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?

Comments

What does Netcraft say?

[0100010001010011]

Perhaps the users have spoken and most prefer the Gnome2/MATE/Cinnamon style interface. The rest of us are on Awesome, Xfce or something else.

Re: What does Netcraft say?

[Zontar The Mindless]

Given the considerable lengths to which MS has gone over the last 20 years in its attempts to strangle any other, nascent desktop OS in the crib, I think it's pretty fucking remarkable that we even have any alternatives at all.

Fuck the numbers. What matters is this: Do we still have choices? Yes? Then I really don't give a shit about how many people make choices that I don't make. Let them. I don't follow the Kardashians, either.

And FWIW--long-time KDE user here. The Plasma/workspaces stuff is boneheaded but can safely be ignored. Otherwise, I'm still liking it pretty well. If that ever changes? "We'll always have Window Maker."

Re: What does Netcraft say?

[thegarbz]

Who said anything about desktops?.

The article.
The first post.
The reply to the first post.

This is what is called a "conversation". A reply needs to be considered in context of what's above it. And in the context of this conversation, you're an idiot.

It better not be.

[Zombie Ryushu]

KDE is the Gold standard in Linux Desktops. It has the most utilitarian behavior of all of the existing Linux desktops.

Re:It better not be.

[HiThere]

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. The last time I tried Mate I wasn't really impressed, but that's 6 months ago. Cinnamon seemed to have caught some sort of disease from Gnome3 when dealing with panels. Trinity doesn't seems to work well with the current series of applications.

But currently what I use is KDE4. I like it, it's just never felt as solid as KDE3 did....but I preferred Gnome2 to KDE4, so I'm not sure why Mate hasn't felt like a reasonable choice.

Re:It better not be.

[SLi]

Have you tried KDE on Ubuntu? It's in such a sorry state that I consider it a wonder if it starts at all. Even trivially fixable bugs that make a package unusable for everybody go unheeded for the best part of a decade, which is presumably because Ubuntu is not run by that many people. That has been the Ubuntu way as long as I remember, but their KDE support has only gone from bad to nonexistent.

I installed (K)Ubuntu at work, and regret it. At home I run Debian unstable, which mostly just works, but breaks in all kinds of interesting ways once every two years or so. I cannot afford that at work, so I thought I'd give the hyped Ubuntu with its rolling releases a try. (Before you tell me I should try Debian stable, consider that Debian doesn't generally fix /any/ bugs for a stable release, no matter how broken they make the package, unless it's a security issue. And that's a feature. Debian testing is a lot like unstable, but with the added downside that fixes are delayed by a random time after they get to unstable.)

For Ubuntu, presumably they will eventually get any KDE fixes from Debian, but for issues which for some reason happen to be present in Ubuntu but not in Debian, you are out of luck. Moreover, the KDE packages in Ubuntu seem to be essentially an entirely randomly timed snapshot of Debian unstable KDE packages. If KDE was entirely broken in Debian unstable at that point, then it will be in Ubuntu. Nobody cares.

How Active Does Development Need to Be?

[damn_registrars]

I'm not sure how active desktop development needs to be for a single *nix desktop environment. I am a big KDE user myself, and I'm happy with where it is. Sure, some of the applications from the KDE team have been neglected quite a but but they're not fully broken either. KDE runs GNOME stuff quite well when there are GNOME applications that I just can't get by without.

That and of course I still do a huge part of my most important work from the command line. That won't change any time soon, so as far as that is concerned it matters not at all whether or not any additional new features are ever incorporated into the environment.

Re:How Active Does Development Need to Be?

[JoeMerchant]

I don't know that maintaining a web browser in the face of Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera and the rest makes any sense?

Also, a standalone mail client? I haven't used one of those in nearly 5 years now. So, do I care that it hasn't updated? Do its users want it to become more like Outlook? I think probably not.

My gripe with KDE the last time I tried to use it was lack of font scaling support for 4K screens... I assume that KDE5 is addressing that, but how well? Next time I set up a desktop I might try it, but for now I'm happy enough with what comes "out of the box" with Ubuntu, and was unhappy enough with the last Kubuntu I tried that I've left KDE to go grow up some.

I hope it does continue to improve, I used to really prefer KDE to Gnome.

Re:How Active Does Development Need to Be?

[damn_registrars]

I don't know that maintaining a web browser in the face of Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera and the rest makes any sense?

I can tell you from experience that Konqueror is a browser with a vastly smaller footprint than Chrome or Firefox. There are times when this can make a really big difference, particularly if you are in a situation where you need to X-forward a browser session over the internet; Chrome and Firefox might be particularly painful while Konqueror could be usable.

Opera I haven't used in a long time, and the last time I tried to use it I found it quite broken in *nix. Maybe it's better now? As for Edge, I'm not aware of a system upon which you could have both KDE and Edge. If you know of such a beast, feel free to enlighten me.

Also, a standalone mail client? I haven't used one of those in nearly 5 years now. So, do I care that it hasn't updated? Do its users want it to become more like Outlook? I think probably not.

There is still demand for a standalone mail client, though I can't say I've used KMail much. I use Thunderbird religiously. I most certainly do not want it to look any more like Outlook, in fact I value how much it looks like the old Netscape Communicator.

My gripe with KDE the last time I tried to use it was lack of font scaling support for 4K screens.

Holy first world problems, batman. If I ever find myself with that much disposable income ...

Did KDE survive KDE3-KDE4?

[Skewray]

I never got over the KDE3 to KDE4 transition, and switched to something else. I think KDE4 was too complex to survive long-term.

Re:We're All Dying

[Nemyst]

The "hacker" crowd is most definitely not dying, it's simply facing demographic changes. We used to be everything there was when it came to computers, both users and contributors. Now, there are billions of end users who don't give a toss about how it works so long as it does. We're no longer the majority, or even a dominant force.

However, that does not mean that the crowd is shrinking. Proportionally, it might be, but in absolute terms it's far more likely to be growing and to keep growing as more and more people have access to a computer from a young age, therefore exposing them to technology and allowing them to choose this path if they feel an affinity with it. Things are definitely changing, but don't go tombstone shopping just yet.

Subject

[MBGMorden]

Honestly, yes. KDE was the first desktop environment I tried when I started dabbling around in Linux back in the late 90's. I continued to use KDE for several years into the 3.0 series because compared to Gnome it just felt more polished and capable. As a matter of fact I remember at some point one of the big Linux groups (may have been a branch of Red Hat) announced that they'd be adopting Gnome as their "official" platform and I immediately though "Well, that's the end of Linux as a desktop option, because Gnome sucks.".

Somewhere along the way though KDE did indeed stagnate, and Gnome and even XFCE started to feel just a little more put together. Eventually Gnome went a little off the rails too but thankfully Mint forked off Cinnamon and it is wonderful IMHO (though I did successfully use XFCE for a bit while Cinnamon was still stabilizing). I still will download and boot into some of the other DE's like KDE every now and then, but none of them feel right. Cinnamon on the other hand has manged to keep pace with technology and looks like not trying to upend the entire UI paradigm.

Unless it changes drastically though, I no longer have any interest in KDE - and my interest in Gnome is limited only to backporting the useful bits into Cinnamon.

A view from a user

[Frank Burly]

I no longer follow Aaron Siego's blog or planetkde very closely, but KDE seems to be improving and remains the least annoying DE for me. However, the curb appeal is an issue and Konqueror does indeed seem dead and I don't think there are enough developers who want it working to revive it. I think most of the problems are from the heavy redevelopment for Plasma 5+ combined with the lack of a major distro to underwrite it. We see Gnome flailing around and paying developers to do the things users hate, and a small contingent of hobbiests and grantees keeping Mate going. KDE is trying to push things forward with a similarly small developer base. I don't think there are many users who want to return to KDE 3.5 (as good as it was). Kontact/Kmail is retro looking, but only marginally compared to the Evolution screenshots I just looked at. The problem with Kmail is the backend, Akonadi, which frequently misbehaves and offers no practical advantage (except to developers, who could access the unified backend if they were working on PIM programs, which they aren't.)

umm all modern desktop environments suck

[chris2net23]

The only advancement to any desktop environment which seems to really exist compared to KDE 3.x is search. I'm seriously thinking of returning to KDE 3 and putting my money into helping the developers of the Trinity Desktop Environment (KDE 3.x) resurrect it. It needs some work to bring it up to speed, and more so properly maintain it, but it seems to have the most potential of all the desktop environments. I thought it was dead, but I'm no longer convinced of that. Mainly because it's not an impossibility, but it does need a financial backer with sufficient assets to make it happen.

Post Bait.

[ElectricPrism]

This article is post bait. 1. Lure passionate people into highly upsetting or controversial hypothetical statement. 2. Popcorn 3. Watch the war break out between the factions 4. Profit SEO comments and data 5. Popularity++ KDE is not dying. On GamingOnLinux statistics KDE is the #1 used Desktop Environment https://www.gamingonlinux.com/... Is the author blind? Perhaps specific tools and websites that were once cutting edge have gone stale, but seriously - Konqueror? You mean that thing that was replaced by Dolphin? Someone should tell the author there's a reason why X Y and Z tools have not been renovated - usually because there are better options available.

The "gleeful adoption" of Windows 10?

[jez9999]

Who the hell has "gleefully adopted" Windows 10 apart from MS fanbois? It's so appalling I'm literally thinking of quitting .NET development rather than eventually being forced to use it.

And no, its UI isn't even good. It's shitty monochrome icons and minimalistic 2d bullshit. Windows 7 and Mint Cinnamon look a lot nicer.