7 ms·

KDE is excellent. Always seemed it got a lot of negativity from people that only perceived Linux as an operating system that should be run on a 5 year old lapt

by Jonnax 9y ago

KDE is excellent. Always seemed it got a lot of negativity from people that only perceived Linux as an operating system that should be run on a 5 year old laptop.

kazen44 9y ago
most criticism i seen nowadays is rooted in the KDE 4.X days. KDE 5 has been excellent and suprisingly lightweight aswell.
- simion314 9y ago
  I am still on KDE4, my setup works fine for me so I don't dare to change it, the problem was in the begining with KDE4.0 and the next few years, the transition from KDE3.5 was rough.
- SXX 9y ago
  I would agree, but Plasma still using up to 400-500MB RAM for me with no obvious reason since I use pretty much default panel with 6 saved app launcher icons. While it's not problem on 32GB machine it's the part of KDE with most memory usage of all KDE apps that I use.
  - makomk 9y ago
    I'm pretty sure every KDE 5 version of Plasma has a memory leak somewhere, but it seems like tracking it down would probably be hell.
    - SXX 9y ago
      Might be it's time to finally run it under Valgrind's massif and try to fix it myself.
      - jcelerier 9y ago
        You should look into using heaptrack instead, it's much much faster than valgrind and has a very efficient UI - the memory flamegraphs in particular are fantastic. It's built by folks at KDAB so works fine with KDE / Qt apps.
- yoran 9y ago
  Just out of curiosity, how does KDE compare to XFCE feature-wise? I am using XFCE for it being lightweight. However, I'd be willing to give KDE a shot if it has some nice features that can enhance my productivity while remaining lightweight.
  - lallysingh 9y ago
    The file manager, dolphin, is nice. Open up a shell in the window for that directory. Second best for manager I've ever used after Mac+default folder x
    - znpy 9y ago
      > dolphin I really can't understand why people would want to use something as dumb as dolphin (created to be as dumb as nautilus) when you have the great and awesome Konqueror at your fingertips.
      - seba_dos1 9y ago
        It's the same kpart, just in a different UI shell. Dolphin has some overly simplistic defaults, but you should get the most (if not all) that you can get with Konqueror out of it.
  - Sylos 9y ago
    KDE's search, called KRunner, is pretty nice, too. It searches applications and files, mails and calendar entries etc. (if you use the KDE Kontact suite), can calculate things and convert between units, allows you to jump to windows that you have open and many more things. It's also got autocompletion and acts intelligently to a limited degree (basically it remembers that when you typed in "Fi" last time, you wanted Firefox, not Filezilla, so it puts Firefox at the top). Of course, this does use up more CPU cycles than the pretty basic search in Xfce. You can turn off some of those search features, if you don't think you'll need them. And here's some random examples of the features that KDE has: I do some webdev, so I need a color picker every now and then. I have one of those in my panel. I also have a little button in my panel that I can click on, which pops open a list of the most recently modified files in my Downloads-folder, effectively acting as a direct access to my downloads. Lastly, you might want to play around with turning off compositing in KDE's settings. That does limit some features, but should speed things up quite a bit, too.
nnq 9y ago
There's also the folks who end up having to use Ubuntu LTS (16.x) for various reasons, and if they ever try KDE on it will be doomed to inevitably hate it... Hope the story doesn't repeat with their next LTS version. (Maybe the KDE foundation should dedicate manpower/resources to the Kubuntu project before their LTS releases or something, as they'd massively increase their usage base this way...)
- 2ion 9y ago
  Absolutely true. At work, we use 16.04 and Plasma in the version that shipped with it is very unbecoming. A stark contrast to what actually maintained, recent versions of the DE bring to the table.
- rwnspace 9y ago
  Curious, for what reasons am I supposed to hate it? What am I ignorant of? I use KDE neon which uses a mildly stripped-down Ubuntu 16.04. I surf, do some web development, attempt to learn Clojure, and make my desktop look very pretty. So far (couple months) I've had the "it just works!" level of experience. Edit: Actually, I suppose that is distinct from the LTS Ubuntu release /with/ KDE.
  - Sylos 9y ago
    Yeah, KDE Neon is very distinct from Kubuntu 16.04. Kubuntu 16.04 comes with a really outdated version of Qt and with KDE Plasma 5.5, which was essentially still a development version of the 5.x series. KDE Neon pretty much just exists to fix that hot mess.
    - nnq 9y ago
      ...then why TF don't people promote like even a little bit?! I didn't event know this KDE Neon existed. Really, WTF, it's not event on the page listing Ubuntu flavors https://www.ubuntu.com/download/flavours https://www.ubuntu.com/download/flavours and being a KDE project it's not even on the kde.org homepage. Do some people still live by "build it and they will come" nonsense? I mean, nobody expects dedicated marketing campaigns for an open source project, but at lest some links in the places where people could see. Event on the neon.kde.org page I see the crucial information that this is based on Ubuntu LTS burried in a big wall of text I wouldn't have ever bothered to read if I wasn't actively digging for details. I'll wait for a version based on Ubuntu 18 LTS when that comes, and definitely try it, but boy, it's like whoever works on this took great effort to keep it stealth or something...
qwerty456127 9y ago
I have hardly ever used a computer less than 5 years old. All the computers I've used (except the most ancient) had built-in graphics. Yet I have never seen a single sign of slowness from KDE ever. I totally don't understand people saying KDE is slow or resource-heavy.

by Jonnax 9y ago

KDE is excellent. Always seemed it got a lot of negativity from people that only perceived Linux as an operating system that should be run on a 5 year old laptop.

kazen44 9y ago

most criticism i seen nowadays is rooted in the KDE 4.X days. KDE 5 has been excellent and suprisingly lightweight aswell.

simion314 9y ago
I am still on KDE4, my setup works fine for me so I don't dare to change it, the problem was in the begining with KDE4.0 and the next few years, the transition from KDE3.5 was rough.
SXX 9y ago
I would agree, but Plasma still using up to 400-500MB RAM for me with no obvious reason since I use pretty much default panel with 6 saved app launcher icons. While it's not problem on 32GB machine it's the part of KDE with most memory usage of all KDE apps that I use.
- makomk 9y ago
  I'm pretty sure every KDE 5 version of Plasma has a memory leak somewhere, but it seems like tracking it down would probably be hell.
  - SXX 9y ago
    Might be it's time to finally run it under Valgrind's massif and try to fix it myself.
    - jcelerier 9y ago
      You should look into using heaptrack instead, it's much much faster than valgrind and has a very efficient UI - the memory flamegraphs in particular are fantastic. It's built by folks at KDAB so works fine with KDE / Qt apps.
yoran 9y ago
Just out of curiosity, how does KDE compare to XFCE feature-wise? I am using XFCE for it being lightweight. However, I'd be willing to give KDE a shot if it has some nice features that can enhance my productivity while remaining lightweight.
- lallysingh 9y ago
  The file manager, dolphin, is nice. Open up a shell in the window for that directory. Second best for manager I've ever used after Mac+default folder x
  - znpy 9y ago
    > dolphin I really can't understand why people would want to use something as dumb as dolphin (created to be as dumb as nautilus) when you have the great and awesome Konqueror at your fingertips.
    - seba_dos1 9y ago
      It's the same kpart, just in a different UI shell. Dolphin has some overly simplistic defaults, but you should get the most (if not all) that you can get with Konqueror out of it.
- Sylos 9y ago
  KDE's search, called KRunner, is pretty nice, too. It searches applications and files, mails and calendar entries etc. (if you use the KDE Kontact suite), can calculate things and convert between units, allows you to jump to windows that you have open and many more things. It's also got autocompletion and acts intelligently to a limited degree (basically it remembers that when you typed in "Fi" last time, you wanted Firefox, not Filezilla, so it puts Firefox at the top). Of course, this does use up more CPU cycles than the pretty basic search in Xfce. You can turn off some of those search features, if you don't think you'll need them. And here's some random examples of the features that KDE has: I do some webdev, so I need a color picker every now and then. I have one of those in my panel. I also have a little button in my panel that I can click on, which pops open a list of the most recently modified files in my Downloads-folder, effectively acting as a direct access to my downloads. Lastly, you might want to play around with turning off compositing in KDE's settings. That does limit some features, but should speed things up quite a bit, too.

nnq 9y ago

There's also the folks who end up having to use Ubuntu LTS (16.x) for various reasons, and if they ever try KDE on it will be doomed to inevitably hate it... Hope the story doesn't repeat with their next LTS version. (Maybe the KDE foundation should dedicate manpower/resources to the Kubuntu project before their LTS releases or something, as they'd massively increase their usage base this way...)

2ion 9y ago
Absolutely true. At work, we use 16.04 and Plasma in the version that shipped with it is very unbecoming. A stark contrast to what actually maintained, recent versions of the DE bring to the table.
rwnspace 9y ago
Curious, for what reasons am I supposed to hate it? What am I ignorant of? I use KDE neon which uses a mildly stripped-down Ubuntu 16.04. I surf, do some web development, attempt to learn Clojure, and make my desktop look very pretty. So far (couple months) I've had the "it just works!" level of experience. Edit: Actually, I suppose that is distinct from the LTS Ubuntu release /with/ KDE.
- Sylos 9y ago
  Yeah, KDE Neon is very distinct from Kubuntu 16.04. Kubuntu 16.04 comes with a really outdated version of Qt and with KDE Plasma 5.5, which was essentially still a development version of the 5.x series. KDE Neon pretty much just exists to fix that hot mess.
  - nnq 9y ago
    ...then why TF don't people promote like even a little bit?! I didn't event know this KDE Neon existed. Really, WTF, it's not event on the page listing Ubuntu flavors https://www.ubuntu.com/download/flavours https://www.ubuntu.com/download/flavours and being a KDE project it's not even on the kde.org homepage. Do some people still live by "build it and they will come" nonsense? I mean, nobody expects dedicated marketing campaigns for an open source project, but at lest some links in the places where people could see. Event on the neon.kde.org page I see the crucial information that this is based on Ubuntu LTS burried in a big wall of text I wouldn't have ever bothered to read if I wasn't actively digging for details. I'll wait for a version based on Ubuntu 18 LTS when that comes, and definitely try it, but boy, it's like whoever works on this took great effort to keep it stealth or something...

qwerty456127 9y ago

I have hardly ever used a computer less than 5 years old. All the computers I've used (except the most ancient) had built-in graphics. Yet I have never seen a single sign of slowness from KDE ever. I totally don't understand people saying KDE is slow or resource-heavy.