I'll echo GazL a bit in that I'm not interested in being beholden to whatever new shiny thing DE's are doing these days. Gnome 3 burned me as well as KDE at one point. i3 will probably never change that substantially...
All that said, I'm curious what PV *himself* is running. That may have something to do with 'the wait'. Perhaps he doesnt like Plasma and thinks KDE4 is the kats meow. Perhaps he doesnt use either and wants to move to XFCE only... who knows. I'd love to know how he feels about the current state of DE's in general....
Our feelings matter not

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xfce is fine for me and i don't think i could do with it ;plasma on the other hand just seems to be a decandent extravagance . I just need to see what i'm looking at not things bouncing

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XFCE seems the most 'stable' of the big DEs.. though that's what I thought of KDE at one point. But since moving to i3 I'll never move again until it's gone.

I am 100% in-line with you here. As you well said, impressed by the technical might, but depressed by the complexity.

I don't use a DE. I would be perfectly fine with a fluxbox desktop. I have been using icewm for many years (so muscle memory has built up) but I perfectly understand that most people want (or maybe just are used to) a desktop environment.

It's probably part of a global trend towards more ease of use at the price of more complexity (look at modern cars )

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I can offer some theories here. Pat said in an earlier thread that he has used Xfce as his main DE for a while now. A few days ago I had a rather lengthy discussion with a confidant of mine, let's call him [which I shall transcribe on my blog soon], who ran Unix/Slackware for many years. He left Slackware when KDE4 came out because he detested Plasma. He's old school, likes Unix to be traditional and hated the fact that KDE had removed some functionality, tried to make it look like OSX while simultaneously removing some of its stability. Essentially it had gone backwards, as far as he saw it, since he had been using KDE since beta 2.

I would venture that he and Pat share similar points of view about the current state and unnecessary complexity of modern DEs. I imagine what we are seeing here is a tug of war - albeit an amicable one, one would hope - between Pat and Eric, with moving Plasma 5 into Slackware being on one end of the rope and removing KDE altogether being on the other end. If that really is the case I imagine the latter will eventually win out.

In my own opinion, Slackware does not need KDE at all. Xfce is perfectly suitable.

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One user's input: I would love to see 15.0 or at least -current with both Xfce and Plasma 5, no wish for Gnome.

I've played with AlienBob's LiveSlak and I like it. Very slick. But I'm still using KDE4 on Slackware64 14.2... in anticipation of 15.0 with Plasma 5 (and now using, as of this past weekend, Xfce on SlackwareARM -current on my shiny new Raspberry Pi 4, with SARPi's help.)

It would be nice if 15.0 came stock with Plasma 5. If 15.0 came just with Qt5/depencies, and that would make Eric willing to keep making Plasma 5 for 15.0 available and updated, that would work just fine for me.

If Eric would make and update Plasma 5 only for -current as long as Qt5/dependencies were included, that would probably motivate me to finally add a partition with -current, or simply switch to it from 14.2.

I guess I would do the same if someone took over making and updating Plasma 5 from Eric, but I would approach that cautiously until I knew I could trust the new person.

TheTKS

@philanc i've used iceweasel, once tried dillo then tried Seamonkey but found it wasn't coping with some requirements. I'm now on 64 bit current and using icecat-60.3.0-x86_64-1_SBo. I can see videos on twitter , watch news BBC on iplayer. But why your probably using iceweasel i'm guessing is that you want something that does the job without unnecessary frills ? certainly thats my thinking

All those years, i am using KDE, Xfce4, Openbox, keep changing between them and Xfce4 had a slight edge as my favourite choice. But now, 99,99% of my time is KDE 5. While offering the expected functionality and flexibilty, it feels as responsive and as light as Xfce4.

This... I am tempted to create a post with a poll - may or may not be official or even considered by Pat, but I think it would spark an interesting discussion.

Screw it here it is - https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...de-4175662221/

In my opinion dropping KDE entirely would be a mistake. I use XFCE as my desktop and I use KDE applications.

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When is pat goings to update the ancient KDE4 with the modern KDE5?

No longer than on the next year will be released Qt6, then will forget about the "obsolete" Plasma5 and we will look forward for the brand new and written from scratch Plasma6...

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I'm starting to wonder whether 14.2 will be the Windows XP of Slackware.

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The sole reason for the existence of my 'ktown' repository with Plasma5 packages (and before that, KDE4 packages) was to provide a testing ground for bleeding edge KDE software. So that the KDE updates in Slackware would be safe because they already had been tested and proofed in the wild.

I have no intention at all of creating and maintaining my own fork of Slackware with a focus on Plasma5. If KDE4 would be dropped from Slackware and Plasma5 would not take its place, the original reason for having 'ktown' is gone. I'd have to reconsider, see also my comment in the KDE poll.

And IMO, XFCE is a nice light-weight Desktop Environment, but that's all it is. It does not play well with HiDPI screens, or multiple screens, and it is just a desktop with no serious applications.
If you remove KDE, there's little left to work with. And if you would want to add modern KDE applications, you would have to install the KDE Frameworks too. Plus all the Qt5 dependencies they require. Plus several of the Plasma packages. This will be un-manageable as a SBo submission.

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