KDE users of slackware, how has your experience been?

Originally Posted by alnun For those of you on current or those who are using KDE5 on stable, how is the stability of KDE been for you? I want to get some opinions on stability and experiences before I consider switching to KDE full time because I've had a few negative experiences in the past with KDE and heard it's generally unstable as well by others in the past.

I don't use KDE5 on stable, I wouldn't even consider trying that. I do use KDE5 on -current. I have been using KDE5 since it was introduced in ktown. I am very happy with KDE5 in Slackare64-current. It is my experience with desktop and laptop usage is reliable and stable.

Plasma 5 hasn't been available for Slackware 14.2 (Stable) in a long time now. Until it was pulled from Alien Bob's servers I used to run it but it is history now.

EDIT - Mon May 25 19:15:55 UTC 2020
I have removed the un-maintained KDE 5-17.11 for Slackware 14.2 from my 'ktown' repository. If you want or need to run Plasma5, please migrate to slackware-current.

Ping Ivandi - That initial leap in staggering usage is primarily Baloo indexing your drives for fast searching. If you wait a few minutes it's done from then on or you can disable Baloo and never get the hit but at the cost of slowing down searches. Many don't use that feature at all so it is perfectly fine to just disable it. The degree on initial impact is in relation to the power of your machine. Mine hit 80-90% CPU (i5-10600K) for a few minutes with Baloo allowed but now idles around 1-2%.

Originally Posted by enorbet Ping Ivandi - That initial leap in staggering usage is primarily Baloo indexing your drives for fast searching.

Not necessarily. There seems to be a bug with elogind and Wayland which triggers 100% CPU if you log out and then log back in. See post #15 above for how to fix it.

Interesting to note that KDE5 on Slackware64-current is using less RAM than XFCE.

Originally Posted by rkelsen Not necessarily. There seems to be a bug with elogind and Wayland which triggers 100% CPU if you log out and then log back in. See post #15 above for how to fix it.

Thanks rkelsen but Wayland doesn't work for me yet and really I don't care if it does for probably at least a year.

Originally Posted by enorbet Thanks rkelsen but Wayland doesn't work for me yet and really I don't care if it does for probably at least a year.

It works here, but I think you're right, it's not ready for prime time yet. I'll wait until they resolve the issues with wine (among other things).

With that said, it certainly scales better than X and seems to work very well on UHD & HiDPI screens. There are a few minor differences in the way it works, which I find annoying.

Originally Posted by hitest Interesting to note that KDE5 on Slackware64-current is using less RAM than XFCE.

It is surprising, I do not recall how much XFCE uses vs KDE5, but compared to MATE, KDE5 is anywhere from 10-40MB slimmer; which is why I have made the decision to jump from LXDE(Well currently now in 14.2 I am using MATE), to KDE.

bash-5.1$ inxi -CGIDM CPU: Info: 8-Core model: Intel Core i7-9700K bits: 64 type: MCP cache: L2: 12 MiB Speed: 4786 MHz min/max: 800/4900 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 4786 2: 4795 3: 4801 4: 4801 5: 4801 6: 4857 7: 4800 8: 4801 Graphics: Device-1: NVIDIA TU106 [GeForce RTX 2060 Rev. A] driver: nvidia v: 460.67 Display: server: X.Org 1.20.10 driver: loaded: nvidia resolution: 1: 1920x1200~60Hz 2: 1920x1080~60Hz OpenGL: renderer: GeForce RTX 2060/PCIe/SSE2 v: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 460.67 Info: Processes: 270 Uptime: 14m Memory: 15.42 GiB used: 2.15 GiB (13.9%) Shell: Bash inxi: 3.3.03 Drives: Local Storage: total: 5.46 TiB used: 3.58 TiB (65.6%) ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: Samsung model: SSD 970 EVO Plus 1TB size: 931.51 GiB ID-2: /dev/sda vendor: Seagate model: ST4000DM004-2CV104 size: 3.64 TiB ID-3: /dev/sdb vendor: Seagate model: ST1000LM048-2E7172 size: 931.51 GiB Machine: Type: Desktop Mobo: ASRock model: Z390 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ac UEFI: American Megatrends v: P4.40 date: 11/26/2019

I've been using kde5 for years under 64-current starting with ktown. KDE5 comes with some useful tools but I add what I want. I have tried baloo a few times but it is just isn't worth the trouble it causes me, so I always go back and turn it off. I tried Kubuntu twice and Arch once, Ubuntu a few times, and much etc. I would say that Slackware gives me the superior KDE5 experience. I have to say I did prefer the look and style of KDE4 but I do give it up for the function of KDE5. Right now I have two partitions booting Slackware-64-current and one with win10. Sometimes I do bork my slackware and having the other partition with a not-yet-borked one is convenient and wise for me to get up-and-going immediately.
Fluxbox is my fall-back DE. I am quite fond of fluxbox, actually, but I never quite get around to re-customising it.

I never really used KDE and fedora with GNOME worked well enough after 3.12 or so. This weekend I tried the latest liveslak and after a few fixes to get it running without annoying me, what is this kdewallet crap, it runs smooth. I'll use it as my daily driver and see where it gets me.
Great job!

Originally Posted by hendrickxm I never really used KDE and fedora with GNOME worked well enough after 3.12 or so. This weekend I tried the latest liveslak and after a few fixes to get it running without annoying me, what is this kdewallet crap, it runs smooth. I'll use it as my daily driver and see where it gets me. Great job!

I too run liveSlack and have been for several months now. When I just feel like it I'll pop in the flashdrive containing it and boot into it, but I'd be comfortable easily to run it 24/7, but since I already have my masses of 14.2 fixed and setup from the years, I just play in the liveSlack once in a while to remind myself that if it runs this well in a flashdrive it's gonna be fantastic once I put it on an NVMe SSD. I've been using KDE since I started using Linux (February of 2000). I've tried many other DE's but either they just weren't intuitive enough for me *personally* or it was too much of a hassle to get some of my favorite KDE apps installed to them. KDE has never let me down or slowed my system, and I can't say that with (at least) Gnome.