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KDE at 30

kde.org

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Re: KDE at 30

#121

Post by poolnoodle »

cogman10 wrote: post #60
sqircles wrote: post #47

I have long held a bias of KDE being the clunky and slow option from trial in the ~early-oughts. Within the past month or so I installed it to give it a spin and haven't switched back to XFCE since. It strikes a good balance of customization / speed / taste / and just working out of the box. Thanks KDE team!

If you are someone that mostly likes the Windows 7/10 experience, KDE out of the box is basically that. It's more customizable. It's (IMO) less clunky and less burdened by legacy components. But it really just feels like windows used to feel like. But also just fast and low memory. You can run KDE on ancient hardware. If you have something like 512MB of ram, you can do KDE just fine.

I must be doing something wrong. On my old i5 6200u Laptop with 8 gigs of RAM fedora kde takes ages to boot and system operation is definitely more sluggish than Windows 10 used to be.

Re: KDE at 30

#122

Post by tmtvl »

newsoftheday wrote: post #69
c-hendricks wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do plan to remove X11 from Plasma Desktop as well: https://blogs.kde.org/2025/11/26/going-all-in-on-a-wayland-f...

> Outside of rare special cases, yes, they will still work using the Xwayland compatibility layer. It does a great job of providing compatibility for most X11 applications Not on my 4 year old PC. Wayland performs poorly and usually in wonky ways. I tried it for several weeks. Could not stand the odd behaviors and poor performance and went back to X11. And this is an AlienWare PC, cost me $2000 US, the most I've ever…

Before I upgraded to my new PC (managed to get it just before AI sent prices into the stratosphere), I was using an older PC (2016~ish) without discrete GPU. It ran Plasma Wayland without any problems. My new PC (has an RX 7600) also runs it without any problems. I don't know what's wrong with your PC (I mean, AlienWare does make atrocious garbage, so it could be anything), but I expect it to run better on your lesser PC's/laptops.

Re: KDE at 30

#123

Post by cogman10 »

poolnoodle wrote: post #121
cogman10 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are someone that mostly likes the Windows 7/10 experience, KDE out of the box is basically that. It's more customizable. It's (IMO) less clunky and less burdened by legacy components. But it really just feels like windows used to feel like. But also just fast and low memory. You can run KDE on ancient hardware. If you have something like 512MB of ram, you can do KDE just fine.

I must be doing something wrong. On my old i5 6200u Laptop with 8 gigs of RAM fedora kde takes ages to boot and system operation is definitely more sluggish than Windows 10 used to be.

Are you using an SSD? That does make a pretty big difference.

Also, make sure you are setup to use proprietary firmware. IDK if fedora does that by default. For my laptop I was running without it for a bit and things were definitely a bit sluggish. I had to add some modprobe settings for the i915 (intel video card) driver.

For your CPU it'd look something like this

    # /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
    options i915 enable_guc=2 enable_fbc=1
(might be guc=3)

You'll need to make sure you have the linux-firmware package installed.

(Some googling suggest fedora isn't doing this for you).

Here's an arch wiki entry about it with a bunch of extra diagnostics commands.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Intel_graphics

Here's a gist that also covers fedora

https://gist.github.com/Brainiarc7/aa43570f512906e882ad6cdd8...

Re: KDE at 30

#124

Post by froh »

I wonder how that parallel universe would have looked like where the gnome part of Xamarin inside Novell would have partied with the kde guys at SUSE towards shared components.

the only reason kde wasn't dead right there was the solid kde market share in corporate linux gui deployments at the time. and then came the Novell Microsoft (Balmer days) deal, "look, Linux desktop doesn't make any sense...".

Linux desktops were doing amazingly well in "kiosk" deployments, hundreds and thousands of very similar centrally managed workplaces. think selling tickets, showing time tables, atms, think sears or the likes (it was those days)

but I get astray

how would a universe look like where Xamarin and SUSE had had the phantasy to see gnome and kde synergize instead of cage fight?

sigh, a woman may dram...

Re: KDE at 30

#125

Post by solid_fuel »

cogman10 wrote: post #60
sqircles wrote: post #47

I have long held a bias of KDE being the clunky and slow option from trial in the ~early-oughts. Within the past month or so I installed it to give it a spin and haven't switched back to XFCE since. It strikes a good balance of customization / speed / taste / and just working out of the box. Thanks KDE team!

If you are someone that mostly likes the Windows 7/10 experience, KDE out of the box is basically that. It's more customizable. It's (IMO) less clunky and less burdened by legacy components. But it really just feels like windows used to feel like. But also just fast and low memory. You can run KDE on ancient hardware. If you have something like 512MB of ram, you can do KDE just fine.

> But also just fast and low memory.

In my experience it's fast and low memory right up until you go to edit a panel or add a widget. The editor runs like molasses on my desktop.

Re: KDE at 30

#127

Post by dang »

retardsinoss wrote: post #12
adjfasn47573 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> since leaving one out is a message in itself Side question: why would having a male or female mascot be "a message in itself"? Why do people want to see a message, and especially a $currentDayPolitics one, in every single thing? A mascot can be a cute mascot without having to represent anything more than exactly that. Just as a random example: Let's say some OG founder of a project had a cute dog named Laila, and t…

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Re: KDE at 30

#128

Post by Pooge »

newsoftheday wrote: post #72

Please do not drop X11 in Kubuntu, Wayland performs poorly and weirdly. X11 rocks.

I really don't understand the complaints about Wayland. When the switch was made I wouldn't even have noticed it if I didn't read the blog.

Are you using an Nvidia GPU?

Re: KDE at 30

#129

Post by liotier »

thom wrote: post #50

It feels to me that a lot of the bigger ideas in KDE fell away over the years. In the 2000s I would log in every morning, open a KWord doc in one Konqueror tab, a KSpread sheet in another, and some browser tabs alongside them, then I'd launch Kate and open some files over SSH or FTP and get to work. It felt like someone had really embraced OO and applied it to every part of the desktop, and I assume something like KP…

> I use KDE now as a bog standard boring Linux desktop that just works

"bog standard boring Linux desktop that just works" is a low key major achievement - I love it !

Re: KDE at 30

#130

Post by liotier »

Early KDE made no sense for me - I went Gnome, then migrated to xfce in disgust... I saw myself using an increasing number of KDE applications (I was impressed by Dolphin and Kate), I thought I might as well go the whole way and setup my Debian with KDE. I was immediately awed by the sane defaults and how everything is a mutable parameter... KDE Plasma is my dream desktop nowadays !
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