10 ms·

I was a very happy KDE user during the 3.3 to 3.5 days. I tried sticking with the desktop after the 4.0 release (there were SO MANY changes and grand new ideas

by c0l0 4y ago

I was a very happy KDE user during the 3.3 to 3.5 days. I tried sticking with the desktop after the 4.0 release (there were SO MANY changes and grand new ideas under the hood!), but lost patience soon after the 4.2 release - it just wasn't ready for day-to-day use; all the rough edges made me bleed every day. So I made the plunge to Xfce, and didn't look back for more than a decade. Until some three months ago, when I had to set up a new, additional machine at home, and I decided to try the new (really: current :)) Plasma Desktop on Arch Linux for funsies. By now, all may Xfce machines, except the one at work, have been migrated to KDE. Now even my wife uses it on her personal desktop - she's especially fond of Okular, KDE Connect, and digiKam.

PontifexMinimus 4y ago
> I was a very happy KDE user during the 3.3 to 3.5 days [...] So I made the plunge to Xfce, and didn't look back for more than a decade. My experience too. I liked KDE 3.5 so of course the devs had to fuck it up by chasing whatever is the user interface fashion of the day. So I went with xfce which doesn't change much. Maybe I will try out KDE again sometime.
- ablob 4y ago
  May I ask what the biggest changes/ deal breakers were? It is difficult to understand the whys without knowing about the usage-pattern was broken. I'm genuinely curious.
  - oriolid 4y ago
    IIRC KDE4 wasn't as much breaking existing usage patterns but pushing intrusive things like desktop widgets and generally trying to lock me into tightly integrated system. I remember it was really easy to create a desktop note by accident and somehow really difficult to delete one. KDE3.5, or Xfce for that matter, felt more like something that is good for launching apps, managing desktop and some generic utilities. The clumsy UI design didn't also help.
  - mardifoufs 4y ago
    > May I ask what the biggest changes/ deal breakers were? It is difficult to understand the whys without knowing about the usage-pattern was broken. I'm genuinely curious. KDE 4.0 was famously broken at release. It's not even missing features that was the issue, it was highly unstable and not ready for release.
  - fiddlerwoaroof 4y ago
    I was in this group and the major thing that annoyed me was the reinvention of the Amarok music player, destroying my favorite music player ever overnight.
    - oriolid 4y ago
      Now that you remind me, the Amarok update was terrible. For some time I used to run a self-built version of 1.4 and I see there is now a fork called Clementine and a few clone projects. For me streaming services have mostly replaced local music files.
  - LtWorf 4y ago
    KDE4 was pre-pre-pre-pre-release quality. It crashed all the time, it greatly increased hardware requirements, and they were trying to push the whole "semantic desktop" thing that was a complete failure and was basically nepomuk running at 100% to "index files" (that would never be found).
    - tjrDL6MjB2Zwwa 4y ago
      The desktop thing was one of my major issues. They fucked up desktop icons. It'd be akin to purchasing a new walkman and the volume buttons don't immediately change volume up and down, instead they're more generalized buttons so you CAN change the volume up and down with them, just not by pushing them and nothing more. Someone somewhere had an idea and an intent and I didn't give a shit and it represented a fundamental problem in their mental model of what they should be doing, so I left. It's great that it eventually got salvaged but it should never have happened in the first place.
- UncleSlacky 4y ago
  Trinity (forked from 3.5) is still around: https://trinitydesktop.org/ https://trinitydesktop.org/
  - kombine 4y ago
    One can truly see that KDE 4 was the right move long term.
    - canadianfella 4y ago
      [dead]
- kombine 4y ago
  It wasn't chasing the design. The major change was upgrade to Qt4 and they rewrote almost the entire thing from scratch. Long term I think it was for the best.
bluGill 4y ago
KDE did everything they could to tell people that it wasn't ready for general until 4.3, but never figured out how to get people to listen. Distros insisted on installing it by default. There was good reason for them to release 4.0 when they did but nobody has figured out how to communicate releases only to those the release is for (this last isn't about KDE, humans in general have the issue)
- LarryMullins 4y ago
  They should have called it 3.999 instead of 4.0, or "4.0 BETA", or "4.0 (for developers only!)" or anything like that. Anything other than giving it a new major version number without a disclaimer that it wasn't ready for prime-time. When you give something a new major version number, distro packagers will either update to it or they'll be subjected to endless questions from users asking them why the package is outdated. > There was good reason for them to release 4.0 What were those reasons? To me, it really seems like they rushed it out because the release of Windows Vista and iOS made them feel like they had to release something to seem current and up to date.
  - emilsedgh 4y ago
    The reason is that KDE is mostly developed by volunteers. Many of whom had branches that have been developed and ready for several years but not released. They were losing interest. KDE had to move the train to keep those volunteers around. If you don't ship it and some point it's gonna die.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
      So use the beta version to integrate everything and make sure it all works before shipping it to users. That's the point of having a beta. But shipping what should have been a beta release to end users as though it were finished has ramifications in how your project is viewed and whether people keep using it.
      - emilsedgh 4y ago
koyote 4y ago
I had the same experience but never moved back from Xfce. Is there any particular reason you've now migrated back to KDE? What I particularly like about Xfce is that it's not very bloated. KDE always seemed quite bloated to me.
- kombine 4y ago
  Can you define "bloated"? RAM consumption? Disk space? All are a cheap commodity these days. I've been using KDE for the past 8 years on and off, and uninterruptedly in the last two years. It's fast, powerful and rich.
  - topaz0 4y ago
    I also found it to be slow on my (now 7 year old) laptop. Not everyone has the luxury of frequent upgrades. And I tend to prefer speed over bells and/or whistles.
    - aidenn0 4y ago
      KDE hasn't gotten more resource intensive on my laptop (turns 7 soon) since it was when I installed it in mid 2016. It probably uses a 200-300 more MB of ram compared to XFCE, but the number of tabs open in my web-browser dominates any other memory usage on my system. The only thing that slowed my system down was the file indexer (Baloo); some people have said better now, but I never re-enabled it.
      - kombine 4y ago
        That. I disabled Baloo because it's cache was growing uncontrollably. And Firefox with many opened tabs uses most RAM anyway, in that sense I don't see how much it's the problem of KDE.
      - everybodyknows 4y ago
        Did Baloo replace Nepomuk? How does Baloo compare with locate?
netol 4y ago
Same here. I still miss the KDE 3 interface: a bit ugly but usable, quick and stable. Xfce and gnome UX have always felt limiting to me

by c0l0 4y ago

PontifexMinimus 4y ago

> I was a very happy KDE user during the 3.3 to 3.5 days [...] So I made the plunge to Xfce, and didn't look back for more than a decade. My experience too. I liked KDE 3.5 so of course the devs had to fuck it up by chasing whatever is the user interface fashion of the day. So I went with xfce which doesn't change much. Maybe I will try out KDE again sometime.

ablob 4y ago
May I ask what the biggest changes/ deal breakers were? It is difficult to understand the whys without knowing about the usage-pattern was broken. I'm genuinely curious.
- oriolid 4y ago
  IIRC KDE4 wasn't as much breaking existing usage patterns but pushing intrusive things like desktop widgets and generally trying to lock me into tightly integrated system. I remember it was really easy to create a desktop note by accident and somehow really difficult to delete one. KDE3.5, or Xfce for that matter, felt more like something that is good for launching apps, managing desktop and some generic utilities. The clumsy UI design didn't also help.
- mardifoufs 4y ago
  > May I ask what the biggest changes/ deal breakers were? It is difficult to understand the whys without knowing about the usage-pattern was broken. I'm genuinely curious. KDE 4.0 was famously broken at release. It's not even missing features that was the issue, it was highly unstable and not ready for release.
- fiddlerwoaroof 4y ago
  I was in this group and the major thing that annoyed me was the reinvention of the Amarok music player, destroying my favorite music player ever overnight.
  - oriolid 4y ago
    Now that you remind me, the Amarok update was terrible. For some time I used to run a self-built version of 1.4 and I see there is now a fork called Clementine and a few clone projects. For me streaming services have mostly replaced local music files.
- LtWorf 4y ago
  KDE4 was pre-pre-pre-pre-release quality. It crashed all the time, it greatly increased hardware requirements, and they were trying to push the whole "semantic desktop" thing that was a complete failure and was basically nepomuk running at 100% to "index files" (that would never be found).
  - tjrDL6MjB2Zwwa 4y ago
    The desktop thing was one of my major issues. They fucked up desktop icons. It'd be akin to purchasing a new walkman and the volume buttons don't immediately change volume up and down, instead they're more generalized buttons so you CAN change the volume up and down with them, just not by pushing them and nothing more. Someone somewhere had an idea and an intent and I didn't give a shit and it represented a fundamental problem in their mental model of what they should be doing, so I left. It's great that it eventually got salvaged but it should never have happened in the first place.
UncleSlacky 4y ago
Trinity (forked from 3.5) is still around: https://trinitydesktop.org/ https://trinitydesktop.org/
- kombine 4y ago
  One can truly see that KDE 4 was the right move long term.
  - canadianfella 4y ago
    [dead]
kombine 4y ago
It wasn't chasing the design. The major change was upgrade to Qt4 and they rewrote almost the entire thing from scratch. Long term I think it was for the best.

bluGill 4y ago

KDE did everything they could to tell people that it wasn't ready for general until 4.3, but never figured out how to get people to listen. Distros insisted on installing it by default. There was good reason for them to release 4.0 when they did but nobody has figured out how to communicate releases only to those the release is for (this last isn't about KDE, humans in general have the issue)

LarryMullins 4y ago
They should have called it 3.999 instead of 4.0, or "4.0 BETA", or "4.0 (for developers only!)" or anything like that. Anything other than giving it a new major version number without a disclaimer that it wasn't ready for prime-time. When you give something a new major version number, distro packagers will either update to it or they'll be subjected to endless questions from users asking them why the package is outdated. > There was good reason for them to release 4.0 What were those reasons? To me, it really seems like they rushed it out because the release of Windows Vista and iOS made them feel like they had to release something to seem current and up to date.
- emilsedgh 4y ago
  The reason is that KDE is mostly developed by volunteers. Many of whom had branches that have been developed and ready for several years but not released. They were losing interest. KDE had to move the train to keep those volunteers around. If you don't ship it and some point it's gonna die.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
    So use the beta version to integrate everything and make sure it all works before shipping it to users. That's the point of having a beta. But shipping what should have been a beta release to end users as though it were finished has ramifications in how your project is viewed and whether people keep using it.
    - emilsedgh 4y ago

koyote 4y ago

I had the same experience but never moved back from Xfce. Is there any particular reason you've now migrated back to KDE? What I particularly like about Xfce is that it's not very bloated. KDE always seemed quite bloated to me.

kombine 4y ago
Can you define "bloated"? RAM consumption? Disk space? All are a cheap commodity these days. I've been using KDE for the past 8 years on and off, and uninterruptedly in the last two years. It's fast, powerful and rich.
- topaz0 4y ago
  I also found it to be slow on my (now 7 year old) laptop. Not everyone has the luxury of frequent upgrades. And I tend to prefer speed over bells and/or whistles.
  - aidenn0 4y ago
    KDE hasn't gotten more resource intensive on my laptop (turns 7 soon) since it was when I installed it in mid 2016. It probably uses a 200-300 more MB of ram compared to XFCE, but the number of tabs open in my web-browser dominates any other memory usage on my system. The only thing that slowed my system down was the file indexer (Baloo); some people have said better now, but I never re-enabled it.
    - kombine 4y ago
      That. I disabled Baloo because it's cache was growing uncontrollably. And Firefox with many opened tabs uses most RAM anyway, in that sense I don't see how much it's the problem of KDE.
    - everybodyknows 4y ago
      Did Baloo replace Nepomuk? How does Baloo compare with locate?

netol 4y ago

Same here. I still miss the KDE 3 interface: a bit ugly but usable, quick and stable. Xfce and gnome UX have always felt limiting to me