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KDE at 30

kde.org

51–60 of 139 posts

Re: KDE at 30

#51
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…

All the development action went to the web. Dolphin's still pretty awesome.

Re: KDE at 30

#52

One of the most impressive and useful free software projects. My first experience was being totally confused by KDE 1 during my first attempts to use Linux, and I'm writing this from my KDE desktop. Other than the really bad KDE 4 release, the project has consistently been great for me. I've submitted a few smaller patches over the years and that experience was also low friction for a project of this size. KDE is hig…

I agree it's really impressive, it brings a lot of things together into a cohesive package and experience. I'm a huge evangelist, I think it's the best desktop experience.

Re: KDE at 30

#53
post #49
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first love was WindowMaker :)

Window Maker is still really cool! Not a full desktop environment, though. I tried using it with GNUstep for a while, but while the base libraries are apparently still actively developed and maintained, a lot of the applications are antiquated, and they’re very hard to make blend in with EFL/GTK/Tk/Qt apps. Sometimes I wonder what the desktop landscape would look like today if that branch of software gained wider ado…

> Sometimes I wonder what the desktop landscape would look like today if that branch of software gained wider adoption in the free software communities. :-)

It's derived from GNUStep which was from NeXstep who Apple bought. OSX and now macOS are descendants of that design. That's where the macOS dock comes from. Not a 1 to 1 design obviously but a marriage between the operating systems thanks to Steve Jobs.

Re: KDE at 30

#54
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 still find a decent amount of the integration, like KIO, is still there and works well - it puts MacOS and Windows to shame in terms of how I can just interact with files anywhere as if they're native within KDE apps.

It's kind of a shame that Konqueror fell to the wayside, but modern browsers are so complicated I cannot fault them for focusing elsewhere.

Re: KDE at 30

#55
post #49
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first love was WindowMaker :)

Window Maker is still really cool! Not a full desktop environment, though. I tried using it with GNUstep for a while, but while the base libraries are apparently still actively developed and maintained, a lot of the applications are antiquated, and they’re very hard to make blend in with EFL/GTK/Tk/Qt apps. Sometimes I wonder what the desktop landscape would look like today if that branch of software gained wider ado…

You should then give NEXTSPACE a try: https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace

I think it’s the closest thing to that dream today.

Re: KDE at 30

#56

One of the most impressive and useful free software projects. My first experience was being totally confused by KDE 1 during my first attempts to use Linux, and I'm writing this from my KDE desktop. Other than the really bad KDE 4 release, the project has consistently been great for me. I've submitted a few smaller patches over the years and that experience was also low friction for a project of this size. KDE is hig…

I agree it's really impressive, it brings a lot of things together into a cohesive package and experience. I'm a huge evangelist, I think it's the best desktop experience.

> I think it's the best desktop experience.

Not just in the Linux world, it's also far better than Windows and macOS.

Re: KDE at 30

#57
I hope someone comes along with a better recollection than I have. When KDE 1 came out there were some bitter licensing discussions on /. and elsewhere, largely regarding Qt. I had high hopes for Enlightenment and later Gnome but they mostly seemed to fail.

Re: KDE at 30

#58
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 still find a decent amount of the integration, like KIO, is still there and works well - it puts MacOS and Windows to shame in terms of how I can just interact with files anywhere as if they're native within KDE apps. It's kind of a shame that Konqueror fell to the wayside, but modern browsers are so complicated I cannot fault them for focusing elsewhere.

> It's kind of a shame that Konqueror fell to the wayside, but modern browsers are so complicated I cannot fault them for focusing elsewhere.

KHTML became webkit (Safari) and then blink (Chrome) so they created the foundation for quite many browsers ...

Re: KDE at 30

#59

I feel quite repulsed by the fact that the first thing you see when opening the post is a huge donation card.

I used to feel that way about prominent banners / cards. Then I tried to get donations on my own site and until I became hyper-aggressive I never received even a dollar. It was frankly disheartening. Now, it is not yet sustainable but at least moving in the right direction. In other words, they really have no choice.

Re: KDE at 30

#60

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.

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