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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?"
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.
Why Aren't You Running KDE?
Because Xfce (personal use) and no windowing or graphical interface at all (work servers) completely satisfies all my needs?
I use Xubuntu at home on two desktops and a netbook and have yet to encounter the inability to do anything while at the same time requiring very little of my time to maintain it. I'm sorry if this sounds like a plug for Xfce, it's not. I'm simply responding by asking a counter question: what exactly am I missing if I use these machines for web surfing, e-mail and lots of hobby development? I'm forced to maintain a Windows 7 x64 partition for Diablo III, netflix and some other crappy windows stuff I can't shake so maybe I'm unaware that with KDE we can now satisfy some of those things?
Can someone tell me what Linux Jesus means when he says:
Simply because my old F14 comes with ancient X versions that don't contain all the fixes to make intel 3D really work well. And yes, things really do work better on the graphical side.
Intel 3D? Does he have a 3D monitor? Are these more than just novelties now?
My work here is dung.
Thank you, good day.
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.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Because I am Enlightened
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
The early series 4 KDE were appalling, and thin includes upto 4.4.
4.8 is good, you should all come back to the light side.
I was using kde 3.x - migrated to gnome. Hated unity. I tried mate, cinnamon, lxde, xfce and then thought I'd given kde 4.8 a try.
It's much improved from 4.0!
I completely gave up on GNOME back in the 2.x range as I saw features get continually moved, removed, or just made harder to configure. I loved KDE3 and tolerated KDE4 between crashes (now, thankfully, gone in newer versions) until I realized that as KDE versions got newer and newer, they also got slower and slower on my, admittedly aging, hardware. I've since switched to XFCE and haven't looked back. Much.
For me, Linux or BSD is about performance. If I wanted an integrated desktop experience with bells and whistles, frankly I'd stick with Windows XP or maybe go for XFCE.
Personally, I use Openbox. It's fast as hell and exceptionally customisable. I've ran it on machines ranging from modernish laptops to a creaking old 233MHz Thinkpad 600 and I cannot fault it. For me there is nothing missing that cannot be added (i combine mine with LXpanel and PCManFM).
Openbox doesn't get in the way or chew up system resources, and IMO that is the whole point of a window manager. I'm glad KDE exists, but it simply doesn't interest me.
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.
Invalid Checksum. Retrying.
There's no KDE for Windows 7.
You mean like this:
http://windows.kde.org/
brandelf -t FreeBSD
I had been waiting some time for a comment section completely devoid of any technical argument.
brandelf -t FreeBSD
We're a Linux shop with around 400 desktops and have been running KDE for a decade. KDE3 was rock solid. KDE4, not so much. The KDE4 direction of "let's index everything" with nepomuk and akonadi doesn't work so well when home directories are NFS mounted. In fact, it killed our fileserver. Further, why on earth would I want 400 instances of mysql_community_server running and creating a 128MB DB for each user in their home directory just to index their PIM?
In general KDE login times have been getting longer and longer, and the overall flakiness of KDE up to 4.6 have led us to dump KDE in favor of XFCE. Initial feedback from users has been very positive, and we'll be completing the transition this summer.
KDE4 may have some features that are fine for a standalone desktop at home, but it took a giant step backward from KDE3 in terms of usability in a networked environment at work.
KDE is one of the few environments that actually works with my setup of four monitors in a dual twinview (xinerama) configuration. Unity and GNOME3 do not work at all with this setup, they render only on half the screens, the mouse doesn't work at all, and other problems.
Currently I have to run a bastardized mix of XFCE and OpenBox to get everything to work because the XFCE window manager doesn't work correctly either. MATE (GNOME2) desktop seems to work and I have been thinking of switching (back) to it but it seems kind of buggy. It will probably end up being what I use though.
But on topic, I would love to just use KDE because it works right out of the box without me having to tweak or worry about anything. BUT, it's just too weird and often has annoying bugs/crashes (sort of like Opera actually). It looks weird and doesn't work like I think. I can't really explain exactly what it is other than "weird". It feels confusing and hard to use. If I could pick one example application that showcases the weirdness of KDE it would be the Amarok app. Good grief that thing is bizarre. The UI is so funky and doesn't work anything like what I need. For me that app is a good reflection of KDE as a whole. Bizarre, ugly, and unintuitive UI. I can't get any work done in that.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
I don't know who this "Linus" guy think he is. Just because his name looks kinda similar to "Linux" doesn't mean he has the right to be jerk. The community should flame him off the forums because he apparently doesn't understand the open source ethos.
If he was a real programmer he'd just dig into the code and fix these problems. This is why linux desktop hasn't taken off -- all these moochers who just want their computer to work without putting any effort into understanding the underlying system and not being willing to chip in and help the effort.
Because fvwm does exactly what I want it to and need it to.
I don't like the requirement of moving my hand off the keyboard and over to the mouse just so I can navigate.
It's i3 for me.
Plus, the start menu paradigm is retarded, and the last time I bothered trying KDE they were just trying their hardest to be a shinier, blingier Windows.
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.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
What's wrong with Alt+F2+"fi"+enter?
It's been there for at least a decade, you know?
Having seen the KDE people screw this up once already, many aren't interested in having it screwed up again in KDE 5.0 . KDE needs to make people understand that they admit they fucked up before and vow not to do it again.
To be fair, a good deal of that blame lies at the distributions' over-eager hands. The KDE team stated publicly and repeatedly that the initial KDE4.x line was basically a developer preview. They stated that they didn't expect KDE to be in the same realm of usability as KDE 3.5 until around version 4.5.
Nevertheless, Ubuntu, Fedora, etc. decided to be "bleeding-edge" and install the early 4.x developer preview KDE as the default desktop in their newer releases, severely harming KDE's reputation. While the KDE team could have handled the releases better ("beta" label, etc.), the distributions definitely should have known better.
Why does this story have the GNOME footprint logo, when the thread is about KDE? That's retarded. KDE should have been the first keyword, and the KDE logo should have shown up.
I actually wasn't aware that that exists. In GNOME, clicking the "Activities" button brings up this menu, so I found it almost immediately.
your argument seems dishonest.
Or you know, it's possible to use a system and not suddenly know everything about it..
I couldn't agree more. I first moved to XFCE when I was looking for a lighter window manager on an older computer. This was about a year ago, and I haven't looked back. Everything just works, and failing that, is fairly simple to configure. No godawful semi-maintained nigh-mandatory extensions lists, no configurator-cum-registry, no fighting with dozens of default helper services. It's just... functional. Is that too much to ask?
I'm running KDE too. It has a useful file manager, and it is very configurable. Don't like the alt-tab switcher? There are 4 to choose from :D The defaults are generally OK too, so only a few things need changing. It's not perfect, there could be something better in terms of window management, but I haven't seen it yet. KDE doesn't become useless when you have about 8 windows per workspace, and that's more than you can say about most DEs...
These people do not understand the Unix philosophy and are trying for an all-integrated bloated monster a la MS Windows.
I think KDE understands it supremely well. They try to provide a collection of single-purpose components that get put together in cool ways. For example, KIO slaves provide filesystem-like interfaces to various protocols like HTTP, SFTP, Samba, etc. KHTML (and later WebKit) provides a HTML renderer, DOM, and JavaScript environment. Glue them together one way and you have the Konqueror web browser. Combine them another way and you have KMail. Neither of those are "all-integrated bloated monsters", but sets of components working together to perform a larger job. Isn't that The Unix Way?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?