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Red Hat is Planning To Deprecate KDE on RHEL By 2024 (theregister.co.uk)

Posted by msmash on from the up-next dept.

An anonymous reader shares a report: This week, the Linux distro biz emitted Fedora 29 and RHEL 7.6, and in the latter's changelog the following appears, which a Reg reader kindly just alerted us to: "KDE Plasma Workspaces (KDE), which has been provided as an alternative to the default GNOME desktop environment has been deprecated. A future major release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux will no longer support using KDE instead of the default GNOME desktop environment." In other words, if you're using RHEL on the desktop, at some point KDE will not be supported. As our tipster remarked: "Red Hat has never exactly been a massive supporter of KDE, but at least they shipped it and supported you using it."

133 of 203 comments (clear)

  1. Fedora did KDE better than Ubuntu by Octorian · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What's a shame here is that Fedora has actually done a much better job at packaging a polished and functional KDE desktop than Ubuntu ever did. That's part of the reason that I've stuck with Fedora on my home desktop, after getting fed up with OpenSUSE many years ago.

    1. Re:Fedora did KDE better than Ubuntu by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Slackware does KDE better than anybody. In fact they do everything better than anybody. There's no reason to even consider using anything else. And the entire thing installs in less than 10 minutes.

    2. Re: Fedora did KDE better than Ubuntu by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      For the record this is pure bullshit.

    3. Re: Fedora did KDE better than Ubuntu by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      You are years behind. Qt is under GPL / LGPL licenses.

    4. Re:Fedora did KDE better than Ubuntu by Per+Wigren · · Score: 5, Informative

      Try KDE neon. It's Ubuntu LTS + rolling releases of the latest stable versions of the KDE packages straight from the KDE project itself.

      --
      My other account has a 3-digit UID.
    5. Re:Fedora did KDE better than Ubuntu by pnutjam · · Score: 2

      Ask me how I know you haven't used OpenSuse lately.

      --
      Cheap storage VM.
    6. Re:Fedora did KDE better than Ubuntu by MSG · · Score: 1

      Sure, but there's no indication that will change. Red Hat will no longer ship KDE in RHEL at some point in the future, but Red Hat doesn't ship a *lot* of packages that are in Fedora with RHEL. That's what EPEL is for.

      I don't see any reason to think that Fedora won't have great KDE packages in the future, or that KDE won't be available in EPEL.

    7. Re:Fedora did KDE better than Ubuntu by Tough+Love · · Score: 2

      One word from IBM and this stupidity gets reversed.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    8. Re:Fedora did KDE better than Ubuntu by Gavagai80 · · Score: 1

      The summary says RHEL depreciated KDE, but doesn't say that Fedora depreciated KDE (despite confusingly mentioning Fedora). So it seems likely Fedora will continue with KDE, official Red Hat support not being an issue since there is none anyway.

      --
      This space intentionally left blank
    9. Re:Fedora did KDE better than Ubuntu by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      Even if your fanciful bean counters were running amok, good thing KDE is free.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    10. Re:Fedora did KDE better than Ubuntu by rtb61 · · Score: 2

      This is Linux purely for a business environment. Choice for the end user is most definately not an option. A GUI to serve the business need, of a particular desktop, doing a particular job and only that is desired, no creativity allowed. Redhat does not feature at all in the creativity environment, their mistake and one thing IBM definitely needs to change. They do need to create a Redhat distribution targeted at the creativity business sector (the content creation sector) where choice is required to keep the munchkins happy and creative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/..., even the blue ones working at IBM.

      So gnome the business data input output sector and KDE the creative arts sector because they like to decorate their workspace and set it out their way and it makes them feel happy and a happy munchkin is a creative and productive munchkin, leave M$ nothing.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    11. Re:Fedora did KDE better than Ubuntu by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      This is Linux purely for a business environment.

      Even more reason not to inflict Gnome 3 on them. Remember, IBM has historically been aligned with Suse which is all in on KDE. That alignment is still very much operative.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    12. Re:Fedora did KDE better than Ubuntu by Aighearach · · Score: 2

      They didn't say anything about getting rid of xfce, so business users are safe. ;)

    13. Re:Fedora did KDE better than Ubuntu by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      You're a bit confused about a particular cultural detail.

      See, it is the hobby distros that are principled and ideological, and interested in a "pure" environment.

      Business culture, OTOH, is pragmatic and practical.

      Nobody knows how many people involved in the "creativity business" use CentOS because the distro doesn't have a culture of virtue-signaling; nobody is impressed by the choice, even other people who made the same choice don't care if you use it or not. Generally though people in the "creativity business" are surrounded by very snobby non-linux users, so they probably avoid talking about it at all, and stick to talking about application-level stuff.

      And why would a distro need to target a user group like that? The whole point of RHEL is that they try to make all the stuff work, instead of focusing on doing a bunch of shit differently than everybody else, or appealing to specific demographics. Whatever business you're in, RHEL is about getting work done, not about being pure.

      The best speculation I've seen as to why IBM bought RedHat (other than the developer base) is to improve their integration of public and private crowds. That's all about making all the different weird shit work together! Purity is what the existing offerings have. And silos and lock-in suck. IBM gets it.

    14. Re:Fedora did KDE better than Ubuntu by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      What's a shame here is that Fedora has actually done a much better job at packaging a polished and functional KDE desktop than Ubuntu ever did.

      Why is that a shame? Are you desperate to use Ubuntu but don't because of KDE? It would seem that it is simply the whole distribution ecosystem working entirely as designed. Pick the one with the features you like.

      By catering to all people you end up making no one happy. This is precisely why the spin-off distributions exist.

    15. Re:Fedora did KDE better than Ubuntu by zwarte+piet · · Score: 1

      I did, but there were so many problems with it that I ran back to Mint KDE while screaming.

  2. Yeah by ArchieBunker · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Because it works and isn't tied to systemd like Gnome. You can't make support money if everything works smoothly.

    --
    Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
    1. Re: Yeah by nmo.marques · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Really, support money? How much of their business is RHEL Desktop? Or even RHEL Workstation? Besides Im almost sure someone will repackage it from Fedora to RHEL/CentOS. Ive seen SUSE handling over 250 repos OK. I am sure RHEL can do it also, though I have my doubts theres such a number of repos for RHEL.

    2. Re:Yeah by ichthus · · Score: 1

      Because it works

      KDE is beautiful, smooth, and Dolphin is the best file manager available. But KIO sucks. Just try playing a video over smb:// without downloading it first. Unless your client app natively supports KIO's messed up way of doing things, you can't.

      --
      sig: sauer
    3. Re:Yeah by ichthus · · Score: 1

      I'm talking about KDE as the client.

      --
      sig: sauer
  3. so rhel 8 2024? by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    so rhel 8 2024?

  4. Any link to IBM's acquisition? by MerlinTheWizard · · Score: 2

    Or was it decided before that?

    1. Re:Any link to IBM's acquisition? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      Or was it decided before that?

      If anything IBM will try to replace Gnome with CDE. Now that can sell support contracts.

    2. Re:Any link to IBM's acquisition? by Tailhook · · Score: 4, Interesting

      replace Gnome with CDE

      Do you really believe they'd improve the RHEL desktop like that?

      --
      Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
    3. Re:Any link to IBM's acquisition? by OneHundredAndTen · · Score: 2

      replace Gnome with CDE

      Do you really believe they'd improve the RHEL desktop like that?

      Sure they would: just about anything would be an improvement over Gnome.

    4. Re:Any link to IBM's acquisition? by Shark · · Score: 1

      Nah, they just realized that KDE's code base is just too big to be merge into systemd.

      --
      Mind the frickin' laser...
  5. Red Hat's new desktop environment by gosand · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Red Hat is pleased to announce its new desktop environment... systemd

    --

    My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.

    1. Re:Red Hat's new desktop environment by lister+king+of+smeg · · Score: 1

      Red Hat is pleased to announce its new desktop environment... systemd

      you joke now but I could so see a DesktopD being released by them they will then remove support for other environments from SystemD.

      --
      ---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
    2. Re:Red Hat's new desktop environment by gosand · · Score: 1

      It would be called SystemDE

      --

      My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.

  6. 22 Years after the release of KDE 3.0 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    The best version of KDE.

  7. Can't blame them by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    I can't blame them. Pushing things like the disaster that Discover is or the mess that KDEPIM has been since version 4 to companies is calling for trouble. More trouble than paid support can chew.

    KDE prioritizes bleeding edge tech and new features over performance and stability, specially at the start of new major versions, and I say this being a KDE user since version 2.0. That approach doesn't work well in enterprise.

  8. Don't use KDE much anymore but by mpercy · · Score: 1

    I like Qt and use the "konsole" terminal app. Guess I need to find a new tabbed terminal app that I like as much as konsole.

    1. Re:Don't use KDE much anymore but by phoenix_rizzen · · Score: 4, Informative

      Look at Terminator.

      I was a huge fan of Konsole when it first got tabs. But, as screens got wider and wider, tabs weren't enough. Split-windows were needed. Early versions of Konsole supported it. Later versions removed it.

      Terminator makes tabbes consoles, split-window consoles, and focus-follows-mouse work beautifully together. And it can send input to multiple consoles in a windows, in a tab, or in a tab group.

      Haven't touched Konsole since installing Terminator. It's one of the few non-QT apps I like using. :)

    2. Re:Don't use KDE much anymore but by vadim_t · · Score: 1

      The version of Konsole in Fedora 29 supports split windows fine.

      It's inferior to Terminator, though. Konsole can only split a window either horizontally or vertically, while Terminator can mix and match those. So for instance you can't make a 2x2 split layout in Konsole.

      Also, if you're a fan of fancy terminals, Kitty is also worth looking into.

    3. Re:Don't use KDE much anymore but by tap · · Score: 1

      How it's it better than just have a 2x2 matrix of four instances of Konsole? Isn't it just another window manager running inside a window at some point?

    4. Re:Don't use KDE much anymore but by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      I like Qt and use the "konsole" terminal app. Guess I need to find a new tabbed terminal app that I like as much as konsole.

      Considering qt and konsole are a lib and an app, respectively, and not the desktop environment, no, you don't.

      I run xfce and I can link to Qt and run applications starting with the letter k just fine.

      Plus, you'll still be able to install it normally from whatever third party repo you get media codecs from. :)

    5. Re:Don't use KDE much anymore but by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      Probably he doesn't want to look like an old fart with a dozen xterms.


      $ ps ax | grep xterm | wc -l
      14

      I tried to try the tabbed ones long enough to decide if I liked the paradigm, but all of them that I tried crashed at least one time over a few months of use. xterm has never crashed on me in decades! Also, no weird bugs, because no new features.

    6. Re:Don't use KDE much anymore but by vadim_t · · Score: 1

      That wastes a lot of screen space, and is more fiddling than just adjusting the borders in something like Terminator.

      Plus, I use both multiple tabs and splits inside some of the tabs.

    7. Re:Don't use KDE much anymore but by mpercy · · Score: 1

      Thanks for mansplaining all that to me, but if RHEL is not going to support KDE, I have a concern that it will not be included in the distribution. So to install a KDE app, I'll have to go the third-party repositories for konsole app, then drag in who knows how many dependencies from third-party site? Some people work at places where unofficial (not RHEL) sites are forbidden (we sure aren't putting media codecs on our servers) or at least require exception approval. It's easier to just find a RHEL-provided app that still satisfies the majority of what I want.

    8. Re:Don't use KDE much anymore but by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      Not even going to read your attempt to `splain shit.

      I did read up to the `splain part.

      But that's really fucking stupid. Was I speaking down to you? Of course I was. Do I care how you identify? No, I do not.

    9. Re:Don't use KDE much anymore but by qwertyatwork · · Score: 1

      ps ax | grep xter[m] | wc -l and you won't see the grep line in your output.

    10. Re:Don't use KDE much anymore but by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      Yeah, but is spending that much time on it worth worrying about off-by-one errors?

      What if we both knew that it would always be off by one, and the specific number wasn't important, and it was over ten? Would it still be worth thinking about?

      Using the class match with a single member is a nice technique, though.

  9. Red Hat KDE support is crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Support for KDE in Red Hat products has been crap for everything post Red Hat 9.

    If you want KDE use SUSE.

  10. What is the state of KDE? by squiggleslash · · Score: 2

    The last time I looked, which was a while ago (hence the question) there was quite a schism between KDE 3 and KDE 4 proponents. Did KDE4 ever reach a level it was (almost) universally adopted? Did they get forks like GNOME did (GNOME 2 -> Mate = supported GNOME 2, GNOME 3 -> Cinnamon = usable GNOME 3)?

    --
    You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    1. Re:What is the state of KDE? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      KDE4 in later versions was mostly adopted and considered good enough. KDE Plasma is currently well into version 5 though, so you're a bit behind the times.

      There is technically a fork of KDE3 (Trinity) but it's only used in a couple of distros, like Q4OS. KDE Plasma 5 is generally considered pretty solid and has no forks.

    2. Re:What is the state of KDE? by Daemonik · · Score: 4, Informative

      KDE users don't fork KDE because in general we're fairly happy with it, unlike GNOME which has always been a hot mess. Every distro that provides KDE sticks with the current version. KDE3 is still supported by the diehards with Trinity though.

    3. Re:What is the state of KDE? by squiggleslash · · Score: 1

      Thanks (and thanks to the others who replied), my concern is that maybe the schism had pushed a large number of people away from KDE, hence RedHat's decision, but it sounds like that's not the case.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    4. Re:What is the state of KDE? by AvitarX · · Score: 3, Informative

      Gnome 2 was awesome.

      I miss the clean thin top and bottom panels with some nice effects from Compiz.

      --
      Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
    5. Re:What is the state of KDE? by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      I think the biggest issue is most Linux Apps are GTK based, while KDE is QT based.

      So the GTK apps all look a bit off when you use KDE. So in order to get most of your Linux Apps to work you would need to install 90% of Gnome anyways. While they are a lot less popular KDE apps. Which is kinda sad konqueror was really the IE Killer browser, as it was one of the first WebKit browsers, that Safari and Chrome uses.

      I think the next issue is KDE seemed for most of its history to Copy the Windows UI in style, While Gnome more or less made their own UI better suited for Linux. Much like how OS X is its own UI.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    6. Re:What is the state of KDE? by Per+Wigren · · Score: 5, Interesting

      KDE users don't fork KDE because we have enough configuration knobs to tweak to make it look and behave so close to what we want that we don't feel the need to fork it. The configuration minimalism of some other desktop environments drives people to fork them over minor disagreements.

      --
      My other account has a 3-digit UID.
    7. Re:What is the state of KDE? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      That's a pretty serious misconception. There are a few high profile Linux apps which for some inscrutable reason use GTK, that is true, but I'm putting a serious question mark for "most". Not to mention that the trend actually is that applications which used to use GTK in the past has or are in the process to or have switched to QT, like Wireshark, VLC and the LX desktop.

      If you have a quick look at this list over at Manjaro, you'll see that Qt has you pretty well covered, unless you absolutely insist on Chrome(ium), Libreoffice and Firefox, which all seem to favour GTK because of lacking competence and legacy reasons.

    8. Re:What is the state of KDE? by Daemonik · · Score: 4, Informative

      Honestly I think it's also how each project formed. KDE was always an integrated effort from the start with clear goals, while GNOME was a reaction to Qt's license and kind of accumulated extra bits, and developer egos, as it went, mostly in reaction to KDE. Every distro that standardized on GNOME had it's own interests over the project as a whole, whereas KDE had a team fully in control outside of the distro.. which I think is why GNOME has been so popular with distro maintainers, they don't get to claim KDE like they could GNOME.

    9. Re:What is the state of KDE? by Octorian · · Score: 2

      The configuration minimalism of some other desktop environments drives people to fork them over minor disagreements.

      This minimalism is why I don't find modern Gnome usable without installing a bunch of tweak tools and add-ons that I shouldn't even need. Seriously, the cruisade to minimal'ize the Gnome environment has made it far more featureless than Windows or macOS to the point that it pisses me off.

    10. Re:What is the state of KDE? by lister+king+of+smeg · · Score: 2

      Gnome 2 was awesome.

      I miss the clean thin top and bottom panels with some nice effects from Compiz.

      That is why I use Mate Desktop fork of Gnome 2. I do miss compiz though. Desktop environments peaked in 2010 and have been shooting themselves in the foot since. The want to be the environment for phones that will not support them or be touch accessible to the touch screen desktops that no one buys because mouse and keyboard function better for PC.

      --
      ---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
    11. Re:What is the state of KDE? by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 4, Interesting

      This minimalism is why I don't find modern Gnome usable without installing a bunch of tweak tools and add-ons that I shouldn't even need. Seriously, the cruisade to minimal'ize the Gnome environment has made it far more featureless than Windows or macOS to the point that it pisses me off.

      The problem with minimalism is that no one can really disagree on what particular features are candidates for removal - except for the developers who simply make executive decisions, of course. It reminds me of a story/article I remember reading about some MS developers explaining why their company didn't release a simpler version of MS Word that cut out the 90% few people use. After all the "common wisdom" is that most of Word is simply bloat that's little used. Everyone who used it claims to only use about 10% of it's features.

      Microsoft actually has a significant amount of metrics on what features people actually use in Word. As it turns out, beyond the core set of common features nearly everyone uses, it turns out that the bulk of the "unnecessary" features are used by a small percentage of people, but the distribution of who uses those features is spread out very broadly. Some people rely on mail-merge features, some require the review features, while others need support for more advanced page layout features. But they're typically not the same customers. So in reality, there's no mythical "90% of unneeded features" they can cut without making the software nearly useless to a very high percentage of their customers.

      I think desktop UIs and layouts are probably somewhat similar, in that when removing some "little used" options, you're going to annoy a small percentage of people with each option you remove. No one uses ALL of those options, but many people probably used one or two of them.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    12. Re:What is the state of KDE? by AvitarX · · Score: 1

      I really liked having thumb-nailed windows, easily adjusted transparency and things coming and going from their proper locations when minimizing and maximizing.

      3x3 desktop wall and a slight non rigidity when dragging windows was nice too.

      Desktop Linux peaked a little earlier even, I stopped using it somewhere in the 2.6 kernels when there was a bug/feature with the IO scheduler that caused lots of hangs starting with Ubuntu 8.04 or 8.10 (I forget). Windows 7 came out and I didn't really look back.

      Windows 7's application bar remains my favorite I have used, and side by side window snapping was included. The only features I find really missing are the abilities to pin windows on top and to lampshade them for a quick peak behind.

      I suspect things are better now in KDE world, and I never really messed with Gnome3, but Gnome2 seemed perfection to me. Sun spent a lot of money doing UI research, and I think it showed.

      --
      Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
    13. Re:What is the state of KDE? by OneHundredAndTen · · Score: 1

      Plasma 5 is pretty amazing

      Only if you are easily amazed. Plasma 5 does pretty much the same thing that desktop environments over ten years ago were already doing, only using fewer resources. Plasma 5 just has more bells and whistles, but it is very, very far from amazing.

    14. Re:What is the state of KDE? by antdude · · Score: 1

      Do people still use Compiz today?

      --
      Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
    15. Re:What is the state of KDE? by AvitarX · · Score: 1

      No idea, I stopped using Linux on the desktop when the IO scheduler caused frequent lookups and it was implied I should buy an SSD to fix the problem.

      --
      Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
    16. Re:What is the state of KDE? by antdude · · Score: 1

      What do you use now? Mac OS? Windows? BSD?

      --
      Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
    17. Re:What is the state of KDE? by Jerry · · Score: 1

      KDE with Plasma 5.12.7 is awesome! I've been using KDE as my DE since SuSE 5.3 offered KDE 1.0 Beta in 1998 and haven't had a single moment of regret. I programmed client-server apps using Qt for nearly 10 years, and the leap from Qt3 to Qt4 was monumental. TrollTech redesigned Qt's API from the ground up with Qt 4.0 and it was easier for them, both technically and economically, to start fresh than to kludge Qt3.0, which was not modular like Qt4 was. TrollTech could not support 3 and 4 at the same time, and neither could distro developers, so KDE3 disappeared, and after its time so did KDE4. Kubuntu and KDE Neon User Edition are awesome DEs for Ubuntu.

      --

      Running with Linux for over 20 years!

    18. Re:What is the state of KDE? by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      Gnome 2 was awesome.

      I miss the clean thin top and bottom panels with some nice effects from Compiz.

      Gnome 2 was awesome, but I don't miss it because Xfce has everything it had, and doesn't bother trying to add new stuff to trip me up.

      At first I went to Mate, but they were using language that implied that they were not against the forced changing of paradigms, they just didn't like specific details of the changes. So I don't trust them to stay with the Gnome 2 awesome at all.

    19. Re:What is the state of KDE? by Aighearach · · Score: 1, Insightful

      That's perhaps the most absurd reason for changing OSes I've ever heard; "somebody random blamed a software bug in a free OS on having low class hardware."

      Lets just say, I do believe you that your computer was locking up, but I don't believe you that you know what caused it, or that it was the "IO scheduler."

    20. Re:What is the state of KDE? by rkoot · · Score: 2

      Recent LibreOffice (development) versions can be configured to use Qt5/KF5 instead of gtk3/gnome.

    21. Re:What is the state of KDE? by sensei+moreh · · Score: 1

      Microsoft actually has a significant amount of metrics on what features people actually use in Word. As it turns out, beyond the core set of common features nearly everyone uses, it turns out that the bulk of the "unnecessary" features are used by a small percentage of people, but the distribution of who uses those features is spread out very broadly. Some people rely on mail-merge features, some require the review features, while others need support for more advanced page layout features. But they're typically not the same customers. So in reality, there's no mythical "90% of unneeded features" they can cut without making the software nearly useless to a very high percentage of their customers.

      Ok, so why not a core for the features nearly everyone uses, and a plugin system for the remainder in which the user can install any needed additional features. For that matter, why not the same for libreoffice?

      --
      Geology - it's not rocket science; it's rock science
    22. Re: What is the state of KDE? by AvitarX · · Score: 1

      Here's a bug report for the same issue (I think, at the bottom).

      Additionally there was a period when the process scheduler was designed very poorly for interactivity around then and patches to make it selectable or more interactive were poo pooed.

      Shortly after Linus spoke out strongly against spinning rust. It was pretty clear that was the use case being designed for wasn't me, both in experience and rhetoric.

      Linux went from a decent solution for me in the late 90s early 2000s (still played some games on windows), to a great one and my only desktop in the mid to late 00s, then to unusable on my hardware for a while.

      After a decade or so of rapid improvement in the desktop experience (under the hood and more in ones face) there was a multi year stint where both regressed.

      I'm sure it's great again, but so is everything else from a desktop user perspective. I used cygwin and now Linux on Windows to fill the gaps Windows leaves me missing.

      https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubu...

      --
      Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
    23. Re:What is the state of KDE? by Per+Wigren · · Score: 1

      KDE4 certainly pushed me away after being a KDE user since pre-1.0 in the 90s, but I just recently (this year) came back and now I love it again. Give KDE neon a try if you want to see modern KDE in action.

      --
      My other account has a 3-digit UID.
    24. Re:What is the state of KDE? by walterbyrd · · Score: 2

      Use MATE.

      As a MATE user, I cannot understand why anybody would use Gnome or KDE.

      I think a case could be made for XFCE. Or IceWM, if you are low on resources.

    25. Re:What is the state of KDE? by sad_ · · Score: 1

      XFCE is basically gnome 2.

      --
      On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
    26. Re: What is the state of KDE? by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      Exactly, there is a real bug report that says nothing like the bullshit you puked up above.

      Binary package hint: linux-source-2.6.22

      When compared with 2.6.15 in feisty, heavy disk I/O causes increased iowait times and affects desktop responsiveness in 2.6.22

      this appears to be a regression from 2.6.15 where iowait is much lower and desktop responsiveness is unaffected with the same I/O load

      See, I was wrong to believe you that your system was locking up now that you've been very specific about what bug you're talking about. IF you were being honest above, then you're lying now about this being the related bug. OTOH, if you were telling the truth above, then you're lying that this bug report is related.

      Furthermore, this was a bug in Ubuntu, a sucky distro, where your comments were about Linux and the story was specifically about RedHat Linux. Furthermore, it was a bug reversion! LOL Yeah, ubuntu is a hobby OS, and comes with extra bug reversions. As that bug report discusses, a fresh install would have fixed the problem, because it was distro related. If you had been using Fedora/RHEL/CentOS you would never have had that problem. The thing about RHEL/CentOS is that they are very stable, they don't change kernels all the time, and they're only using well-tested ones. Why the fuck would a user as touchy about a bug as you are being using Ubuntu in the first place?!

      I'm glad you have Windows, and I'm glad you like it. Thank fucking goodness users like you eventually realize that Linux isn't right for everybody.

      Never use Linux, or any open source at all, unless you know you want to use it! If you're not sure what to use, choose a consumer product that comes with the hardware you purchase, or is highly recommended. Open source is given away to the people who want it, there is no other reason to use it. If you hate things that are named in a similar way to other things that you hate, avoid all Free Software or Open Source because it allows forks and there will always be buggy things that are different versions of the thing you chose.

  11. Oh I get it now by TheDarkener · · Score: 1

    In 2024 M$ will have merged with IBM and made Explorer a viable Linux DE that will simply sit on top of Redhat.

    It'll be Gnome vs. Explorer, not Gnome vs. KDE anymore. KDE is too similar to Explorer for Microsoft's liking I'm sure.

    --
    It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
    1. Re:Oh I get it now by ilsaloving · · Score: 1

      As much as I hate to say it, compared to Gnome, I'll take Explorer. The Gnome developers should be ashamed of themselves for what they're doing.

    2. Re:Oh I get it now by TheDarkener · · Score: 1

      Disregarding your opinion of Gnome, do you think Microsoft would open source Explorer in this hypothetical scenario?

      --
      It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
    3. Re:Oh I get it now by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      I say they would, because the only way that that scenario comes about is if it is IBM buying Microsoft, and you know they would do it.

      Once upon a time, most email was delivered by sendmail. Sysadmins joked that you only need a BS to be a sysadmin, but you need a PhD to configure sendmail! Yes, the config was that bad. So then MS put out Exchange, and lots of people started switching. Horrified, IBM wrote Postfix and open sourced it so that there was a non-MS alternative to sendmail. Because obviously everybody using sendmail wanted to switch, as long as there was something with the needed features.

      If IBM bought MS, they would totally open source Explorer. Just for giggles. (You can tell they're giggling when their ties oscillate slightly)

    4. Re:Oh I get it now by ilsaloving · · Score: 1

      At one point (the IE4 days I believe), Internet Explorer actually *was* available for unix. Then when Microsoft won the browser wars they dropped it like rotting fish.

      The entire explorer shell, however, I think is a different animal and I don't know how well that could be isolated enough from the rest of Windows to make it open-sourceable. Assuming that it was, I don't see Microsoft ever doing that. One of the single biggest reasons people don't move to Linux is cause "It's not Windows". If suddenly you could make Linux behave very similar to Windows, that would be a roadblock removed, and Microsoft would never allow that.

  12. Context by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I think some context is required for the article.

    1. RHEL is mostly used in server environments. Desktops usually aren't a focus for RHEL users.

    2. Support for KDE Plasma is being removed. That doesn't mean you can't install KDE, just that it's not supported. If something breaks you're on your own.

    3. There were some other major removals or depreciations which the article mostly skips over. Python 2 is going away in favour of Python 3. Btrfs is being dropped entirely. A lot of driver support is being trimmed for future releases.

    1. Re:Context by deKernel · · Score: 1

      I guess I am confused on why btrfs is being deprecated. Any ideas why?

    2. Re:Context by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Upstream doesn't consider Btrfs to be stable (ie unchanging) and it is known to break in some multi-disk situations. You don't want to support something that is fast moving and known to lose data - not in enterprise environments for 10 year spans.

      SUSE gets around this by disabling some Btrfs features and focusing on keeping the file system static rather than chasing new releases. Seems to work for them.

    3. Re:Context by CanadianMacFan · · Score: 1

      If you are in the enterprise and something like KDE Plasma isn't supported by RedHat then it's not going to be installed. It'd just give the RedHat support people something to point to as the problem even it couldn't possibly be the problem.

      I was responsible for about 75 servers for a government department to host some of their web sites and application servers. This was for development, testing, and production servers. I wanted to have all of the servers to boot up to run level 3 and forget any of the desktop stuff. Better to save any of the resources for the actual applications we wanted to run. But the couple of other people in my group couldn't live with that even though we did absolutely nothing at all that required an X Server to be running on those machines.

    4. Re:Context by eneville · · Score: 1

      Which product do you mean? I think RHEL replaced AIX in many places.

      Though RHEL isn't exactly cheap, but over the next decade, I suspect their revenue will go up considerably as it replaces Windows in the business space.

      --
      Why UNIX?
    5. Re:Context by MtHuurne · · Score: 2

      I don't know why Red Hat is deprecating it, but my experience with btrfs was so poor that I've dropped it.

      The first problem I ran into is that free space is not automatically reclaimed. I'd get processes unable to create files when "df" reported 75 GB free. It turns out you have to regularly run a cleanup command that moves data around so the free space is combined and usable again. So not only do you have to defragment your disk in 2018, if you don't, it doesn't just slow down but becomes unusable for everyday operations.

      I figured I'd set up a cron job to defragment the disk every week. But then the problem is that while the defragmentation is running, the PC becomes so unresponsive that it's barely usable. This is a problem with Linux in general, that heavy I/O will make the system unresponsive. But usually it doesn't happen unless you're using a lot of swap space.

      The final drop was when the system became so unresponsive that it wouldn't even react to the command I issued to abort the defragmentation in progress. I wanted to actually use the PC, so I did an emergency unmount and reboot with SysRq. On the reboot the brtfs file system was corrupted and wouldn't mount. Eventually I got it to mount read-only and managed to get most of the data off, but I never got it to mount read-write anymore.

      Apart from the inconvenience, what really scared me off btrfs was the state of the recovery tools. The official pages firmly tell you to only run fsck as a last resort. There are a whole lot of other tools that can each recover from specific problems, but unless you know how btrfs works internally and can figure out from a vague error message which part of it is broken, all you can do is try one tool after another, wait a long time as it scans your entire partition and see nothing improve.

      So all in all, brtfs has some interesting features, but despite being around for quite some years, it's nowhere near a mature file system.

    6. Re:Context by KiloByte · · Score: 1

      I guess I am confused on why btrfs is being deprecated. Any ideas why?

      Business reason: Red Hat is making its own storage system that poorly reinvents parts of btrfs in a higher layer, touted as enterprisey with paid features.

      Technical reason: Red Hat uses ridiculously ancient kernels, backporting features from kernels 30 or so versions newer. This just can't be stable unless you have a team of engineers devoted to every subsystem, and Red Hat never had such a team for btrfs. The kernel moves quickly, without regards to internal compat, such backporting just can't go well.

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    7. Re:Context by bignetbuy · · Score: 1

      They are putting sendmail to bed. Finally. Long live Postfix.

    8. Re:Context by guruevi · · Score: 1

      BtrFS is a steaming pile and hasn't gotten better over the years. Copying ZFS and making it GPL was a nice idea but the implementation was bad from the beginning.

      Where ZFS was initially only a few hundred lines (and the core is still very clean and small), BtrFS came out of the gates at thousands of lines and tried to "fix" what COW and self-healing/aware filesystems inherently lack, a way of re-mapping data previously committed to disk while atomically maintaining the log.

      In the end BtrFS has been superseded by either ZFS-on-Linux or XFS/EXT4 on SSD as part of a distributed file system that handles consistency at a higher level.

      --
      Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
    9. Re:Context by Jerry · · Score: 2

      RH is re-inventing the wheel by dropping Btrfs in favor of their own fs, called Stratis. Considering how long it took ZFS and Btrfs to reach their current state of development Stratis may be years in the making before it's ready for RH servers. Besides, who knows what IBM will do with either Btrfs or Stratis. As far as Btrfs is concerned, I've been using it for almost four years on both Kubuntu and Neon User Edition and it has been faultless for me. I've used SINGLETON's, RAID0 and RAID1 on two disks, but I haven't tried RAID5 or 6. I limit my snapshots to 5 per subvolume on a rotating manner and all of my archival snapshots were created using the incremental method offered by "btrfs send -p...". A few people at Kubuntuforums.org have used Btrfs longer than I have and two of them keep three and five distros on their primary disk in a multi-boot scenario. Oshunluver and Vinny. Check out their posts. Personally, I'll never use a distro which does not allow me to install Btrfs as the root filesystem.

      --

      Running with Linux for over 20 years!

    10. Re:Context by Jerry · · Score: 1

      I use autodefrag in the fstab boot line for @ and @home. I run trim weekly as a systemd service. I limit my snapshots to 5 per subvolume in a rotating manner, deleting the oldest before I create the newest, and I always use the incremental backup method. I do massive amounts testing of various software packages and use the rollback feature quite often. The last time I used balance was when I reconfigured from RAID1 to a one disk singleton, two or three years ago. My main drive, and SSD is at 2.05 TBW of a 300 TBW max. So I've got 17 years left on my Samsung EVO 960. All in all, I've been using Btrfs as my root filesystem for almost four years and it has been flawless. I will never use a distro that doesn't offer Btrfs as the root fs.

      --

      Running with Linux for over 20 years!

    11. Re:Context by Jerry · · Score: 1

      No, Btrfs has not be superseded by either ZFS or XFS. ZFS has licensing issues that will not be overcome as long as Ellison needs more jet fighters and Pacific Islands. IF ZFS ever becomes GPL then it still won't be adopted because it takes too much RAM, preferable ECC RAM. And, it takes 9 complicated steps to make it a root file system even if you wanted to install it, so Joe and Sally Sixpack won't be running ZFS any time soon. ZFS is already on many corporate servers, which are headless and boot using other operating systems. But, ZFS is nice in many regards, and I like it, but not running on my personal computer. IMO, Btrfs is the perfect fit.

      --

      Running with Linux for over 20 years!

    12. Re:Context by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      Nonsense, they already support a lot of different stuff.

      This is high end support, they have to hire actual smart people who understand *nix to do that work. Because, the employee actually calling from the client company is often a sysadmin or engineer.

      The support they do is mostly professional services, not helpdesk. Though they certainly do offer desktop support too. Actual professionals have no problem at all supporting two things, because they're thinking about real problems that are being presented, they're not reading a script or something, or memorizing a checklist.

      Most of the speculation as to the reason centers on the cloud technologies RedHat has, and the associated programmers, and IBMs desire to improve the hybrid public/private cloud ecosystem. So that's exactly the opposite direction as wanting to consolidate offerings.

      Mostly IBM has been driving consolidation by discontinuing their famously expensive proprietary offerings, and moving customers onto open source instead! They believe in their ability to add value through high quality professional services, they aren't really doing the lock-in thing these days.

    13. Re:Context by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      It is hard to get the code finished when the prototype keeps slipping through your fingers like Btr.

    14. Re:Context by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      RH is re-inventing the wheel by dropping Btrfs in favor of their own fs, called Stratis.

      Nope. Stratis composes existing software so that it adds up to having features people wanted from Btrfs/ZFS.

      It uses XFS and the linux devicemapper subsystem to export a D-Bus API. This way, there is new implementation code, but there aren't any new core technologies, and the base filesystem code is already stable.

      Btrfs is not going to be a significant part of the future, because it has failed to show itself as worthy. You can't lose data, and you can't change features all the time, if you want to be a filesystem. You have to know what your features are supposed to be, and also how to implement them. People who want to futz with the features and API to get it perfect even when it doesn't yet work that well, they should write browsers or something where that type of practice is accepted. That's the simple fact; considering how long it took Btrfs to get to its current state of development, few people would be willing to use it even if they were told it was finally stable.

      I don't doubt there are more than one of you who choose it, I just doubt that if RedHat or IBM goes out collecting technical opinions from professionals that Btrfs will be found to be popular, or to have a use case that it was ever actually stable enough to be assigned to. Stratis already has a more-stable, more-highly-regarded filesystem under the hood.

    15. Re:Context by caseih · · Score: 1

      Poorly reimplements parts of btrfs? Hardly. Stratis is a much better choice for an enterprise than btrfs. It offers all the same volume and snapshot management capabilities as BtrFS or ZFS, but using proven, existing technology, like XFS. It's not a case of NIH as you suggest. The reality is BtrFS hasn't really panned out for anyone, unfortunately.

      Having used BtrFS for the last 6 or 7 years on my two main daily-driver computers, I can say it's got nice features, but it's not ready yet at all. Performance problems and limitations abound, plus the issues that were mentioned a few posts ago. It still doesn't support RAID 5 or 6, and you can't use it on top of LVM to get that. There's no way I'd trust it on a server given my experience with it (reminds me of the time I tried ReiserFS 3 on a server... that just about cost me my job!).

      On the other hand, I'm very excited to see how RH's Stratis project turns out. Even in these early stages, we know how it will perform and we know how stable and secure it will be, because we know LVM and XFS already, and there are decades of use proving the reliability of these components. Plus stratis provides a management API and system needed to integrate with things like containers and virtualization provisioning.

    16. Re:Context by KiloByte · · Score: 1

      There's no way I'd trust it on a server

      Funny that -- I'd never trust any silentdatalossfs like XFS on a server -- or desktop, or a SoC -- either. There's a massive difference between knowing your data has been corrupted months after the fact and during the next read (or scrub). And, with my rate of mistakes, hourly backups without having to stat() every file is also a massive ass-saver.

      Snapshot capabilities of LVM are sharply limited, and getting them feature parity with btrfs would be effectively reinventing btrfs. There's no way around CoW, merely different possible implementations -- or different layers doing it.

      I believe $DISK's FTL would be the best place, as it _already_ does CoW, but unless it starts exposing such capabilities to the kernel...

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    17. Re:Context by KiloByte · · Score: 1

      To elaborate: on-disk data gets corrupted both at rest and during transit. They _are_ supposed to report errors, but they notoriously fail to do so -- then the pipeline is notoriously flaky. Companies I worked with tend to buy bottom of the barrel hardware, and in my experience silent data corruption happens drastically more often with disks than memory. Thus, btrfs is needed for the same reason you use ECC RAM for, except that its error-spotting gets a lot more use than that of RAM.

      Things may change in the future when $DISK gets far closer (such as DIMM-interface Optane), but that doesn't work with CoWing LVM anyway (well it does, but you lose so much speed you could have stayed with traditional disks). So that'll obsolete both btrfs and Stratis; for now I use what's good for current hardware. And btrfs is here, Stratis is not.

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    18. Re:Context by caseih · · Score: 1

      Shrug. XFS has a proven track record, despite your own anecdotal experience with it. I've seen no dramatic, wide-spread issues with the roll-out of RHEL 7 and CentOS 7 across the world. I'm sure there are issues, but not widespread like you intimate.

      And if XFS isn't your thing, Stratis can theoretically utilize other known-stable file systems like Ext4.

      Stratis uses LVM's thin provisioning facilities to provide CoW. And of course snapshots do work fairly well with the LVM layer providing that (sharply limited as they might be... doesn't seem to be a problem for Stratis). Stratis does not yet have support for detecting bitrot yet.

      RH is well aware of ZFS and BrtFS's strengths and capabilities. They are keenly aware that BtrFS hasn't panned out and can't meet the needs of their customers. Funny you should talk about reinventing BtrFS, which itself was a reinvention of ZFS, both of which reinvented the concept of the LVM layer, rather than build on that. I hope BtrFS continues and fixes the many problems it currently has, but I'm not holding my breath. In the meantime my own computer's performance is steadily declining (any significant amount of I/O activity such as swap brings BtrFS to its knees on my machine).

      Compared to ZFS and BtrFS, in my opinion, Stratis is much more in keeping with the Unix philosophy (and can use existing repair tools). Which isn't a bad thing in my opinion.

    19. Re:Context by MtHuurne · · Score: 1

      I checked my old fstab and it only had the "noatime" option specified. Maybe that is the difference then?

      Trim was set up as a cron job, but even if it wasn't, that would lead to poor free space management at the SSD level, not at the file system level.

      I'm still not eager to go back due to the mess that the recovery tools are.

    20. Re:Context by KiloByte · · Score: 1

      It's not about XFS itself failing, it's about the disk, its firmware, cable (@#$%^&*!) or some part of the mobo silently passing corrupt data as valid. XFS has no way to detect this.

      For this reason ext4 recently got metadata checksums as well, and it's a MASSIVE, vital improvement. Sure, it has only a small chance of catching silent corruption, but as such errors rarely go alone, you at least know you have a problem. Unlike btrfs, you won't know of _data_ corruption nor know which blocks are bad, but that's still a great thing to have.

      As for LVM: it would need to have a large amount of unallocated space somewhere. The filesystem also needs a large mount of unallocated space. You also can't resize XFS down (at all) nor ext4 (offline only) so you can't even move from one pool to the other (discard somewhat helps but you still risk overcommit). Btrfs and ZFS on the other hand, violating that layer, combine that pool into one and can utilize it fully.

      And, LVM can't work with new technologies such as DIMM-mounted Optane. Ok, it can work by emulating a legacy disk, but you lose all the goodies. I see no obvious way to port btrfs or Stratis to DAX so both will be obsolete. The replacement functionality is done by the CPU itself, and CoW is done mostly as a page fault rather than a full filesystem operation -- you can't really hide it in a layer. Heck, going through the kernel at all causes such a relative slowdown that you want to go all userspace :)

      Stratis, no matter its true or perceived upsides, is simply too late. Btrfs is fully functional today, and Optane memory is being shipped to first rollouts. The marketing bleating currently goes "your datacenter storage will get XXX times faster" rather than "forget game loading times or pauses to save", but the technology is here, live.

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
  13. There are no properly packaged KDE distros today by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Back in 2005 KDE was freeken awesome and there were distributions that focused on properly packaging it. Today not so much. It does not help that KDE went to shit after the last 3.x release. GNOME 2 sucked, but GNOME 3 got better in some areas. Then forks of GNOME 3.x fixed some of those issues (mainly a lack of a menu system to find programs you just installed). Unity also sucked in this regard. Cinnamon which is based on GNOME 3 works really well, but lacks Ubuntu's polish. For whatever reason Linux Mint's developers insist on fucking it up with proprietary NVIDIA drivers. That for a long time got in the way of seamless and smooth upgrades that one could experience on Ubuntu. Ubuntu of course has fucked things up alongside every major distribution between System D and bundling malware. Between Amazon, Flatpak, and Snaps GNU/Linux has gone to shit. Somehow I'm still using it, but only because everything else is either worse or support just isn't there. I could probably utilize some un-fucked up distribution that doesn't have System D, Snaps, or Flatpak, but I know those distributions all have there own quirks. No, I don't want the latest and greatest outside of printer drivers, kernel, and a graphics stacks (ie hardware support). I want stability, ease of use, and wide support (I'm not even demanding support for non-native applications, but just what gets built for GNU/Linux), etc.

  14. Move on by Tepar · · Score: 1

    This is part of why I dumped RedHat for Mandrake in 1998 and never looked back. Now it's Manjaro FTW.

    1. Re:Move on by squiggleslash · · Score: 3, Funny

      You dumped RedHat for Mandrake because 20 years later RedHat would announce plans to deprecate KDE over the next four years?

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    2. Re:Move on by jasonharrop · · Score: 1

      Yeah me too, Ubuntu to KDE Neon, to now, KDE on Manjaro.

    3. Re:Move on by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      This is part of why I dumped RedHat for Mandrake in 1998 and never looked back.

      Protip: Next time, bring back sports scores.

  15. Is multi-login GNOME working, yet? by J053 · · Score: 4, Informative

    We have been a RHEL/CentOS shop (servers and workstations) since around 1996. In our environment, it is necessary for system operators to be logged-in on the consoles of more than one computer at a time. We started out with GNOME (actually installed it on Solaris before moving to Linux), and found that the GCONF databases did not like having more than one instance of the same user (with a shared, NFS-mounted $HOME) logged in. Configuration options would get scrambled, sessions couldn't be saved, etc. These problems did not occur with KDE, so we migrated all of our workstations to KDE as our officially-supported environment. If GNOME can now function properly with multiple login instances, OK, we'll try it - but if not, looks like LXDE or something else. Good thing I'm retiring before 2024. Grumble.

  16. Re:There are no properly packaged KDE distros toda by Daemonik · · Score: 4, Informative

    Try KDE Neon, it's built on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and maintained by the KDE community.

  17. Slackware by BringsApples · · Score: 4, Informative

    Slackware still installs (as default option) and runs KDE very well. And if you like installing everything from source, like me, then slackware's great, even if it'll probably die in a few years.

    And thanks to Red Hat for giving us all a 5-year heads-up.

    --
    Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
    1. Re:Slackware by LVSlushdat · · Score: 1

      SURE hope you're dreaming on that "even if it will probably die in a few years".... I started with Slackware back in 1994 and with EVERYBODY seemingly jumping off the "systemd" cliff like Lemmings, I may have to go back to my "Linux roots" if my current distro, Devuan, shits the bed....

      --
      THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
    2. Re:Slackware by BringsApples · · Score: 2

      If you've got an extra box laying around, it's worth installing slackware with KDE. When I first started using slackware, in 2007(?) I only used it as a mail/ftp/dns server, and router, so I only ever used ssh to conenct, and it was all command line from there. Then around 2012 I decided to try to ditch windows, and loaded up the latest version at the time (I think it was slackware 13.2) and loaded the desktop. I was not very impressed, but fought through it anyway. Now it's on version 14.2, and the desktop environment is much better. Most all hardware is usable now :)

      Cheers!

      --
      Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
    3. Re:Slackware by Excelcia · · Score: 1

      A five year heads up is a hell of a lot more notice than Slackware gave that it was dropping support for Gnome.

      Slackware is great to learn Linux on, since it still forces you to get your hands dirty. I actually like that. But unfortunately, it's not a distribution for a production environment. On the plus side, capturing the output of a "make install" and turning that into a Slackware package that could then be uninstalled at will was great. But that ease of making a package was also its downfall. It's so easy to get caught in dependency hell with Slackware, I finally had to trade it in for something a little more grown up. Straight Debian for server, and Mint for desktop. It takes a lot to break Debian's package management - I have a Mint desktop continuously upgraded since version 16.something.

      Slackware is a hobbyist's distro. Great to poke around with and learn on, but not one to use for serious work any more.

      The reason it's going to die in a few years is that Patrick has always insisted on basically being a one-man show. He eschews a community, snaps at those who try and help, and insists on keeping Slackware as the SLS nostalgia distro it started as.

    4. Re:Slackware by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      If everybody was jumping, and you called it a cliff, and they kept jumping, maybe it wasn't actually a cliff at all?

      Oh, and BTW; lemmings don't even jump off cliffs, or into rivers, to their deaths, or anything like it. It is complete fiction that is retold by idiots who never look anything up to understand facts, they just repeat whatever blahblah their stupid friends blurt out.

  18. Replaced with OS/2' "Workplace Shell" by perpenso · · Score: 3, Funny

    Nah, it'll be replaced with OS/2' "Workplace Shell", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    1. Re:Replaced with OS/2' "Workplace Shell" by ilsaloving · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Nah, it'll be replaced with OS/2' "Workplace Shell", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      You know what? That would be bloody awesome. I *loved* workplace shell when it was around. It completely blew the crap out of Program Manager on Windows.

    2. Re:Replaced with OS/2' "Workplace Shell" by perpenso · · Score: 2

      Nah, it'll be replaced with OS/2' "Workplace Shell", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      You know what? That would be bloody awesome. I *loved* workplace shell when it was around. It completely blew the crap out of Program Manager on Windows.

      Of course OS/2 2.0 blew the crap out of Windows, its contemporaneous version of Windows for 16-bit 3.1, 32-bit Windows NT was not out yet. All the more tragic.

    3. Re:Replaced with OS/2' "Workplace Shell" by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      OS/2 wasn't bad, outside of multitasking.

      If they hated us they'd go back to AIX, instead of putting more skin into the linux.

  19. Re:What ever happened to Looking Glass ? by F.Ultra · · Score: 1

    The 3D fad died

  20. Re:What ever happened to Looking Glass ? by jellomizer · · Score: 1

    Oracle bought Sun Micro-systems.
    They own the IP and probably don't care to put resources into it.

    At the time when Sun was still themselves, the biggest problem was Sun was leaving the workstation market, and focusing mostly on servers, this means people were not going to pay a lot of money for a 3d card for a Sun Workstation, while 3d Gaming cards for PC's which were nearly as good if not better were much cheaper.

    Then we had the rise of Apple OS X during this time frame, which caused the market to rethink UIs and focus more on a much more simpler UI without as much eye candy and more on having a point for each element on the screen. The 3D window display doesn't offer much of a real advantage.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  21. KDE on servers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Sounds like a bad idea to me.. Really ANY desktop is a bad idea. Let them be servers.

  22. Doesn't matter to me. by pecosdave · · Score: 1

    As a KDE user I personally deprecated RedHat back in 2001 or so when I switched to SuSE Linux, and abandoned RPM all together when I switched to Debian Etch.

    Redhat - the corporate world loves it, but actual people who like Gnu/Linux seem not to.....

    --
    The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
    1. Re:Doesn't matter to me. by Tough+Love · · Score: 2

      Any corporate weenie that loves redhat deserves a special corner of hell writing rpmbuild scripts over and over again for the rest of eternity.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  23. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  24. Dunno by Artem+S.+Tashkinov · · Score: 1

    RHEL has never been advertised as a desktop distro. I'm not sure this news will affect more than a couple of people.

    Besides KDE in RHEL is extremely outdated and contains very few KDE applications, so it's not like it was a good choice for its users in the first place.

    1. Re:Dunno by bignetbuy · · Score: 1

      Nonsense. RH offers RHEL Desktop and RHEL Workstation for desktop use.

    2. Re:Dunno by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      Large numbers of developers whose software runs on servers use CentOS for their desktop.

      It might just be that most of the users with that use case can do their own support, they use CentOS instead of RHEL even when the server is RHEL.

      In any case, the apps will still run fine, and will be able to be installed from a different repo. Right now, "everybody" uses the EPEL repo, maintained by Fedora, for the vitally important extra packages like kmahjongg.

  25. LONG LIVE MWM! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Who needs anything more?

    Want more?

    FVWM2!

    Peace out.

    1. Re:LONG LIVE MWM! by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      Exactly. KDE will still be available in the EPEL repo... just like fvwm still is! They dropped the 2 from the package name, though.

  26. Red Hat needs adult supervision by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

    This is why Red Hat needed to be bought by IBM. It is 100% certain that IBM will put KDE back to first class status. To do otherwise just accelerates the loss of desktop share, and when that goes, server/VM soon follows. This is already the trend due to incompetent Red Hat stewardship.

    I don't care, we'd all be better off with Ubuntu in the server room than Red Hat anyway.

    --
    When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    1. Re:Red Hat needs adult supervision by iggymanz · · Score: 1

      pffft, KDE is dying. People have moved on to better.

    2. Re:Red Hat needs adult supervision by Tough+Love · · Score: 2

      KDE #1

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    3. Re:Red Hat needs adult supervision by iggymanz · · Score: 1

      LOLZ.

      so the writer of that article liked it. Meanwhile, KDE is dying.

    4. Re:Red Hat needs adult supervision by Tough+Love · · Score: 2

      Says random internet troll.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    5. Re:Red Hat needs adult supervision by Aighearach · · Score: 2

      KDE, rather than being only a desktop environment, is actually a collection of applications, one of which is the desktop environment itself.

      ***ROFLCOPTER***

      Newsflash, the applications don't actually care which window manager you're running, or if you're using a "desktop environment" or just running startx when you want a GUI.

      But he continues with further high praise:

      Whether you want a desktop environment that works just out of the box or you want a fully customized desktop experience, you can definitely choose KDE.

      Indeed! Even people laughing while it slowly dies can agree: You definitely can choose KDE. If you know how to turn on an optional repo, anyways! LOL

      My favorite, Xfce, is also on that list. The only con listed?

      Comes with less application installed.

      Yeah, about that... LOL
      But he deserves some slack, because it says he's just a student whose hobby is TV.

    6. Re:Red Hat needs adult supervision by iggymanz · · Score: 1

      Says major distros dropping it or planning to drop it. Most popular desktop distro already dropped it.

  27. Microsoft orders last attack of the Gnomers by Tough+Love · · Score: 2

    That's the only way I can make sense of this. Microsoft, knowing that IBM will soon move Red Hat out of reach of the old Miguel/Friedman infiltration axis, moves to cause as much damage as possible in the time they have left.

    --
    When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  28. Re:There are no properly packaged KDE distros toda by Jerry · · Score: 2

    Doesn't have Ubuntu's app for adding proprietary drivers, so I can't set up my wifi on it.

    Yes, it does. It's called "ubuntu-drivers". I used it to install my Nvidia GT 650M.

    --

    Running with Linux for over 20 years!

  29. Re:Buggar by Aighearach · · Score: 1

    I've never seen pong using qt or gtk, but there is always: https://github.com/kurehajime/...