the day. It has been optimised for decades. Wayland developers will have difficulty beating that, and if they do, their hard work will be hidden by every ground sloth application that requires 128GB on a 32 core 8GHz liquid helium cooled gamer's rig to run as fast as an anaesthetised ant.

        1. Jim 59

          Re: Is there any evidence that Wayland is an improvement?

          Upvoted for "ground sloth".

      2. P. Lee

        Re: but...

        opensuse 13.1 is quite reasonable.

        The first thing to do is switch the system fonts from sans serif to Nimbus Sans L and everything looks much better. Even PulseAudio works.

        I like the network transparency of X. It helps with messing with the server in the garage. I'd vote for more network transparency if I could. I don't want to have a whole desktop and then try to filter bits out, like citrix does. I really dislike RDP just to get one application running. Far better to put the effort into smarter clipboard systems and perhaps wait for HTML derivatives to allow the lower bandwidth interfaces. You could always run squid on a desktop/tablet host - its the bloodsucking advert slingers and video streamers that gobble bandwidth by breaking caching.

    2. chivo243 Silver badge
      Stop

      From the screen shot, it's slightly better than the new Yosemite from Apple which is just slightly better than new Windows. Are all desktops going into the hopper lately? Or are they starting the road to unification for smart devices? I'm not sure, but I'm a bit worried...

      1. Gordon 10
        FAIL

        Incoming Rant

        I suspect lots of UI pseud's going to the same conferences following the same nerdy trends regardless of what users actually want/need. Honestly do they even talk to end users any more?

        Honestly is there anything in modern OS design these days that isn't some massive circle-jerk?

        How about an OS that just fucking works for 90% of users.

        The reality is we reached peak UI for Keyboard/Mouse about 15 years ago, and for Touch 2-3 ago.

        Now its all meaningless window dressing - that brings the excuse of being able to re-invent the wheels on the all the useful functions that didn't make the first cut of a new UI release, as an excuse to keep themselves busy.

        A pox on all of their houses.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Incoming Rant

          Last I looked you could use any previous version of KDE if it just f***ing works for you. PS This is not an O/S.

          If others want instead to use the newer version then they can, because that's their choice.

          That's the key word there ... CHOICE.

          1. keithpeter Silver badge
            Windows

            Re: Incoming Rant

            "...To search, you just start typing and a search field appears with your text in it. It's pretty much impossible to discover this feature..."

            Here we go, here we go, here we go....

            I'm all for new flat pastels, but one needs to be able to find applications and files having allowed Nepomuk to index one's gigabytes.

          2. Gordon 10
            FAIL

            Re: Incoming Rant

            The point is that its a choice that very few want. Instead of all these UI "experts" designing stuff so they get maximum masturbatory pleasure from it - why don't they actually spend their time doing something that would be more beneficial to the community. It doesn't matter how l33t their coding skills are if they don't have the self discipline to do something useful.

            Linux didn't become popular because it had nice eye candy - it became popular because

            a) it was free.

            b) it did the server basics very well indeed.

            The trouble is all these sub-groups whilst starting out with great aims just become petty self-serving groups directed to achieving their own aims, and because they don't talk to anyone in the real world they end up delivering something that pleases no-one but themselves.

            At least Canonical had the excuse of being directed by a billionaire megalomaniac for Unity. WTF are the Gnome and KDE guys excuses?

        2. no-one in particular

          Re: Incoming Rant

          From the article:

          > frankly the default KDE 4 theme has been looking long in the tooth for a while now

          Reading that sentence early in the piece just made my heart sink. Does the author think the changes are good because they are more functional? Because they free up screen space for important stuff (your data in your program of choice)? Because they work better with screen readers and are an aid to the disabled? Use less CPU?

          Nope.

          They are just "long in the tooth". What does that even *mean* for a GUI? It isn't rad? Isn't cool? Isn't some-other-pointless-faddy-word?

          1. Allonymous Coward
            Coat

            Re: Incoming Rant

            Quite.

            /me goes back to my Xfce desktop.

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Incoming Rant

            > Reading that sentence early in the piece just made my heart sink.

            I agree. To his credit though, Gilberson has got a bit more clued up in his recent pieces. You should have seen his Linux articles from a few years ago. :(

        3. Jim 59

          Re: Incoming Rant

          Whoa! Upvoted for "massive circle-jerk".

          To be serious, I think that too many FOSS developers are excited by graphics development, and many fewer are interested in writing wireless drivers. "Ohh! look! my menu !" But as they are doing it for free it is hard to critisize them.

        4. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Incoming Rant

          > Honestly do they even talk to end users any more?

          Yes we do.

          Besides being users ourselves.

          And besides users being able to become contributors, should they so choose.

          1. strum

            Besides being users ourselves.

            Nope. Devs/engineers can't be users - wrong mindset.

            Devs know what the hardware/software is supposed to do; users don't. Devs know what parameters an argument requires; users don't. However badly-placed a function is, devs know it must be there, somewhere; users don't.

            Engineers shouldn't be allowed within a mile of UI design (except to code it). The only thing worse is a graphic designer.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Besides being users ourselves.

              > Engineers shouldn't be allowed within a mile of UI design

              On the basis of what experience would that be?

              And btw, note that although I'm a minor KDE contributor, my work has been on background services, D-Bus interfaces, and translation. I'm rubbish at GUIs so I won't touch them.

              1. NohSpam

                Re: Besides being users ourselves.

                As an HCI/UX Designer and UI Designer since around the start of the 90's, I'm still working with some of the best software engineers and architects in the business, on anything from small, web based UIs to mainframe systems management via Eclipse, mobile and HTML5 ...</drone>

                I have also used Linux/KDE pretty much exclusively since 1997. I've always preferred the extensive customisation available in KDE to anything Gnome offered. The ethos with Gnome and latterly with Canonical, Microsoft and especially Apple is limited customisation due to a presumption that their choices are good enough... nay, the best choice for all users. I've never been a chronic settings tinkerer but when something irritates me I'll usually have a way to fix it in KDE. In other OSs/WindowManagers, I usually waste a lot of time looking, only to find it's not catered for. I admit that there's a large element of getting used to stuff but KDE is just easier (with a few notable exceptions) to my mind. Live and let live though. I've recently had a Mac forced on me (need to use Adobe cloud tools) and having gone in with an open mind, I've found it to be a mixed bag. Some stuff is pure genius but there's a surprising range of UI that's just awful. An example that drives me nuts every time is the window control. It seems like there's an underlying complex state model, which determines what you can see and what size it's allowed to be. In KDE, I can pick any one of a running applications windows directly and easily specify minimised, maximised (even maximised horizontally or maximised vertically), arbitrary size or shaded (just the title bar). It's all very simple, application independent and deterministic.

                Now, coming on to the Engineers ability to deliver UI. The problem with FOSS is that teams are generally self selecting, under resourced, under appreciated, are being paid to do another (commercial) job and are expected to maintain enthusiasm and drive over many releases, while frequently being diverted by life events (marriage, kids, job changes). To deliver UI, different skills are required than are generally possessed by the detail crazy, completer finisher, linear thinkers who code for a living. To do a good job on UI, we need people who can, in their initial investigations, put aside the limitations of the possible and enquire of and empathise with the problems and tasks the user is trying to handle. People who can diverge crazily and facilitate others to do the same, then converge. People who know how to see the bigger problem and be innovative in designing a solution for it. People who know how to do user research. People who know how to negotiate the relative importance of shipping function vs a great user experience. There's a lot more. I've spent my career trying to exploit these skills and hone the associated techniques, so that a software engineer can be confident that delivering a design I've worked on will meet or exceed users needs, even on complex systems. Not just because I asserted some personal conviction but because I've iteratively researched, validated and checked, with the people who ultimately will use it! Now, step forward the software engineer who's got time and skills to do everything I mentioned (and much more) and remain independent and have time to write and unit test the code - probably unpaid?

        5. ecofeco Silver badge

          Re: Incoming Rant

          Users, punters, customer, clients.

          All just warm bodies that are obstacles to the money or fame or both and will one day be outlawed.

          /sarcasm

      2. ecofeco Silver badge

        That is, of course, the million dollar question.

        As for interface design overall? Don't get me started.

    3. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      It reminds me of Windows. Flat and depressing.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "It reminds me of Windows. Flat and depressing."

        That's because it's a direct copy of many of the Windows 8 idioms and innovations. As always, Team F/OSS are copying where MS has lead. Maybe they'll innovate for themselves in the next decade or so. Until then, expect they should expect a writ from MS to land on their desk.

        Not content with fragmenting their sub-1% with multiple OSs using different packaging methods, the fragment that again with different distros of those OSs that have different dependencies and fragment again with different DEs. This is why Linux is a mess which no one supports or really cares about, beyond a few basement-dwelling neckbeards.

        Get a common target in place (or a small number, at least) like Apple and Windows have; then you might get some share. Oh, and backwards compatibility. What runs on this version must run on future versions for at least a decade or more.

        I keep hearing (yet failing to see) how great F/OSS devs are - are they up to the challenge of the real world?

        1. JLV
          Happy

          >Team F/OSS are copying where MS has lead

          A nitwit who manage to get it totally backwards ;-)

          Whether or not you like Linux, MS had plenty of opportunity to observe and learn from the Gnome3/KDE4 and especially Unity fails of the last few years.

          These gripes about massive unsolicited UI changes, touch and usability of desktop vs tablets/phones? Had been going on for years before MS decided to faithfully make the same design errors with Metro. They could have learned from all the Penguin griping going around, but, no, they doubled the ante instead and managed to make Win8 even more hateful with its schizophrenic Metro/Classic personality.

          At least, on Linux, and Macs, if all else fails, the command line is a pretty capable interface. Not quite how I would describe the command line on Windows ;-)

          For me, KDE 3x was the best. Granted, in that case, it did look somewhat like Win XP, which is not by itself a bad thing.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          > I keep hearing (yet failing to see) how great F/OSS devs are

          Some of us are great and others not so good, but... failing to see? How can you be "failing to see" when the code is out there for everyone to look at?

          > - are they up to the challenge of the real world?

          ??? Beg pardon?

  3. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
    Linux

    Bring back Gnome-2

    Gnome-3 , Unity and now KDE (if V4.0 wasn't bad enough) have all IMHO totally lost the plot.

    nowt more to say really.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. gv

      Re: Bring back Gnome-2

      Err, yes Mate. Personally, I prefer i3, fluxbox, openbox or even WindowMaker to Gnome 2.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Bring back Gnome-2

        +1 for Openbox. I've been checking out distros with new GUIs lately but haven't found anything I prefer to CrunchBang ( #! ).

        Simple and fast.

        1. asdf

          Re: Bring back Gnome-2

          IMHO on most distros Openbox comes out looking the best with default settings of all the micro window managers. Plus even windows users can pick it up pretty easily once they figure out the right click opens the menu.

          1. Will Godfrey Silver badge

            Re: Bring back Gnome-2

            ... and another openbox-er here (with ROX as the filer)

    3. Khaptain Silver badge

      Re: Bring back Gnome-2

      Have to agree with Steve, the whole desktop UI thing has gone way overboard. The graphics gymnastics that we see now are just a little bit OTT. I always end up dumbing my interfaces down where possible.

      I do like the aero style preview though, which for me is a definate plus..

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Bring back Gnome-2

      > Gnome-3 , Unity and now KDE (if V4.0 wasn't bad enough) have all IMHO totally lost the plot.

      > nowt more to say really.

      Saying "have all IMHO totally lost the plot" is as useful as a chocolate teapot.

      I trust you have made detailed reports of your concerns at the bug trackers of all the above projects? I can't speak for the other two, but at KDE we are not Mozilla: we actually listen to people.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Me too!

    Everyone else is doing the flat look, so can we have some as well......Sigh.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Me too!

      Right, because you think the default theme should be Your Whim or Nothing Must Ever Change? Having a fully configurable desktop and a gazillion different themes available on the Internet just isn't good enough for some people.

      1. Terry Cloth

        Flat look

        It's not that I dislike any default other than my own idea of Perfection. It's that I object to making things harder to distinguish. 3D/2D, either's OK, but what's with this lack of contrast? I don't want to have to go carefully examining each icon or notification to determine what it is. I want some variation so that various pieces stand out. I really feel sorry for the visually-impaired users---what a crock!

        1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

          Re: Flat look

          I really feel sorry for the visually-impaired users

          A major point indeed. The world does not consist of 18 year old looking for fashionable desktop styles.

        2. Bucky 2

          Re: Flat look

          what's with this lack of contrast?

          This was a complaint in our household with a recent Android update, when the status bar icons went from color to monochrome. It used to be we could tell what was going on WITHOUT putting our reading glasses on because the differently-colored icons made up for the problem of visual acuity.

          As long as I can continue to replace the default icon set in KDE with one of my own choosing (with colors), it shouldn't be as big a deal with the desktop as it is with the phone.

          Fads come. Fads go. It's not a big deal as long as I can customize.

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Flat look

          Do you realise that the actual look and feel is fully customisable in KDE? Indeed, major distros ship with their own "skins" which look nothing like the upstream version.

          What counts is what's under the bonnet, and I believe we have a pretty solid bit of engineering down there.

          I am not involved with KDE5 though, so I'll reserve further comment.

        4. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Flat look

          When I go to a restaurant and there's one dish I don't like, I pick a different one.

          I'm much more concerned about the kitchen cooking my meal well.

        5. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Flat look

          > It's that I object to making things harder to distinguish. 3D/2D, either's OK, but what's with this lack of contrast?

          Have you actually used it, or just talking on the basis of some screenshots? Come on, give it a try and install it--if you don't like it, you get double your money back.

          > I want some variation so that various pieces stand out. I really feel sorry for the visually-impaired users---what a crock!

          Well, don't just stand there. Get involved. Contribute your own theme.

    2. Chika
      Unhappy

      Re: Me too!

      Everyone else is doing the flat look, so can we have some as well......Sigh.

      And that's one of my biggest gripes and possibly the biggest reason why I still don't use KDE4 and am unlikely to use this. It seems that KDE are too keen to ape other styles rather than produce something that sets them apart from the crowd.

      For myself, I will probably stay with KDE3 or TDE as long as I can. Possibly considering Cinnamon as a replacement if that doesn't pan out. And yes, this is another openSUSE user!

  5. Lars
    Happy

    Very confusing

    Lets stick to a one party system, the Russians all agreed in old good times, Lada is the car.

    1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

      Re: Very confusing

      What about the Moscovitch?

      The Zil? Well, only if you were a party BigWig.

      There were even some East German Wartburgs around.

      Lada's were not the only Car of the good old USSR.

      This is from a visit in 1981.

      1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

        Re: Very confusing

        My other car is a ZSU

      2. keithpeter Silver badge
        Coat

        Re: Very confusing

        Had a ride in a Moscovitch once, tecchy at University bought one while I was doing my phud. Very nice little estate with chunky tires and wicked heating - December in Brum.

        Seriously, there is something to be said for 'bog standard this is how it works', especially if you train people.

        Mine's the greatcoat and ushanka

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Very confusing

        What about the Moscovitch?

        The Zil? Well, only if you were a party BigWig.

        There were even some East German Wartburgs around.

        Lada's were not the only Car of the good old USSR.

        This is from a visit in 1981.

        Those Trabis weren't too shabby either

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Very confusing

          > Those Trabis weren't too shabby either

          Not until you needed to use the brakes. :) Reminds me of the Spanish ABS joke ("a veces frena, a veces no").

      4. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Very confusing

        What about the Moscovitch? [etc]

        They were all shit. Poor design, even the one that was a simplified Fiat, appalling build quality, and no spare part availability (which is why they stopped importing Ladas into the UK, as the EU insists on a certain amount of spares being available). Nothing has changed since the end of the Soviet Union either - if you go to Russia then all the domestic built cars are still about thirty years out of date and fall apart. Not helped by the low quality petrol and terrible state of the roads.

  6. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

    Lies, damned lies and messing with popcon data

    A couple of decades ago, about 60% of Linux developers used KDE, and about 60% used Gnome [Note to Windows users - switching to a different desktop environment in Linux usually requires about three mouse clicks, or you can run several at once and change which one controls the display/keyboard/mouse with <CTRL><ALT><Function Key>]. I was curious about what the current figures are, so downloaded some popcon results, which you can see below. Before that, here are some of the reasons why my results are thoroughly bogus:

    1) Only machines with Debian installed report to Debian Popcon. I am sure plenty of people use Unity on Ubuntu, but only one Debian Popcon user uses Unity.

    2) Popcon is optional. Lots of people do not install it, or they disable it.

    3) A Debian package gets a vote if one of its executables is executed in the last month. (Some votes are missed because the executable is on a file system mounted ro or noatime.)

    4) I have picked a package as a proxy for desktop environment use. I may not have selected the most appropriate package.

    5) Multi-user computers get one vote per environment used, no matter how many users use each environment.

    perl-base 152772

    xserver-xorg-core 66660

    gnome-panel 19654

    xfce4-panel 11163

    plasma-desktop 8990

    openbox 4488

    lxde-common 3407

    mate-polkit 1884

    fluxbox 855

    fbi 313

    cinnamon 247

    ratpoison 105

    kdelibs4c2a-trinity 98

    unity 1

    perl-base got the most votes. It is a proxy for the number of computers reporting to Debian Popcon.

    xserver-xorg-core is an attempt to count desktop/laptop machines, missing out servers.

    fbi is an attempt to count the number of people using Linux virtual consoles instead of Xorg.

    kdelibs4c2a-trinity is Trinity (fork of KDE 3 from before the KDE developers started shitting on their users)

    My attempt at getting modern figures shows 29% use Gnome, 17% use XFCE, 13% use KDE (plasma-desktop) and 43% use Xorg without Gnome or KDE. The only conclusions I trust from these figures are that both Gnome and KDE developers are good at driving their users away, but KDE developers are slightly better at it. KDE developers should not win a prize until we can find a way to compare them to TIFKAM developers.

    1. keithpeter Silver badge
      Pint

      Re: Lies, damned lies and messing with popcon data

      @ Flocke Kroes

      Might be worth mentioning that default Debian is Gnome. KDE and XFCE4 take an *active choice* at install time, either 'alternative desktops' route during install or installed afterwards. Installing KDE on a Gnome system can lead to fun (phonon/pulse &c).

      Might also be worth mentioning that the *default* for popcorn when using the text based installer is 'No' , i.e. Popcorn results not sent.

      Interesting non-the-less. Just remember what happened to Sinofsky who trusted telemetry data....

    2. asdf

      Re: Lies, damned lies and messing with popcon data

      Cinnamon numbers are only so low because as you imply I don't believe popcorn is available for LMDE users and a recent official Debian Cinnamon version has just now became available in Sid and is not even in Jessie yet. There are unofficial repos and building it yourself but that won't do much to help the numbers. Still my guess is in a year Cinnamon will be a lot closer to the top.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Lies, damned lies and messing with popcon data

      > A couple of decades ago, about 60% of Linux developers used KDE, and about 60% used Gnome

      A couple of decades ago (I am writing in 2014), neither KDE nor Gnome existed.

      Popcorn is less than ten years old, so clearly you're not comparing like for like datasets.

      Debian defaults to Gnome for its desktop environment. If you took your numbers from other distros (SUSE, OpenSUSE, Kubuntu, ...) you would see a different picture.

      Twenty years ago, Linux was a very obscure OS used mostly as a web server and in "niche" applications (film production, geophysics). Ten years ago it was a merely obscure OS used mostly by geeks like me. Five years ago, Android became the best-selling mobile OS. Now, every household is likely to have at least one or two Linux devices (mobile phone, ADSL router, TV, security system, ...). In other words: the number of Linux users has skyrocketed since its creation, but most of the growth has not occurred on the desktop, which is what KDE and Gnome are targeted at.

  7. tempemeaty
    Facepalm

    It's not just a GUI change, it's a "trendy" infection....

    I see the "flat look" on Windows 8 and It looks like a stupid backstep to me. Then a Mac user I know is upset about Yosemite abandoning OSX's forward thinking 3D aesthetic for the same horrible "trendy" "flat look" as well. Now I find that same "trendy" aesthetic infecting a Linux GUI. The future really belongs to the one OS GUI design that doesn't "follow" all the other's "trendy" design aesthetic. The future belongs to the one that "leads."

    "I think" this fashionable and trendy copy-cat styling of GUIs on all the OS's is going to really look embarrassingly stupid in about five years.

    1. druck Silver badge
      Thumb Down

      Re: It's not just a GUI change, it's a "trendy" infection....

      What next, bloody upper case menus too?

  8. TimeMaster T
    Happy

    I'll stick with the KDE 3.5 codebase, Thanks anyway

    The Trinity Desktop Environment took the KDE 3.5 code base and has kept it updated, for the most part, to work with newer applications while also keeping the look and design of the original KDE 3.5.

    I've been using it since KDE went to 4.+ and have yet to come across and compatibility issues with it.

    Yes, I'm a dinosaur but at least I'm a happy one knowing I will likely get to keep my current desktop for a long time to come.

  9. Fungus Bob
    Facepalm

    Gnome 3, Unity, TIFKAM, Yosemite and now KDE 5

    We need a new TLA:

    LLS - Looks Like Shit

    1. asdf

      Re: Gnome 3, Unity, TIFKAM, Yosemite and now KDE 5

      It is a bit annoying that everyone is trying to make a UI for phones work on the desktop (which they don't) when the number of phones or even tablets with said UIs (iOS aside) is a rounding error of market share. But even Apple is trying to ruin the desktop experience all in the name of the brave new mobile world.

  10. asdf
    Mushroom

    KDE

    The best desktop there is if you have a gig and half of memory to spare and your computer doesn't have a battery to worry about draining.

    1. The BigYin
      FAIL

      Re: KDE

      Pre-loaded modules/libraries is not bloat or wasted memory.

      RAM sat empty doing nothing *IS* a waste.

      1. asdf

        Re: KDE

        True as long as you don't want to fire up any wine windows games which will want what KDE is gobbling (ram, cpu/gpu cycles). Granted I am exaggerating and KDE has gotten much better but that concept a DE should be its own everything and the kitchen sink ecosystem is not for everyone.

  11. synonymous cowherd
    Devil

    The best desk top by far

    RAT POISON

    >:)

    1. asdf
      Trollface

      Re: The best desk top by far

      Especially if you are too cheap to go to Walmart and get a new mouse. JK lean tiling window managers can be really neat if you put in the pain to learn and set them up. Still when I go lean I go JWM. Its not much bigger than ratpoison (though granted a totally different workflow) and IMHO you get a lot more out of the box.

    2. asdf

      Re: The best desk top by far

      Actually the best desktop by far is found in my .xinitrc

      exec xterm

      That's all you need (and yes I know there are no even leaner terminals but xterm does the job). Everything else is fluff. Seriously I do use that when I run full screen windows games on wine to reduce cpu/gpu cycles stolen by anything else.

      1. asdf

        Re: The best desk top by far

        >there are no even leaner terminals

        there are even leaner terminal emulators. There FIFM.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: The best desk top by far

        The best I've found is: ssh user@host<CR>

        With the implied "X11Forwarding no" && "locate X11" returning no results.

        255/255/255 text on a 000/000/000 background....It pretty much looks the same across all the platforms, font and all.

  12. Tom 35

    It's pretty much impossible to discover this feature,

    Hay, stop copying windows 8!

  13. ZSn

    Pointy, clicky sh*te

    To quote a glaswegian engineering professor I once worked with. I tend to agree with this, though it will get downvotes. There is a lot of gumph written about how so and so window manager has translucent underwear (or whatever) and how this alpha channel is better than...(pardon me if I lose the will to live).

    Frankly it all peaked with OLVWM that came with slackware 3, after that came the useless eye candy.

    1. asdf

      Re: Pointy, clicky sh*te

      Nah its contemporary FVWM was better IMHO. Then again always been a sucker for that Motif look in the early WMs.

  14. roger stillick
    Go

    Re: The best desktop by far...

    ratpoison reminds me of my 1972 HP-1000 mini running Unix System IV...

    Made my Plant Engr's face flush when I asked him if there was any way to manipulate the serial numbered Manual DWG that accompanied the text file designs that we stored a whole bunch of...and published as a Customer Spl Ckt...seems ATT didn't have a mouse or touch pad yet and couldn't do pix images - no GIMP...20 years later our SUN Workstations could run Open Windows and Adobe graphic stuff (mouse those pix and DWG's)...

    IMHO= just love to use a home made coding book for the Ui... ratpoison as an X-Windows tiling manager allows Gimp w/mouse to run in one of the X-windows hyper-threads...putting us back to 1972 in simplicity, and X-windows of 1992 graphics...YUM

    caveiat= running Ubunto 13.1 w/classic Gnome, no features option...so I already got my dead stupid Ui and don't need ratpoison... so if ever upgrade to 14.1 or higher might look at ratpoison type Ui...RS.

  15. Bill the Sys Admin

    The Flat Look

    Urghh, Just the same designs everywhere now. This looks all iOS and Androidy to me! Try and have some originality.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    May I remind the couch-bound critics here...

    a) How much have you paid for it?

    b) You are not obliged to use it¹. There are plenty of alternatives out there.

    c) It's FOSS. If you don't like something, you can actually change it, or hire someone to have it changed. Or at least report your problem through the proper channels.

    d) If anyone of you has actually given KDE5 a spin, please stand up and say so. I don't believe any of you have, and you're just going on what Gilberson (not exactly the most clued up writer here) is saying. You'd be better off by reading the official announcement here: http://kde.org/announcements/plasma5.0/.

    ¹ But see point d)

    1. shaolin cookie

      Re: May I remind the couch-bound critics here...

      Replying even though I'm not one of the earlier critics, but instead an avid user of KDE4.

      I did give KDE5 a spin, and as can be assumed it's not really ready yet. Never mind that, but the reason I did try it was one that was referred to in the article ase well, the supposed high dpi support. I have a 2nd gen X1 Carbon which really could use that, but I also didn't see any notable improvement in that regard when comparing to KDE 4.13. If there's some magic switch somewhere to turn that on, it would be cool to try.

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