hi guys this is just a question that came to my mind, anyone out there still uses kde 3? and if you do, it would be awesome if you'd post a screenshot. thanks.

Yes, because that's what comes with Debian Lenny. When Squeeze gets released (hopefully sometime this year), I'll have to see if I like KDE4 or move to something like LXDE.

Sorry, no screenshot cause I'm not at my linux box.

This is an interesting and timely question (to me, anyway). Up until a couple of weeks ago, I was using kde 4. I wasn't really happy with it (bugginess, gets slower over 10 - 14 days, possibly due to memory leaks rather than unfamiliarity with how it works, although I don't really find it intuitive).

Anyway, somewhere in the long list of monthly, or more frequent, KDE4 updates, I'd broken my KDE 3 installation, but I decided to try to fix that. Well, I didn't quite succeed, and ended up with a kde 3 install that has some elements of kde 4 included. I don't know how I did that, but its just what I wanted, even if it does waste a bit of screen real estate.

Even though, somewhere underneath, it is a deeply screwed-up install and it is sometimes unclear whether you want the kde 3 tools or the kde 4 tools to configure it, it is, so far, stable and doesn't slow down to deep-frozen-treacle speed.

And while I've been with KDE 4 since 4.1.4 or something, all the time I've been hoping that the next update would 'just work'(TM), and, so far, it 'just doesn't' (also TM, guess who got that one?). Yeah, I know that they said kde 4.0 was a developer-only preview, but that didn't mean 4.01 wouldn't be OK, but it wasn't, but maybe 4.1 or 4.1.1...well, you know the story. They are going like gangbusters killing off bugs, but, there were so many, they haven't got it down to an acceptable state, yet, and I don't know when they will.

(OK, I'm being slightly unreasonable here; I'm sure that I could make it a lot more tolerable by adding extra RAM or shutting down the PC rather than suspending it, every evening. But I don't have to do that with KDE 3, I don't have to do it with Gnome and I don't have to do it with Enlightenment.)

I still use Mepis 8.0 instead of 8.5 primarily because of KDE 3 vs. 4.

I have played a fair amount with KDE 4 and think most of the differences make it worse than KDE 3. Mepis 8.5 is worse than 8.0 in a few more ways beyond KDE. But I guess ongoing development is in the new versions, so I guess I will figure out how to customize and/or learn things enough to make it tolerable.

I have only tried KDE 4 on computers with 3GB or more of ram, and I mostly care only about computers with 3GB or more of ram. So I don't think anything I dislike in KDE 4 results from whatever extra ram it might use. I haven't even noticed that.

Why? You want to see my Firefox Window taking up most of the screen? Or you want to see the plain off cyan desktop I chose because I don't like the Mepis 8.0 background (unfair because I don't like any non solid background, but Mepis 8.0 was worse)? Or you want to see my slightly customized version of the Mepis 8.0 KDE task bar? Or maybe the random icons down the left edge of the screen (if I shrink the FireFox window) of various files and links I ought to clean up because I never use them?

Nothing there should be interesting. I don't want interesting, especially not visually interesting. I want functional.

I'm sure one of the Mepis websites still has some nice screenshots of Mepis 8.0 KDE 3 desktops.

KDE3 running on Slackware 12.0 was my main desktop until a few weeks ago.

The release of Slackware 13.1 prompted me to upgrade. After a few hours' use of KDE4 and tweaking its settings, I've got it set up to work pretty much the same way as KDE3.

My hardware is a bit older, so I've switched off things like "Desktop Effects" and the "Nepomuk Semantic Desktop". These two tweaks yielded some decent performance increases on their own.

To make it look and feel more "familiar," I've set up the desktop as a folder view, set the menu to use the "classic" style and set the default file manager to Konqueror. It is now close enough to KDE3 in look and feel that it doesn't matter to me anymore. In fact, I'm finding that it even does a few things that KDE3 didn't, and in general, seems to work better. This is version 4.4.3.

Under KDE3, games or other software which used sound had to wait for the aRts daemon to "suspend" itself before they could access the sound card. KDE4 doesn't have this problem.

ok ok ok.... relax my friend
i can see nobody likes to show their desktop anymore...

on my cent install but not Arch

Well, I can't get it under the file size limit for this site. I doubt anyone else would like it or be able to reproduce, anyway.

Hi,

I tried KDE (3/4) and stopped using it. Too bloated for my taste.

The "Why?" at the beginning of my rant was actually a serious question. Even without all the reasons (including size, that I didn't mention, and some privacy issues) that my own desktop is a particularly bad choice to share, I still don't understand the point of posting anyone's desktop.

I made the mistake of upgrading to Squeeze/experimental a couple of months ago so that I could give KDE4 a whirl. I hated it and just went back to fluxbox

I liked KDE3, but found KDE 4.0 - 4.3 horrible.

Recently I decided to try it again (happened to be version 4.4.4), and I like it and use it. Plasma is still a bit glitchy, but not nearly as bad as 4.3.

I like the "Oxygen" theme for the cursor, windows, and widgets, and the "Elegance" theme for Plasma.