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> 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

> 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.

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.