KDE maintainers speak on why it is worth looking beyond GNOME

KDE Plasma is a Linux desktop environment which has just been updated to 5.20 - but why should users consider it instead of GNOME, the default for Ubuntu and Red Hat, or the lightweight Xfce? We spoke to Plasma maintainers David Edmundson and Jonathan Riddell. KDE is a Linux desktop built using the Qt framework KDE is a Linux …

[45RPM]

The "Problem" with Linux

The "Problem" with Linux isn't in the core OS. It's in the GUI - and most Linux GUIs look rather rough, at least when compared to the polished shininess of macOS and even Windows.

KDE is part of the solution, at least to my aesthetic sensibilities. Other than a ropey looking default mouse pointer (which looks like its been fondled too long in the bath), KDE looks as if care and attention has been lavished on making it look nice and slick. It is the OS equivalent of JetBrains tools (which also look like they've been built carefully, and with considerable thought put into the design - dodgy ligatures aside, their equivalent of the KDE pointer!).

Gnome and the Linux distros which use it (even the supposedly 'beautiful' ones like PopOS) always even up looking a bit. Well. Cheap. You know - scratchy plastic and wobbly fascias. I can't quite put my finger on it, but the overall effect is 'Urgh. No'.

KDE's biggest problem is that, at some point, you will need to install software designed for Gnome, and then you're bringing the 'Urgh, No' into your beautiful KDE home. Software like Gimp. Software like Libre Office.

Linux's greatest strength is that it's developed by an army of talented developers. Its biggest weakness is a lack of overall design sensibility and consistency.

[nematoad]

Re: The "Problem" with Linux

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

If a desktop does what it is supposed to do i.e. launch things and then get out of the way then to me the fact that the cursor is just right is a secondary consideration. Now your aesthetic sensibilities may be offended but don't forget the GUI is a tool, nothing more. If you want something pretty to look at set your wallpaper to something of your choice.

Oh, and whilst I'm here this quote:

“If you tried Plasma four or five years ago, and had an opinion, you should try it again.”

made me laugh. I did, once bitten, twice shy. I've never looked at KDE, pretty though it may be, after the shock of moving from KDE3 to 4.

Oh, did they ever get rid of that bloody cashew?

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: The "Problem" with Linux

" that bloody cashew"

AKA the Golden Turd.

[PerlyKing]

Re: Once bitten

“If you tried Plasma four or five years ago, and had an opinion, you should try it again.”

made me laugh. I did, once bitten, twice shy. I've never looked at KDE, pretty though it may be, after the shock of moving from KDE3 to 4.

So your mind is closed, not willing to take another look at something that might have improved? Your choice.

[nematoad]

Re: Once bitten

I feel no need to.

After struggling, unsuccessfully with KDE4 I looked elsewhere. I found MATE. It suits me and I have stuck with it.

It takes a long time to build up trust and reputation. It doesn't take much to destroy them and that is what KDE did to me. I think that a lot of Gnome users felt the same when Gnome changed from 2 to 3.

[ibmalone]

Re: Once bitten

MATE is fine, but KDE found its way back. I've said it before, my dividing line between Gnome and KDE is that after the Gnome3 change it was always the users that were wrong, some of the sharp edges got rounded off and they relented on a few things, but that still seems to be how it is over there, it doesn't seem to be the way KDE is. So I can't, as someone else asked, guarantee it wont happen again, but I think it has a culture that's less likely too.

Apart from the obsession with Konqueror, but they're never going to win that one :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Once bitten

"... unsuccessfully with KDE4 I looked elsewhere."

Whoaaa... KDE 4 was awesome dude. Maybe you tried KDE 3 or 5, because KDE 4 was such a gift that I never once, not once had a peering Windows/Mac user resist in asking "What's that?" Now KDE 5 is good, but you have to go and "restore" so much of what was once available by default in 4, that it's a pain in the ass.

BTW, KDE 5 might not be what 4 once was, but as a testament to it's capabilities, it's still pretty at 2160x1440 on a Windows Surface Pro v3 8GB using the "surface" branch (5.9.3-surface). It's not much more responsive than Win10, only about 10% faster, but the crazy thing is that if you actually care about boot times it's nearly 30% faster. I have no idea why it boots faster (and don't care as I'm using it as a "desktop"), but if you want to use it as a tablet it's something to know (and as a plus you never see that Windows Updating shit so it goes down fast too).

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Once bitten

And here we have the problem.

Kde3 offered functional and apps, that actually worked properly.

Kde4 and until recently 5 did not.

To get "pretty" and ape windows aping apples latest fad , the functionality baby was thrown out with the bathwater.

As an example KMAIL, went the trendy "lets use the browser" route, removing native printing from the app, so that the slooow browser could render it for printing instead. Except it never worked.

It is only recently , many years into KDE5 that working printing returned. But the whole akonadi-kmail client server mess remains totally unstable.

Sadly, most of the apps in linux, are less functional than the nominally equivalent one in Windows.

Functionality and stability (- which means not going backwards for years) of the applications people need for work is what counts.

Desktop prettiness is simply not what needs fixing, and the linuxeers obsession with the desktops appearance and frippery like transparency, is to the utter detriment of the needed application usability.

We have ended up with ever changing, complex and unstable services and apis, as if these are a goal in themselves. All available developer energy seems to have gone in to chasing this slippery pig, and trying to put lipstick on it. No time and energy has been left for bacon.

I have been using linux + kde for 23 years. It is dismal that (e.g) the mail client is arguably still functionally inferior to one written in the early 90s by a single developer for win3 using VB, and much less stable than it was 15 years ago.

So perhaps "All About the Apps" will see a change. It's needed

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Once bitten

It's not that I'm not willing to take a look, it's that I already use a desktop environment which is perfectly adequate to the task, and which hasn't (yet) been turned to shit, so I don't have any need for a new desktop environment,

Another factor is that that I have a limited amount of time, and I have better things to do than evaluate a potential replacement for something that's perfectly adequate. Are you going to pay me for the time I spend looking at KDE? Didn't think so.

Another factor is that KDE has already been turned to shit once before. Assuming it's amazing now, are you going to sign a contract guaranteeing that it won't be turned to shit again when the next ooh shiny comes along? Didn't think so. When I switch to a desktop environment, I want some sense that it's going to be consistent and dependable as a long-term choice. I'm looking to get stuff done, not to change up my environment and workflow every 18 months.

If xfce ever does turn to shit, and lxde and the other lightweight, sane desktops don't cut it, and I can't be bothered bolting my own environment together with openbox, then sure, maybe I'll check out KDE. I'll certainly look at it before I consider gnome.

But don't hold your breath.

[Mike 16]

Re: Once bitten

I tend to agree about the various Linux desktops and the "vanity churn" I have come to expect (less now that my only significant use of Linux is CLI), but I am curious whether you apply the "Guarantee that it won't turn to shit" requirement to anything else.

MacOS/iOS, Windows, even the GUI on various DVRs (and automobiles) have in the last several years all had their "turn to shit" moments.

Why single out Linux Desktops?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Once bitten

I'm not singling out Linux desktops at all. I totally do apply the "guarantee it won't turn to shit" requirement to a bunch of things. Windows is a great example (of course, first you'd have to make it not shit, and open source it, and then guarantee in writing that it won't turn to shit). And there's no amount of money you could pay me to use an Apple product with any kind of regularity.

There's a bunch of other software (the majority) where I don't have a "guarantee it won't turn to shit" requirement. But that is software that I haven't used in the past and been driven away from when it turned to shit. I only really require that guarantee when I've been burned already by a particular piece of software. And even then, I don't actually *require* that guarantee - if KDE or gnome really did turn out to be the best option and I felt relatively confident that it wouldn't turn to shit again, and I didn't already have something which I'm perfectly happy with, then of course I'd look at them. But I'd look at them after I looked at packages that haven't already burned me, like LXDE. And given the current state of things I'd be more likely to roll my own environment with something minimal like openbox than to try gnome or kde again. If you're some evangelist on a forum and you want me to spend time looking at KDE right now, I'm going to need a reason to spend my time on it. I don't have one currently - I really like xfce, and I see no sign that it's going to turn to shit (well, very little sign, there does appear to be a little bit of bloat creeping in slowly, but overall I'd say it's roughly on par with moore's law, and the good seems to outweigh the bad in general).

So, hopefully that clarifies. No, I'm not singling out Linux DEs at all, just ones where I've been burned in the past :)

[chololennon]

Re: Once bitten

"...Another factor is that that I have a limited amount of time, and I have better things to do than evaluate a potential replacement for something that's perfectly adequate. Are you going to pay me for the time I spend looking at KDE? Didn't think so."

So, you don't have enough time to try KDE, but have time to criticize it with outdated/erroneous concepts, come on :-O

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Once bitten

Really properly trying KDE and deciding to stick with it would take me AT LEAST a solid week. Probably more like 2-3 months. Months where my productivity is lowered because my workflow has changed because I'm using an unfamiliar desktop, figuring out the foibles, etc. And it's quite possible that going back to my already-more-than-adequate desktop if I don't like KDE might be nontrivial.

If you want to send me a new laptop loaded with the latest KDE, and pay the difference for any lost productivity, I'll be happy to evaluate it for you and do a comprehensive report (at no charge!) of what I think. I'll even send the laptop back when I'm done if you pay the return shipping. But if it's all just unconfigurable eye-candy that saps my memory and processor power, you might not like the write-up.

On the other hand, it takes 5 minutes to write a rant about how it used to be good, and then it wasn't, and so now you're going to have to incentivise me to bring me back. That's what I do in my free time, while enjoying my morning coffee. Ranting is enjoyable to me. Changing my desktop environment is a (huge) chore.

It's nice to hear about how I have "outdated/erroneous concepts". Like wanting to get stuff done. With zero examples or counterpoints of how I'm wrong. Come on :-O

[ovation1357]

Re: Once bitten

https://linuxreviews.org/Xfce_Classic_Brings_An_Alternative_To_Those_Who_Do_Not_Want_Xfce_To_Become_GNOME_Light

AND

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2020/01/xfce-4-16-client-side-decoration

Bad luck dude! XFCE is heading on the path to Shitsville right now... It's almost entirely the GNOME project's fault IMO because they started a crusade to get other projects to adopt client side decorations in the name of Wayland.

The Xfce developer who wrote most of the CSD-related code, Simon Steinbeiß, has become so invested in it that he refers to any critisim of it as "passive-aggressive" and "trolling". It does, indeed, seem like there is zero hope client side decorations being optional in the upcoming Xfce release.

I hope you're ready for Hamburger menus in your title, sorry, header bar. And ugly 'pop-overs' too. The XFCE team claim they're not embracing the full horrors of this but it's sadly unavoidable as plenty of GTK apps are going this way... Remmina is a prime example as they have gone so far as to strip out a specific XFCE option that keeps classic menus and now only offer the GNOME CSD.

It's not pretty.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Once bitten

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! Oh god no! Not xfce! The horror!

Well, it looks like I'll be changing DE's next time I upgrade. That's sad. This xfce classic could be promising. Or maybe LXDE. Or perhaps someone wants to incentivise me to try KDE.

I'll now be heading to the xfce bug tracker, where my displeasure at this turn of events can be properly ignored while another project goes down the shitter. sigh.

Thanks for the heads up. :cries:

[NATTtrash]

Re: Once bitten

I'm afraid I'm right behind you there. With the "mix" of different application interfaces in xfce already, I've also grumbled in some applications, spending (too much) time trying to figure out where basics like print or edit were hidden this time. It's a shame, but it looks like basic conventions will go down the Ribbon route. And we all know how well that worked out...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Once bitten

If you'd also like to have your opinion on this subject ignored, I recommend commenting at https://gitlab.xfce.org/xfce/libxfce4ui/-/issues/14

[ovation1357]

Re: Once bitten

The most frustrating thing about all of this is that all we're asking for is that this major change be made optional.

At the moment GTK makes it necessary to throw away old menu code and rewrite it specifically around header bars etc. I really isn't beyond the wit of man to create a title/menu API which could be written just once and then rendered in various ways including 'classic' and 'CSD'.

Sadly it seems that we're two years down the road with this - I only discovered the problem recently because I happened to upgrade to Ubuntu 20.04 LTS fairly early - those who wait another two years for the EOL of 18.04 will get a bigger shock. I don't see much chance of GNOME being persuaded to do it any differently. As you can see, external developers such as XFCE have already invested time and effort into it as well.

I'm still a bit lost for options on MATE - I find myself at a juncture where I believed I'd escaped the kind on nonsense I had to endure when GNOME2 got axed, only to find that another mad design change by the GNOME team is going to ruin my desktop environment :'(

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Once bitten

Yeah. I agree with everything you said 100%. It's super sad

If I can't escape this braindead interface choice, I'll probably end up going for something super-minimal and retro. Ugh. So much for usable software.

Remember when it was good? back when software had configuration options and there was this philosophy that the users should be the ones with the power? Sigh.

[sitta_europea]

Re: Once bitten

... KDE has already been turned to shit once before. ... the next ooh shiny ... I want some sense that it's going to be consistent and dependable as a long-term choice. I'm looking to get stuff done, not to change up my environment and workflow every 18 months.

Quite so. That's why I'm still using fvwm after all these years. For a time we tried KDE for everyone in the offices, but when it got upgraded (without even asking us) work stopped for days. We tried to replace it with GNOME instead, but after several days of that the work still hadn't really started again so it's XFCE in the offices now.

[fedoraman]

Re: The "Problem" with Linux

Yes, I found the shock of moving from KDE 3 to 4 very abrupt too, from a mature-seeming environment that you almost didn't notice (the mark of a good GUI to me) to one where you were constantly brought up short, where things no longer worked, and KDE just got in the way of you doing your work.

However, it has slowly matured, and though I greeted the change from 4 to 5 with similar trepidation, I have to say that its good, again.

I'm now running KDE Neon, and it feels great. Its fairly quick even on a cheap Celeron/SSD laptop, looks good, and doesn't get in the damn way all the time!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The "Problem" with Linux

What did you switch to in the interim to have a usable desktop environment, and what brought you back to kde?

[Dave 126]

Re: The "Problem" with Linux

> Now your aesthetic sensibilities may be offended but don't forget the GUI is a tool, nothing more.

The divide between appearence and function isn't as clear cut as you make out. Especially for less experienced users. The visual environment has a bearing on people's ability to learn. We're wired to spot differences, so if a visual environment is full of variations that are arbitrary then it obscures the variation that is meaningful.

As you say, the UI is a tool, but don't forget that since it is an *interface* with a *user* then issues with our human brains need to be accommodated.

[nematoad]

Re: The "Problem" with Linux

I think that fedoraman has it correctly. A desktop or if you like a GUI should be as invisible as possible, It is a means to an end not, as the devs working on KDE 4 or Gnome 3 seem to have thought, an end in itself. Change for changes sake is never a good starting place.

Where I do agree with you is trying to work with an inconsistent environment does nothing for your workflow, and that was the thing that drove me away from KDE. I had work to do and things that had to be done. I did not need the challenge of wrestling with something that was supposed to help me but kept getting in the way. Sure, computing was both my career and a hobby but to have to fight the environment was not something I was prepared to put up with.

It was a long time ago now but I seem to recall one of the head devs on KDE 4 coming out with something like " You will find that you will have to adjust the way that you work with our new desktop." That is sheer arrogance, and is in effect the tail wagging the dog, The desktop environment should be the servant not the master.

[Graham 32]

Re: The "Problem" with Linux

It's the fonts. KDE's fonts are nice and crisp. Gnome's fonts look blurred to me, too much anti-aliasing. Gnome has been like that since forever so I guess it's a design decision. Not to my taste.

[sgp]

Re: The "Problem" with Linux

Yes, I always get the feeling of being drunk when using Gnome.

[TimMaher]

Re: The "Problem" with Linux

What about when you are not using it?

[slimshady76]

Re: The "Problem" with Linux

Not just the fonts. The Gnome extensions world should be nuked to death. It's an unholy mess of orphaned extensions, ever-changing shell code which renders some other extensions incompatible with just a minor version update and other nasty stuff.

Not to mention how slow Gnome is when compared to KDE, even in relatively low powered laptops.

[K]

Re: The "Problem" with Linux

> Help train Google's machine-learning algos

That a very interesting observation, KDE to me if a far more powerful and customisable, which often comes at the price of speed - Gnome on the other hand, feels like the Lidl equivalent of MacOS.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The "Problem" with Linux

Have you shopped at Lidl recently?

I've always had that image of it as a budget brand selling low quality stuff, and couldn't understand why people have been raving about Lidl for the last 6-7 years.

Well, it turns out that it has the best meat and fresh produce of the lot, and great quality overall. At least that is my experience in three countries on the continent.

[K]

Re: The "Problem" with Linux

To be fair, I do shop their periodically and their reputation for cheap and awful in completely wrong.. Also their "random stuff" always has some excellent stuff.

[Manolo]

Re: The "Problem" with Linux

Well, (KDE fan here, mind you), the KDE themes/Plasma styles/application styles/icon packs/splash screens etc that you can install as extras are an unholy mess as well.

Half of them will not install from the System Settings application and half of the ones that do can truly bork your desktop.

I am also about to switch GPU as I have had it up to here with all the bugs and glitches that Plasma + nVidia entail.

[bombastic bob]

Re: The "Problem" with Linux

but.. but... but... KDE is NOW all 2D FLATTY FLATSO, at least from what I have seen.

At least Mate (based on GTK 2 last I checked) CAN have *Nice* 3D Skeuomorphic and colors, rather than the 2D FLATTY of Chromium, Australis, and Win-10-nic. Similarly, Cinnamon (which, as I understand, uses GTK 3).

Whatever Gnome is doing nowadays, Pfftt.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: The "Problem" with Linux

Not here it isn't. A bit of playing about with themes sorts it out. I use a Window Decoration theme called Reactionary - slightly mis-named because a CDE theme is available for the even more reactionary.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The "Problem" with Linux

"Not here it isn't.

No, it's not 2D at all, not even by default. In fact it's still so non-2D that all the same tools like the spyglass, OSD drawing and various drag & drop styles/options/whatever are all there utilizing 3D effects (pretty much all Meta+/-/F10/F11/F12 shortcuts you can turn on under "Desktop Effects" are in 3D).

I've seen 2D KDE, but I'm not going out of my way for that crap. However, some of the optional animations in KDE are just over the top 3D crap... exploding windows when closing forming lava like smiley faces... HARD PASS (although it was cool to see once, animations are now off!).

[Dr_Bingley]

Re: The "Problem" with Linux

KDE can, too. Just enable a different application style like Fusion (included in KDE Neon and Kubuntu) or QT Curve (quite easy to install), install a different icon theme and, if you like, change the window decoration.

[Manolo]

Re: The "Problem" with Linux

Yes, that horrible flatness (isn't it called Material Design or something?) kept me running Mint 17.3 (last Mint with KDE 4) for a long time as well until I finally bit the bullet and went to Kubuntu 20.04 (still buggy as hell, reason I moved to Mint, but they don't do a KDE version anymore).

I am running the Breeze Dark Global theme, Oxygen Plasma style, cursor and icons, QTcurve application style and Plastik window decorations. Maybe a bit of a hodge-podge, but I like it, it looks almost as my previous KDE.

I am considering trying either KDE Neon or OpenSuse, getting to annoyed with Kubuntu's many bugs and regressions.

[Gary Heard]

Re: The "Problem" with Linux

OpenSuSe user here.

Been using it and KDE since v7 (KDE3) all the way to now (Currently 15.1), KDE is a shedload better than it used to be and I stuck with KDE3 for a long time when 4 came out.

The desktop is good, IMO (much) better than Gnome. I like it, stable as a rock and it looks great

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The "Problem" with Linux

I was going to say definitely go for OpenSUSE, but you've already Heard Gary.

[guyr]

Re: The "Problem" with Linux

At least Mate (based on GTK 2 last I checked)

Mate moved to GTK 3 several versions ago. I use it exclusively on all my Linux systems. It's original design goal directly from the MATE web site https://mate-desktop.org/:

"The MATE Desktop Environment is the continuation of GNOME 2."

So, the look and feel of GNOME 2 is the essential ingredient, rather than a particular generation of GTK.

[jelabarre59]

Re: The "Problem" with Linux

Cinnamon Desktop has worked quite nicely for me. I can get the desktop to have a reasonable look, and not screw up my workflow. Unfortunately, RHEL8 doesn't support any desktop other than Gnome3, so I've had to use Fedora 33 for my work laptop (had wanted to run RHEL8 as it's what I'm working with on our test environments).

Occasionally I'll take a look at the latest KDE, but then I find I'd have to spend a lot of time re-tweaking it for my own liking and workflow. I get too distracted with yak-shaving as it is, I don't need to add another path of distraction. Maybe I'm missing out, I'll probably never know.

[Blackjack]

Re: The "Problem" with Linux

Beauty in Windows only matters until you go back to the barebores basic theme because that makes the PC run faster. Remember Aero? One of the most Googled results was how to disable it.

[MyffyW]

Re: The lovely thing about Linux

....is that we can debate, try and ultimately choose which desktop environment we want. Now for my current lifestyle I'm pared back to Xfce and loving it. But I respect those who want to put on a big fluffy jumper... and will defend their right to do so until my fingers get sore from typing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Xfce?

In my day we just had to make do with t'wm... :-)

[Arthur the cat]

Re: Xfce?

SunView. It worked.

[Dan 55]

Re: Xfce?

For small values of worked.

All the cool kids were down at Club Soda on the OpenWindows help pages.

[needmorehare]

Re: The "Problem" with Linux

The real problem is that Windows software has better long-term platform support on Linux (through Mono and Wine) than its own native software does. Despite having full source code available, backwards (and often forwards) compatibility is still non-existent because the maintainers of a lot of the userland libraries and software chop and change so frequently that nothing is ever stabilised.

As a result, application developers who want to offer long term support (10+ years) are forced to #ifdef their way through ever changing, non-standardised messes to keep things going. All this adds up to features coming and going all the time, with the desktop experience never reaching a point of completeness.

Flatpak, AppImage. Snap etc. are not solutions. Stabilising the most used APIs would be a start, with a long term goal to stabilise the ABIs eventually. Only then will Linux stand a chance on the desktop.

[ovation1357]

Re: The "Problem" with Linux

I want to downvote this but at the same time you make a good point about KDE almost unavoidably ending up with GNOME/GTK applications and their look+feel..

However: "most Linux GUIs look rather rough"

What planet are you on? Modern windows looks utterly horrible - it's flat and featureless, there's inconsistency between applications written with Winforms Vs more 'modern' dotNet or even Electron (here's looking at that total abomination of the Teams UI). Windows is so crap in this regard that when I added a high definition external display for the first time (Win 10) all the fonts went terribly blurry and I found loads of people complaining about incurable blurry fonts if there's a mismatch in display resolution plus and HighDPI scaling involved! Just to add insult to injury the windows display settings told me I'd have to log out or reboot because not all running applications could auto adjust. How shit it that?

By turning off scaling and rebooting I could finally get passable fonts.

But the then Windows still has a tonne of old Win32 style dialogs which aren't resizeable and/or can't properly display their contents. I still encounter such things regularly when using windows.

I'm not saying I've never encountered a rubbish UI or dialog on Linux but this kind of thing is generally not a problem.

I had to use Mac for a while but with a non-Apple monitor - the font rendering was appalling and no matter what tweaks I tried they were always fuzzy. I'd suggest it was a deliberate obsolescence in the same way a mac will not correcy map the keys of a UK PC keyboard, but then a colleague had a fancy iMac and I didn't much like the font rendering on that either.

I wiped the Mac, installed Ubuntu MATE and the fonts on the same monitor were vastly improved.

Linux, at least in my experience of the MATE desktop, renders fonts beautifully - they're pin sharp and very customisable should you want to change them.

I very deliberately choose to use a fairly old fashioned theme on MATE (Clearlooks) but most of the desktop environments have a wide choice of themes to suit all tastes including ultra-modern 'beautiful' ones.

When you choose Linux you not only get an unparalleled amount of choice in customisation but a good number of those desktops offer excellent defaults too.

So I don't really get how you can describe Linux GUIs as 'rough'. What exactly is rough about them?

[Cynic_999]

Re: The "Problem" with Linux

OTOH I would rather have a pair of manky-looking scissors that work well than a pair of scissors that are chrome-plated with a glitzy design that look fabulous on my desk but don't cut too well and will break if you look at them too hard.

My PC is a tool, not a work of art or desktop ornament.

YMMV

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The "Problem" with Linux

With KDE you get to have both. It looks nice IMO, but I use it because it makes me so much more productive than anything else I've tried.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The "Problem" with Linux

It's in the GUI - and most Linux GUIs look rather rough, at least when compared to the polished shininess of macOS and even Windows.

Agree 100%, although I must say it surprises me a bit when I see what amount of talent is on display around design apps and things like Blender. I must have a look again at Enlightenment - if I could have a desktop with the design qualities of E and the richness of Gnome/KDE applications I'd be very happy.

Otherwise we'll just stay with the combination of MacOS desktops and Linux in the server room. That looks good where it has to and is robust where it matters (one of the reasons we're not going near Big Sur yet - especially the outstanding issues that impact backups have as yet not been solved) and no, we don't use Windows. I think we have even ditched MS Office by now :).

Anyway, I don't think anyone disputes the technical quality of Linux, whatever distro you favour. But UI and UX need more work. Unfortunately, end users mostly judge by shiny, and shiny alone (well, OK, and games). That's also why LibreOffice is a hard sell :(.

[quxinot]

Notsomuch.

Wow, it's the best because it's paid for by someone who may or may not have an agenda. And it works great with systemd, that no one wanted in the first place.

Sorry, but this sort of appeal isn't going to move me away from MATE. Which is what Gnome was, before someone decided to 'innovate' and completely screw the pooch.

Thank god the versatility of linux means that there's room for everyone with varying use cases, preferences, and needs. Having many options is always a great thing.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Notsomuch.

From this user's PoV the significance difference between Gnome 2 and KDE was that KDE would allow you to put desktop items where you wanted and leave them there so that stuff could be logically - or at least consistently - grouped so you knew where to find them. Gnome 3 then went off on what I suppose they'd view as an "a clear desk is the sign of a clear mind"* tack. Of the desktops that arose from the reaction to Gnome 3 Cinnamon looks acceptable to me. At one point I tried installing the others and MATE left the OS so screwed not even KDE would work properly, even after MATE was removed - issues in particular about not being able to shut down properly AFAICR. It'll be a cold day in hell before I try MATE again.

OTOH some releases of KDE have been less than polished and for some reason Debian, the distro for stability and long term support, seems keener on using these than the LTS Plasma versions.

*My version of this is "an empty desk is the sign of an empty head".

[ibmalone]

Re: Notsomuch.

Hilariously they've seemingly changed the default back, but only after I finally got used to it*, so if it reverts then I have to find the setting (configure desktop, wallpaper settings, type desktop) to go back to a clean one.

* tend to find I've much more rarely got a window-free desktop now, so getting at an icon means minimising everything. Also resizing on remote desktops tends to jumble up the icons anyway...

[Dave559]

Re: Notsomuch.

'Gnome 3 then went off on what I suppose they'd view as an "a clear desk is the sign of a clear mind"* tack.'

I have to say that I've never been a fan of icons on the desktop. That's what menus or panel icons (to open drives, or bookmarked folders, in the file manager, or a magic hotkey (one of the Gnome 3 features that I like) are for, in my opinion.

Yes, my actual physical desktop is a mess, but that's only because I don't have an infinitely nested, infinitely deep, and easily searchable filing cabinet within arm's reach (or any reach) when I need it, and which would retract out of the way when I don't.

[alain williams]

Re: Notsomuch.

Sorry, but this sort of appeal isn't going to move me away from MATE.

I have just upgraded my desktop, I was running CentOS 6 which has reached end of life after 10 years.

CentOS 8 comes with Gnome 3, Mate is not an option. Gnome 3 is, for me, unusable - so after running RedHat/Centos since 1995 I have switched to Debian + Mate. A few teething issues, but works well.

Hopefully I will soon have a nice stable environment that I will not need to fiddle with for another decade.

[bombastic bob]

Re: Notsomuch.

As I recall, earlier CentOS had an option for Mate... when was this taken away???

[ibmalone]

Re: Notsomuch.

Still on RHEL7, so I presume CentOS7 too. Not sure about 8, rolling that out was going to be this one of this year's projects then something happened, can't remember what...

[jelabarre59]

Re: Notsomuch.

As I recall, earlier CentOS had an option for Mate... when was this taken away???

In the RHEL8/CentOS8 series. Gnome3 is the only available desktop.

[ibmalone]

Re: Notsomuch.

Pretty bad news considering Gnome3 doesn't work with X2Go. I see there's a Copr, not particularly impressed to see it dropped. We've stuck with RH for a while because of satellite and we technically have support (read: can access knowledgebase answers...), but remote desktop is now essential for us, as for many others.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Notsomuch.

You might want to take a look at xfce. I find it to be an excellent balance between being relatively lightweight but also having a decent amount of functionality. I'm coming up on a decade of use through a few version upgrades and it only seems to get better as the years go by. I'd expect it to be relatively easy to install on centos, too.

[alain williams]

Re: Notsomuch.

I did - it is much better than Gnome 3; but a few things still annoy me.

[Wellyboot]

Out of date?

>>> “on these little ARM boards, these Raspberry Pi type boards, the CPU is not very good but they have a great GPU. Qt offloads more onto the graphics card.” <<<

Multicore 1GHz+ ARM boards have been generally available for five years now, so I'd argue that if that level of CPU is considered poor for running the user interface I'd be looking at what it's doing with the cycles available considering that offloading to GPU is a primary requirement in a GUI.

As for GUI flavours, finding the text editor & CLI usually occupy my first minute with any new one.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, Wayland isn't done yet? Over 10 years!

[Down not across]

Personally, I couldn't care less. X11 has served me well for over 3 decades.

[Tom 38]

nvidia don't want to support the "preferred" way of doing things in Wayland (gbm/kms). There is a second way of doing things (EGLstreams), but many compositors don't support it, plus Xwayland has to fall back on software rendering. This slows adoption of wayland itself, which slows the number of applications that have wayland support and therefore need Xwayland.. which compounds the problem.

nvidia have a way of working with Xorg that they're happy with and don't want to change it/expose more of their secret sauce. Hopefully that will change, and we'll get complete wayland at some point.

If you don't nvidia, then its pretty much there right now.

[Jonathan Richards 1]

+1 for Neon

I've been running KDE as my main PC GUI for a long time (though XFCE on lower spec laptops and netbooks). Neon as a distribution is a good way to have a default KDE installation, nicely integrated and regularly updated. 5.20 is based on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. Recommended.

[jemmyww]

From Apple land

After years of using a Mac I decided I was fed up with it. Keyboards being the main complaint, but that's another story. I got a nice dell, used Windows 10 for a few minutes, and then installed Manjaro.

I've tried the different desktops available. Gnome feels super slick when it first gets going, but quickly becomes annoying. I didn't find it intuitive at all, I kept opening a screen of icons, stuff was hidden, and I later found out I really needed an extra tweaks program to access settings that were not available in the usual settings menu. I tried a couple of extensions that changed things up a bit, but they're quite slow, I found any extension that messed with the layout or windowing was jittery.

I tried other desktops, and I don't have much to say about them, they were fine and were as they were, but weren't for me, and came across as restricted in one way or another. Before using macs I was running XFCE on debian. It didn't appeal this time around, perhaps I've changed and it has not?

KDE has been great. All the settings are available in one place. The default layout is intuitive, and then you can customise the hell out of it. Activities is interesting, it's another layer above virtual desktops, and I'm using it to keep 2 types of work and my personal stuff separate. It looks nice and minimal. I've even written a plasma widget using QML, and that was fairly easy; QT docs: very good. Plasma docs: pretty shit.

The most surprising thing about KDE5 has been how snappy and lightweight it feels. Back in the day KDE3 seemed heavier than Gnome, and KDE4 was just awful and sluggish. They really have turned it around.

[GrumpenKraut]

Re: From Apple land

> Gnome ... stuff was hidden ...

They tend to decide what the user needs and what not, which I find exceedingly annoying.

> KDE ... All the settings are available in one place.

Exactly. Maybe the KDE folks should advertise that more strongly.

[Spasticus Autisticus]

Sorry KDE, 3.5.10 was the last good KDE in my books. Used on SuSE something or other (11?). I thought KDE 4 was pretty awful so they lost me, I did try it again a few years later but still disliked it compared to whatever I was using - might have been Mint Gloria and GNOME or Xfce. Still a happy Mint user with either MATE or Cinnamon depending on GPU power.

[PTW]

Had me thinking I'd give it a try

Right up to the "...making systemd the default in the future" ta-ra!

[Elfo74]

Re: Had me thinking I'd give it a try

“I think without [Systemd] Wayland would be effectively impossible,” said Edmundson.

LOL

That means AlienBOB's Slackware64-current runnink the latest plasma5 and wayland should not exist

slackware.uk/people/alien-slacklive/latest/slackware64-live-plasma5-current.iso

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Had me thinking

"“I think without [Systemd] Wayland would be effectively impossible,” said Edmundson."

So that's a win-win situation then, right? No wayland, no systemd, what's not to like?

Mind you to be fair (why??), my Linux of choice has been OpenSuse, for years. Now on 15.1/15.2m Systemd remains invisible, though I'd prefer it to not be there at all. KDE, on the other hand, is fine by me, and has been for years. There were dark days for Suse around maybe 11 or 13 when too many things just didn't work, but things do seem to have recovered for my needs (which are relatively simple).

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Had me thinking I'd give it a try

I suppose that's the difference between effectively impossible and really impossible.

[Pascal Monett]

“There was really nothing good one could say about it, but it was popular.”

I'm sorry, but I followed Windows since DOS 1.0 (still have the manuals).

Windows was a revolution for the user. Sure, technically it might well have been a mess, however as far as maintenance is concerned, the ini and sys files were a blessing. It has never been easier to "reinstall" Windows - all you needed was a backup of you .sys and .ini files and you were done.

The abomination that is the Registry blew that out of the water. Curiously, Linux is still based on ini files. I wonder why ?

In any case, I remember fondly those days where any problem with Windows could be resolved by exiting Windows, grabbing your trusty 5.25" floppy backup and overwriting the existing *.sys and *.ini files, and relaunching Windows.

Ever since Windows 95, resolving issues meant wiping the disk, reinstalling the OS, finding back all the required drivers and reconfiguring everything. A full day's work.

Windows 3 was a breeze to maintain.

[MyffyW]

Re: “There was really nothing good one could say about it, but it was popular.”

This set off fond reminiscences of that classic "If Operating Systems Were Airlines" .... an analogy which nowadays would result in one never getting further than the power on self-test.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: “There was really nothing good one could say about it, but it was popular.”

Curiously, Linux is still based on ini files. I wonder why ?

Don't worry, Poettering is working on that.

[Fred Goldstein]

Re: “There was really nothing good one could say about it, but it was popular.”

Windows 3 was remarkably unstable. DOS 6 was okay, but Windows 3.0 running atop it would crash when I did difficult stuff like walk into the room, touch the keyboard, or look at the screen. Windows 3.1 was better and at least usable. I think the whole registry thing began with OS/2. It was a pain there, and Microsoft split from IBM with Windows 95, but they adopted the registry. Go figure.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: “There was really nothing good one could say about it, but it was popular.”

I think HP New Era add on to 3 might have had something to do with it. That added a lot of OO stuff (so called) to the UI. This became standard in W95 (HP was listed in copyrights). New Era itself used a mass off obscurely named files and I think these were so cumbersome that they got swept up into a monolithic registry although OS/2 might have done that before 95.

[Flocke Kroes]

From another KDE 3.5 refugee

Thanks for the warning. The KDE team are still focused on doing a bunch of stuff I do not even have to disable in XFCE. I am sure people who prioritise appearance over getting stuff done will love it.

[Throgmorton Horatio III]

Been a while since I last used KDE (probably either with Sabayon or openSUSE) so it would be interesting to see if they really have managed to make it lightweight now. Haven't really fiddled much with Linux over the last couple of years since computers became tools instead of a hobby.

[Anonymous Coward]

Takes less than half an hour to download, dd, boot and play with a live image of something like Manjaro or OpenSUSE. Or 15 minutes spent looking at YouTube videos of various scenarios and configurations.

[Manolo]

Check out the review here:

https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/plasma-5-20-review.html

"Performance, responsiveness, stability

Phenomenal. I have no complaints. The system was fast, sprightly. Everything worked instantly. On idle, the memory consumption stands at about 550 MB (or a bit more), while the CPU ticks around 1%. There were no crashes or errors of any kind."

[Lars]

Pleased with KDE

I have tried over the years more or less every distro there is, much for fun and I have four laptops to play with.

But my main road has been Mandrake - Mandriva - Mageia with KDE.

You like stuff you get used to, and I preferre a more clasical menu system than than the more "Fisher Price" type screens (for lack of a better word).

I have one of those small Acer laptops with just 1gig of memory and it works with Mageia and KDE just about so I will swap the 1gig for a 2gig and it's perfect to take out fishing and such.

[Arthur the cat]

Re: Pleased with KDE

I have one of those small Acer laptops with just 1gig of memory … and it's perfect to take out fishing and such.

Does it catch many fish?

[Mike 16]

All the fish

OT, apologies, but that line: "Does it catch many fish?" triggered an old memory. A friend (no, really) worked for National Semiconductor (or Nominal Semi-destructor as some called it), and they had a contest for "Best application note" for the then-new SC/MP (aka SCAMP) microprocessor

The name stood for "Simple Cost-effective Micro (Multi?) processor".

If it was "multi", that's because the CPU was so "vertically" microcoded that the memory bus was idle much of the time. One suggestion was an "organ" with twelve SCAMPs, one per top-octave note, sharing one memory.

My favorite of the "did not make it to publication" set was the idea of using the SC/MP in its 40-pin DIP as a fishing lure.

[The Spider]

Re: Pleased with KDE

This is so close to my own use case that you simply wouldn't believe it - except that my last laptop was Win10 and I couldn't co-install Mageia on it.

Started off with Mandrake 10, after arriving here in Korea, and stayed with them until they became Mandriva, then jumped ship to Mageia, which was a very smooth transition.

As others have said here, KDE 4 was a bit of a wreck and around 3.5.10 was mature and well-developed, not to say responsive. Now I am running KDE 5.x and it is better, but I would still be happy with 3.5. Still using the Plastik theme. I can now do almost anything I want and do not normally need Windows, which is usually a work requirement.

The only thing that I think will eventually make me abandon it is the preponderance of Poettering (because it is based on Red Hat), which I think I could live happily without... I was just toying with the idea of downloading a live Slack install to try it with KDE...

[The Spider]

Re: Pleased with KDE

I should add that when I perform a new install, I always try my best to make Plasma look like KDE3 used to. Great desktop but a good set-up should not interfere with workflow (unlike certain other OSes I could mention...).

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the article!

Interesting to know that Manjaro is also funded by Blue Systems, I guess that explains why it's GUI is so impressively slick (pro-tip: if you're running a GUI on the Pi4, you could do a lot worse than using Manjaro).

My workhorses both at home and work are OpenSUSE and it has been so for more than 15 years, but nevertheless Manjaro is also great.

And KDE… it is a beast of a desktop environment. What I have found empirically, from my own experience and observing others, is that it is a significant productivity booster at all expertise levels. If I had to pick two things that I particularly like, that would be the ease and flexibility of configuring shortcuts (global and application) and its ability to easily tweak/override all sorts of application window settings.

I have also written widgets for KDE in the past and it's been a blast, though that was in the pre Qt Quick days, I haven't got experience with the latter (Qt is a very nice framework, btw).

Yes, I'm a KDE fanboy. :-) There is a reason for that, though, and it's not marketing!

Edmundson, Riddell & all other contributors who no doubt are reading these comments: thanks a bunch, you've been doing a fantastic job all these years!!!

(and I say this having had significant differences of opinion with Edmundson on the mailing lists in the past, including perhaps some more vociferous exchanges than was called for, which he handled like a true gentleman)

[Zolko]

Re: Thanks for the article!

"If I had to pick two things that I particularly like, that would be the ease and flexibility of configuring shortcuts (global and application) and its ability to easily tweak/override all sorts of application window settings."

my 2 favorites are Kmail (rather Kontact, with Kmail and Korganiser) which are a very potent PIM, and Dolphin, which is (by far) the best file manager on Earth: you can have split windows (à-la Midnight Commander), tabs, tre-view, pre-view, Kfind, an open-terminal-here (which opens a terminal in the directory where you are), and most importantly, it connects with KIO to any and all external services (FTP, SSH ...) as if it were local.

I've used KDE since version 1, 2 was good, 3 really great, 4 utter crap, and 5 is excellent again. I hope they're not screwing it up with SystemD.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Thanks for the article!

> Dolphin, which is (by far) the best file manager on Earth

Nope. Best in the universe.

I agree, it's part of what makes KDE so productive. And you forgot to mention that your multiple open tabs / panes are not limited to your computer. It's a blast moving files across remote servers by dragging and dropping just as if they were local files. And accessing your phone's filesystem and so on.

I use Kontact every day as my calendar / organiser and Kontact is great… unfortunately Akonadi leaves a bit to be desired, but that's not Kontact's fault.

And let's not forget KDEConnect! :o)

[Dr_Bingley]

Thank you for this interview!

KDE Plasma easily is my favourite desktop environment. I couldn't get used to Gnome when Win10's user-unfriendly shenanigans (like ads in the start menu) finally drove me away from Microsoft's offerings, but KDE immediately felt like home.

[Doctor Syntax]

With the exception really H/W challenged boxes I've never quite grasped the "how light can it be" argument. If you want light use a kernel and Busybox, nothing else. If that doesn't meet your needs then we're just into a trade-off between those needs and the resources required to meet them.

[chololennon]

Why not give KDE a try instead of criticizing it?

Many people here and on the internet criticize KDE based on sheer ignorance, they still think that KDE is KDE 4... come on, KDE 5 was released in 2014, and it can be as lightweight as XFCE not to mention that no desktop has the powerful configuration options of KDE. Last, but not least, Dolphin is one of the best file managers out there.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Why not give KDE a try instead of criticizing it?

As someone who has tried all major KDE versions starting before it even reached 1.0, I've given up on it. KDE 5 was basically rolling the turd of KDE 4 in glitter.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Why not give KDE a try instead of criticizing it?

I find that this gentleman's post illustrates well one problem of using the internet to form an idea about something one may want to learn more about.

Like a large majority of the negative comments in this article, it is generic, aggressive and utterly uninformative. The person wants to give the impression that he is a knowledgeable, authoritative source on the subject ("tried all major KDE versions starting before it even reached 1.0"), but for all the audience know, he does not have any significant experience using the product, or he might have been conditioned by a myriad of possible factors that we can only guess at, since no details have been provided.

So as a general word of advice, I would suggest readers interested in obtaining useful information to look at the detail and quality of what is being posted (be it negative or positive), and consider also if the poster's situation / scenario being described is representative of our own possible experiences.

[Lars]

Re: Why not give KDE a try instead of criticizing it?

So very well said AC.

[StrangerHereMyself]

Too many choices

I personally believe there are too many desktop choices for Linux at the moment, which results in many of them being fair in most respects but missing the polish that Windows has. I've been waiting for over 20 years for a suitable Linux desktop and only now is this starting to become a real possibility (I use Linux Mint; of which there are too many versions as well).

Choice is usually good, but in this regard I believe it dilutes the quality of the end product. There's too much duplication and it has therefore taken too long to end up with a desktop environment that can compete with Windows.

Had all Linux desktop projects (or at least the major ones such as KDE and GNOME) merged twenty years ago we would've reached this stage in 2005, maybe earlier.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Too many choices

Bullshit.

Not married, not a car owner, or perhaps it wasn't that hard to choose after all.

If Linux was owned and produced by one company then they would not deliver that many choices, (am I speaking to a child here).

The reality is such that it has become possible for many choices and that reality will hopefully not change.

[chololennon]

Re: Too many choices

"I personally believe there are too many desktop choices for Linux at the moment, which results in many of them being fair in most respects but missing the polish that Windows has"

Are you using Windows 10? Please, you can't say that Windows is polished. e.g. Old interfaces mixed with new ones, old interfaces zoomed in because they don't support high dpi screens, broken start menu because of the updates, etc, etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Too many choices

> in most respects but missing the polish that Windows has

Have you actually used KDE?

[Anonymous Coward]

License

KDE and QT are great if you are writing GPL software. If not: bad luck you need to buy a commercial license.

It's a shame, because the technology is slightly better than GTK. Not better enough to be worth paying, though.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: License

What a curious idea. Care to explain?

[ibmalone]

Re: License

GTK is LGPL licensed, meaning applications written against it do not need to be GPLed.

Qt is dual-licensed, there is a commercial license allowing you to develop closed source applications that use it or an option to use it under an open source license. My memory of this was that the only open source license option for Qt was GPL, meaning you could only distribute GPLed applications that used it (privately if not distributing you can do what you like), however it is currently available under LGPL, but LGPL 3.0 rather than the LGPL2 which still covers GTK. The difference between the two is not the same as that between GPL2 and GPL3, I'm not entirely sure what it is, to work it out you have to parse all the LGPL caveats about how you're allowed to distribute linked code. https://www.qt.io/download-open-source

Edit: I'm not 100% sure, but LGPL 3.0 may actually be more permissive rather than less. IANAL...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: License

> Qt is dual-licensed

Qt has been triple-licensed since 2014.

https://www.qt.io/blog/2014/08/20/adding-lgpl-v3-to-qt

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: License

So GPL, GPL, or buy a commercial license...

[bon_the_one]

KDE

I read this article with interest, as I did use KDE years ago, but it was a bloated mess. However after getting home tonight I decided to give it another shot and see what improvements there were.

I'm running Debian10, and installed it.

Oh my. What an appalling mess. I'm totally staggered they think this is a reliable and useable desktop.

It's unstable to the extent that often after logging it it would lock up my machine, it's horribly slow, the menu layout and branching (that this is totally personal) needs more clicks than necessary. It only offers me a USA keyboard on the login screen, not the GB layout I need, it argues with passwords sometimes needing my user pass, sometimes needing a root password but never specifies. It's actually worse than it was years ago.

I'm back to XFCE for speed and less resources. Keep telling yourself you are doing well hun, like Trump does.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: KDE on Debian

Are you sure its KDE at fault?

There seems to be plenty of circumstantial evidence even here that e.g. KDE bundled with OpenSUSE works good enough for lots of people.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: KDE on Debian

I second that. As said above, OpenSUSE and Manjaro are both superb distros.

I stopped using Debian and derivatives about 15 years ago due to the packagers habit of mangling the software in ways of varying carelessness or incompetence.

I am sorry, but if I have to run a script that relies on a certain Bash feature, I do not expect some random distribution to patch away that Bash feature because someone thinks it's not "pure". This was an actual example, someone had stripped /dev/tcp support from Bash, and that had me waste the best part of a day trying to figure out where the problem was.

If you think it needs to be fixed, send a patch upstream. If it gets rejected, either live with it or stop packaging the offending software or bloody fork it, but do not mislead users.

And we will not talk SSH, and how smug I felt as I had already moved away from Debian for precisely the risk of something like that happening.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: KDE

> I'm running Debian10

Err…

[Binraider]

I'm not so sure the problems highlighted in this thread are unique to Linux to be honest. Computers and software are complex; therefore configuration is also complex. Dependency hell adds another layer on top - does KDE program X run under Gnome or vice versa? Install stuff and find out the hard way.

Windows - where do we start. Two control panels; plus administrative tools, the registry, .ini files and a morass of other options to configure things. For Joe Average, the UI does put on display most of the options they will be bothered about. But, generally, awful.

OS X. Only time I've had to resort to the terminal was to disable some of the security features in the most recent versions. Otherwise; there's little to configure. Of course, having locked-down to the eyeballs hardware choices also means there is (little) reason to configure stuff anyway.

And then Linux. If your GUI of choice doesn't have a program to change what you want to change, you then need to know where to look, to find where you need to look. Often a plain text file; but unless you know the flavour of system you're working on, you'll have to resort to [$search engine of choice] - and I'll include the man-pages in that description of engine of choice. This is a major blocker to uptake for routine tasks.

I am rather fond of Linux mint; but then; what do I install - the default programs, Gparted; Dosbox, the non-free video drivers and Steam. "just works". When it comes to the shitshow of picking stuff out of software manager it is completely hit-and-miss whether stuff works.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Trying Out" a different environment......

......usually requires a separate machine and some spare time for, say, a week.

*

......because most people have a "go to" machine which they can't afford to sacrifice for an experiment lasting a week.

*

......and the usual reason for reluctance to change is that the "go to" machine has been found to be adequate.....there needs to be some compelling practical reason driving a need for change.

*

In my case, I've been using Red Hat and Fedora since 1999. For the first part of that period Gnome2 was fine. In 2011 Gnome3 was (and remains) a deal breaker for me. Fedora/XFCE turned out to be, and remains perfectly adequate for my needs. Occasional trials of "Live" alternatives (Knoppix, Mint, SUSE, Ubuntu, Xubuntu....) have simply not shown me anything I need. Why would I try KDE or Plasma? Perhaps someone here can tell me what the COMPELLING reasons for change might be......I simply can't see any!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Trying Out" a different environment......

Err, virtualisation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Trying Out" a different environment......

> .usually requires a separate machine and some spare time for, say, a week.

For values of "usually" excluding live distros?

For the unaware: live distros are versions of an operating system that can be booted and run off read-only media such as a USB or SD card (or a CD, back in the day). You burn the distro onto the media, boot off it, use it, then on next reboot you're back to your usual machine.

Some of them have the option to persist data to a file or partition, and some allow you to launch a real install off them.

[Citizen99]

KDE’s Plasma desktop has had a fundamental change since the mindset of KDE 3 days, when it was considered bloated and heavy

I stuck with KDE 3 in the form of the Trinity (TDE) fork. Gives me a well-featured 'classic' GUI that's not at all too heavy for my >10yrs old workstation and normal laptops. XFCE for Virtual Machines or more feeble hardware.

[drankinatty]

Yep, I built TDE for Archlinux from 2012 - 2014, but keeping up with the changes in Arch, was almost a full time job. Especially though gcc, glibc or other library changes (libpng, etc..). Since I've just gone back to KDE3 with openSUSE for my daily driver. openSUSE still packages the best KDE3 on the planet. It just works. Most TDE changes are coordinated and incorporated in openSUSE's KDE3, though there are still some on the "nice to implement list" when time permits. Being able to use desktop where you never have to worry about a (unknown) bug is nice indeed!

[Claverhouse]

Never Change

KDE is glorious. Never quite got the 'Plasma' bit.

.

Any parts of modernist Flat Design drearily infecting present OSs can be changed through Themes etc.; I am proud to have a Pale Moon reverted to the look of a Firefox circa 2012. The last good year for design. Flat all started with the repulsive Unity Ubuntu debuted. Not that I can stand Gnome...

Actually, my favourite OS, OpenSUSE --- if that's how they spell it now --- has installed as a ghastly dark modern flat crap, with more and more depressing iterations --- add a few skulls and perfect for a Swedish Death Metal MySpace Fan-site; but as said, soon altered

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Never Change

> OpenSUSE has installed as a ghastly dark modern flat crap

Which version? I run both Leap 15.2 (multiple computers) and Tumbleweed (one "canary" computer) and all have the usual salamander-green accent, although the most recent GUI distribution from scratch is from about 18 months ago. I've done more recent new installs but those are all headless.

Anyhow, it is true that distribution themers (not just OpenSUSE) sometimes have questionable tastes! Thankfully, it's only a couple of clicks to choose a different theme.

What I do change from the default in recent GUI installs is the default menu style, which is too big and intrusive for my taste, so I change it to a more traditional list and sublists type. Mind, most of the time I use KRunner (Alt+F2) rather than the menu.

[Dave559]

"KDE 3 days, when it was considered bloated and heavy"

That seems an odd description to me. I was a big fan of KDE 3, which ran well on the fairly low budget desktop I had at the time and didn't seem to need too much in the way of resources. Then came KDE 4 (which I know was considered initially rough and ready and many distros adopted it far too soon), and my poor desktop suddenly became very sluggish with it, as it didn't have a graphics card capable of accelerated graphics, and there didn't seem to be any way to turn off that unnecessary shiny stuff.

(Also at that point, KDE themes seemed to move from the attractive but modest, to the hypershiny and over the top (as well as needing that acceleration), but judging from the screen shots in the article, they now seem to have regressed too far to the horrible flatso look (but still with that heavyweight barn door menu, give me the Gnome 2 style system menus any day, please).)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "KDE 3 days, when it was considered bloated and heavy"

> there didn't seem to be any way to turn off that unnecessary shiny stuff.

There was – and still is: typing this from an ancient Eee of mine which a) still works! and b) runs KDE4. ☺

System settings → Desktop effects, or Alt+F2 to bring up KRunner and start typing "effects".

[Dave559]

Re: "KDE 3 days, when it was considered bloated and heavy"

No, I didn't mean the fancy effects, just that even to display the sort of window chrome that the KDE 4 themes came with (the default theme was some sort of heavyweight and slow brushed metal Aqua-ish look-alike) seemed to require substantially more graphical grunt than my low end computer had (and the computer I had then was probably even less powerful than an eee).

Possibly there may have been "basic" (ahem) effects already running by default, like window shadows or panel translucency, I can't remember, but the point is that they should have started up with minimal requirements and then maybe popped up a "first run" dialog box letting you know that you could enable more fancy effects if you had a CPU and graphics card up to it.

But from my experience then, my computer went from running perfectly fine with KDE 3 to running like treacle with KDE 4 overnight. And with KDE 4 then looking like an ugly and highly confusing mess as well, I wasn't minded to spend much time looking for workarounds, so off to Gnome 2 (which had come on substantially since I had previously looked at it) I went…

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "KDE 3 days, when it was considered bloated and heavy"

From memory, KDE actually does disable effects if it sees that your computer can't take it.

[Dave559]

Re: "KDE 3 days, when it was considered bloated and heavy"

That's good to know. I don't think it did way back then, though (bear in mind this was quite a few years ago that I'm talking about). And it probably wasn't helped by distros at that time leaping to adopt KDE 4 somewhat before it was properly ready, and probably before they had had the chance to tune and reduce the resource usage somewhat.

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like posting is broken?

Or not? Apologies if this does get shown.

[Dave559]

Re: Looks like posting is broken?

Yes, a couple of my posts earlier also didn't seem to appear (or in "My posts"), but have done now. I assume that someone frobnicated the thingamajig successfully?

[Will Godfrey]

Not for me

Interesting article, and info about funding, but I'm an Openbox + Rox Filer bod. They do exactly what I want, when I want them to, and as long as that remains true I see no reason to change.

This on devuan... which also does what I want.

OK, there of elements of Gomeiness and Kdeness in some of the apps, but they are under control.

[Anonymous Coward]

Those little things

Such as selecting text from a document or webpage and dragging it onto the desktop, where a post-it like note is created. I can carry on without my flow being disrupted, and in a few hours time, when I'll need to use that snippet, I know where to find it.

Or the clipboard, which remembers the last X (for a configurable value of X) entries and persists between login sessions (if you want it to).

I'm actually making money by using Plasma, as it takes less time to do the job.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Those little things

And I assume that virtual desktops are quite standard amongst all environments these days?

There is also the option for multiple workspaces though I don't really use that.

[sandbelt]

Well, I tried it

Being a long-time MATE user, but agreeing with 45RPM about the generally gluggy appearance of most Linux distributions, I was tempted enough to flash Kubuntu into an old (2009) Core 2 box with Intel inbuilt graphics. I can report, should there be interest, that this combination is very snappy indeed. Plus, you know, I think it does look better.

[drankinatty]

KDE3 - the last Real KDE Desktop, KDE4 never got there, Plasma is still a mix

The comical part of the article was the comment that KDE3 was considered bloated and heavy (cough... maybe for that 486 with 512K of RAM). KDE3 is a blistering fast full featured desktop environment where (with SSD), you can boot Linux from power-off to full desktop is 11 sec. The author is right about the quote that current KDE is built on cars and coffee machines, because just to start current KDE5 (same SSD), you will have time to stroll down to the coffee machine and get a cup before the desktop is ready....

I have used KDE since (KDE2?) though its pinnacle of 3.510, then starting with KDE4-4.0.4a released May 2008 as the default desktop on openSUSE 11.0, though the current 5.2 built from git sources. From the time 4.0.4a was release to present I have authored over 400 bug reports for things that simply don't work or don't work right or for missing functionality that didn't survive the port from Qt3 on. Everything from systray and clock font control to the wrong physics model used for sphere and cylinder rotation. And then to find the same problem bugged in 2008 against KDE4 still not fixed in KDE5. Sigh...

The problem being that neither KDE4 or KDE5 were developed for a specific Qt version. Most of the apps and interface were developed for Qt3 and then have been ported (more or less successfully) to later versions of the toolkit. There have been new applications developed to replace some of the older ones (Ocular for Kpdf, Spectacle for Ksnapshot, etc..) and in each case the tools remained broken for years as they tried to duplicate functionality available in the older versions. In the case of Spectacle ending up with a dumbed down version that was incapable of taking a screenshot of itself due to the single process limitation)

Now to be fair, Plasma (KDE5 or whatever they choose to call it this week), does work much better now than it did when it was launched, as did KDE4 before it was scrapped for KDE5. But at what cost? The new additions to kate/kwrite are neat, but don't provide any additional functionality. Konqueror, the premier file manager in KDE3 (--profile filemanagement), remains a crippled awkward shadow of its former self, and Dolphin (a/k/a the dumbed down version of konqueror meant to be easier for novice users), simply lacks any real file management features. So Plasma is now usable, but clumsy compared to KDE3. This after two+ years of dealing with some applications that were still KDE4, some Plasma and a myriad of layered dialogs that are difficult if not impossible to navigate in system settings (the new Kcontrol). To this day you still can't put a different wallpaper on each of your multiple desktops (something trivially doable KDE3) without awkward hacks to the "activities" feature or otherwise.

Gone are many efficiencies and finely tuned human-factor considerations present in KDE3 designed to minimize the number of keystrokes or mouse-clicks needed to accomplish any one task. Gone are the considerations that minimized the number of times you would need to move your hands between the keyboard and mouse and then reposition on return to the keyboard. Not something that was intentionally lost, but the unintended consequence of porting a finely-tuned desktop and applications from Qt version to Qt version and basically having to duct-tape and bailing-wire the underlying class hierarchy code to "get things working" with the new toolkit.

Now don't take this as throwing rocks at the KDE team. The KDE3 team was/is an incredibly talented group that developed a desktop from the ground up arriving at what was arguably the most complete and efficient Linux desktop ever made. The sheer amount of human-factors efficiencies integrated into KDE3 is still impressive today. Many of those same talented developers are still there.

The problem comes when decisions are made to run off chasing new gotta-have "widgets" provided by Qt4 (the KDE summit in 2007), compounded by putting out a release before it is ready (alpha-quality at best... the 'a' at the end of 4.0.4), and then the ensuing decade of trying to make it all work. What about the end user while all these gee-whiz new things are being tried? The user-base suffers -- partially working apps, crashes or lost functionality and lost time and productivity trying to chase down why X doesn't work anymore, or you can't do Y with it. And..., then to throw it all away in 2018 to run of chasing Plasma -- restarting the process of patching and porting and broken apps and lost time and functionality which we are now 2+ years into (and hoping it doesn't take another 8 to get right) before... new "widgets" in Qt6 become the next latest rage.... Yes, we do fail to learn from history, and yes, we are destined to repeat it.

So I wish the KDE team good luck with KDE5, and I hope that KDE5 nears actual refinement and completion (something KDE4 never really achieved) but the experience since 2008 and the new KDE4-4.0.4a on until today epitomizes why it is almost impossible for anyone but hobbyists and developers to use a Linux desktop. (don't think Gnome3 is a panacea either -- it has stumbled mightily since Gnome2 trying to hit a moving GTK+3 target (which is now scrapped for the new .... wait for it ... GTK+4). There is a reason GIMP is still built on GTK+2...

So with the thousands of hours spent collecting data, strace'ing misbehaving apps, picking though logs to author bug reports, ... would I do it again? You bet, so long as my daily driver desktop allows me to just get work done when needed, and it does, e.g. "konqueror --verison, Qt: 3.3.8c, KDE: 3.5.10, Konqueror: 3.5.10" :) Hope springs eternal.

[Dave559]

Testing switching from Gnome 3 to KDE 5

OK, I'll give KDE a try again…

(Testing on Ubuntu 20.04: sudo apt install kde-plasma-desktop)

I prefer dark mode: switch from Breeze to Breeze Dark, easily done. (Ouch, it looks so much like ugly flatso Windos10 it hurts my eyes, I need a new theme, quick!)

Switch to focus follows mouse (hmm, perhaps rather too many options to choose from, though).

Move the window close button to the left (hey, it's what I grew up with), and add the window shade button.

Oh, I can even add proper window borders again (in a variety of widths), I''ll go for thin. A shame they don't seem to change colour on the active window, however.

Compose key, easily enabled again, whew…

Now I'm more stuck.

For some work activities, I need to use our VPN, which had been set up in Gnome network-manager.

I literally can't see a network settings icon in the KDE taskbar.

Nothing in Network Settings…?

(And, eek, when you click on a settings category, rather than the child category open directly under the mouse pointer, the menu unnecessarily fancily slides out of the way and opens the category items at the top of the window, so that you have to move the mouse (and your hand) to access them. That's dreadful UI and a real health risk for unnecessary hand strain. And if it turns out you opened the wrong category ("nope, not in there"), you also have to haul the mouse back up to the top of the window for the "back to parent category" button. That really is infuriating.)

OK, where does KDE hide its VPN settings, then?

I have some non-KDE applications that I need to continue to use. Even though I have chosen a dark KDE theme, they seem to have reverted to a light Gnome or Mate theme (as appropriate). Is there a way to resolve that?

But, in fairness, it certainly does seem a lot less bloaty than KDE 4, so I am willing to give it a go, if I can resolve these problems.

[ibmalone]

Re: Testing switching from Gnome 3 to KDE 5

The following is Plasma 5.15.5, YMMV...

VPN connections show up in the same list as hardware connections and just added with the same "Add a new connection" (the + button beneath the list of connections in the connections systems settings module),

GTK appearance settings: System settings, Application style (in the appearance category), GNOME/GTK Application style submenu.

Afraid I've no idea why you don't have a network settings icon, for me it's part of the system tray. (Can be disabled, but don't see why that would be a default, Edit panel, then configuration option on system tray, networks should be ticked.)

[Dave559]

Re: Testing switching from Gnome 3 to KDE 5

@ibmalone, thanks for the GTK settings tip, very useful! (Although, interestingly, when I logged in to KDE for the second time, my GTK programs seemed to have switched to a dark theme somehow anyway?).

I've found the solution to my VPN problem, I needed to install plasma-nm, which it looks like kde-plasma-desktop didn't bring in by itself.

Now I just need to find a KDE theme that I like…

[Dave559]

Re: Testing switching from Gnome 3 to KDE 5

OK, I've been using KDE 5 today, and having tweaked it sufficiently to my preferences (I'm sure there is more I could fine tune), I might stick with it.

The key other visual tweak seems to be to switch the "Application Style" (interface widget style) to anything other than "Breeze", which is what otherwise gives buttons, sliders, tabs, etc the (almost) universally unpopular flatso look.

(The "Breeze" window decorations (window titlebar buttons) do tend to the flatso, but unlike Windos10 buttons, they at least have some aesthetics to them; I can live with them. The other pre-installed alternative window button theme, "Plastik" is more traditional, and perhaps ironically does now look a little 'boxed in' with the buttons in square boxes. Obviously I could look for more titlebar button themes if I wanted to, but I no longer have quite the desire to fully customize my desktop that I once used to, so long as it looks pleasant (and usable) enough. (I did quite like Ubuntu's "Ambiance" titlebar button theme, however, it had just the right balance between attractive design, colour and slightly squishy "3D" buttons, if you ask me.))

Interestingly, my desktop system is now using about 2 GB less than it was with Gnome 3, but rather more CPU: the fan, which would previously be almost silent almost all of the time, is now moderately loud most of the time (about 3 - 4 out of 5 on my arbitrary fan noisiness scale), which is a bit annoying.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Testing switching from Gnome 3 to KDE 5

Mine is Oxygen, not sure if this is OpenSUSE only though.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Testing switching from Gnome 3 to KDE 5

Yeah, I was going to say, depends on what you are using to manage your network, which is a choice made at the distro (not desktop environment) level. On OpenSUSE, it defaults to NetworkManager on laptops and similar and to Wicked on workstations. The latter does not show (as far as I'm aware) an applet, as in principle the networking is mostly stable, as opposed to a laptop which hops from network to network.

I think also some of the complaints about KDE may not actually be KDE's fault but rather crappy packaging or integration with the distro. I would recommend OpenSUSE as a top-notch distro which brings not just a very polished KDE experience but also is super easy to manage both locally and remotely (YaST is a fantastic thing).

[saskwatch]

LXQt anyone?

Use it, love it. Use Openbox as WM with Compton. Plays well with KDE apps & even makes Gnome/GTK stuff look tolerable. Easy on the CPU & RAM. Very old school & all I need.

[Erny48]

After trying several Linux flavours, whilst trying to escape Win10, Mint, Manjaro, MX etc, all tried for a few weeks. I stumbled accros KDE Noen 5.20...excellent! stable not bloated, fast. My system for my work and play.