It is all Eric's fault
 

Hi,

Don't know if it's been already mentioned, so posting it now:
Distribution-friendly tactics in the desktop wars

Well, Eric, how dared you? :^)

--
Best regards,
Andrzej Telszewski

@atelszewski,
Many thanks for the link!
The article confirms the "gut feelings" I've had about KDE for many
years.
That said, they appeared to finally be back on track with the release of KDE-4.13.x and I moved back to KDE from Xfce with KDE-4.14.3. Then they turned right around and started the KDE5 project.
Sigh... I won't do it again. When and if it gets to the point KDE-4.14.3 has to be put out to pasture I'll either go back to Xfce or find another desktop. Lumina looks promising.

Hi,

I left for Xfce after KDE3 has ended and have never returned.
I use plethora of KDE applications, it's just DE that does not fit me.

--
Best regards,
Andrzej Telszewski

This is an interesting discussion, and I'm glad it's happening. I like KDE, and made the transition to 4.x pretty smoothly. I also really like XFCE, and even kind of like Unity on Ubuntu. I haven't used vanilla Gnome 3. Of these choices, I think KDE is the best fit for me and how I work.

I really want to see it continue to be developed and improved. Hopefully this kind of feedback will result in positive changes.

1. That's a great read.

2. Honestly, I wouldn't mind at this point if Slackware 15 replaces KDE with MATE.

I've had it with KDE. I only use it because it has the things that I need.

I am slowly working my way away from it though with Cinnamon. Cinnamon is so much lighter, starts way faster, and IMO more appealing to the eye than "Plasma 5".

You can argue all day against this opinion of mine, but KDE is way too BLOATED. There are a thousand things that come bundled with KDE that I'll never use. So why do I have to have them on my drive? Why do they need to be in my menu? All the common arguing points aside, I don't need them, I don't want them and my PC is faster without them (however minimal that may be).

I can find and build everything that I need from SBo, and what isn't there is not hard to find and build. I even have some KDE 4 packages running on it. Just waiting for a little more stability with Cinnamon before I make the final switch.

I didn't like GNOME-2. Why would I like MATE?
:)

Well, that's pretty funny for someone who remember that gnome was dropped from Slackware on Sat Mar 26 23:04:41 PST 2005 (yes, more than eleven years ago).

Want a desktop but don't want to bother with too many deps? Try Lumina. It's of course in its infancy but looks promising.

As they say:

I had a feeling loginctl was going to come up.

Not sure that Gnome 3 is such a good example, though. When Gnome 3 was released there was a lot of noise about logind causing some headaches (logind meant systemd) as nobody had an adequate ersatz solution. It's all history now, but at the time was pretty similar to this.

Hi,

It looks simpler than KISS, I'm not sure if it survives.

--
Best regards,
Andrzej Telszewski

Agreed.
I was using it earlier today and liked what I saw, but if XSnow doesn't work, I don't know......... :)

+1 on that.

Hi,

As long as KDE's applications were kept around :)

--
Best regards,
Andrzej Telszewski

Trying to engage gently after the "I've had it" remark which I interpreted as frustrated and a bit angry. If I am mistaken, my apologies. No flame intended but what/when was the last full KDE Desktop you tried? So many people are still smarting from the early days of KDE 4x, I just have to ask if you're one of those people? Frankly, with very few exceptions (Dolphin maybe, but there's always Krusader) I'd be perfectly happy with KDE 3. It was as close to perfection for me at least at the time and since I have a few boxes with it still installed I'd have to expand to "even now". KDE 4 marked a sea change for KDE trying to provide every possible service/app and especially directed at Workstations it seems.

That said if you actually find KDE "bloated" and not just "too much stuff I won't ever use" I see that as the fault of the Admin. There are complete instructions and tutorials on how to pare KDE down to a more SOHO Desktop or even Server focus. Just turning off some KDE services you don't need gets KDE within just a few percentage points of Xfce performance (at least any of the v4 versions of KDE ) . I can't in good conscience call that "bloated" and if your concerns are hdd space I have to ask "So what?" Hard drives are cheap and Slack uses many KDE libraries just to easily satisfy many dependency issues so they never become an issue. Seems a small price (hdd space) to pay for serious convenience.

If it's just that somehow KDE rubs you the wrong way that's a perfectly valid statement of taste and preference but that does not mean "bloated". Lately I have been miffed by the moving target syndrome as with Digikam. What a pita that a distro as vanilla and powerful as Slack can't ship with Digikam onboard because it is such a major taskmaster satisfying it from one release to the next. That still doesn't constitute "bloated". It just seems stupid on KDE devs part when Profit and Loss are calculated.

Sorry but I just cringe at how much that word "bloated" gets casually tossed around, usually with no basis in fact. I just consider it a disservice to the Linux Community to do what can amount to disseminating FUD. I'd just like to see Linux people have more precision and responsibility in language applied.

I like KDE, always have. Anything 'Gnome' looks awful in my eyes. I can put up with a little of the bloat (though I honestly don't see much, if any, difference in speed between when I try/use something like XFCE compared to KDE, since my system has all the speed and power it needs to make it all negligible), after all, it's there with Gnome too. I've tried other DE's, but so far nothing's quite hit the 'This is what I want!' bone yet.

For the time being I'll just keep sticking with the tried and true KDE and remain happy by that decision.