Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Is KDE Dying?
A long-time loyal KDE user "always felt that it was the more complete and integrated of the many Linux desktop environments...thus having the most potential to win over new Linux converts." And while still using KDE exclusively without any major functional issues, now Slashdot reader fwells shares concerns about the future of desktop development, along with a personal opinion -- that KDE is becoming stale and stagnant:
KDE-Look.org, once a fairly vibrant and active contributory site, has become a virtual ghost town... Various core KDE components and features are quite broken and have been so for some time... KDEPIM/KMail frankly seems targeted specifically at the poweruser, maintaining over many years its rather plain and arguably retro interface. The Konqueror web browser has been a virtual carcass for several years, yet it mysteriously remains an integral component...
So, back to my opening question... Is KDE Dying? Has innovation and development evaporated in a development world dominated by the mobile device? And, if so, can it be reinvigorated? Will the pendulum ever swing back? Can it? Should it?
The original submission has some additional thoughts on Windows 10 and desktop development -- but also specific complaints about KDE's Recent Items/Application Launcher History and the KDE theming engine (which "seems disjointed and rather non-intuitive".) The argument seems to be that KDE lacks curb appeal to fulfill that form-over-function preference of the larger community of users, so instead it's really retaining the practical appeal of "my 12 year old Chevy truck, feature rich for its time... Solid and reliable, but definitely starting to fade and certainly lacking some modern creature comforts."
So leave your own thoughts in the comments. Does desktop development need to be reinvigorated in a world focused on mobile devices -- and if so, what is its future? And is KDE slowly dying?
So, back to my opening question... Is KDE Dying? Has innovation and development evaporated in a development world dominated by the mobile device? And, if so, can it be reinvigorated? Will the pendulum ever swing back? Can it? Should it?
The original submission has some additional thoughts on Windows 10 and desktop development -- but also specific complaints about KDE's Recent Items/Application Launcher History and the KDE theming engine (which "seems disjointed and rather non-intuitive".) The argument seems to be that KDE lacks curb appeal to fulfill that form-over-function preference of the larger community of users, so instead it's really retaining the practical appeal of "my 12 year old Chevy truck, feature rich for its time... Solid and reliable, but definitely starting to fade and certainly lacking some modern creature comforts."
So leave your own thoughts in the comments. Does desktop development need to be reinvigorated in a world focused on mobile devices -- and if so, what is its future? And is KDE slowly dying?
Konqueror would seem to be the best file manager for power users and programmers. it's very configurable. I don't think I could find as good a replacement for it.
Konqueror is a web browser and it does work very well if you wish to make it a file manager, however, it is nowhere near as good as Dolphin which is so configurable that IMHO puts all other file managers to shame. I follow the Unix paradigm. "The right tool for the right job" and using a Web Browser as a file manager is not really using the right tool.
If you have Fedora 24, KDE spin it ships standard with QupZilla which is sort of like Chrome (pretty much all browsers are sort of like Chrome) except it gives you allot more privacy and it actually does quite well on many browser benchmarks. Yes, I know you can easily lock down Chrome although good luck with a certain operating system which I won't name.
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
Linux was never alive to begin with. It's market share has always been in the toilet. Nobody takes it seriously as an operating system.
You are quite right Linux's market share is so abysmal that billions of people actually use it daily without being aware of it.
If you are going to Troll, do it properly.
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
The KDE transition sure seemed to coincide with developers losing interest. Sure there's Krita, and Konqueror makes for a pretty good file explorer, but in the list of apps made for KDE, there's nothing that's, you know, killer. Instead, most K apps that don't look derelict look more like demos, half-baked to show off a feature of the toolkit-under-development rather than something you'd actually have confidence to rely on for the foreseeable future.
This is disappointing. I've used it for years in the 2.0-3.0 days and always felt that KDE had the edge over GNOME. But for one reason or another, the apps aren't there, so a K desktop is basically a K window manager + file explorer, on which you run GTK apps and LibreOffice (i.e., another GTK app), even though the K team posts one announcement after another how KDE's underpinnings are cutting-edge.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
About 2% of desktop users use Linux. That's about 30 million, not billions.
Android. Web servers. Routers. Switches. Billions.
That was true 3-4 years ago, but no longer. You should really try out Dolphin--I think you'll find that it now has all the useful features from Konq. It also supports the fish: handler for protocol-agnostic remote usage (FTP, SSH, etc.).
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
The context is KDE. The D in KDE stands for Desktop.
Talking about things that are mostly not desktop is the strawman.
It was launched and chosen as the default because of baseless fears over the licensing of Qt back in the 90's,
Back in the 90s the license was an issue. It's not the same now.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
KDE3 was the gold standard for my use. KDE4 never seemed as "solid". I preferred Gnome2. When I saw KDE5 on Ubuntu I immediately reinstalled Debian.
XFCE is pretty good, so is LXDE.
xubuntu. lubuntu.
But currently what I use is KDE4.
kubuntu.
Not that I really give a crap, but there was no need to install debian. You could have just installed a different -desktop package.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
KDE is the de-facto DE for Linux workstation/desktop users
In what world?
The top five distributions, according to distrowatch, and their default DEs (others may be available as extras or in special editions/spins) are:
Mint: Cinnamon, Mate
Ubuntu: Unity
Debian: Gnome
Mageia: KDE
Fedora: Gnome
For businesses that use Linux on the desktop, most use Red Hat Enterprise Linux and its varieties like CentOS and Scientific Linux. These all default to Gnome (2 or 3).