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I hesitate to use the word 'bloat', but ever since DKE4 with that Avahi service or whatever it was, that's the impression I've had of KDE. It almost feels like

I hesitate to use the word 'bloat', but ever since DKE4 with that Avahi service or whatever it was, that's the impression I've had of KDE. It almost feels like a separate OS on top of an OS. I guess it's just not for me. About a year ago I discovered AwesomeWM and just how flexible and configurable it is - I can truly have a 100% completely customized desktop down to every detail. Even without that though I'd probably opt for something like XFCE if I wanted something with a desktop and taskbar. There's just no good reason a desktop has to be as heavy as more popular options. Even the Windows desktop isn't as heavy.

Shared404 3y ago
> Even the Windows desktop isn't as heavy. Have you used Windows recently[0]? KDE is definitely lighter than Windows, in both mental load and RAM usage. At least as of late Windows 10 and early Windows 11, which were the last times I used it with any regularity. I'll stick with sway though for now, and I'm excited for the new Cosmic version coming soon. [0] Recently is relative of course. It's been a while for me.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
MSFT_Edging 3y ago
I moved to i3 then to Xmonad after years of Gnome, I felt similar, just too much junk. Recently I set up a few new laptops and decided to try KDE as a "base layer" for various utilities I need, as its easier to install the DE and get the utilities as deps than download them all myself. The annoying truth about tiling WMs that I ignored for years is man it takes so much time to get set up exactly how you like it. I could drop in my xmonad setup like I've done on other machines, but I want to try one of the wayland offerings and just the time commitment is making me put it off. That being said, the most recent KDE plasma desktop is extremely snappy and polished feeling. More so than the windows desktop, and I feel like its 85% as smooth as say MacOS. I've yet to test battery life compared to a bare bones suckless tiling setup, but I'm still getting very good battery life without it.
not_your_vase 3y ago
I feel you. I have become a sway and xmonad user on my machines after years of riding KDE. I was daily driving Neon (the official KDE distro) for about 2 years before I have had enough of the bloat and the general direction of the desktop env. I have a more and more stronger feeling that most of these projects are developed without an actual usecase. Which is fine of course, OSS is about scratching your own itch, not other's... but nowadays it's almost a sin to mention that something is buggy/unusable.
orhmeh09 3y ago
Just FYI, XFCE has a dbus dependency, so it might not be what you are looking for if that's a problem for you.
natrys 3y ago
On the flip side, AwesomeWM or Xmonad users like us are stuck with Xorg for the foreseeable future. Maybe not a problem for here and now, but a concern in the long term for sure. Shame that the barrier to entry to creating an independent WM for Wayland is so high that very few exist yet and none that can substitute those two (yes I am aware of Sway).
sho_hn 3y ago
If you haven't revisited it since those days, Plasma 5 eventually achieved a reputation for being relatively light-weight - a default session was, at some points (maybe still is), lighter than XFce, getting it design wins on lower-powered ARM devices like the Pinebook at the time. This was the result of projects like Plasma Mobile, and also the community intentionally focusing on hardware vendors and embedded as a growth area (as now seen with deployments like the Steam Deck or Mercedes-Benz cars). Criticism of KDE 4 as bloated is well-taken, but we've since done quite a lot to repent :-) Disclaimer: I'm a KDE contributor.
- DEADMINCE 3y ago
  > If you haven't revisited it since those days, Plasma 5 eventually achieved a reputation for being relatively light-weight - a default session was, at some points (maybe still is), lighter than XFce That is very interesting! I will definitely give it another look. Is it still running that service that started with 'a'? What was the reason for that? I always found that so frustrating. I remember fighting with it to try and kill it or disable it way back in the day. > Criticism of KDE 4 as bloated is well-taken, but we've since done quite a lot to repent :-) Disclaimer: I'm a KDE contributor. Thank you for all the work you do!
  - milliams 3y ago
    I think you're thinking of "Akonadi", a service used for calendars, contacts, emails, RSS etc. It famously originally came with a MySQL server dependency (though I think that it might now work with SQLite).
    - jraph 3y ago
      I just checked, Akonadi still uses MySQL on Plasma 6. But you can probably disable it (in settings > background services > Account manager (translated from French so possibly not accurate)) if you don't use any PIM feature of KDE (contacts, mails). Now, it's quite idle, so one wouldn't need to worry about it I think. Baloo, Nepomuk's successor, has also improved a lot and file indexing can be disabled, or folders excluded from indexing. And I agree about Plasma being lightweight: that's what I run on a 12 year old tablet which has 1GB of RAM because it has been the only touch-friendly DE that was lightweight enough for years. Now, we have Plasma mobile and Phosh that might do the job better.
bityard 3y ago
I have not tried KDE 6 yet, but I have been running KDE 5 on Debian for about 1.5 years and with few exceptions, I find it to be fast, relatively bloat-free, and almost infinitely configurable. On my systems, it uses something like 1.2 GB of memory out of the box. Meaning you have a _very_ usable machine even with only 4 GB of RAM, as long as you can avoid the temptation to run Electron apps. Pretty sure that is impossible with Windows. I've tried basically every Linux DE and WM since I first started using Linux in 1996, and basically haven't been happier with the overall experience than I am now. Which scares me a little bit, because every time I get comfortable with a DE, someone decides to throw it all out and rewrite the thing from scratch. (GNOME 2->3, KDE 3->4, etc.)
- tredre3 3y ago
  > Pretty sure that is impossible with Windows. A fresh Windows 10 install on a system with 4GB of ram will idle at around 1GB used. Perhaps your comment is correct in regards to Windows 11, though. KDE6 has been pretty good to me, you should try it! Or wait for 6.1.
dnAGged 3y ago
Why do you think KDE is not configurable?
- DEADMINCE 3y ago
  I don't, but it, nor any DE like it come close to customizability when compared with AwesomeWM. It's not just about settings are available, I can hook into and change whatever functions I like, add custom code easily, replace every single aspect of the interface, etc.
  - fooker 3y ago
    Can you give a specific example of what you could do with Awesome WM that you can't replicate easily with plasma 5 or an available extension?
xcv123 3y ago
> Even the Windows desktop isn't as heavy LOL. No. Try Window 11 then try KDE 5 or 6. No comparison. You are comparing KDE4, a 10 year old release which was not well optimized. KDE has become more efficient while Windows has become more bogged down and bloated with ads and telemetry and crapware. It is unusable before running a debloating script.
- redeeman 3y ago
  and probably kde 4.0 or 4.1, not the later releases where things were kinda good
- DEADMINCE 3y ago
  I don't know about Windows 11, but Windows 10 is still very snappy on old hardware with low ram. Windows has a lot of issues but desktop responsiveness isn't typically one of them.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - xcv123 3y ago
    Windows 10 is more bloated than Windows 8. Windows 11 is worse than 10. Even if it was more responsive, the ads are obnoxious.
    - DEADMINCE 3y ago
      No ads on my windows 10. Yes you have to configure it a bit after install, but once you do it can be pretty lean. I ran it on a machine with no more than 4gb for a few years and it was fine, clean and fast.
      - xcv123 3y ago
        I was talking about Windows 11. That is much worse. Yeah of course there are ways to get rid of all that. Plenty of decrapifier scripts on Github. I use https://atlasos.net https://atlasos.net
lyu07282 3y ago
I don't think they are comparable anyway, plasma is a desktop environment not a window manager. I mean plasma5 has an incredible amount of features, and it's extensible by Qt/QML widgets that are very easy to write. Sure you can say you don't really need its features, like it's bluetooth integration, its audio mixer, multihead display settings, notifications with individually configurable alerts, per-application or window customization, integrated screenshot and screen recording, MTP/NFS/SMB/etc. integration, file content fts, etc. etc. And I'm sure you could achieve all of it somehow in awesomewm/i3wm/etc. but to me it just feels like a waste of time and a bad user experience. Perhaps I'm just getting old and rather focus on more interesting things than the configuration files of my window manager. Disclaimer: I've been using Linux on the desktop exclusively since before Windows XP.

Shared404 3y ago

> Even the Windows desktop isn't as heavy. Have you used Windows recently[0]? KDE is definitely lighter than Windows, in both mental load and RAM usage. At least as of late Windows 10 and early Windows 11, which were the last times I used it with any regularity. I'll stick with sway though for now, and I'm excited for the new Cosmic version coming soon. [0] Recently is relative of course. It's been a while for me.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

MSFT_Edging 3y ago

I moved to i3 then to Xmonad after years of Gnome, I felt similar, just too much junk. Recently I set up a few new laptops and decided to try KDE as a "base layer" for various utilities I need, as its easier to install the DE and get the utilities as deps than download them all myself. The annoying truth about tiling WMs that I ignored for years is man it takes so much time to get set up exactly how you like it. I could drop in my xmonad setup like I've done on other machines, but I want to try one of the wayland offerings and just the time commitment is making me put it off. That being said, the most recent KDE plasma desktop is extremely snappy and polished feeling. More so than the windows desktop, and I feel like its 85% as smooth as say MacOS. I've yet to test battery life compared to a bare bones suckless tiling setup, but I'm still getting very good battery life without it.

not_your_vase 3y ago

I feel you. I have become a sway and xmonad user on my machines after years of riding KDE. I was daily driving Neon (the official KDE distro) for about 2 years before I have had enough of the bloat and the general direction of the desktop env. I have a more and more stronger feeling that most of these projects are developed without an actual usecase. Which is fine of course, OSS is about scratching your own itch, not other's... but nowadays it's almost a sin to mention that something is buggy/unusable.

orhmeh09 3y ago

Just FYI, XFCE has a dbus dependency, so it might not be what you are looking for if that's a problem for you.

natrys 3y ago

On the flip side, AwesomeWM or Xmonad users like us are stuck with Xorg for the foreseeable future. Maybe not a problem for here and now, but a concern in the long term for sure. Shame that the barrier to entry to creating an independent WM for Wayland is so high that very few exist yet and none that can substitute those two (yes I am aware of Sway).

sho_hn 3y ago

If you haven't revisited it since those days, Plasma 5 eventually achieved a reputation for being relatively light-weight - a default session was, at some points (maybe still is), lighter than XFce, getting it design wins on lower-powered ARM devices like the Pinebook at the time. This was the result of projects like Plasma Mobile, and also the community intentionally focusing on hardware vendors and embedded as a growth area (as now seen with deployments like the Steam Deck or Mercedes-Benz cars). Criticism of KDE 4 as bloated is well-taken, but we've since done quite a lot to repent :-) Disclaimer: I'm a KDE contributor.

DEADMINCE 3y ago
> If you haven't revisited it since those days, Plasma 5 eventually achieved a reputation for being relatively light-weight - a default session was, at some points (maybe still is), lighter than XFce That is very interesting! I will definitely give it another look. Is it still running that service that started with 'a'? What was the reason for that? I always found that so frustrating. I remember fighting with it to try and kill it or disable it way back in the day. > Criticism of KDE 4 as bloated is well-taken, but we've since done quite a lot to repent :-) Disclaimer: I'm a KDE contributor. Thank you for all the work you do!
- milliams 3y ago
  I think you're thinking of "Akonadi", a service used for calendars, contacts, emails, RSS etc. It famously originally came with a MySQL server dependency (though I think that it might now work with SQLite).
  - jraph 3y ago
    I just checked, Akonadi still uses MySQL on Plasma 6. But you can probably disable it (in settings > background services > Account manager (translated from French so possibly not accurate)) if you don't use any PIM feature of KDE (contacts, mails). Now, it's quite idle, so one wouldn't need to worry about it I think. Baloo, Nepomuk's successor, has also improved a lot and file indexing can be disabled, or folders excluded from indexing. And I agree about Plasma being lightweight: that's what I run on a 12 year old tablet which has 1GB of RAM because it has been the only touch-friendly DE that was lightweight enough for years. Now, we have Plasma mobile and Phosh that might do the job better.

bityard 3y ago

I have not tried KDE 6 yet, but I have been running KDE 5 on Debian for about 1.5 years and with few exceptions, I find it to be fast, relatively bloat-free, and almost infinitely configurable. On my systems, it uses something like 1.2 GB of memory out of the box. Meaning you have a _very_ usable machine even with only 4 GB of RAM, as long as you can avoid the temptation to run Electron apps. Pretty sure that is impossible with Windows. I've tried basically every Linux DE and WM since I first started using Linux in 1996, and basically haven't been happier with the overall experience than I am now. Which scares me a little bit, because every time I get comfortable with a DE, someone decides to throw it all out and rewrite the thing from scratch. (GNOME 2->3, KDE 3->4, etc.)

tredre3 3y ago
> Pretty sure that is impossible with Windows. A fresh Windows 10 install on a system with 4GB of ram will idle at around 1GB used. Perhaps your comment is correct in regards to Windows 11, though. KDE6 has been pretty good to me, you should try it! Or wait for 6.1.

dnAGged 3y ago

Why do you think KDE is not configurable?

DEADMINCE 3y ago
I don't, but it, nor any DE like it come close to customizability when compared with AwesomeWM. It's not just about settings are available, I can hook into and change whatever functions I like, add custom code easily, replace every single aspect of the interface, etc.
- fooker 3y ago
  Can you give a specific example of what you could do with Awesome WM that you can't replicate easily with plasma 5 or an available extension?

xcv123 3y ago

> Even the Windows desktop isn't as heavy LOL. No. Try Window 11 then try KDE 5 or 6. No comparison. You are comparing KDE4, a 10 year old release which was not well optimized. KDE has become more efficient while Windows has become more bogged down and bloated with ads and telemetry and crapware. It is unusable before running a debloating script.

redeeman 3y ago
and probably kde 4.0 or 4.1, not the later releases where things were kinda good
DEADMINCE 3y ago
I don't know about Windows 11, but Windows 10 is still very snappy on old hardware with low ram. Windows has a lot of issues but desktop responsiveness isn't typically one of them.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- xcv123 3y ago
  Windows 10 is more bloated than Windows 8. Windows 11 is worse than 10. Even if it was more responsive, the ads are obnoxious.
  - DEADMINCE 3y ago
    No ads on my windows 10. Yes you have to configure it a bit after install, but once you do it can be pretty lean. I ran it on a machine with no more than 4gb for a few years and it was fine, clean and fast.
    - xcv123 3y ago
      I was talking about Windows 11. That is much worse. Yeah of course there are ways to get rid of all that. Plenty of decrapifier scripts on Github. I use https://atlasos.net https://atlasos.net

lyu07282 3y ago

I don't think they are comparable anyway, plasma is a desktop environment not a window manager. I mean plasma5 has an incredible amount of features, and it's extensible by Qt/QML widgets that are very easy to write. Sure you can say you don't really need its features, like it's bluetooth integration, its audio mixer, multihead display settings, notifications with individually configurable alerts, per-application or window customization, integrated screenshot and screen recording, MTP/NFS/SMB/etc. integration, file content fts, etc. etc. And I'm sure you could achieve all of it somehow in awesomewm/i3wm/etc. but to me it just feels like a waste of time and a bad user experience. Perhaps I'm just getting old and rather focus on more interesting things than the configuration files of my window manager. Disclaimer: I've been using Linux on the desktop exclusively since before Windows XP.