TechRadar has decided that KDE is the most usable desktop compared to Gnome and Unity. A few days prior to the publication of this article, my friend John emailed me to write:

I’m using Kde on my computer at work and it is amazing. It’s improved so much that it’s now stable and highly usable.

I tried Unity (I’m using Ubuntu) and it was unusable. Gnome 3 was better but had massive issues with my second screen (dual screen setup with nvdia gpu running in twin view). Gnome 3 was still lacking in the productivity area though. Lxde worked great but I don’t want to use a desktop that looks and feels like Windows 95… Also Lxde has few apps so I had to pull in gnome or ode ones…

I also had issues with Ubuntu’s lightdm but switching to kdm fixed that. So far Kde is the only desktop that fully works, feels good, looks good and has apps for every task.

John

Sent from my phone

Finally folks are figuring out that KDE doesn’t suck anymore.


Update: Adam Weiss writes with a political comparison:

Gnome 3, Unity…they are like the George W. Bush of the non-KDE Linux desktop movement. Instead of taking care of the real issues on the desk, they went gallavanting off into the netbook world, dropping bombs all over the place and even to this day nobody can really figure out what the point of netbooks is…

December 18, 2011 · [Print]

71 Comments to “KDE Doesn’t Suck Anymore, People Finally Realize”

  1. DigiFree says:

    Yeah, KDE rocks. I realized this when I first tried Unity in previous version of ubuntu. What a disaster it was. At that time I tried GNOME3 but it was almost as bad. So for the first time in my life tried KDE (4.5 if I remember correctly) and I was blown away. It was better than even GNOME2 and ever since that time I’m on KDE. I just love how beautiful it is and how flexible and feature full it is.

  2. Peter says:

    To say KDE doesn’t suck anymore implies it did suck before, right? ;)

    It feels like some terrible disease strucked minds of open source desktop developers. To rewrite everything from scratch seems of utmost value now, regardless of it’s actual usability. Yeah, KDE 4 matured and is quite usable now, but I do remember last releases of 3.5 line – they were terrificly stable and KDE 4 after all this time still likes to hang on me from time to time. Was it really worth to break everything just to have it rewritten, with new bugs? Cause there were no major changes in terms of actual functionality.

    • > To say KDE doesn’t suck anymore implies it did suck before, right?

      KDE 4.0 sucked. Every one knows it. Linus and others left KDE.

      While KDE was improving since 4.0, more and more folks caught the “KDE Sucks” sentiment and left. Our community has gotten lamer and smaller. Big distros and corporations and high profile Linux developers have focused on Gnome-world.

      But now we’re long last stable. Will the Linux community come back?

  3. Aaron Seigo says:

    “Was it really worth to break everything just to have it rewritten, with new bugs?”

    an answer in two parts:

    first, yes, it was worth it. 3.5 got very stable and performant .. but hit dead end walls as soon as we tried to go the next step in terms of modernization.

    the best example is Plasma Active. that literally would have been impossible with 3.5 without writing something new from scratch. yet now we can share 97% of the code (only counting Plasma code; not Linux, Qt or the rest of kdelibs!) and get something fantastic for tablets.

    this is why i chose a rewrite of kicker and kdesktop: so we would not have to rewrite it nor face hitting dead end walls again.

    second part of my answer: we only rewrote kicker and kdesktop. kwin had compositing added to it, but was not rewritten. the control panels were not rewritten, though a new shell was indeed introduced (systemsettings replaced kcontrol). dolphin was pre-existing, and we kept konqueror, though Qt4 did push on us a rewrite of the views. the vast majority of the code was NOT rewritten. this “it was a total rewrite” is a myth.

    “Cause there were no major changes in terms of actual functionality.”

    Activities, krunner’s capabilities, widgets on dashboard and screensaver, kwin compositing (things like zoom, present windows, etc), folderview … on and on. “no major changes” in terms of functionality is a mistatement (at best).

    if we then look to Plasma Netbook or Plasma Active it becomes clear just how much your statement does not reflect reality.

    @DifiFree: i’m really glad to hear it’s working well for you :) we hear this more and more these days and it makes all the effort so worthwhile!

    • > . this “it was a total rewrite” is a myth.

      Of course people are misinformed about the *cause* of the disaster. But they’re certainly correct that KDE 4.0 blew chunks, and providing the reason of “total rewrite” is actually pretty generous. In fact, it’s a way better myth than the truth — which is that only some things changed, but as a consequence of just a few things, KDE 4.0 sucked. So, I say stick with the “total rewrite” myth.

      The good news, of course, is that we’re finally on our feet, and plasma and the rest of KDE is really smooth. Let us hope we can weather the next transition to modularization of kdelibs, qml, and qt5.

    • Peter says:

      I admit I don’t know how much of actual new code there is in KDE 4. However, I’m certain that transition to Qt 4 took more changes than what you’ve counted. I think you’re excluding, conciously or not, all the code that doesn’t form “core” KDE as you would understand it. Best examples here are kdepim, with some components (esp. KMail) unusable at time of KDE 4 release, and KOffice too. While these may not form the desktop environment itself, people actually use them – and actual DE is just supposed to make it possible ;)

      And yes, I don’t see major changes in functionality. It may be because I’m just an old-fashioned desktop user and don’t do my work on some shiny mobile device where I could see the results of shared codebase. What changed for me (I won’t bring up regressions here) is addition of plasma widgets, which are pretty nice, but not that much of a change. But then it seems like perception of changes is highly subjective.

  4. Aaron Seigo says:

    @Jason: i don’t like lieing to people :)

    and no, 4.0 did not “blow chunks” for what it was meant to be: a release of stable ABI libraries. unfortunately, all the rest of the SC came with it too, regardless of its readiness. if you go back to my presentation at the release event you’ll see that it was aimed at early adopters and developers looking to target the 4.x libs. i’m tired of people re-writing history and/or placing expectations that were never there to begin with.

    now, THAT said:

    “Let us hope we can weather the next transition to modularization of kdelibs, qml, and qt5.”

    Qt5 is almost completely source compatible with Qt4 (not accidentally) and kdelibs will be the same, minus libplasma which will be transitioning to QML at this point and that is causing some changes to the library (though not much will be impacted outside of the shells, and that will be simple porting rather than functionality changes). so it’s a very different kind of game compared to Qt4 and kdelibs4.

    we also won’t be re-doing Plasma Desktop -> we’ve carefully been planning a staged transition to QML, something that begins in 4.8.

    finally, we have separated libs devel from workspace and app devel so we can release the libs when they are ready and then at a later point release workspaces and apps when they are ready. this will help prevent the challenges faced with 4.0 where everything was release together even though there were different needs in the different parts (libs, workspaces, apps). that process of division started some releases back when we stopped calling the software products as a whole “KDE”.

    so we have very good reasons to be optimistic about the 4->5 process. a lot of learning has happened in the last years and necessary changes have been put in place. from Qt (not breaking everything to hell like in Qt4) to how KDE does release management.

    • lhugs says:

      “so we have very good reasons to be optimistic about the 4->5 process. a lot of learning has happened in the last years and necessary changes have been put in place” – your post speaks for itself, Aaron. There’s a huge amount of technical competence speaking from it. Thanks for all your efforts by the way and sorry for not donating (earning money’s difficult) and not contributing (studying is much more work than I originally thought). Which one is worse is up to you to decide ;) Can’t wait for christmas present 4.8!

  5. Mitch says:

    Jason I am with you 100%, both on the original post and on your responses here.

    KDE 3.5 was great, but I agree that the transition to 4 was overall an improvement. However, the manner in which it was done caused a mass migration away from KDE to other desktops. It will take some time to get people to look again, and that is a shame – and it could have been avoided.

    I should point out that at the same time, semi-related to the 3.5->4.0 transition, there were other issues as well, most notably a rewrite of amarok that broke lots of things for no discernible reason. Amarok is good now, though I am not sure if 100% of the functionality of the 3.5 version was restored.

    I spent some time away myself – not voluntarily, actually, but because at work I was given a mac. This November I finally prevailed on them to let me use linux again, and using KDE (kubuntu 11.10) rather than MacOS is a breath of fresh air.

    I still think that more work is needed. There are a still too many crashes in various apps, and plasma still dies some times when you log out. Is anyone really sure that kmail2 is totally free from the mail-losing bugs that rendered kmail1 unusable for such a long time (bugs which, I point out, were never closed after several years).

    • Good to hear from you Mitch. Regarding Amarok — I jumped ship from that boat a long time ago as well and moved to Clementine, a port of Amarok 3 but written for pure Qt4 with no KDE deps. It’s excellent.

      • Mitch says:

        Seems that Clementine is still missing some of the stuff that was in Amarok 1.4 that I liked – I don’t see anything handling podcasts, and there’s no wikipedia. That being said, it is considerably simpler and smaller that Amarok 2.0. But A 2.0 is a lot better now than it was at the 4.0 time, which was my point.

        One other thing I just remembered. About the time that the 3.5 -> 4.0 transition was being done, it was decided to abandon Konqueror as a file browser and instead write Dolphin. I know I was probably in the minority, but I was always a big fan of Konqueror as a file browser and everything viewer. The problem was that as a web browser it wasn’t great, but I don’t see that rekonq has really improved matters (from the point of view strictly of web browsing).

        • Peter says:

          I use Clementine 0.7.1 on Arch Linux and Wikipedia is here :) Never used podcasts with Amarok so I can’t really tell if Clementine lacks something in this area.

    • Peter says:

      The funny thing is – just when users started migrating away from KDE and GNOME had real chance of dominating Linux (and by extension all *nix) desktop, cause people were coming for it’s famous stability and non-revolutionary changes… GNOME devs decided that it’s best to break everything even more than in KDE 4. While KDE 4 was barely usable, GNOME 3 is totally unusable for everyone who works with two or more apps at the same time. Good job at making yet another proof of Murphy’s Law.

  6. sven says:

    The funny thing is that I switched to Linux in 2006. KDE 4.0 was the first Linux Desktop I used. I also tried Gnome and KDE 3.5, but I liked KDE 4.0 the best. Even with many, many bugs that existed in that release…

  7. Artem S. Tashkinov says:

    I beg to differ:

    In KDE 3.x I could easily:

    1) drag kicker around the desktop without using any settings, it’s impossible in KDE4.x unless you change Plasmoid’s settings manually via a pop up menu.

    2) make kicker 100% transparent (I like it this way). No need to tinker with non native themes, which break ever new KDE release.

    3) use KRunner as a calculator 2+2 (Enter) – you can do the same in KDE4, but you must enter ‘=’ after every expression, which is absolutely inconvenient.

    4) view my sensors status via KSensors. KDE4′s plasmoid only allows to examine temperatures (not voltages/frequency/fan speeds).

    5) I have dozens of complaints against new updated shiny KDE4 applications, which got *worse* after being ported to Qt4/KDE4.

    KDE4 is another instance of a DE, which is tailored to the tastes of its developers, not the tastes of normal and power users.

    Don’t break something that works well.

    • Burke says:

      I agree with you on certain points, except for 3). I am also using Krunner as a calculator and accept the usage of ‘=’. C’mon man, you can’t be serious that this is a real complain for you. It is one character! ;)

      More than that I suggest you think about the thinks which have gotten better. There are apps which a now waaaay much nicer than in the old days. Also I think that the plasma themes thing brings alot of consistency into the desktop. It isn’t really a problem to get a 100% transparent panel.

      Therefore I wouldn’t claim that in KDE the taste of developers is tailored. There are some points and features here and there where I indeed have the feeling, but in general? Nah, I don’t think so.

  8. Benny says:

    @Artem.
    Not a KDE developer, but installed quite some KDE here and there. Dragging kicker around was a nightmare for many users. The main problems I have seen with KDE3 were deleting the panel or moving/resizing it. They could not undo the changes.
    In KDE4, the main problem I have seen was a person deleting system tray plasmoid by accident. They don’t know what it is called and can’t set it back.

    Locking everything down is a good thing, and I think it should be more drastic: always locked on startup, lock again after 15 minutes.

    • Fri13 says:

      The widget lock mechanism is totally broken in KDE SC.

      As people can not even use all widgets correctly if lock is enabled. And plasma functions are broken like user can not drag and drop image to desktop to have it as wallpaper or as link. Like if user wants to add a folder as folder view widget, it needs first to be unlocked and then drag the folder. Or if user wants to add link from webpage (URL bar favicon drag to desktop), it needs first to unlock and lock afterwards.

      Adding a widgets does not work well with the widget browser what is top of the default panel. Like when user unlocks plasma > cashew > add new widget > widget browser comes to bottom panel.
      And if plasma is not locked, it can allow user to move or delete those widgets from panels or desktop.

      So to use desktop, you need to keep it unlocked, keeping it unlocked, cause problems and bad looking desktop with mouse hovering and cashew icons on panels etc.
      I would say that is one of the biggest problems what needs to be taken care with plasma by designing that feature from scracth.

      KDE SC 4.0 might have been very bad start (I think it was good enough, but lacked key features) but since then, some features were added well but same time whole KDE SC series has got bloated with same problem what made KDE 3.5 so bad, too many features and fancy buttons on toolbars and so on. It isn’t elegant and simplified anymore by default, but user needs to go and remove buttons and hide menubars and tweak there and here to get it elegant looking and simply to use. Only because some new features has been added to default, not to be kept hided in settings.

  9. Nathan says:

    Why does it always have to be a competition? I like it that the comments have been evaluating KDE on its merits and faults, not in comparison to other DEs. So many people seem to get defensive about the DEs and WMs they use, as though Unity being good somehow detracts from KDE or G3.

    I use KDE4 on my desktops and LXDE on my netbook (I managed to figure out what the point of a netbook was; I’m not sure why Adam Weiss is having trouble), and when LXDE does something well I don’t feel like it detracts from the things that KDE does well, and vice versa.

    Maybe if we stopped bashing these other things and instead decided to learn from them, we could create something better?

    • Fri13 says:

      The problem is the bad usability with idea to have one graphical user interface what is used in all different use cases. Example with the netbook. Those have small screen, low performance and usually used with touchpad instead mice, when compared to desktop computer what has huge screen, medium go high performance and used with mice.
      Then there are tablets what has small screen size, virtual keyboard and finger touch with multitouch and low to medium performance (RAM).

      KDE has understanded well that they need to design graphical user interface for every different use case. You can not simply make one and slack it to all devices.

      Like example with the OS X top panel where you have application menubar. It worked great when computers had 1024×768 and 14″ CRT screens. And it does even today with 1280×800 screen.
      But when you have 1920×1200 24″ or 2560×1600 30″ resolution it is terrible to use as distance between application and menu is huge and the menu size is very small.
      And it does not work at all with multiscreen setups.

      And when it comes to touchscreens, you do not want to use drop-down menus on those or even to have windows to management (The whole WIMP idea is terrible on those).

      So, it is better to design a graphical user interface what is different for different devices and environments.

      KDE Plasma Desktop
      KDE Plasma Netbook
      KDE Plasma Active
      KDE Plasma Mobile
      KDE Plasma Mediacenter

      Problem is as well, that KWin and every application should be always be easy to configure globally to have specific features. Like when on netbook, having every window in maximized, without window decoration and toolbars with 32x32px icons.
      When on touch screen, same thing but with 48×48 icons and text under them so they are easier to touch with finger.
      With desktop/laptop computers having different hot corners for actions and windows to be movable and so on…

      You simply can not just slap one GUI to all of them, what GNOME, Canonical and Microsoft is trying. KDE, Apple and Google got it better way.

      I just wish I would have a tablet with 12″ touchscreen with a accurate pen and allow to use multitouch and pen same time without mistaking them (I understand Samsung and Vacom has technology for that) and have a KDE Plasma Active for it.

      Now I have 24″ display, netbook 10″ and 15″ laptop and when configuring them with separate versions of Plasma, people really love to use them.

  10. lars says:

    I abandoned KDE when it went to version four several years ago. I migrated to Ubuntu/Gnome. Now the new Ubuntu/Unity has broken all my custom productivity short cuts and it is virtually unusable on a large screen, I started to look for a replacement. I tried KDE again and found exactly “KDE doesn’t suck anymore”. I was like coming home after a long wander in the wilderness. Kubuntu was horribly unstable, but my old friend Suse is solid.

    -lars
    http://www.twobraids.com/2011/11/rediscovering-kde-part-3-suse-effect.html

  11. Noodles says:

    It’s been usable for quite a time now. But it’s still ugly as fuck.

  12. Gonewest says:

    >> Sent from my phone

    That email signature says it all.

  13. Rolad says:

    Kubuntu with KDE 4.6 was great. Then came the horribly over engineered Akonadi nightmare and spoiled it all. KMail became unusable and problems are very hard to track. How would you explain to your mother what Nepomuk, Akonadi, Virtuoso, Soprano is? Akonadi is a dependency of Plasma, therefore it can not be removed!!!
    Though I am a big fan of KDE I was already looking for alternatives. The good news is: I was able to stay with KDE by using Claws mail and deleting all Akonadi related executables. Not nice, but now using my notebook is fun again. For the future: Please make using Akonadi an option.

    • Ditto ditto ditto ditto times a million: Akonadi and that whole Nepomuk new-useless-daemons-muking up my computer situation is absurd. The kde build used to have an option where you could disable the whole thing from being built, but this disappeared at some point. The whole system is AWFUL. I’m not even sure what it’s supposed to do at its best. I don’t use it; I don’t want it; I don’t care about it. You can stop indexing my files and rearing into my runtimes and instantiating six different database backends anytime you want, kthanx. The whole thing makes me think it started as some Scandinavian or German students’ graduate school final project / paper where they got real excited over some abstract idea, and then dumped it into KDE, which is ever so welcoming to accept this kind of enthused crap code. Sigh. Your comment got me fired up; usually I can keep cool about this. But this Akonadi business has got to stop. The “semantic desktop”, whatever the hell that’s supposed to be, has been nothing but nightmareish.

      /rant

      • Alejandro Nova says:

        The main advantages of both Akonadi and Nepomuk (Akonadi: at last something that allows me to retrieve mail without a cluster of mail engines, saving memory) and Nepomuk (an intelligent database that will replace any form of database storage about files) have not materialized.

        The way to go is to fully materialize this goal. There are lots of apps in Playground (Lion Mail, KFacebook, the Akonadi Google agents) waiting for some dev to love them and to include them in the KDE Software Compilation.

        • Roland says:

          Akonadi/Nepomuk should be optional, no matter how useful it is now or in the future. There are thousands of useful packages in Ubuntu but I am not forced to install them. Pioneering new technologies like Akonadi is very honerable and applaudable.
          However you Akonadi guys make an intrusive monster a required component of KDE. Here you are not offering a new option you are taking away KDE from people who simply can not afford to have a component like Akonadi, that makes the system instable, eats mails and spams the list of running processes.

  14. mark says:
    Odd article. The Gnome folks alienated many old users too when they switched to Gnome 3. I myself think that both KDE 4 and Gnome 3 added so many bugs and changes that using them is not justified anymore. Go XFCE, go! Oh. I just saw that Aaron Seigo replied.Well, Aaron, you are an intelligent man. But you are completely WRONG.And I tell you why:- KDE developers follow Qt upstream evolution. So when Qt was hitting version 4, KDE was hitting version 4 as well. In other words, you purposely abandoned KDE 3.5 _because_ YOU developers wanted to stick to Qt 4.This has NOTHING to do with “hitting a dead end with KDE 3.5″, this has ALL to do with version changing. And in the process, you threw away stable KDE 3.5 to terrorize the world with bug ridden KDE 4.0 (and more releases to MAKE IT MORE STABLE AND LESS BUGGY)Are your users test cows or what that you treat them like that or think they are STUPID?”but hit dead end walls as soon as we tried to go the next step in terms of modernization.”You did not even TRY to adapt it or do evolution in SMALL steps. You threw EVERYTHING away just to use Qt 4!Please do not insinuate that 3.5 was a dead road BEFORE when you made the ACTIVE decision to COMPLETELY throw it away in the first place!”the best example is Plasma Active. that literally would have been impossible with 3.5 without writing something new from scratch. yet now we can share 97% of the code (only counting Plasma code; not Linux, Qt or the rest of kdelibs!) and get something fantastic for tablets.”Wow. That is fantastic.The problem is – I do not use tablets and I don’t care about tablets.I understand that you want to gain market share, but I am a USER.I do not care about strategic values when they are not useful to ME.I am SELFISH and I like to be SELFISH because YOU KDE developers want to force me to ADAPT TO YOU. That is dictatorship. Sadly, Gnome 3 is exactly that way as well. (Ok, I am not really complaining, I am simply not using either of Gnome or KDE, but I am still mad that YOU guys forced me to give up on KDE 3.5. And Trinity is sadly not really working for me…)”this is why i chose a rewrite of kicker and kdesktop: so we would not have to rewrite it nor face hitting dead end walls again.”But you just wrote that it was rewritten because you catered towards tablets … “a new shell was indeed introduced (systemsettings replaced kcontrol)”And you killed dcop. qdbus has a shitty syntax. My old dcop scripts, like renaming a tab title of KDE 4 konsole, does not work AND I FAILED TO MAKE IT WORK IN QDBUS!WHAT A SHIT MOVE.”the vast majority of the code was NOT rewritten. this “it was a total rewrite” is a myth.”Oh, is it? Like in qdbus when things that worked perfectly well, no longer worked? When you switched to Qt4? Which in itself is so incredibly bloated, it is not even funny …14M qt-3.3.8.tar.bz2 209M qt-4.8.0.tar.bz2That is right. 14 MB compared to 209 MB and you still use propaganda moves to think this is a “small” change and barely anything is rewritten WHEN THE SIZE DIFFERENCE OF THE COMPRESSED SHIT IS 195 MB?! AND THAT IS NOT COMPRESSED P0RN HERE!”Activities, krunner’s capabilities, widgets on dashboard and screensaver, kwin compositing (things like zoom, present windows, etc), folderview … on and on. “no major changes” in terms of functionality is a mistatement (at best).”It indeed is. You are right. You completely changed the functionality. KDE 4 is totally different from KDE 3. Especially it has more bugs.”if we then look to Plasma Netbook or Plasma Active it becomes clear just how much your statement does not reflect reality.”Wow! Way to go to be nice to good old desktop users! That’s the attitude of KDE Developers, it is the “we don’t fucking care” attitude. But don’t worry, the GNOME 3 Devs are even worse.”@DifiFree: i’m really glad to hear it’s working well for you :) we hear this more and more these days and it makes all the effort so worthwhile!”Sure. Because you want to IGNORE users like me who LIKE TO RANT.But I like to rant not without reason.I will continue to rant against developers who think for themselves.By the way – even though I am ranting against you, I think you are a cool guy.I rant against Mr. Drepper because I think he is an a**hole.So you see the difference. I will continue to critisize you and other developers, but at the same time I think you are cool. Mr. Drepper “I work for Goldman sucks” on the other hand is a poisonous guy who kills the GNU world systematically. Another thing: KDE now has a propaganda slogan “Experience Freedom!”. Who is buying into this lowly propaganda? When I use a desktop, I want it to be USEFUL. I don’t want to EXPERIENCE FREEDOM while using it. It is not a fucking drug that can be used…
    • Mitch says:

      Mark, you really think this sort of post is useful? I have a 3 1/2 year old and I tell him that he doesn’t get what he wants when he throws tantrums.

      If it were my blog, I’d just delete this.

      • Aidan says:

        Then perhaps it’s fortunate that it isn’t your blog. Burying your head in the sand and ignoring users objections against stupidity is what caused KDE to haemorrhage users in the first place. Gagging popular dissent doesn’t resolve it, it merely makes you ignorant of it.

        The fact of the matter is, the KDE developers made a unilateral decision, ignored user wishes, threw out a half-baked DE which brought no practical gain for users, and left them with a bloated broken pile of crap, a mere shadow of the former great, fast and stable DE. All so you could satisfy your egos. I’m sorry to break it to you, desktop development isn’t an ego trip, it’s a means to an end, and that end is to provide users with sane, solid, stable, dependable software so they can get on with doing what practical things they need to do. Breaking everything doesn’t do that.

        Feel butthurt that such user objections wounds your pride in KDE4? Tough, you deserve that kick in the balls and a whole lot more. KDE3.5 is still far superior to KDE4, and like the rest of faildesktop crap, you’ve just wasted years of development effort on forcing inferior bloated crap on everyone which flat out ignored prior lessons learnt.

        • Mitch says:

          I am not saying anything about the merits or lack thereof of Mark’s “argument” (such as it is). Mark is insulting people *personally* for no better reason than he disagrees with them or doesn’t like their choices. He calls people names and yells at them and expects to be taken seriously.

          BTW, I am only a KDE user and haven’t developed anything. I don’t feel “butthurt” and have no “pride in KDE4″, since I actually had nothing to do with it.

          How about this, Aiden: should I say that you are an a**hole? We disagree and you’ve gotten lots of facts plainly wrong, so I’m justified, right?

  15. I Use KDE 4 instead of GNOME & UNITY, cause i like it more and better suits my needs, We have GNOME, UNITY, LXDE, XCFE they all are good…at it all comes down to personal preferences….!!!

    My Issue Is If You Don’t Like Then Don’t Use It? In LINUX world we have so many choices…!!

    I DO NOT LIKE GNOME & UNITY, BUT I RATHER NOT SAY ANYTHING BAD ABOUT IT!!

  16. Patrick says:

    Oh come on, even though I agree that KDE is not the worst Desktop, comparing *any* free software with GWB is too much.

  17. Mike says:

    Mark, you are right. With KDE 3.5 I had an absolute stable desktop. In case I would make a little show for Windows users I started beryll and they got big eyes. I need nothing of the new features of KDE4. Why is Plasma, Akonadi, dbus not a possible additional feature?
    Here with me are many different Desktop-Systems: Kubuntu, Kubuntu LTS, Opensuse, Debian.
    After every upgrade it is a big surprise if the dbus, akonadi and so on is working or not. And these are essential things in KDE4 you know.

    My wish: upgrade kde 3.5 with kicker and all the known good things to 3.6 with qt4. KDE4 is a fine Desktop for the future, many people will be interested in and will help finding bugs, develop etc. And, one day, when it’s stable, I will use it to. But im not a beta-tester…
    We are the people!!!
    And we are just normal users!

    Merry Christmas!

  18. lhugs says:

    Hey,

    was just reading all those horrible follow-up comments from the mail notifications (using KMail2, which works very well). I strongly hope you are not being discouraged by them. You are doing great work and the results of your work is great, too. I do not really understand why people complain about KDE 4.

    Initially, I was a Ubuntu/GNOME user, after having tested KDE 3.5. It was somewhat awkward, limited and well.. you just felt its age and its limits. KDE 4 (ok not 4.0 but 4.3 and above) in contrast felt very modern, very customizable, flexible, just powerful. It made me leave GNOME. Thank you for the best DE out there.

  19. Kamil says:

    I’m a long time KDE user (more than 8 years I think) and I absolutely love the 4.x series. I was bitten hard by 4.0/4.1 release but from 4.3 onwards it’s been a smooth sailing.
    KDE devs set a very ambitious target and are persistent in reaching it. Fair play guys!
    I want to congratulate the whole team for the fantastic work they’re doing. You are responsible for creating the best Linux desktop environment and it’s not a small feat.
    Now, when KDE is mature, the only thing I would personally recommend would be to concentrate more on bug fixes than on new features. I know that fixing bugs is a tedious and boring process but they’re the thing that bites most users. They don’t care a lot about internal migrations (QTQuick, QML, etc.) if annoying bugs torment them. The usual reply that it will be fixed (if ever) in the next KDE version (4.6 -> 4.7) is not enough I’m afraid…

    Thank you again for a great desktop environment and keep up the good work!

  20. Laurent says:

    Hi all,

    I feel sad for you when I see some of the ranting here.
    To be honest, I shared the same feelings at first, with first iterations of KDE4. Didn’t see the point of changing, although I somewhat understood the objectives of cleaning code, making the DE more evolutive, and improving performances.

    Well, on the last part, I have sadly to throw it back at you: while I never saw a huge difference between KDE3 and Gnome2, I really feel the weight of KDE4. MUCH more demanding than the old both. Although on a recent machine you won’t feel it, it’s significantly impairing user experience on netbooks or old computers.

    HOWEVER, on the bright side, everything else has greatly improved:
    - theme consistency
    - widgets (although I don’t use them in fact)
    - integrated desktop effects (yeah, you could use Beryl and such, but now it’s integrated > should be easily maintained/improved, and it works well out-of-the-box even with free drivers).
    - original, interesting and EFFICIENT ergonomy tricks (like the folder view, felt like a scam at first because we see it as replacement for desktop, but quickly becomes a must-have)
    - semantic research: yeah, as many others, it doesn’t work well for me. Let’s be honest, it’s crappy really. BUT, anyone working in enterprise can feel the HUGE potential of the thing for file/documentation management.
    - Activities: one other huge innovation, although very hard at first to understand the differences and potential beyond plain multidesktop.
    - Various presentations for various devices, while keeping same coherent tools/application suite. >>> Will make “multi-device” working much easier, because no new interface to learn 100% from scratch, same features of applications, data migration/synchronization seamlessly.

    Frankly, to those still ranting… This decision was brutal, was harsch, was stupid in very short term. Still, from all I could read on development vision of main Linux DE, KDE team has by very far the most pragmatic and coherent vision of probable evolution of uses. And if they felt this was necessary, then so be it. This was a step behind only to jump even farther. ;)

    You’re criticizing Akonadi. You’re right, it can be broken. But it’s midway towards the result. And it’s not like they warned since many months about the major break-up in technology. It’s not like you have the choice in what upgrades you make in your software compilation…

    And, by the way, it’s free software, they are all working for us, but also for themselves. IMO, you have no right to rant as aggressively as you would an editor that you actually paid for that, as Microsoft (which would tell you to fuck off anyways).

    Keep the great work guys!

    • Peter says:

      You’re making a point that:
      1) KDE 4 is new tech and it can be broken at times,
      2) people are warned of it.

      However, you’re missing the point of other people, that this broken new tech is EVERYTHING offered now instead of older tech, which perhaps was a nightmare to make changes but was at least stable. I think it would help you to see this point were you not arbitrarily dissmissing it as “rant”.

      Frankly, half of the improvements you mentioned are more or less eyecandies, and even them don’t work properly. I still have constant issues with Plasma hanging while attempting to do drag and drop with it. The only thing I can do is X reset and it leaves no traceable cause in logs, so i can’t even report it as a bug. I never had such problems with KDE 3.5, not to mention MS Windows. I love Linux capabilities as development environment, but if I had to use it as, say, office desktop, I would hate it in an instant.

    • Alejandro Nova says:

      Nepomuk is going out of its “potential” phase and maturing quickly, and you can feel that in KDE 4.7.3, KDE 4.7.4, or in KDE 4.8 beta 2. To have a folder view with “nepomuksearch:/JUZGADO” right into my desktop has proven priceless.

  21. koto says:

    KDE is the desktop environmet for me. I can’t even imagine using anything else now that I have gotten used to the features and configurability that doesn’t even exist anywhere else. Every release is a step foward and there has been little no drawbacks in the last two years that I have been using KDE. I just can’t wait for the next big step: Qt5, KF5 and KDE Workspaces 5.0.

  22. Mike says:

    I think people got it other way round – it’s not that KDE doesn’t suck, it is that Gnome and Unity suck even more.

    I’ve been using KDE4 from 4.2 to 4.3, (still using 4.3), and it was great, if you throw out unusable or plain useless junk like all that PIM stuff + semantic desctop. It had great launcher, good and stable window manager, some whistle and bells like wiggly windows, and it was running my programs more or less fast.

    Well, since then I’ve tried to migrate to new shiny KDE versions what 3 times? And every time it was downhill UX-wise. Obligatory PIM stuff, some stupid fixes like removing back button from launcher, etc etc. Last time I’ve tried it was KDE 4.7 on OpenSuSE 12.1, it doesnt even shut down properly.

    I guess I just call it quits at that. When my current desktop dies from old age I’ll upgrade to some less grandiose DE, which just runs my programs and doesn’t force a big bunch of totally useless stuff down my throat. Yeah, I khow, all those semantics-shmantics will work just great Really Soon Now. I just don’t care.

    Artem got it right – it is a fine example of developer-centric DE for developers.

    • haku says:

      KDE in no way forces you to use any “PIM stuff” nor sematic desktop. It’s quite easy to completely disable Nepomuk and Akonadi if you so desire. It also should be obvious that if your system doesn’t shutdown correctly the problem is not in KDE but your distribution.

      One of the nice things in KDE is configurability. If you don’t want automization you can just disable all the daemons and you get very lean desktop.

      • Roland says:

        Oh yes, KDE forces me to use PIM stuff. On Kubuntu Akonadi and kdepim are dependencies of Plasma. Disabling Nepomuk/Akonadi does not work because a handful of related processes are always running and the rest may kick in with every careless mouseclick. The shutdown bug is also a KDE problem, because Plasma crashes on shutdown and throws a popup that keeps the system alive untill the popup is clicked away.
        So again, please make it possible to ampute Akonadi from Plasma, even if all of kdepim must be cut away.

        • Peter says:

          Also, many non-kdepim programs have dependency on Akonadi, for example Gwenview.

        • haku says:

          If you can’t disable Akonadi and Nepomuk you distribution or you are doing it wrong. Nepomuk can be disabled from system settings and Akonadi by either not starting anything that uses it (Plasma itself doesn’t need it) or by simply editing one configuration file. After that there’s no Akonadi or Nepomuk related processes at all.

          I for one have used KDE on Arch without either of those for long time untill recently.

      • Mike says:

        That’s not my point. Why should I figure out how to remove from product core things intended for me to use? Nepomuk & Akonadi are “KDE Pillars” after all, right? KDE devs wanted me to use it, not to remove it. I wanted to use it, damnit! I wanted all these great gee whiz semantic goodies!

        But they don’t work for me in 4.2, 4.3, … well, Alejandro here says Nepomuk is maturing quickly in 4.7 and 4.8, but I don’t hold my breath.

        If the product repeatedly doesn’t work for me as expected, I can’t see the reason to disable half of it to fix it. I’d rather go try something more useful for my personal taste.

        • haku says:

          You are of course free to use what ever you like. I was just pointing factual flaw in you post. Nepomuk and Akonadi are quite a small part of KDE overall.

          • Doppelsonnenuhr says:

            I don’t really know what the fuss is all about. I disabled Akonadi and Nepomuk on my old, slower Kubuntu laptop. It works fine.

            I’ve left them running on my newer, faster laptop. It runs SuSE 12.1 – it also works fine.

            And, KDE is beautiful.

  23. Laurent says:

    Please allow me to stress a few things following the comments and reactions to my previous post:
    - I wasn’t putting aside all critics as “ranting”. I was waiving the tone of some commenters, as if they were forced to use fresh-new distros, or as if they had been ripped off. I stressed at the beginning of my post that I had shared the aforementioned critics, at least for a while.
    _ Indeed, no one forces you to use PIM stuff and such. I never used any of office/communication software from KDE until very recently (and I don’t use them in production yet). I understand that you’re pained to be left aside as software evolves and forces you to either accept it or migrate to another one. It would bother me too. But saying that it’s a developer-centric decision feels very unfair to me.
    - And, you know what, I’m not even a developer. I’m a plain “so-called” geek who just knows the basics of Linux since 2002, I never wrote a line of code, never even compiled the kernel or such things. I like to use software that works out-of-the-box. It works for me, so I’m satisfied. If I was in your place, with bugs everywhere, I’d probably be infuriated as well. My bottom line is: please don’t generalize your situation as a base to throw out all the hard work and improvements that have been made, even if they don’t feel useful to you (as I said, there is also significant new features of KDE4 that I feel superfluous for me, still I don’t say they are useless to everybody).

    Cheers,

    Laurent

    • Mike says:

      Laurent, my another two pennies:

      When users come to developer and ask him made a Real Good Feature optional, as in “opt-in”, and developer answers “We can’t, cause we need beta-testers”, I call that developer-centric.

      When distro maintainer decides to cut out some known to be broken features out of product, and developer calls it a “sabotage”, I call that developer-centric.

      When users are complaining about performance and bugs in a product’ subsystem, and developers are removing an option to build product without this subsystem, because “it would be harder to maintain”, I call that developer-centric too.

      As for overgeneralising – you should just visit fourm.kde.org
      Top thread in Semantic Desktop is called “How to disable Nepomuk and Akonadi?”. Top thread in Office and Productivity – “How to NOT install Akonadi and Nepomuk?”

      • haku says:

        What you are doing is exactly overgeneralising. Those two topics have total of 15 000 views and 60 posts and they have been there for over two years. That in all seriousnes doesn’t make a case. Well obviously it’s not limited to those two topics and there was and still is some problems with both technologies which may lead to the user wanting to disable them. However for vast majority there is absolutely no need to do so.

  24. Mike says:

    I changed to Linux in 2001. In this time I don’t know exactly what “open-source” means. I found a lot of intelligent people wich are very interested in supporting me with my first steps. There was developers answering mails at the same day. Mails from a DAU like me…

    And there was Version numbers I never seen before: 0.0.9…???
    On my questions people told me that this version works and is useable, butthere are still bugs inside. There will be a version 1.0 when its bugfree!

    This impressed me very much and I liked it. It was cmpletely different from the windows world. A couple of years later there was a new KDE version born. When I hear the developers opinion why we have du use it and to live with a lot of essential bugs I feel like customer of Microsoft.

    Kind regards and merry christmas!

    …and sorry for my bad english…

  25. Hans says:

    I am a fan of KDE, and have been for many years. However, I really struggle with Akonadi and Nepomuk. I find the current state of things very sad, because it means many people turn away from KDE. Or, even worse, with GNOME and UNITY also being in poor shape, many people turn their backs on Open Source Software altogether. And I cannot honestly recommend anyone to move away from Windows7 – this hurts the most, since I am a believer in Open Source Software.

    It appears to me that someone got carried away with the fascination of complex structures, and completely forgot the basics. It is beyond me how anyone can call something “beautiful software” that adds /home on an NFS share as an afterthought. I don’t mind running a mysql database on the server (i have got one anyway for MythTV), but then at least I want a clear instruction of how it should be set up. And I expect it to work, of course.

    I am old enough to remember the pain it caused to move from Unix to Windows 3.11, with no network and single user. The world has moved on with cloud services and so forth, but some developers seem to go back in time, by using their laptops as single users and with no network storage. This to me is a betrayal of the whole idea of open source – or does anyone believe Linux would have been successful had it not been a networked, multi-user system from the start?

    KDE and kmail are loosing market share, as can be seen from reading many posts on the net. The reasons in my opinion are:
    - only works on single user machines without network storage (/home locally)
    - does not provide a working method of migrating data from an existing installation
    - generally is too buggy and unstable

    Some of the functionality of Nepomuk and Akonadi (like the google stuff) is very interesting. However, it is a shame all of that software was released onto unsuspecting users, instead of it being developed first. Unfortunately that leaves a lot of users very frustrated and thus destroys KDE market share.

    Still I will not give up and give 4.8 a try …

    • Mitch says:

      I am interested to hear what problems you have had.

      I installed Kubuntu 11.10, and aside from some understanding issues with the nVidia graphics drivers, everything has been smooth.

      My impression is that kmail had problems under KDE 3.5 and I never used it (for other reasons). The bugs reported for kmail2 look less serious, but maybe there is something I am missing.

      • boooger says:

        rant
        Why does Akonadi IMAP have to suck *so* badly. It literally eats camel turds and does not much else. It’s ruined Kmail. I cannot use KDE’s PIM anymore. I may as well through the whole thing out. Yes, I really think that way – even before you mentioned it. One thing I have to say is that *some* of the KDE devs are really social morons. I am a social moron as well. But I think I could show some remorse when I realized I fucked all my users over.
        /rant

  26. Mstafa says:

    Kubunty was how it all started with me getting to linux. Back then I didnt even know there was a KDE and a Gnome… Going to ubuntu and gnome was a matter of curiosity as a linux newuser. I stayed there for long, I liked it becos of my needs , but for almost 4 yeras, knowing ubuntu does all for me, I was never able to forget how things looked better with KDE kubuntu,, I missed it so much. But never had a chance to go back to KDE. within those 4 years I gave it one shot one day,,, it sucked and I left. But I just never liked gnome though using it and make it do all I needed. I never liked the colors (yes I know u can change that!!!), I never liked the Mac-oriented look.. it’s just something missing in the Linux-feel while using Gnome … I am back to KDE AND IT REALLY ROCKS… I told myself: wow, thats the cutie pie I was with once, articulate and delicate… she’s back to herself looking even better after all said the years

  27. Mark Hahl says:

    I’ve been a loyal KDE user ever since I started using Linux and I love it. It’s modern, advanced with an atmosphere that is new and up to date. KDE lets met do what I want, not what the the environment wants, I don’t feel held back allowing me to focus on how I want things done. KDE 4.0 had a reasonable amount of functionality, which has been developed over time to create a advanced, modern innovative desktop environment.

  28. Hans says:

    Mitch,
    thanks for asking about my problems. I spent a week-end trying to install openSuse 12.1, which has got its own issues (systemd also doesn’t work with /home on an NFS share). But the main problem I had was Akonadi. The self-test was red all over, and I worked my way through item by item. I gave up at the point when everything was green, and I could in Kmail2 see my mail folders, but they were all empty with no emails in them.

    I know I have got myself to blame for some of the mess I ended up in. I am currently running KDE 4.5.2 (which already uses akonadi for Kontact) and I was trying to upgrade to 4.7 (not sure which .point version came with the original 12.1) on the promise, that you could always come back to the previous version, without data loss. So whilst I was working through the list of the failed self-tests, I am sure I made some stupid moves. In the process I deleted the nepomuk and akonadi files and databases on various occasions to create them from scratch, which sometimes helped me move on. I also had to go back to 4.5.2 on a number of occasions, because I had to read my emails. This, I am sure also messed up things. Then 4.7.3 was issued and I installed that, since I read it made nepomuk so much more stable. Add to all this that I was unsure of how I was supposed to set up the database for akonadi in a networked environment, even despite reading the “deployment issues”. So I ended up in a big mess, where it was impossible to tell, where the problems originated from, due to the mix of versions, the many failed attempts at configuring things, and maybe a set-up that is not as intended and is due to me not understanding how Akonadi is supposed to be set up in a networked environment. That also makes it virtually impossible to create meaningful bug reports. I feel I should contribute to KDE, but found even creating useful bug reports incredibly difficult.

    As I said, I will give 4.8 another try. I will make sure to start from a fresh .kde4 and a completely empty akonadi database on the server. I will then use the new import feature in 4.8 to migrate my data.

    It is encouraging to hear from people who have had success with kmail2. So I guess it must work somehow, and I just messed it up by trying to migrate old data and setting it up for a networked environment. That makes me mildly optimistic that I might be more successful with 4.8.

    Meanwhile, I do believe that data migration and a networked environment are basics, which the KDE team lost sight of when they tried to introduce akonadi. That alienated a lot of users unnecessarily, and cost KDE a lot of sympathy. I think that is really sad, because I still think KDE overall is a great project. I wish in future they will call releases “stable” only once they are stable and thus be able to build a loyal user base that can spread the word. I am still a loyal user, but at present, I would not dare to recommend KDE to any newcomer to Linux. I hope that will change again soon.

  29. Mitch says:

    I have to say that I have never kept any of my data in a proprietary system (even an open one) so I don’t really use the migrations. I can understand how it would be a necessity for most people though.

    Furthermore, I almost never do dist upgrades, always clean installs. Maybe that has saved me from the sorts of problems you are having.

    I have to say that what I have always liked about KDE is that they are thinking out of the box on the desktop experience, and always trying new things. I really like the new plasma desktop and (once I figured it out) I like the different kinds of desktop, as presented in Kubuntu under activities.

    I have a set of instructions I wrote up so I can reinstall Kubuntu from the live CD. Maybe you’ll find it useful.

    http://mitchgolden.com/computers/kubuntu-11.10.txt

  30. Hans says:

    Mitch,
    thanks. Interesting, where you say “don’t use the current version, it is broken”. At least it makes me feel less of an idiot to know, that other people also struggle sometimes with the latest software :-)

    My question to the community:
    has anyone got kmail2 working with /home on an NFS share?
    I would be very interested in a How To.

    To give you a further idea of the sort of problems I am having:
    I added an addressbook to Kontact. That works well, but now, I have got a duplication of it, and no idea where it came from. So I have two identical addressbooks to choose from. They both have the same name and they point to the same directory. So they are identical, but due to the nature of Akonadi being a cache, they are not consistent with each other if I make any changes. I tried deleting one of them, but the system wouldn’t let me. Actually, I do not understand, whether deleting an addressbook actually deletes it, or whether it removes it from Kontact only. Presumably, it tries to actually delete it, but can’t, because its second instance in Akonadi still uses it? Maybe, I don’t know.

  31. Mitch says:

    The application that didn’t work out of the box for me was digikam, which frankly is one of the really great things about KDE.

    (One thing that is missing from this thread is the discussion of the applications in KDE, which is really what I like so much about it. Amarok was – and is again – an music player that is better than anything you’ll find on Mac or Windows – and digikam is brilliant as well.)

    I have never used any of the mail, calendar, or contact applications, so maybe I have avoided the problems. I have had some mixed results with OpenOffice but that’s not part of KDE per se.

  32. Masud says:

    I recently abandoned GNOME because of Unity, I absolutely hated it. I then tried the classic version of GNOME which seemed fairly broken on Ubuntu 11.10. I tried KDE and was quite surprised to see how good it has become. However, for a person who hasn’t used KDE for years now, I found it rather cumbersome. A lot of things were hidden behind a beautiful interface. I personally like clean simple interfaces. I tried Xfce 4.8 and have not gone back to either GNOME or KDE since then.

    I guess it is a personal choice at the end of the day, but I do acknowledge that KDE has come bounds and leaps since its early days.

  33. Alhana says:

    It’s not true. KDE is still gaudy, very slow, having misterious segfaults each 15 minutes and consisting of programs which either has too little functions or plainly doesn’t work. It’s nightmare to work with.

  34. astotxo says:

    Although I don’t want hurt anyone, some of my feelings are well expressed in this post. I kept working on KDE3.5 on openSUSE 11.0 for 4 years and enjoyed it really much. “How come did you stick to 11.0?” may ask some people. Well, my computer is a tool I use to achieve work. It worked properly and I couldn’t risk to lose my data or my software functionalities and spend the time to go through all the distribution upgrades only to be “up-to-date”. But since my OS is obsolete I can hardly install new software so I took the decision to upgrade it. So now I spend my time to help my computer to work better when it used to be the other way round!!! I don’t want to judge KDE4, I am just sad to spend extra time in front of my computer to learn how to use KDE4 and notice everything runs slower that before on my 10-year-old computer.
    That’s all for the complaining, now what do you people suggest? I just want to use something that runs as well and as simply as KDE3.5. So, trinity, XFCE?
    Cheers!

  35. Phrixus says:

    Sorry, but no. came back after 4 years, still cant browse and use my 12tb fileserver.

    Looks great, stable, very impressed. bottom line: still sucks.

    I will never understand why the dolphin devs think that all files are on a local machine,

  36. Aaron Seigo says:

    @Phrixus: olphin and konqueror use exactly the same code base for remote access, and both can use ioslaves for remote access as well as do just fine with locally mounted (network) partitions.

  37. Jens says:

    I know this blog is old but I just found it through Google :-) I just wanted to say that I absolutely love KDE. I am still a relatively new Linux user I started to use Linux first time with Kubuntu 10.04 KDE. At the time I didn´t had a clue about KDE I just knew it was closer to windows then gnome that was the reason I tried it. But it was unstable alwas crashed and somehow it felt strange to me and it was Ugly also to complicated. But somehow I liked it.

    As a new Linux user I also wanted to try another DE so I changed to Gnome 2 I thought Gnome 2 was nice liked it as well simple and stable it was the right DE for a Linux beginner. But i never forgot about KDE.

    Since Gnome 2 is not available anymore on Ubuntu I tried Unity and it SUCKED still had KDE in my mind. Now a little bit more experienced with Linux I installed Kubuntu 11.10 with KDE 4.7 and upgraded it to KDE 4.8 (4.8.2 right now) and what BANG KDE now feels absolute incredible fantastic lovely superb to me :-)

    It is now extremely rocky Stable I never had even a Single crash in half a year. Even though I dont use a lot of KDE stuff exept Dolphin and K3b but thats it. I use Thunderbird for Mail and emesene for Chat and so on….But the plain DE KDE is giving me is extremely fantastic I can´t stress that enough. I love Activites using Multidesktop each desktop with a diffirent Backround and Symbols. Also Kwin works fantastic my Eye Candy Desktop Effects are all very quick now they dont stutter anymore since I use QtCurve instead of Oxygen. Even on a Multimonitor Setup on separate Xs using Second Screen as TV with TV Time still the Desktop Effects are nice and fluid. I have now configured KDE completely my Way.

    Nepomuk? Akonadi? What is it? LOL I am not interested in theese features yes they run in the backround but I dont care don´t need them they dont distract me my KDE is still extremely Quick and even more extremely stable. Sure there are still a vew BUG´s but I just dont use the features with these BUGS so no Bugs for me not the way I use my KDE :-)

    Maybe I finally found a way using this DE my Way I even think now that it looks nice not ugly anymore I changed everything the way I need it anyway. And its a zillion Times better as any Windows I have seen in my live. I trust my KDE 4.8.2 a 100% Percent now doing all my Work with it managing a Portfolio I use it as a Trader PC with all the Freedom KDE offers.

    I gues i could run it for Years and I dont think it will crash or get slower any time. Thank you KDE Team !!!!!

  38. {anonymous} says:

    KDE still sucks really bad
    LXDE is the new KDE now this is a nice frontend
    All the buntu’s are pigs bloatware
    Mate is a joke
    Cinnamon is a joke
    Gnome is a joke now with 3
    Saying KDE is “Wow” is like saying beer tastes good
    give a baby a drink of beer and watch his face….LOL

    The only way KDE 4.anything is any good is if there is nothing else…cmon….face it…they all ran off chasing after some vision of grandeur with blindfolds….

  39. Hacksaw says:

    1 – use Gentoo.
    2 – use nvidia closed driver.
    3 – don’t even try ~arch.
    4 – absolutely set USE “-semantic-desktop” to remove all crap.
    5 – uninstall kdepim, kmail, akonadi (forced by 3).
    6 – use claws-mail for e-mail, chromium for web browsing, libreoffice for documents.
    7 – uninstall konqueror, koffice, calligra (consequence of 5).
    8 – enable effects/compositing (it will actually go SLOWER without!).
    8 – Congratulations, you now have a working, stable, (and somewhat performant) desktop, loosely based on KDE. That is: the best Linux has to offer at this moment.

    • Jason says:

      I’m with you almost all the way there. I like ~arch quite a bit, and it’s still possible to get rid of kdepim, kmail, and akonadi doing that. But yea, everything you said is dead on. That’s the way to get the best Linux desktop out there.

  40. Hacksaw says:

    Sorry, numbering is wrong, should be:

    1 – use Gentoo.
    2 – use nvidia closed driver.
    3 – don’t even try ~arch.
    4 – absolutely set USE “-semantic-desktop” to remove all crap.
    5 – uninstall kdepim, kmail, akonadi (forced by 4).
    6 – use claws-mail for e-mail, chromium for web browsing, libreoffice for documents.
    7 – uninstall konqueror, koffice, calligra (consequence of 6).
    8 – enable effects/compositing (it will actually go SLOWER without!).
    8 – Congratulations, you now have a working, stable, (and somewhat performant) desktop, loosely based on KDE. That is: the best Linux has to offer at this moment.

    Regarding ~arch, sometimes in the past unstable kwin doesn’t like stable nvidia-drivers, otherwise it could be safe.

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