Hi
I was a die hard kde fan. When kde 4 was released, it was bloated and slow, and forced me to switch to gnome. When gnome 3 was released, it was also bloated and slow and forced me to switch to mate. Mate was not fulfilling my needs due to its simplicity so I switched to cinnamon, my current desktop.
Meanwhile, kde 5 was released and everyone is praising this 5th release of kde. Moreover, many surveys showed that kde is again #1 desktop in terms of users. I tried kde 5 many times but its still slow on my i5 laptop with 8GB ram. Even though I had disabled the desktop effects and whistles but still no use. Then I came across a forum post and among the answers, one strike me, which said:
I think the same thing is happening here with me in arch linux. So my question is that can you recommend me a native kde distro which is not bloated with all those heavy effects, whistles, background services etc. and also and fast?
Regards

SSD or HDD ?

HDD

My kde 5 was slow too - plasma menu, pop-up menus and panels. I switched rendering backend to XRender from OpenGL and got plasma much faster.
May be it's your case too?

Meanwhile, I have been searching and find out that many articles have rated openSUSE as best candidate for KDE. I can try your suggestion after downloading/installing openSUSE.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=speed+up+plasma-desktop

have u heard bout gentoo ?

or maybe >>> http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=redcore

good luck !

Hey zerotrack000,

If you're unhappy with the performance of KDE (or any desktop environment, for that matter ...) on your system, why don't you just opt for a lightweight alternative ? When you say you abandoned Mate "due to its simplicity" - this seems to contradict your performance requirement.

You can customize any DE by adding any application you need. Regardless of the computer I use, I prefer LXDE with Arch since it is extremely lightweight and allows me to install only that which I need / want. The only time I use any other DE is when I require a HiDPI-enabled solution, and then I go (grudgingly) with either gnome or Cinnamon.

My 2 cents ....

Already tried the first one. However, regarding gentoo... I have been using it few years back and now no plan to spend time in compiling packages again from source.

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I have to use external devices like usb and bluetooth sound cards, mifi, wireless headsets, and some other. KDE and Cinnamon are only two which properly switches to these hardware when plugged. However, on mate, lxde, fluxbox or any other lightweight desktop, you need to select and configure them everytime, which is painful. In summary, although these desktops are light on resources but they lack complete plug-n-play functionality.

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You didn't mentioned the reason?

Gotcha. Well, if you haven't already done it, maxing out your RAM and switching to SSD will help performance (the SSD really does make a big difference - I've swapped them in on 2 of my laptops and it's given them a new lease on life).

Best !

RAM is already at maximum which is 8GB. I didn't switch to SSD due to its very high price here in my country

I hear you - they're still relatively expensive here as well, but coming down.

Although, Dollar is not used here but if I want to convert the price of SSD in Dollars then:
Price of of 1TB SSD = $580
Price of my laptop = $600

So, in this price I can purchase a new laptop