I don't understand. What does anyone think could or should be added to Fluxbox? It is a minimalist DE that supports most KDE apps reasonably well. Why would anyone need a new version. It's simple, quite reliable... and it's done. It is still quite useful.

I was making the point that what you've just said about Fluxbox could also be said about KDE 4, excepting its minimalism, of course. Together with cwizardone I don't see much benefit to Plasma 5, and aesthetically it was a step backwards.

Ergonomically and from an accessibility point of view KDE 4 and 5 have always been a tedious chore to set up. I certainly do see their value, and I think they have the right ideas about how a desktop should look and behave, but in 2020 there's still always something "off" about them. There's just no immediate flow when you sit down to a KDE 4 or 5 desktop, as there is with, for example, Xfce.

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To me, 3 things stand out about Plasma 5 that are markedly different from KDE 4:

• Memory footprint - Plasma 5 is no longer the memory hog (bloat) that it once was. It is actually less of a hog than Xfce. But don't take my word for it; there's an article about it as well.
• Polished look - Personally, I like the look of Plasma 5. It's much easier to navigate to the place you want to get what you want done.
• Development roadmap - After the disastrous transition from KDE 3.x to 4.x, the developers took a much smarter route for the transition to Plasma 5.

This is just my opinion, and you are free to disagree if you wish. But the above reasons are the primary motivators for Plasma 5 on my machine.

Happy Slacking!

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I agree with you on KDE 4, but 5 is much better in that regard. I barely have to tweak anything. And I need to do a bunch of stuff to make Fluxbox or Xfce function to my liking. You're mistaking your preferences for universal truths.

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Couldn't disagree more! Absolutely one of, if not the worst, desktop I've use had the displease to use. The default appearance (including the icons) looks like it was designed by color blind kindergarteners.

OTOH, as you said, each to their own opinion.

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Tis true! I was just giving my opinion of why I run Plasma 5 on my machine; it was not intended to persuade anyone else to run Plasma 5 if they have a preference for other WM/DEs. But that's the beauty of Slackware; you can configure it to run whatever you want, and it'll do so with the same legendary rock-solid stability and performance we all have come to appreciate in Slackware.

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Now, that I can agree with!

I think this is an example of what I hinted at, namely that we tend to like what we get used to and are resistant to change. Obviously this isn't "written in stone".. just a tendency that must be overcome to accept change. I don't find KDE 4 OR 5 inaccessible, tedious to setup or in any way "off". It seems to me Plasma 5 is just a mature form of v4. while 4 was a huge departure from 3... a departure that sent many, including me for a time, fleeing in all directions. I just stayed in touch to see when they would finally "get it all together". I think Plasma 5 is that refinement... at least as KTown is presented.

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KDE has been vilified and hounded for over a decade now, ever since v4 was introduced prematurely, that it's footprint is daunting and bloated. I think this is why the default is so basic, which is at it should be IMHO. Give me a basic template since I'm going to make it mine anyway immediately.

Below is a link to a recent screenie of my KTown desktop. On the upper left you can see colorful icons. On the right, where notifications, Time, Weather, devices, etc are shown they are monochromatic. I don't think this looks like Kindergarten. Also it can be seen in Conky that the footprint is quite reasonable.

https://i.imgur.com/or0R7NN.jpg

Aesthetics is subjective and people may prefer lighter or darker, simpler or covered with icons, but I don't think a case can be made that it's ugly or unusable.

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Nice wallpaper.

On this note, the only nitpick I have with Plasma 5 (which in no way affects my love of it in any major way) is the removal of the screensavers. I absolutely fell in love with the Euphoria screensaver of KDE 4.x days, and immediately felt the effects of the screensavers' removal. I have approximated it with the combination of the standard xscreensaver included in Slackware, and Alien BOB's rss-glx, which supplements xscreeensaver's offerings of screensavers to include Euphoria. This works well enough that I don't really regret the removal of screensavers in Plasma 5. I believe that the reason for the screensavers' removal was that it represented a security risk (I read it on one of the developer's blogs, which for the life of me I can't seem to locate now. I think the author was Martin, but I can't be certain).

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I have to agree that Euphoria was aptly named, quite beautiful and engaging. The only more mindblowing one I'd ever seen was with some oddball set of card games my used to be Mother-In-Law bought on a 5 CDs. There was a bonus set of screensavers and there was one that was a brilliant rendering of a fantastic kaleidoscope effect. I can't believe this was around the time of Win 3.11. I have searched often for anything even close and never seen one that was so fluid, so non-repeating, and totally hypnotic. I had it on an office computer and customers would stop in their tracks for minutes at a time. You could get lost in it.

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This week's list of new features, changes, bug fixes and performance improvements for kde5,

https://pointieststick.com/2020/08/0...ls-on-wayland/

Alien Bob slid an update to his Ktown packages under the door a couple of days ago. I updated and all appears to be working well

Previously was KDE 5_20.06 so I had to clean my pop bottle glasses to see the change

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LOL well that's underwhelming So does this mean you still think the icons look too primitive? There is a fairly wide range of icons and themes available by default and more are easily added right from "System Settings", but given your level of expertise and attention I suppose you already know that. I further suppose that you're simply more comfortable in Xfce probably from early and long term usage, so now it feels like "ur ol' buddy".