KDE - Reinventing Your Desktop Since 1996 :hattip:

@enorbet

I'm not frustrated or angry.

I am running Slackware64-current full install on my main rig (KDE 4.14). I end up removing all the games (except for kpat that I use every once in a while) and as many other packages that I can without breaking stuff (Calligra, Juk, K3B, etc.). I don't have the desire to rebuild KDE from the ground up paring out the things that I don't want when Cinnamon comes minimal from the start and I can install what I want. Plus it has a modern look without looking like that "other OS". I've used XFCE in the past, but I don't really like it, too minimal. I've even made a custom ISO that doesn't have the extra KDE stuff in the first place, but it is a lot of work.

I do really like some of the things in KDE. Dolphin is great, Nemo cannot compare to it. And Okular is very nice. Those are the only two things that I actually miss on my Cinnamon rig.

I have now created a personal repo of Cinnamon, and another repo that has some other pre-compiled packages that I use on occasion (plus some other things pulled from here and there). Then I use a script to build a file tree like Slackware64-current and a modified version of Eric's mirror-slackware-current script to build a ISO. KDE cannot compare to the performance that I get from Cinnamon. Not only that but it takes 1+ GB off of the size of my ISO, but that's just a side effect. I am actually going to upload a ISO to MEGA for a friend of mine to try out and see what he thinks about it. (I actually have one up but I have updated a lot of things.)

I don't blame PV or anyone on the Slackware team for the extra things that come with KDE. They do a great job and have to satisfy the needs of many.

Ha, they've certainly come a long way since then. If only they could decide where they wanted to go :)

I'm not wondering about his harsh words, when they write stuff like:

(Source)

If he had asked nicely "Hey can you please, please not depend on systemd?" it would never have created this discussion at all. A very important discussion.

So thanks, Eric. It's important to stand against the major distributions. We all know what happened when Ubuntu adopted KDE 4.0. Or included pulseaudio's first releases. Or systemd. Not everyone likes betatesting software for years, until it eventually becomes ready.

My two preferred desktops are KDE and Cinnamon. But really, even if you don't like the desktop, nothing else compares to KDE's apps, even if you don't use 90% of them. Plus, it's one of very few that are not "Gnomish." I'm guessing that's because it has QT as the toolkit instead of GTK+.

Anyway, that was a good read. I do hope that the KDE project takes some of those comments to heart. I think that a singular focus is the main thing they lack right now.

I'm with atelszewski. Keep the KDE applications.

Other than that Fluxbox has been my preferred interface since about 2008, with occasional forays into E.

I like KDE a lot, but after having made the transition from 2 to 3 and 3 to 4 I am too tired at the moment to go with 5.
so it is nice from Slackware to have the stable KDE as long as possible or it makes sense,
but Slackware is not the only distribution I use, so on other I had to work with other desktops, and hey, at the end they all work, unuty, gnome, xfce, kde, I can, and actually like to, work with all of them.
but it's not just what I have on my on machines, it is also about what I have recommended to other people, it's hard to find some stability people will accept.
So I am not surprised that the percentage of people take different choices, as mentioned in the article even with openSUSE (especially openSUSE, bringing a 'stable' leap with a KDE5 fragment) what was !the KDE distribution, is shrinking.

I'm loving the entire gmane.org thread! It speaks to a wider range of issues than just KDE or even Linux, and some of the participants are really smart. Like this:

I don't particularly like GNOME, but that sounds like a decent recipe for any project's success!

While I am not a KDE fan, I wonder how that openSUSE developer calculated KDE popularity based on Distrowatch ranking. openSUSE is not the only distro in Distrowatch top ten that uses KDE as the default desktop. There is Mageia with same default desktop and also KDE is official Manjaro flavor alongside Xfce. Hence, KDE and Gnome are equal considering their usage as default desktop on ten popular distros.

My $0.02 on the article...

Even if 85% of distributions (which is more realistic) use brand X package, and brand Y is still being developed and worked on as a lighter weight alternative for the remaining 15%, it makes more sense to target all instances rather than irresponsibly assuming everyone uses Brand X and end up outed as an idiot to the masses for shooting your mouth off at a package maintainer who knows more about the system they work with than you do. Don't be one of those smart people who do the stupidest things.

Even if GNOME has made some questionable decisions, their goals have been clear. Xfce even clearly defines goals, as do many other desktops but not KDE/Plasma. I seriously question, and righfully so, the long term viability of a desktop environment that has no clear goals in mind and plays cat and mouse games with distributions. Nobody, that I know of, likes playing games and being played at the same time.

Not to question the motives, but at this point, perhaps ending KDE as a desktop (with the continuation of the apps if possible) and implementing an alternative such as Trinity or Mate as the workhorse for any distribution over KDE, not just Slackware, seems a feasible goal. If KDE can't get their act together, how long can they be reliable?

Same here... I've been using KDE4 for a long time now, having switched to it some time around mid-2010... but the latest developments are making me think it might be time to switch to XFCE.

It's a real shame, because as many others have pointed out, KDE has some very good features and applications.

KDE in a nutshell: http://lxer.com/module/forums/t/36145/

Matter of taste ..
 

I have been trying desktops (and avoiding desktops) since before there was a Linux. They are all good as long as they let you get to the app you need to use.

That said, the fastest and easiest 'full featured' (by my standards) I have used was fluxbox, the prettiest was KDE (love the plasma cube animation when impressing Windows rubes. Hey, can you make your Windows box do THIS?). I like the TinyX used in TinyCore, love puppy, and can get along with almost anything. They really do not matter when I spend most of my time getting to and using the command line (bash or ksh) for automation scripting.

Thank you for the link to Lumina, I intend to have a look at that desktop environment.

I do not see the desktop as worthy of angst, there are so MANY good options. Reserving a measure of 'hate' or 'love' for one is just giving it to much weight in your life. If one does not work for you today, it probably will next week. Meanwhile load something else and get on with accessing linuxquestions. ;-) It is all good.

As soon as you start using various desktops in networks with 50+ users, this sort of mild-mannered relativism quickly gives way to cursing against interface developers. I've installed KDE (3.x, 4.x), GNOME (2.x, 3.x), Xfce and MATE for non-tech users and then simply watched them get along with it. As far as I'm concerned, I can get along with any of these, but with less tech-savvy users, it's a different story. With KDE 4.x and GNOME 3.x, you can be sure to get calls on a regular basis. I clicked on that bean thing in the corner and now my thingy on the screen bottom has disappeared, how can I get it back? How do I change the background image? How do I change my system font? Etc. In terms of usability, my heavily customized version of Xfce is a clear winner.

Yes it is.