Ask Slashdot: Why Aren't You Running KDE?

First time accepted submitter mike_toscano writes "At least some of us have recently seen Linus' most recent comments on his experience with Gnome 3 — he didn't have many nice things to say about it and as you know, he's not the only one. On the other hand, there have been some great reviews and comparisons of KDE with the other options (like this one) lately. Sure, early releases of 4.x were painful but the desktop today is fully-functional and polished. So the question: To those who run *nix desktops and are frustrated by the latest Gnome variants, why aren't you running KDE? To clarify, I'm not asking which desktop is better. I'm really talking to the people who have already decided they don't like the new Gnome & Unity but aren't using KDE. If you don't like KDE or Gnome, why not?"

Comments

Found happiness elsewhere

[Anonymous Coward]

You can’t completely break something for a long time and expect people to jump right back when you fix it. I, like many others, had to go elsewhere when kde3 became impractical to keep running and kde4 was completely broken. What I have now works great, and more importantly, kde4 doesn’t have any killer features that appeal to me that I don’t already have in my openbox/xfce4 setup.

All I really want is good multi-monitor handling (including separate panels for each monitor) and the expected standards for managing windows. KDE 3 provided that with minimal fuss KDE 4 initially didn’t. My openbox+xfce4 setup provides it with a little work and minus all the eye candy I disabled anyway.

People will gradually migrate back. I might give kde4 a try the next time I build a machine... but for now, I’m happy with my setup and have no reason to switch back.

Re:Found happiness elsewhere

[hmmm]

You can’t completely break something for a long time and expect people to jump right back when you fix it. I, like many others, had to go elsewhere when kde3 became impractical to keep running and kde4 was completely broken.

+1 this. I'm sick of distributions which I've gotten used to and liked who suddenly throw themselves (and my productivity) off a GUI cliff. I don't care if you're putting in place the building blocks for some super duper new GUI, I use my computers to get things done and don't like having a "WTF?" moment when I upgrade.

I used and really liked KDE for a long time, and along came 4.x . Suddenly I was left with a half working GUI, and was told that "well you shouldn't have upgraded should you?" and "it'll get better when we fix all the bugs". This is my problem now is it?

MS are about to run into the same issue with Windows 8. Taking a well known and, maybe not loved but tolerated, GUI paradigm of a desktop and discarding it. It's going to cause chaos and resentment amongst their user community, many of whom will look at alternatives.

I greatly respect everyone who contributes to open source, and I know you put your heart and soul into it, but for most of us our computers are not toys that we sit and tinker with endlessly to display snazzy new GUI effects, they are the tools we use to get things done. Once you lose the trust of the user that they can rely on you to provide a stable and easy to use OS you will have an incredibly hard job getting them back.

Re:Found happiness elsewhere

[doublebackslash]

I've found XFCE to be a VERY sweet spot for me as well. I use the default WM, just heard of OpenBox via this thread.

My favourite thing is raw speed. Absoloute unquestioning speed. XFCE doesn't get it my way, it doesn't take time to play an animation whenever I do something. It snaps to attention and that is a BIG deal when I'm developing. Alt-Tabbing around, switching virtual desktops (with keyboard shortcuts, natch), raising and lowering windows, etc are all things that should happen fast. The next screen update if possible. The other desktop environments have forgotten that. I like animations and all the eye candy at first, but when I went to get something done they just got real annoying. Not to mention all the things that they want to change just... because? I don't know.

Unity wants me to change my workflow, lack(s|ed) basic configuration, has the "unified menu" (really hate those) and a whole slew of other problems that I never found because when I realized it wouldn't let me launch more than one instance of an application (a terminal, for example) without performing some ritual (I never found out how) I restored from backup as quickly as I could. Unity, in my experience, is slow braindead garbage designed with goals nearly orthogonal to my own needs.

Gnome I've not tried since it arrived stillborn in Ubuntu 11.10? (I think? It crashed for me hourly. Didn't take long for me to change when that started). The last time I looked at KDE it simply didn't give me controls to do certain things, forget what but it was keyboard shortcuts for window management. It might have been virtual desktops but I could be wrong. I like to be able to swtch desktops with *absoloute* keyboard shortcuts instead of relative ones. I don't give a half a rat's tail about the "geometry" of my work spaces. Hint: There isn't one! Its all just an abstraction! I don't want to have to give a moments reflection on "where I'm at" in my virtual desktop space to know how to get to my "destination"! I know that I want to get to virtual desktop 3 so I hit ctrl+alt+down and I'm there. I make habits of putting certain things in certain places so it is reflex to jump to the right place to find them, no thought required and no distraction from my train of thought.

Anyway, KDE seemed incomplete. Lack of controls that irked me (and I DID try. I like the look of it and I recall it being speedy enough. Just felt like I was typing one handed, for lack of a better analogy)

XFCE fit the bill for me in every single way. Right now everything else seems like a pain in the neck that is trying to get in my way, change my workflow to a painfully slow one, or is jsut plain broken / incomplete.

Re:Found happiness elsewhere

[smi.james.th]

You make a good point . Slackware continued with KDE3 for quite a while after 4 started shipping, and Mint forked Gnome2 as MATE and they're still shipping it. They also made Cinnamon which uses some pieces of Gnome3 but with most of the features you loved from 2, I'm using that at the moment and personally I think it's brilliant. So the distros do have a choice.

fwiw

[stoolpigeon]

much further down in the thread Linus says, "And for all the people wasting everybodys time with "Why don't you use Unity/KDE/xfce/xyz" - I've tried them. They are even worse, and equally importantly they aren't the normal window manager. I'm really not that odd." - There is a lot more in the comment and if I could figure it out I'd link directly to it - but if there is a way to do it, I couldn't figure it out. Scrolling through this thread made me think there is room for lots of improvement in g+

As for me - I do run KDE and love it. I have for years and stuck with it even through the switch to 4, which was a touch frustrating at times but not nearly as horrible as so many made it out to be - in my opinion.

Unwilling to (re)implement --geometry

[kmahan]

KDE would be more usable for us developers if the KDELibs crew would (re)implement the basic --geometry command line feature. Removed in KDE 4, available everywhere else. It has been listed as a bug since the release of KDE 4.

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=165355

Please vote for this and maybe the KDE developers will take notice.

Pretty damn simple

[SmallFurryCreature]

When I open a movie from a network drive, it copies the entire file first as it is incapable of simply passing a network url to the movie application. Something that every other desktop manager out there can handle.

It is this kind of "wtf" that is rampant throughout KDE. To me, it is the kiddy desktop, where people spend ages on getting some cool feature working but the basics are falling apart. In theory, it should be highly capable but in reality, it is so fragile and its defaults so inane, that to get it working just takes to long.

That is part of the reason Ubuntu and Gnome 2 were so popular. They finally just worked. I am using Linux to be productive, KDE does not help me be productive.

Oh and one final thing KDE team, learn that EVERY single app you build has a far superior solo version out there. I don't need a complete office suite with my desktop thank you very much.