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Where KDE is Going – Part 1

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Re: Where KDE is Going – Part 1

#61

Post by reitanqild »

coldtea wrote: post #56
reitanqild wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have like ten years of experience in mixed setups. I have supported Windows since 3.1.May I try to shed some light into this? Windows (from Microsoft, no OEM) could be really good, snappy and usable. On the other hand what many users see is a locked down enterprise installation at work and a bloatware-ridden laptop from hp, dell or one of the other mainstream brands at home. Furthermore a Windows installation (the…

A, also true. I always custom install from a Windows disc, and throw away the "monstrocity" that comes pre-installed in the OEM machine.

> I always custom install from a Windows disc, and throw away the "monstrocity" that comes pre-installed in the OEM machine.

Sadly that's not an option for most people.

Why Microsoft hasn't punished the OEMs over the years for making them look ugly, slow and bloated is an unanswered question to me.

Luckily that means we now have several Linux distros to choose from.

Re: Where KDE is Going – Part 1

#62

Post by simoncion »

Nanzikambe wrote: post #54

I love and use KDE on both my workstation and laptop. However over the decades, and especially since v4, I've seen it grow into something I barely recognise. Some things have to change: 1/ Remove akonadi/nepomuk/mysql - a full mysql install just to provide a data store for "PIM and metadata" is ludicrous. 2/ Make sure the Semantic desktop/Semantic Search/nepomuk is optional. I respect that it maybe useful for some, b…

> It took me 12 hours to get kdelibs-4.12.5 + the rest of kde-base built without...

Gentoo and its USE flags system makes this sort of thing really easy. If you have an otherwise idle machine sitting in a closet somewhere, you could even create a Gentoo binary package builder [0] for your primary Linux machine, so you don't have to spend time building the world on your primary box.

[0] You compile software on the package builder, it creates tarballs and installation instructions, then you use the package manager on another machine to install those tarballs.

Re: Where KDE is Going – Part 1

#63

Post by reitanqild »

beefhash wrote: post #50
nisa wrote: post #12

I have huge respect for everyone involved in KDE and OpenSource software and I'm writing this on KDE 4.13 but damn... it still sucks. Maybe I'm the wrong user.. but I do programming and do sysadmin stuff most of the time.. First the good parts: KDE is quite stable for me. I have hardly any crashes... this is huge as Unity had some ugly bugs I could not resolve. But I had to install the Numix theme and icons and tweak…

>Today, KDE is no longer a Unix Desktop Environment. Today, KDE is people: Us. You and me. Compare this with: >GNOME: People-focused[1] Is it just me or is this focus on humans/people good at creating unpopular software? [1] https://www.gnome.org/about/

Hehe, the more usability experts and especially self - proclaimed usability experts the worse it ends up for people like me ;-)

Not saying Mac, Gnome and Unity are bad, just that I don't like them and have good reasons for not liking them. But I guess annoying power users isn't a good strategy to get more user advocates.

Re: Where KDE is Going – Part 1

#64

Post by Nanzikambe »

simoncion wrote: post #62
Nanzikambe wrote: post #54

I love and use KDE on both my workstation and laptop. However over the decades, and especially since v4, I've seen it grow into something I barely recognise. Some things have to change: 1/ Remove akonadi/nepomuk/mysql - a full mysql install just to provide a data store for "PIM and metadata" is ludicrous. 2/ Make sure the Semantic desktop/Semantic Search/nepomuk is optional. I respect that it maybe useful for some, b…

> It took me 12 hours to get kdelibs-4.12.5 + the rest of kde-base built without... Gentoo and its USE flags system makes this sort of thing really easy. If you have an otherwise idle machine sitting in a closet somewhere, you could even create a Gentoo binary package builder [0] for your primary Linux machine, so you don't have to spend time building the world on your primary box. [0] You compile software on the pac…

Actually I do use Gentoo :) Despite the USE flags KDE's own dependencies make this rather less than easy.

Try remove akonadi, consolekit, polkit, kde-base/pim add "-consolekit -policykit -udisks -udisks2 -upower -raptor -redland -semantic-desktop -virtuoso -soprano -gstreamer -canberra" to your USE flags and rebuild KDE.

Ended up having to create a custom ebuild, mask a whole lot of stuff and add some stuff to package.provided to make it work.

> you could even create a Gentoo binary package builder [0] for your primary Linux machine

I wasn't complaining about compile time, I have 20+ cores distributed for distcc compilation.

Re: Where KDE is Going – Part 1

#65

Post by signal11 »

reitanqild wrote: post #55
coldtea wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With Numix the machine feels and looks great but I'm not so happy after installing Windows 8.1 on an 10 year old Pentium M notebook with 2GB RAM and having to realize that Windows is way faster and responsive and more feature-rich than KDE and Unity and requires less RAM. I'm not trolling - I'm talking about stuff like browsing files using the file manager and using a browser or office for writing documents. Despit…

I have like ten years of experience in mixed setups. I have supported Windows since 3.1.May I try to shed some light into this? Windows (from Microsoft, no OEM) could be really good, snappy and usable. On the other hand what many users see is a locked down enterprise installation at work and a bloatware-ridden laptop from hp, dell or one of the other mainstream brands at home. Furthermore a Windows installation (the…

> Furthermore a Windows installation (the OEM one ordinary people have to go through) can easily take 2+ hours.

Windows 8 clean installs are very quick indeed (less than 30 minutes in my experience) due to improvements MS made to the way files are copied. They claim most upgrades take 40-60 minutes. See http://arstechnica.com/business/2011/11/windows-8-to-have-fa...

Re: Where KDE is Going – Part 1

#66

Post by nisa »

LaSombra wrote: post #41
nisa wrote: post #12

I have huge respect for everyone involved in KDE and OpenSource software and I'm writing this on KDE 4.13 but damn... it still sucks. Maybe I'm the wrong user.. but I do programming and do sysadmin stuff most of the time.. First the good parts: KDE is quite stable for me. I have hardly any crashes... this is huge as Unity had some ugly bugs I could not resolve. But I had to install the Numix theme and icons and tweak…

Can you share your Numix and KDE/GTK2/GTK3 tweaks?

I've added this PPA: https://launchpad.net/~numix/+archive/ppa and installed the icons and theme packages.

KDE:

QtCurve with custom colors and widgets configuration file: https://github.com/numixproject/numix-kde-theme You can load these files in the Systemsettings. If you install the icon packages you can select these there.

GTK 2/3:

There is an option for setting GTK Themes in my KDE distribution - set GTK2 and GTK3 to Numix. The GTK themes and icons are in a an PPA: https://launchpad.net/~numix/+archive/ppa - you have to disable the option to apply colors to non-kde Applications as the themes are slightly different and this will cause problems.

I've tried this with Ubuntu 12.04 and did not get it to work (not GTK3 options) but it works really great on Ubuntu 14.04.

Re: Where KDE is Going – Part 1

#67

Post by general_failure »

vacri wrote: post #31
general_failure wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spot on. Plasma is complete crap but nobody will acknowledge it. I was a very passionate kde user (and have also contributed a lot to the code base). I have given up on KDE since the last 4 years or so. The oxygen theme is such an eye sore. The problem is it's sacrilege to question all these decisions in the "community" (whatever is left). And also the constant rewrites is so annoying. First Qt4, then graphics view,…

I tried Cinnamon and used it for quite a while. But if you're not on Mint, it seems to break regularly. I didn't like KDE4 when it first came out, but now I'm loving it. And if you don't like a theme... change it. Guh-nome and Unity don't really like to allow you to do that. I never liked the jellybean XP theme, and would change any of my XP machines to Win Classic theme. It seems an odd complaint to make for somethi…

Good to know. I have never seen breakage since I use mint :)

Re: Where KDE is Going – Part 1

#68

Post by josteink »

So the consensus on here seems to be that KDE (like GNOME) is too busy doing their own things, while not really catering to the needs of actual users.

Not having used KDE in a while (since the plasma disaster) I'm obviously not that into current details, but I remember advocating KDE over GNOME because it just worked and have what I needed.

Since Ubuntu those days are definitely gone. But now GNOME + unity is slipping too.

My next desktop may be cinnamon. I just wish I didn't have to be desktop-hopping like this to keep a nice, simple and working desktop. (and no, lxde and xfce is not for me. I find then too minimal and underpolished)

Re: Where KDE is Going – Part 1

#69

Post by reitanqild »

signal11 wrote: post #65
reitanqild wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have like ten years of experience in mixed setups. I have supported Windows since 3.1.May I try to shed some light into this? Windows (from Microsoft, no OEM) could be really good, snappy and usable. On the other hand what many users see is a locked down enterprise installation at work and a bloatware-ridden laptop from hp, dell or one of the other mainstream brands at home. Furthermore a Windows installation (the…

> Furthermore a Windows installation (the OEM one ordinary people have to go through) can easily take 2+ hours. Windows 8 clean installs are very quick indeed (less than 30 minutes in my experience) due to improvements MS made to the way files are copied. They claim most upgrades take 40-60 minutes. See http://arstechnica.com/business/2011/11/windows-8-to-have-fa...

OEM or sane?

(As can be seen from my comment history I like Windows 8)

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