4 ms·

KDE (Plasma) 5 (i guess you meant that) is usable but i still think KDE 3 was the high point of KDE. After all the flashy stuff was introduced in KDE 4 things w

KDE (Plasma) 5 (i guess you meant that) is usable but i still think KDE 3 was the high point of KDE. After all the flashy stuff was introduced in KDE 4 things went downhill fast. Similarly with Gnome, Gnome 2 was the best series, Gnome 3 was awful. It seems somewhere around the late 2000s both projects got very nice and usable desktop environments, couldn't figure out how to "evolve" next (because apparently software just can't not evolve) and started throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks. And unsurprisingly, a lot of it did stick. To its credit, KDE 5 does seem to try to clean up the mess a bit though in that over the years it is the only between the two that doesn't compulsively make me want to remove it from any Linux machine i get my hands on (and can remove stuff :-P). Sadly XFCE seems to be heading down the same way.

qwerty456127 6y ago
I agree for Gnome, but how is KDE 5 worse than KDE 3?
- badsectoracula 6y ago
  Note that i was never a big fan of KDE in general, i just happen to like KDE 3 more than the other versions (though TBH i haven't used KDE 2 at all and while i do like how KDE 1 looked and behaved - it was the first Linux environment i ever used - it was a bit too rough, though that was also because of Qt1 too) and i used it as a second environment in some computers. But the two main reasons i think KDE 5 is worse than KDE 3 is that as a UI it follows the same pattern as Gnome 3 (and Windows 10's "modern" apps, sadly) for wasting screen space everywhere and it does feel like it has a lot of moving parts everywhere which aren't exactly fitting perfectly with each other even though they are made for each other (i know that KDE 3 was probably also similar, but it always felt solid and stable - i wonder if breaking kdelibs or whatever it was called to a myriad of tiny little libraries that all applications and each other needing to be there anyway made things more brittle, though that might be my bias from whenever i try to install a KDE application in a non-KDE environment and i get a dependency vomit from the package installer). I might sound too hard on KDE 5, but TBH if i absolutely had to choose between it and Gnome and had no other option (or the other option was a tiling WM - which i never liked), then i'd use KDE. It isn't bad, i'd still install it on a computer i do not want to fiddle around with much.
  - Fnoord 6y ago
    I would say if you like KDE 3, you liked KDE 2 as well. KDE 2 was the tick of the tick-tock of KDE 2/3. KDE 5 is the tock of the tick-tock of KDE 4/5. At least that is how I'd describe it (Intel been tock-tock-tock'ing the past years notwithstanding). I have fond memories of KDE 2/3 and GNOME 2. I also ran KDE 1 and GNOME 1 back in the days (initially GNOME cause of RedHat Linux and the license issues with KDE). If you compare them to Windows 9x and early NT they were quite good.
    - badsectoracula 6y ago
      I think that with the exception of the kernel being a layer on top of MS-DOS (but that would be comparing with Linux not with KDE), Win9x was better technically than KDE1. For example I do not think to this day there is anything tech-wise like COM with all of its related tech like OLE (which allows documents to embed objects exposed by other applications which themselves can run in 'embedded mode' to edit said embedded objects), ActiveX (which in a similar way allows applications to make use of reusable controls that can describe themselves), Automation (which allows applications to expose scriptable interfaces that can be called by any other application), Active Scripting (which allows applications to embed scripting languages which themselves are registered with the system so that, e.g., you can install a scripting engine for Python which then can be used to script any application that uses Active Scripting even if that application has no idea about Python) and a bunch of other things. (note that DBus does provide the 'expose interfaces' part, but it is only about that whereas COM is a more generic technology that was used for all of the above)
      - emilsedgh 6y ago
        What you're describing for a "dbus but for ui" is one of the core KDE technologies still in use today named KPart [0][1]. [0] https://techbase.kde.org/Development/Tutorials/Using_KParts https://techbase.kde.org/Development/Tutorials/Using_KParts [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDE_Platform_4#KParts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDE_Platform_4#KParts
        6y ago
- scaladev 6y ago
  I still find it extremely buggy. I've been hearing these "KDE 5 is fine now" for the past few months in comments, podcasts, blog posts, etc. Yesterday I gave in and decided to try the latest release. After logging in, KDE greeted me with a plasma crash. In the next few hours of light usage, some more crashes followed. It's working as it always has been for me, since the early days of 4. It's pretty much dead for me now. For the record, this has been happening on many machines, and I don't use nvigia GPUs and similar stuff. Also, I try to report bugs in software that I use, but KDE has the appearance of software which receives no QA at all. It's one thing to report a bug in sway or some XFCE application which crashes maybe once in a few years, and other to use something which crashes a dozen times a day. I'd be filling bugs all day long.
  - eitland 6y ago
    > Yesterday I gave in and decided to try the latest release. After logging in, KDE greeted me with a plasma crash. In the next few hours of light usage, some more crashes followed. What distro? New or installed on top of something else? I have run KDE Neon since a few years ago om two (admittedly high end) laptops and it has been very smooth.
    - qwerty456127 6y ago
      > I have run KDE Neon since a few years ago om two (admittedly high end) laptops and it has been very smooth. I have been using always-latest KDE5 with Manjaro on a very old (Core 2 Duo, Intel graphics) laptop for some years already and it's perfect. Less than 5 crashes a year. KDE4 would crash as soon as I attached an extra display. KDE5 also crashed often when it was immature. Now it works like a breeze. As somebody who has watched (and tried regularly) KDE since the inception of KDE3, I can say KDE has finally reached maturity (if not perfection) about 1.5 years ago.
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    The KDE bug reporting process is a huge pain, too. I discovered that Konsole crashes when unlimited scrollback is enabled and /tmp becomes full. Submitting the crash report requires answering a pop quiz, and if any of your answers are unsatisfactory then you get a message that your report is not useful. Navigate that gauntlet and then you are asked to create an account and write a bug report, and your crash dump becomes public. Good software needs a really easy way to report bugs and get back to work. And people to triage the reports. I do not work for KDE, but the bug reporting process treats me like I do.

qwerty456127 6y ago

I agree for Gnome, but how is KDE 5 worse than KDE 3?

badsectoracula 6y ago
Note that i was never a big fan of KDE in general, i just happen to like KDE 3 more than the other versions (though TBH i haven't used KDE 2 at all and while i do like how KDE 1 looked and behaved - it was the first Linux environment i ever used - it was a bit too rough, though that was also because of Qt1 too) and i used it as a second environment in some computers. But the two main reasons i think KDE 5 is worse than KDE 3 is that as a UI it follows the same pattern as Gnome 3 (and Windows 10's "modern" apps, sadly) for wasting screen space everywhere and it does feel like it has a lot of moving parts everywhere which aren't exactly fitting perfectly with each other even though they are made for each other (i know that KDE 3 was probably also similar, but it always felt solid and stable - i wonder if breaking kdelibs or whatever it was called to a myriad of tiny little libraries that all applications and each other needing to be there anyway made things more brittle, though that might be my bias from whenever i try to install a KDE application in a non-KDE environment and i get a dependency vomit from the package installer). I might sound too hard on KDE 5, but TBH if i absolutely had to choose between it and Gnome and had no other option (or the other option was a tiling WM - which i never liked), then i'd use KDE. It isn't bad, i'd still install it on a computer i do not want to fiddle around with much.
- Fnoord 6y ago
  I would say if you like KDE 3, you liked KDE 2 as well. KDE 2 was the tick of the tick-tock of KDE 2/3. KDE 5 is the tock of the tick-tock of KDE 4/5. At least that is how I'd describe it (Intel been tock-tock-tock'ing the past years notwithstanding). I have fond memories of KDE 2/3 and GNOME 2. I also ran KDE 1 and GNOME 1 back in the days (initially GNOME cause of RedHat Linux and the license issues with KDE). If you compare them to Windows 9x and early NT they were quite good.
  - badsectoracula 6y ago
    I think that with the exception of the kernel being a layer on top of MS-DOS (but that would be comparing with Linux not with KDE), Win9x was better technically than KDE1. For example I do not think to this day there is anything tech-wise like COM with all of its related tech like OLE (which allows documents to embed objects exposed by other applications which themselves can run in 'embedded mode' to edit said embedded objects), ActiveX (which in a similar way allows applications to make use of reusable controls that can describe themselves), Automation (which allows applications to expose scriptable interfaces that can be called by any other application), Active Scripting (which allows applications to embed scripting languages which themselves are registered with the system so that, e.g., you can install a scripting engine for Python which then can be used to script any application that uses Active Scripting even if that application has no idea about Python) and a bunch of other things. (note that DBus does provide the 'expose interfaces' part, but it is only about that whereas COM is a more generic technology that was used for all of the above)
    - emilsedgh 6y ago
      What you're describing for a "dbus but for ui" is one of the core KDE technologies still in use today named KPart [0][1]. [0] https://techbase.kde.org/Development/Tutorials/Using_KParts https://techbase.kde.org/Development/Tutorials/Using_KParts [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDE_Platform_4#KParts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDE_Platform_4#KParts
      - 6y ago
scaladev 6y ago
I still find it extremely buggy. I've been hearing these "KDE 5 is fine now" for the past few months in comments, podcasts, blog posts, etc. Yesterday I gave in and decided to try the latest release. After logging in, KDE greeted me with a plasma crash. In the next few hours of light usage, some more crashes followed. It's working as it always has been for me, since the early days of 4. It's pretty much dead for me now. For the record, this has been happening on many machines, and I don't use nvigia GPUs and similar stuff. Also, I try to report bugs in software that I use, but KDE has the appearance of software which receives no QA at all. It's one thing to report a bug in sway or some XFCE application which crashes maybe once in a few years, and other to use something which crashes a dozen times a day. I'd be filling bugs all day long.
- eitland 6y ago
  > Yesterday I gave in and decided to try the latest release. After logging in, KDE greeted me with a plasma crash. In the next few hours of light usage, some more crashes followed. What distro? New or installed on top of something else? I have run KDE Neon since a few years ago om two (admittedly high end) laptops and it has been very smooth.
  - qwerty456127 6y ago
    > I have run KDE Neon since a few years ago om two (admittedly high end) laptops and it has been very smooth. I have been using always-latest KDE5 with Manjaro on a very old (Core 2 Duo, Intel graphics) laptop for some years already and it's perfect. Less than 5 crashes a year. KDE4 would crash as soon as I attached an extra display. KDE5 also crashed often when it was immature. Now it works like a breeze. As somebody who has watched (and tried regularly) KDE since the inception of KDE3, I can say KDE has finally reached maturity (if not perfection) about 1.5 years ago.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  The KDE bug reporting process is a huge pain, too. I discovered that Konsole crashes when unlimited scrollback is enabled and /tmp becomes full. Submitting the crash report requires answering a pop quiz, and if any of your answers are unsatisfactory then you get a message that your report is not useful. Navigate that gauntlet and then you are asked to create an account and write a bug report, and your crash dump becomes public. Good software needs a really easy way to report bugs and get back to work. And people to triage the reports. I do not work for KDE, but the bug reporting process treats me like I do.