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KDE Turns 19

Posted by samzenpus on from the age-is-just-a-number dept.

prisoninmate writes: Believe it or not, it has been 19 long years since Matthias Ettrich announced his new project, the Kool Desktop Environment (KDE). "Unix popularity grows thanks to the free variants, mostly Linux. But still a consistent, nice looking free desktop-environment is missing. There are several nice either free or low-priced applications available so that Linux/X11 would almost fit everybody needs if we could offer a real GUI," wrote the developer back in October 14, 1996.

4 of 115 comments (clear)

  1. Re:1996 was the year of Linux on the desktop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    19 years and they are going backwards... Soon they won't have been born, and the classics of UI can fix this mess for them.

  2. Why do you like KDE? by LichtSpektren · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm curious to hear from some KDE fans. In my experience, the K applications are almost universally inferior to other free counterparts (who uses Calliga Suite over LibreOffice? Konqueror over Firefox/Chromium?), and I have found Plasma to be gaudy and bloated compared to MATE and Xfce. But that's just me. Any reasons why KDE is so great, beyond its vast customizability?

    1. Re:Why do you like KDE? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      oh god, I cant even where to start...

      konsole is perfect
      much more options (customization as you call it)
      klipper FTW!
      amarok!
      k3b
      file manager is also perfect
      its dense environment if you know what i mean (no meaningless white space around everything on desktop)

      as of browser, I use chrome

      I use kde from version 2.0 and yes, it was shit then (slow as hell). But version 3.0 forward was really great. I periodicaly tried xfce and gnome, but just dont like it.

  3. Re:K in KDE by fnj · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Christ, the whole point of KDE was that it used an excellently architected C++ core library instead of a clunky crude C core library trying to imitate OO on a flat procedural programming environment. A long time ago, before Qt went straight full free software, the whiners had a point about shying away. As it is now, why would KDE ever switch away from the best?

    UI retrogression abandoning use standards is a universal hipster problem. It has nothing whatever to do with KDE. Microsoft started it, Firefox copied it, and Gnome took it up with a vengeance. KDE to this day is still a rational GUI. Windows are properly decorated, with proper controls in the proper places, no hidden now-you-see-it, now-you-don't scrollbars, and no idiotic bullshit abortions like only-the-one "current" window having a title bar, with the title bar at the top of the display.

    As for "slow app loading", what piece of shit hardware are you running on? I use a mix of KDE, GTK, and other apps, and they all load instantaneously on my decidedly trailing-edge boxes. The absolute nauseatingly worst offenders for RAM bloat are Firefox and Thunderbird, which are both GTK-based.

    If you've got absolute lightweight religion for whatever reason, I won't knock it. I will just point out that all the usual DEs are pigs for RAM use, and that disk space use has been a complete non-factor for at least 15 years. Even Xfce has caught the pigginess. With LXDE pretty much withering and Razor-Qt developing at a glacially-slow pace, I personally think Lumina has a lot of promise.