Not adding to the discusion/argument, just mentioning that Eric's 4.12.2 is working perfectly on my Slack64 14.1. Praise "Bob" for Alien Bob!

+1.

I said so because I already knew that
EDIT: and by the way, XFCE is a good DE. Not as complete as KDE but it is not bad.

I also run 4.12.2 now on 14.1. Thanks, Eric. Just wanted to add that my Thinkpad T60 (32 bit only) with 1 GB RAM runs KDE quite fine.

Greetz
In addition to the fact that I think I understand and concur as to "why kde?" in Slackware, I also appreciate that Slackware is not a one DE distro. It's interesting, educational, and fun to have a number of them installed "right off the bat" and the ability to install more to try those out as well. Some have mentioned Enlightenment (E17) and I have played with that since v14 (ouch! strange doings) and I have to say E17 has gotten really good.

I'm not trying to derail the thread, which seems fairly well concluded, but I see that people interested in DEs continue to visit this thread, and maybe they like Slackware's multi-faceted abilities and would like a new DE with which to play. If so, E17 is quite worthwhile.

Same here on 14.1. I did launch an earlier Slackware on VirtualBox and revisited KDE-3.5 for the first time in a while. Doing an A/B comparison, there are exactly two things I miss from that older version -- and both are panel applets.

1). The old kdict appeals to me more than the current dictionary plasmoid. The two buttons from kdict were handy to do a spell check (M) and the other (D) to do a "fuzzy" lookup are absent on the newer one, the red applet with an "Abc" logo. Is there a current panel dictionary that's as good as the old one.

2). Also missed is the old kweather. I've tried a number of the newer plasmoids and have settled on CWP, which is very good. But the old kweather allowed numerous locations to be configured and with a couple of clicks, one could easily be selected. I just selected Minneapolis and found it to be -2.0 F, making here in Dallas quite balmy with our 31.4 F degree-reading.

I've grown so accustomed to organizing my computing work with KDE4's Activities that it remains a superb desktop environment but those couple of panel applets are missed.

For many years, until very recently, I disliked KDE intensely. As far as I was concerned it was a bug-ridden mess, which was unforgivable considering KDE had been out almost as long as Windows 95. However, I must confess that recent releases have been very impressive. I upgraded KDE to Eric's 4.11.5 on Slackware 14.1 (64-bit, 8 GB RAM, Intel Core Duo 6600) and over the past two days I have been playing around with it. Activities are an excellent implementation of virtual desktops. I especially like the "Search and Launch" option. Kwin offers all kinds of possibilities for window management ; many of them should be standard in all windows managers. As a Total Commander devotee I don't care much for Dolphin and Konqueror but Krusader is available and almost as good as TC.

There are very, very few rough edges in this release. While memory use seems to be high the computer performs well and all programs are responsive. To my shame I now find myself belatedly admitting that in many ways KDE is what all desktops should be like - Linux, Windows, etc. The feature list is staggering and the implementation increasingly solid and reliable.

As for a Slackware philosophy, I don't think there ever was one. In any case, I don't see this new KDE as a fly in the KISS ointment. On the contrary, while undoubtedly complex, it is perhaps what Linux has been waiting for - a desktop to compete at long last with the main players.

As I said, I was no lover of KDE at all, ever since I started using Linux around 2000. With the latest releases I have done a complete U-turn. I recommend that other people fortunate enough to have reasonably good hardware give it a second look. You can remove most of the bling, the glowing shadows and whatever else. Take time to explore Kwin and Activities especially. They can be very helpful in improving your workflow.

Finally, I would like to appeal to the developers not to abandon KDE 4 just when they have struck gold with stable releases. Gnome 2 was abandoned just when it had matured into an enterprise-grade desktop environment, and as far as I am concerned FOSS only has itself to blame if it carries on committing the same acts of stupidity over and over again. When KDE 5 is released there should be a commitment to carry on supporting KDE 4 for ten years, even if it means only minor releases every six months. Bringing a software project of this scale to its current state of fruition and then abandoning the whole thing just because you have other itches to scratch would be arrogant and immature. We already have more than enough of those people imposing their ideas on the FOSS ecosystem to last us a lifetime.

I tried KDE once ... the version was 0.97 if I remember correctly. Buggy as hell. You saying it is better now?

Where do I sign the petition?

You're entire posting is very worthwhile but that final paragraph is about as good of a summation of a FOSS guiding principle (or for that matter just about anything in the software world) as I've seen.

Thank you very much!

It's quite obviously better.



The question is, are people prepared to give it a fair run before dismissing it? I certainly wasn't but I finally relented and I'm glad I did. If you adopt a hostile posture at the very outset as I had been doing then you won't like it. The thing that matters is that you need to approach KDE with an open mind. It also stands to reason that you should install the latest version as well. It's no good criticising KDE if you have 4.1 or 4.4 or 4.8 installed. KDE SC 4.11.5 is much more polished and stable than those releases were.

Thanks, will try it out and maybe I will start installing Kubuntu for my friends.

I've found Kubuntu to be pretty buggy (my dad's PC runs it)

Not to speak ill of other distro's, but it's Ubuntu...bugginess is to be expected, much like Fedora. The non-LTS versions are just thrown together to get it out, I've never seen a version that wasn't buggy.

What release is that? I have Studio Ubuntu 12.04 with full KDE installed that works quite well. I don't use it very seriously...just play around, but it seems solid enough. Many people comment that KDE completely changes the character of Ubuntu, since around v. 11 iirc.