
Where KDE is Going – Part 1 - sciurus
http://dot.kde.org/2014/06/26/where-kde-going-part-1
======
Nanzikambe
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, but please respect that it may not be useful for all.
       3/ Ditto for consolekit/policykit 
       4/ Ditto for KDE PIM. The moment Kopete, Konversation, Kaddressbook etc depended upon the PIM stuff, was the moment I dropped them for Pidgin. Why? See point #1
    

It took me 12 hours to get kdelibs-4.12.5 + the rest of kde-base built without
consolekit, policykit, akonadi, nepomuk, udisks/udisks2, upower, raptor,
redland, gstreamer, virtuoso, soprano and canberra. But the result is a clean,
usable and fast desktop, ie. the desktop I want! If I have to do that each
time I upgrade, I'm going to look at other options. I'm most definitely not
alone in this, a search on any of #1-4 will find hordes of frustrated people
spending time figuring out ways to remove all these unwanted features.

For many users, removing all the above isn't an option. For users its complex
and time consuming. Failing to make them optional (rather than default) KDE
will suffer -- losing users, as memory consumed by an idle desktop triggers
horrific flashbacks to darker Windows days.

My perception as a user is that Gnome (minimalism uber alles) and KDE
(everything and the kitchen sink) have gone to extremes and forgotten their
user base.

~~~
simoncion
> 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.

~~~
Nanzikambe
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.

------
nisa
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 knobs to get a common
look between KDE/GTK2/GTK3.. I found the default Oxygen ugly and not well
designed but this is probably a question of taste.

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.

Back to KDE: I don't understand Plasma at all - I don't use "activities" I
tried it but found it useless. I don't care about widgets. I'd care more if
the widgets would not be so useless.. something like gkrellm that ran on
fvwm95 gives me more and better data about cpu/disk/network usage than any
widgets I've found in the collections.

Memory... at least 400MB RSS after a fresh boot running only Konsole. No
semenatic desktop, no Akonadi, no widgets... This is just crazy.

I have no SSD and 4GB RAM - maybe I'm too cheap for KDE but Akonadi and all
semantic desktop parts never worked for me.

Why can't I disable the desktop search? After some hours googling I managed to
kill most of Akonadi and Desktop search but I really would enjoy something
like a minimal KDE desktop.

Dolphin/Kwin/Konsole/Kate/Okular are really great tools, through and I enjoy
using them more than the Gnome tools..

I don't think I'm an old grumpy user - I really enjoy the Unity concept and
even found Gnome3 interesting but I'm still feel some longing from time to
time for the speed and functionality of KDE 3.5.

But overall I can work with KDE. I would be probably a lot more happy if I had
a SSD and 16GB RAM and well.. that sucks. I don't want to install Windows on
this machine for it to be faster!

I know there are alternatives.. but running Windows 8.1 on this 10 year old
Pentium M notebook just made clear to me that the problem is not the hardware
- it's the software.

Why is it so hard to to have a highly functional and low-footprint system?

~~~
currysausage
This is so, so true. And it is so _sad,_ given that KDE 3 was a very usable,
somewhat well-structured (considering the many configuration options) desktop
that ran reasonably well on hardware from the previous _century._

It didn't _try_ so hard to be pretty. Actually, I always thought KDE 2/3 did
have a pragmatic, technical elegance. KDE 4 (sorry: KDE-SC-Plasma-something 4)
just looks like an early alpha preview uniting all the bad ideas of Windows
Vista.

 _> I don't understand Plasma at all - I don't use "activities" I tried it but
found it useless. I don't care about widgets._

This stuff _constantly_ gets in your way. Because it is a solution in frantic
search of a problem. Unworldly and counter-intuitive to the greatest extent.

~~~
glesica
_early alpha preview uniting all the bad ideas of Windows Vista._

This is _exactly_ how I describe KDE 4. It was in development just as Vista
was being demoed and it shows. The entire design of the system appears to have
been heavily influenced by a failed MS product and the project is still living
with that legacy. Time to go back to the KDE 3 code and start working on KDE
5...

~~~
currysausage
I guess it looks so bad because it is a mediocre interpretation of the UI fads
of seven years ago. This is why it is always a good idea not to follow the
latest fad, especially if you have constrained development resources.
Unfortunately, KDE 5 seems to be headed into a similar direction, copying the
latest "flat design" fad, in a rather uninspired fashion. Until KDE 5 is
ready, this fad will already have passed.

------
pnathan
I am generally _very_ happy with KDE.

It's much more hacker-friendly than Gnome/Unity IMO. Its footprint is huge and
there's enormous power in it that I don't use. XFCE is similar but doesn't
have the polish that KDE does, especially around multimonitor support.

I would encourage the KDE team to focus on driving towards the hacker use case
and letting that power drive the end user experience. :)

------
ChuckMcM
Nice, I still remember (not so fondly) doing the full build of KDE from source
in the 3.x days to get it on my desktop machine. That and a bunch of issues
with things that were more gnomish breaking it in weird ways. Using Kubuntu 12
has been pretty nice though. This next step sounds better still.

------
overgard
I'm not a KDE user (at the moment, though I have been in the past), but I have
to say my first reaction to those screenshots were: "it looks like a shitty
windows 8".

I'm not saying that's the truth, that was just the first thought that popped
into my head looking at those screenshots.

------
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)

------
meatbag
Recently I had to spend a month working on a massively important, yet
incredibly tedious/repetitive, web dev project. I started with our company's
standard-issue dev environment: Windows 7 running Sublime Text. I got fed up
with the slow speed and having to make 3x as many mouse clicks, which add up
to a lot of repetitive motions after a while. I switched back to KDE because I
could use Kate with the "fish://" protocol. I was able to finish the project
in 1/4 the time it would have taken me otherwise. This is not an exaggeration,
though it may be a conservative estimate. Much less wear-and-tear on my hands,
too.

I keep meaning to learn vim and, in so doing, finally become a [SERIOUS
PROFESSIONAL COMPUTER MAN], but KDE, when configured the way I want it, is the
perfect development environment for me. I keep coming back to it. I have used
every major computer operating system, different flavors of Gnome, XFCE,
MacOS, Windows, and Linux under various lightweight window managers. If I need
an OS for an older desktop machine, then I generally prefer razor-qt though :)

I've mostly outgrown the whole militant-OS-partisan thing, but I guess I'm
kind of passionate about KDE. Passionate enough to write a long-winded thing
on the internet, at any rate.

KDE is far from perfect. It's a resource pig until you learn how to use it
effectively. But, so is everything else. It does seem like KDE development
will chase the latest trends, but I hold out some hope that they might make
some concessions for those of us who just want a lightweight system with a few
powerful features.

------
Nux
KDE is going straight ... Down!

I'm sorry to see it go (was my first Linux DE), but it's userbase has become a
niche. It's mostly Unity and Gnome3 now.

------
Xylemon
I feel like KDE5 is ugly, I'm already missing the detailed and elegant design
of KDE4. Maybe it's just my whole dislike of the "minimalism" movement in
general, but KDE5 looks dull and lifeless. That's just the visuals though.
There's other great stuff about it to discuss, but I still can't help be
disgusted by it's new look everytime I see it.

~~~
Zardoz84
You know that you could change the widgets style and colours like on KDE 4 ? I
don't dislike the new look&feel, but I like more what I have now (Oxygen with
a dark colour scheme).

------
dannyrosen
I've been using Kubuntu for about 6 months. I was originally a Windows user
looking to learn more about Linux and wasn't a big fan of the OSX UI. I went
to KDE because it looked and acted like Windows but had the power of Linux
underneath the hood.

I'm looking forward to the future of KDE and applaud the team for their effort
and passion.

------
AceJohnny2
Glad to hear things are still moving along and there are interesting things on
the horizon.

I was a longtime KDE user until a couple years ago when I switched to Awesome
and a desktop-environment-less desktop (i.e, neither Gnome, Unity, XFCE...).

I felt I was in the minority for liking KDE 3.0 (the infamous "public beta"
release), and the following iterations.

Plasma wasn't useful to me (as a coder, I like to have and editor and a shell
occupying as much of my screen as possible), but I appreciated the work that
went into it.

I remember seeing once that KDE had a bad reputation of working around
platform problems rather than tackling them head-on, unlike Gnome. As a
result, they were constantly playing catch-up with the system integration that
Gnome had built. I particularly remember the Network-Manager applet being bad
enough that I just used the Gnome one.

Nevertheless, keep up the good work KDE!

~~~
ris
"I felt I was in the minority for liking KDE 3.0 (the infamous "public beta"
release)"

I think you mean 4.0

~~~
AceJohnny2
Quite right. My, how time flies.

------
superflit
after so many struggle and slowish kde I quit and went XFCE all the way..

It is not fancy but does the trick

------
alexvr
When I was a big Linux nerd I often found myself ditching KDE distros for
those with desktop environments that look elegant and cohesive right out of
the box.

But the new Plasma design looks excellent. If you guys can pull off an
environment with great customization options and out-of-the-box elegance, that
would be fantastic. Looks like the new design is headed in the right
direction.

------
mercurial
Looking forward to KDE apps not dragging hundreds of megs of dependencies. And
though I don't use it anymore, I still have a soft spot for this DE and the
amount of flexibility it offers. Now, if it was a bit less buggy...

------
yefim
I've always loved KDE and support everything they're going. Good job team!

------
varkson
It's got a lot of promise to be the best looking Linux desktop around. I don't
really like the grey they use however; I'd lighten it up. But then you're in
trouble of looking like iOS.

~~~
veeti
Have you seen elementaryOS? Everything they've come up with looks a million
times more polished than anything else in the Linux world.

~~~
dikei
I always feel that Elementary OS is all looks, no substance. They replace many
well-established applications with their own basic apps that might look better
but lack functionality.

------
zafiro17
I've been a KDE user since KDE1 and I think, despite its flaws, it's still
better than Gnome. I personally like the deep configurability, love the
keybindings, WM tweakability, and so on. I'm not a huge fan of Plasma but
think they made the right decision by building an architecture that would
allow them to use the same components to build tablet, desktop, and other
interfaces. I don't use any of the widgets though - don't find them useful.
And I dislike Nepomuk and Akonadi, at least in their current form. I want to
love Kontact but at least in SUSE 12.3 it still falls short of the mark. But I
think this desktop is headed in the right direction and it's always the
default I install first!

------
izietto
KDE is great, but I don't like the default icons, colors and spacings, and the
other themes aren't better (or at least, I couldn't find one).

------
reitanqild
IMO KDE had an edge at Gnome until Ubuntu. Then Gnome on Ubuntu was the
easiest/best DE until Unity / Gnome 3.

Today I switch between elementary, kde and Windows 8

------
seanewest
Remember when the open source movement revolved around Linux? Honestly this
brings back memories from about 10 years ago for me.

------
malkia
I'm excited about KDE Frameworks 5 - Wondering how easy it would be to reuse
parts of them in Qt5

------
pstop
Starting to look fully commercial, that's really slick.

------
middleclick
My experience with KDE was always that it was prettier than GNOME 2 (at that
time) but a massive resource hog, so I always ended up uninstalling it. I am
curious how KDE has come along in addressing the bloat issue.

~~~
whoopdedo
GNOME2 is still more lightweight. Where KDE has gained popularity is with
people bailing out from GNOME 3.

FLTK still retains the small-and-fast crown.

~~~
Zardoz84
False. KDE 4 runs far better that Gnome 2.

