I also share many views expressed here. I have to put it that way, because 'MeToo' has unfortunate connotations . I go back to the days when you could install a distro, cd to /etc, open a text editor, and fix just about everything. They were also the days when you had to fix just about everything after an install! You had to fight each one individually

Slackware is one of the last fixable distributions. Sure, kde is awful, & xfce sucks. I gave up on kde3 because it was bloatware! The first time in ages that I have the cpu horsepower for kde, and kde is horrible.
Mind you, mate, & cinnamon suck too. You can try them painlessly in Alien's liveslak. I improved my outlook on XFCE by popping a decent background on it. I'd post the pic, but imgur is down. The only kde apps I ever willingly installed (k3b & kwvdial) are obsolete.

Go to kde4 if it suits you. I won't. I've got into using those 4 desktops and see no reason to change.

Again, I for one I do NOT consider Plasma5 as being awful, neither the XFCE present on Slackware 15.0 or -current. On contrary, I love them and I was one of those who advocated the Plasma5 adoption.

BUT, many people considers even XFCE too spartan, they simply like KDE4 or Plasma5 because they looks like Windows was and I've seen that the KDE developers raised the stack too much by asking for OpenGL 2.0 , forgetting that there are tons of Intel motherboards which sports integrated graphics support only the OpenGL 1.4 while being modern enough to work with a modern Linux distribution. Blame Intel for shipping this crappy graphics on entry level motherboards, however there are legions of them.

True, someone may suggest the addition of a discrete graphics card in the box. Sometimes this is not possible, if it's a business computer (as origins) and anyway I can't ask someone to add a graphics card if he want Plasma5 because I am certain that I will get a response like "You are kidding? My computer is good enough for running Windows 10 but not good enough to run Linux?"

That's WHY I believe that KDE4 still have its niche and usage and that would be great to have it as alternative.

True, there is another alternative: someone to convince the Mesa developers to finally fix their Gallium i915g driver, which is capable to offer OpenGL 2.1 on the same Intel motherboards. BUT, who? In the end, all major distributions moves to x86_64 v2 and the Slackers are apathetic as usual.

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Exactly! Absolutely! Couldn't agree more.

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I wonder how this can be true for the KDE suite with over 200 applications, almost 400 pkgs and probably 10 times more developers ...

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I wish I knew marav

-- kjh

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In the same way it would be true of Windows 10 and 11, with probably 100,000 developers? KDE in all its iterations never just got out of the way, as a desktop should. It was always encroaching on the workspace, getting in your way with its million little intrusions. And it's still no better, because there's always been an attitude at KDE that they know best.

@cwizardone -- give Xfce another go. I was about to give up on it but I stuck with it and I'm glad I did, because with a little effort you can turn it into the perfect desktop.

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personally, I hate the direction Linux Desktop (any) has taken. Not that anyone cares

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To have reported some bugs and spent some time on the bug tracker, it seems to me that it was rather the case.

Anyway, regarding the design and the features, it is not easy to satisfy everyone.
I for one, I don't talk about the thing I don't like. I just move away

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Do you plan to do a public release?

If by "public release" you understand the build system and all build notes, then yes. Certainly I will make it public right in this Slackware forum.

But certainly I will not publish binary packages, because I do not own a web server and I have no intention to own one, neither assume a long term maintenance from various reasons which you known already.

Long story short, when I will manage to build Katana DE for Slackware 15.0 I will make public all experience - as a proof of concept. And I think that I will manage to build it.

However, seems like (just like KDE4) it conflicts as functionality with Plasma5, then it cannot be installed along, and has support only for ConsoleKit2 - as expected probably for something developed with BSDs in mind.

So, I started to be convinced that it needs to be patched for elogind, if we want to have a functional power management. How my skills on C/C++ programming are (sincerely evaluated) exactly zero point zero, certainly I will need the help of someone skilled to patch it for elogind.

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I'm interested in the discussion going on here and will perhaps try Katana. But I can't understand some of you not liking any DE and not going with a WM. With the time spent on tailoring (or try) a DE I bet you would have all the needed additions to a WM.
What are the missing features in this case ?

Here we go. So far, so good!

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From my point of view the only problem with WMs is the good ones are nearly all abandonware. Stacking WMs, that is ; tiling WMs don't suit my way of working at all.

IceWM is a notable and noble exception.

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ChatGPT

Me: What are the positive points of Slackware ?
The main advantages of Slackware are its reliability, stability, security, flexibility, and active community.

Me: And what is its default desktop environment ?
The default desktop environment of Slackware is Xfce.

Au contraire mon ami!
Unless there has been a change, the default desktop is KDE.
https://distrowatch.com/table.php?di...tion=slackware
If you don't pick on during installation, it will (or use to) default to KDE.