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Health of the KDE Community

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Re: Health of the KDE Community

#41

Post by toyg »

stonesweep wrote: post #34
thevagrant wrote: post #23

Recently got back to using KDE and it is really polished with Opensuse Tumbleweed. I never understood why Gnome got all the attention from distros when KDE feels like a superior option.

In the beginning (95-ish) Qt was license encumbered, there was serious agitation about KDE becoming popular while using it, leading to the very-open GTK based GNOME desktop competition. It was a big kerfuffle at the time. See the History of Qt section: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_(software)

Also Qt is C++, whereas GTK is basically C.

Re: Health of the KDE Community

#42

Post by toyg »

thevagrant wrote: post #23

Recently got back to using KDE and it is really polished with Opensuse Tumbleweed. I never understood why Gnome got all the attention from distros when KDE feels like a superior option.

GNOME was backed by RedHat and other American developers, which included the likes of IBM, Intel, etc.

The bulk of QT and KDE developers are European; the only major European distribution, SuSE, went with KDE - but apart from that, the project could never attract the same level of investment as GTK-based efforts. It’s kind of a microcosm of the US/EU imbalance in digital tech.

Add to it that C++ (Qt) was never as popular as C (Gtk) in academic circles, which are major contributors of fresh developers to opensource in general.

Re: Health of the KDE Community

#43

Post by encryptluks2 »

noahadavis wrote: post #38
encryptluks2 wrote: post #31

The thing I don't like about KDE is that it is that KDE apps aren't individual components but part of a large framework. Anytime I go to install a KDE app on Arch, it wants to install like 30+ packages and unnecessary apps with it and I just end up finding something more lighter weight that doesn't have any or only a couple dependencies and it usually ends up performing a lot better.

The apps are already individual things that don't depend on each other, except in some cases where KParts are used. A KPart is kind of like an application turned into a library. Usually, this is not something users need to be concerned about. The integrated terminal in the Dolphin file manager is a Konsole KPart. openSUSE (and probably others like Fedora and Ubuntu) actually split Konsole into `konsole` and `konsole-…

Here is an example of the packages needed to install an address book called kaddressbook:

```

sudo pacman -S kaddressbook resolving dependencies... looking for conflicting packages...

Packages (89) accounts-qml-module-0.7-3 akonadi-21.04.0-1 akonadi-calendar-21.04.0-1 akonadi-contacts-21.04.0-1 akonadi-mime-21.04.0-1 akonadi-notes-21.04.0-1 akonadi-search-21.04.0-1 attica-5.81.0-1 grantleetheme-21.04.0-1 jemalloc-1:5.2.1-3 kaccounts-integration-21.04.0-1 kactivities-5.81.0-1 kalarmcal-21.04.0-1 karchive-5.81.0-1 kauth-5.81.0-1 kbookmarks-5.81.0-1 kcalendarcore-5.81.0-1 kcalutils-21.04.0-1 kcmutils-5.81.0-1 kcodecs-5.81.0-1 kcompletion-5.81.0-1 kconfig-5.81.0-1 kconfigwidgets-5.81.0-1 kcontacts-1:5.81.0-1 kcoreaddons-5.81.0-1 kcrash-5.81.0-1 kdav-1:5.81.0-1 kdbusaddons-5.81.0-1 kdeclarative-5.81.0-1 kded-5.81.0-1 kdepim-runtime-21.04.0-1 kglobalaccel-5.81.0-1 kguiaddons-5.81.0-1 kholidays-1:5.81.0-1 ki18n-5.81.0-1 kiconthemes-5.81.0-1 kidentitymanagement-21.04.0-1 kimap-21.04.0-1 kio-5.81.0-1 kirigami2-5.81.0-1 kitemmodels-5.81.0-1 kitemviews-5.81.0-1 kjobwidgets-5.81.0-1 kldap-21.04.0-1 kmailtransport-21.04.0-1 kmbox-21.04.0-1 kmime-21.04.0-1 knewstuff-5.81.0-1 knotifications-5.81.0-1 knotifyconfig-5.81.0-1 kontactinterface-21.04.0-1 kpackage-5.81.0-1 kparts-5.81.0-1 kpimtextedit-21.04.0-1 krunner-5.81.0-1 kservice-5.81.0-1 ksmtp-21.04.0-1 ktextwidgets-5.81.0-1 kuserfeedback-1.0.0-1 kwallet-5.81.0-1 kwidgetsaddons-5.81.0-1 kxmlgui-5.81.0-1 libaccounts-glib-1.25-3 libaccounts-qt-1.16-2 libakonadi-21.04.0-1 libdmtx-0.7.5-2 libkdepim-21.04.0-1 libkgapi-21.04.0-1 libkleo-21.04.0-1 libkolabxml-1.1.6-15 mariadb-10.5.9-1 mariadb-clients-10.5.9-1 media-player-info-24-2 pimcommon-21.04.0-1 plasma-framework-5.81.0-1 prison-5.81.0-1 purpose-5.81.0-1 qgpgme-1.15.1-1 qt5-networkauth-5.15.2-1 qt5-speech-5.15.2-1 signon-kwallet-extension-21.04.0-1 signon-plugin-oauth2-0.25-1 signon-ui-0.17+20171022-2 signond-8.60-3 solid-5.81.0-1 sonnet-5.81.0-1 syntax-highlighting-5.81.0-1 threadweaver-5.81.0-1 kaddressbook-21.04.0-1

Total Download Size: 91.18 MiB Total Installed Size: 487.96 MiB

:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n]

```

I'll have to admit it has gotten better. Before It would want to install the whole KDE desktop.

Re: Health of the KDE Community

#44

Post by ognarb »

noisem4ker wrote: post #21
ognarb wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The plans for plasma 6 and kde frameworks 6 are mostly around removing old deprecated features, simplify our dependency tree and porting to qt6. And there is no plans of adding any big features.

Old deprecated features such as...? Where can I read more?

You can find all the discussion here: https://phabricator.kde.org/tag/kf6/. Don't worry the features are mostly in the API, often because there is now a better available api (e.g. KPluginInfo vs KPluginMetaData, QRegExp vs QRegularExpression, ...).

Re: Health of the KDE Community

#45

Post by ognarb »

zxzax wrote: post #22
dyingkneepad wrote: post #17

The author also links to a similar assessment in the Gnome community, which I find really interesting. With Gnome we can see the interest went down after Gnome 3 was released. Many people like me ran away from it scared by the usability problems and unreliability of the extension system. And Gnome kept the same complained-about interface until today, and the project never picked up the pace it had before. While KDE4…

To give another opinion, I also thought GNOME 3 was not good, until around a few years ago. It's a lot better since then, they really ironed out a lot of the issues so you see the contributions start to raise up again recently. The extension API is also getting a lot more stable, but it's not totally there yet. One area where I think KDE does a lot better is with QML. At the moment GTK doesn't have anything as nice a…

vgtk looks nice, thanks for the link.

Re: Health of the KDE Community

#46

Post by ognarb »

toyg wrote: post #42
thevagrant wrote: post #23

Recently got back to using KDE and it is really polished with Opensuse Tumbleweed. I never understood why Gnome got all the attention from distros when KDE feels like a superior option.

GNOME was backed by RedHat and other American developers, which included the likes of IBM, Intel, etc. The bulk of QT and KDE developers are European; the only major European distribution, SuSE, went with KDE - but apart from that, the project could never attract the same level of investment as GTK-based efforts. It’s kind of a microcosm of the US/EU imbalance in digital tech. Add to it that C++ (Qt) was never as pop…

I don't think the reason is really c++ vs c. But the regional aspect is spot on. Also when SuSE was bought by an American company (Novell), they fired all the KDE devs.

Another aspect is the licensing, GTK was licensed under LGPL way before Qt and RMS casting doubts on the legal aspect of KDE even after Qt was re-licensed under GPL didn't help.

All these played a role in the early 00s, nowadays the problems is mostly that GNOME has many more enterprise features and integration with other RedHat products and it is hard to catch on.

Re: Health of the KDE Community

#47

Post by ognarb »

encryptluks2 wrote: post #43
noahadavis wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The apps are already individual things that don't depend on each other, except in some cases where KParts are used. A KPart is kind of like an application turned into a library. Usually, this is not something users need to be concerned about. The integrated terminal in the Dolphin file manager is a Konsole KPart. openSUSE (and probably others like Fedora and Ubuntu) actually split Konsole into `konsole` and `konsole-…

Here is an example of the packages needed to install an address book called kaddressbook: ``` sudo pacman -S kaddressbook resolving dependencies... looking for conflicting packages... Packages (89) accounts-qml-module-0.7-3 akonadi-21.04.0-1 akonadi-calendar-21.04.0-1 akonadi-contacts-21.04.0-1 akonadi-mime-21.04.0-1 akonadi-notes-21.04.0-1 akonadi-search-21.04.0-1 attica-5.81.0-1 grantleetheme-21.04.0-1 jemalloc-1:5…

Before we had a big libraries called kdelibs and kdepimlibs and people would complain that they were too big and so nobody outside of KDE would use them.

Now we split everything, and people complain that they are too many libraries. There is no way to make everyone happy. Note that all this packages are very small and all provides features you really want to have.

Re: Health of the KDE Community

#48

Post by encryptluks2 »

ognarb wrote: post #47
encryptluks2 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is an example of the packages needed to install an address book called kaddressbook: ``` sudo pacman -S kaddressbook resolving dependencies... looking for conflicting packages... Packages (89) accounts-qml-module-0.7-3 akonadi-21.04.0-1 akonadi-calendar-21.04.0-1 akonadi-contacts-21.04.0-1 akonadi-mime-21.04.0-1 akonadi-notes-21.04.0-1 akonadi-search-21.04.0-1 attica-5.81.0-1 grantleetheme-21.04.0-1 jemalloc-1:5…

Before we had a big libraries called kdelibs and kdepimlibs and people would complain that they were too big and so nobody outside of KDE would use them. Now we split everything, and people complain that they are too many libraries. There is no way to make everyone happy. Note that all this packages are very small and all provides features you really want to have.

I already get those with a single 4MB app though. No need to install so many.

Re: Health of the KDE Community

#49

Post by stonesweep »

toyg wrote: post #41
stonesweep wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the beginning (95-ish) Qt was license encumbered, there was serious agitation about KDE becoming popular while using it, leading to the very-open GTK based GNOME desktop competition. It was a big kerfuffle at the time. See the History of Qt section: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_(software)

Also Qt is C++, whereas GTK is basically C.

100% agree, I missed that - at this point in time (and maybe still a bit today?) there was a lot of grift between C and C++ being used for Linux systems things around that time as well (including how big the resulting binaries were, because modems to download!). Thanks for the reminder.

Re: Health of the KDE Community

#50

Post by ryantgtg »

executesorder66 wrote: post #15
ryantgtg wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m just a casual user, but three features I really like in Dolphin that I haven’t seen elsewhere: - Split window, so you can have two explorers right next to each other. - Tabs - If you drag a file/folder into another folder, you get prompted about “copying or moving?” In terms of health, I also appreciate that many of the devs frequent the kde subreddit, and they all seem really chill and receptive.

- Split window (just use your window manager?) - Thunar has Tabs, and I'm sure lots of other file managers do too - That is a nice option, and others should copy it.

Thanks. I haven't explored other file explorers in a while, and I figured that some of the features I listed exist elsewhere. But I was typing from my phone and was thus too lazy to type a qualifier.

"Just use your window manager" - and have two separate Dolphin windows? I mean, yeah. But it's very nice to have everything contained in one window. Right now I have five Dolphin tabs, four of which have split windows (I don't NEED this setup, but I like it).

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