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KDE celebrates the 29th birthday and kicks off the yearly fundraiser

kde.org

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Re: KDE celebrates the 29th birthday and kicks off the yearly fundraiser

#61
post #58

>Case in point: Microsoft is stopping free support for Windows 10 on hundreds of millions of computers this very week. Many of these old yet perfectly usable devices will not be able to upgrade because of spurious hardware requirements. Microsoft’s solution? “Throw away your computer and pollute the planet because we want to make even more money.” Windows 10 was released in 2015. Does KDE still support whatever versi…

Counterpoint: any modern linux distro will run fine on your 10yo computer.

Re: KDE celebrates the 29th birthday and kicks off the yearly fundraiser

#62
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average Linux user is not your grandma and lets not overstate how easy it is to mess up your KDE config. Most of the config ui in KDE is delightful compared to other desktop environments, and most non-technical users would shy away from even trying to fiddle with technical stuff. And those that do fiddle and mess up are likely to have a technical person at hand to help them, because someone had to install Linux f…

Playing devil's advocate, KDE settings are clear but there might be a possibility for a "Advanced Mode" button (with a first-time click warning) on the top-right of the "Quick Settings" screen that opens up when we launch the Settings. That can hide the "risky" stuff (e.g. "Window Management" etc). There might be value in adding a "Lock Panels" options to handle accidental modifications/removal etc.

I agree with the “Advanced Mode” button. That’d solve a great deal of the issues that KDE Settings suffers.

On the other hand I think it could use a fair deal of work on the clarity front. There are a number of settings that are confusing or ambiguous even for some technical users.

Re: KDE celebrates the 29th birthday and kicks off the yearly fundraiser

#63

I'm absolutely loving KDE since I returned to desktop Linux after a long absence. What really shocks me is how few of the big distros make KDE a default or "first class" DE choice. If I was a novice user coming from Windows, I'd much prefer KDE, which if you stick to the GUI is very navigable and similar in some ways.

GNOME essentially gutted itself when it switched away from GNOME 2. Somehow they still stuck around as a broken default. Go figure. IIRC, then a lot of documentation still mentions GNOME first and then KDE second. Furthermore, Ubuntu without the prefix is GNOME. Kubuntu is KDE. And all the others like Lubuntu, etc. all seem "special" to casual users. Think of what the average university student installs in a VM, when…

As a long-time GNOME user, I support this sentiment entirely. What a disaster. It keeps getting worse too. Now you can barely even tell foreground from background windows thanks to this Adwaita bullshit. First they removed all the features, now they're removing all of the visual information.

Re: KDE celebrates the 29th birthday and kicks off the yearly fundraiser

#64

I've been running KDE plasma with wayland in arch for over a year now, it's been an absolute dream come true. Everything just works. Gaming with Proton, dual monitors with different resolutions, Japanese input, I only need to hop onto windows when my son wants to play Minecraft.

You might not need to even for Minecraft, have you seen this project? https://flathub.org/en/apps/io.mrarm.mcpelauncher (Android version of Bedrock made to work on Linux)

I maintain the AUR package for this. `mcpelauncher-linux` and `mcpelauncher-ui`. If you just do a simple `paru -S mcpelauncher-ui`, it should build just fine.

Re: KDE celebrates the 29th birthday and kicks off the yearly fundraiser

#65

I'm absolutely loving KDE since I returned to desktop Linux after a long absence. What really shocks me is how few of the big distros make KDE a default or "first class" DE choice. If I was a novice user coming from Windows, I'd much prefer KDE, which if you stick to the GUI is very navigable and similar in some ways.

GNOME essentially gutted itself when it switched away from GNOME 2. Somehow they still stuck around as a broken default. Go figure. IIRC, then a lot of documentation still mentions GNOME first and then KDE second. Furthermore, Ubuntu without the prefix is GNOME. Kubuntu is KDE. And all the others like Lubuntu, etc. all seem "special" to casual users. Think of what the average university student installs in a VM, when…

Kubuntu isn't really feature complete compared to Ubuntu, for example the installer doesn't allow to create a zfs on root install.

Re: KDE celebrates the 29th birthday and kicks off the yearly fundraiser

#66

I've been running KDE plasma with wayland in arch for over a year now, it's been an absolute dream come true. Everything just works. Gaming with Proton, dual monitors with different resolutions, Japanese input, I only need to hop onto windows when my son wants to play Minecraft.

To add to the solutions proposed you could also use a mod called geysermc to make the server compatible with both Java and bedrock.

Re: KDE celebrates the 29th birthday and kicks off the yearly fundraiser

#67

I'm absolutely loving KDE since I returned to desktop Linux after a long absence. What really shocks me is how few of the big distros make KDE a default or "first class" DE choice. If I was a novice user coming from Windows, I'd much prefer KDE, which if you stick to the GUI is very navigable and similar in some ways.

There are two minds of thought. 1. Like yours, KDE is similar to Windows so it's less scary for new users. 2. KDE is similar to Windows so will confuse users when it doesn't run Windows software or doesn't quite behave in the same way. Macs don't look the same and people don't get scared or expect their Windows software to run on it. I can see both arguments, and I've definitely seen internet complaints about both KD…

KDE looks different enough to windows in its default install though. And you can make it look like whatever you want, that's the best thing about it. Mine is heavily customised.

Re: KDE celebrates the 29th birthday and kicks off the yearly fundraiser

#68

I'm absolutely loving KDE since I returned to desktop Linux after a long absence. What really shocks me is how few of the big distros make KDE a default or "first class" DE choice. If I was a novice user coming from Windows, I'd much prefer KDE, which if you stick to the GUI is very navigable and similar in some ways.

GNOME essentially gutted itself when it switched away from GNOME 2. Somehow they still stuck around as a broken default. Go figure. IIRC, then a lot of documentation still mentions GNOME first and then KDE second. Furthermore, Ubuntu without the prefix is GNOME. Kubuntu is KDE. And all the others like Lubuntu, etc. all seem "special" to casual users. Think of what the average university student installs in a VM, when…

> And GNOME lives on as a sorry excuse for a bad copy of MacOS desktop looks without the feel.

This is an inaccurate description. GNOME is a copy of (the worst parts of) Windows 8 and Mac OS, not just Mac OS.

But seriously, GNOME isn't that bad, and there are people who genuinely enjoy it over KDE. Choice is what makes the Linux ecosystem great.

However, I do agree that KDE is probably a saner default than GNOME, if the goal is to make the transition from Windows to Linux easier. GNOME is (probably) less buggy than KDE, simply due to having less features overall, but the UX is going to be completely alien and off-putting to most casual users.

Re: KDE celebrates the 29th birthday and kicks off the yearly fundraiser

#69

I'm absolutely loving KDE since I returned to desktop Linux after a long absence. What really shocks me is how few of the big distros make KDE a default or "first class" DE choice. If I was a novice user coming from Windows, I'd much prefer KDE, which if you stick to the GUI is very navigable and similar in some ways.

I’ve been trying it out coming from the Mac recently, mostly because I had to do stuff that didn’t play well with an arm processor.

It is surprisingly elegant and polished now. There’s a couple rough edges - the settings menu needing the apply button on every change like a form is weirdly ancient, and notifications are a bit noisy, but overall I could see myself ditching macOS for it.

Re: KDE celebrates the 29th birthday and kicks off the yearly fundraiser

#70
I'm increasingly pessimistic about everyday reach of Linux.

Around me, all I see are Windows users, volunteers teaching old people how to use several tools... on Windows. Public institutions relying on Windows, upgrading to Windows 11, doing everything despite Trump, despite Microsoft, despite all of the negatives associated with it.

When primary school students are given Windows laptops instead of Linux ones, there's not much hope in changing. But how can you amass enough momentum and volunteers to get enough manpower to at least try to move in the other direction?

KDE surely helps, but it's like, nowadays simply trying to explain what a non-mobile OS is useful for, seems like yet another uphill battle, and I cannot fix even my small town by myself.

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