
KDE Plasma Voted Best Desktop Environment in Linux Journal Readers Choice Awards - jrepinc
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/best-desktop-environment
======
blattimwind
I have been using KDE for ~eight years in one capacity or another and it
almost continually improved with every update. Regressions were quite rare,
even during the KDE4->5 move.

I like that KDE applications are at least somewhat consistent in their UX and
in the way they organize basics. For example, the way settings and shortcuts
are handled is identical across all apps. Kparts makes embedded viewers
consistent and good across apps. Support for GTK theming reduces the visual
annoyance of the rare GTK app. KWin works very well, has a broad selection of
useful shortcuts and has been the most stable compositor I've ever used
(AMD/open source).

On the other hand, KDEPIM/Akonadi seems like it is quite powerful, but for
some reason I kinda didn't became comfortable with it. Not sure why, exactly.
I used KMail and KOrganizer for quite a while, though. Decent tools, but some
rough edges when it comes to first-time setup, e.g. the wizards could really
use some polishing.

There is a surprising number of useful and powerful utilities in KDE.

~~~
finchisko
>Regressions were quite rare, even during the KDE4->5 move.

you must joking right. KDE5 beginnings were terrible.

~~~
JepZ
I am pretty sure you mean 3->4\. KDE5 was so smooth, that you were wondering
why they were talking about a major release.

The problem with the KDE4 was that people were adopting it too early. I
started to use it with the first alpha and saw a lot of bugs during that time,
but I always knew that I was using incomplete alpha software. KDE4 wasn't
stable enough for every day use until 4.3 or so and many people started to use
it with 4.1 which was just the first version which claimed to be usable at all
(most basic programs had been rewritten, but many more advanced programs still
weren't ready).

~~~
shirakawasuna
> The problem with the KDE4 was that people were adopting it too early.

Yes, but this problem was caused by the KDE release team botching their
announcement. They had an alpha release, a beta release, and then a big 4.0
release. Then, it turned out that their '4.0 release' was really what everyone
else would consider alpha/beta, and they didn't want people actually using it
for production environments yet. They screwed up communication royally,
sending mixed messages about whether the software was actually ready or not.

source: I maintained some KDE-related packages on arch and the 4.0 release was
horribly botched.

~~~
seba_dos1
It was all mixed up due to library frameworks and application suite being
released as one big "KDE" package. Kdelibs5 4.0 was ready and stable, but the
KDE desktop wasn't. They tried to communicate that since the beginning, but
not nearly hard enough.

------
oneplane
Strange to see this, maybe it's the target audience that makes this the
result? At the office there are about 40 Linux desktop users, none of them use
KDE. Most remote users I've worked with (~100) aren't using KDE either. This
is of course somewhat anecdotal, but I suspect that the Linux Journal Readers
are a specialised group.

Most systems (out of a pool of about 200) I can query run:

\- Gnome 3 (about 80) \- i3 (about 30) \- Unity (about 25) \- Mate (about 25)
\- Others (KDE included, about 40)

And those are minimally managed systems, all they have to run is orchestration
software and IPA, so they choose their own distro and DE and everything else.

~~~
qwerty456127
Gnome 3 is everywhere because it is the default in all the major distributions
but this doesn't mean people like it. I personally think it actually is the
weirdest DE ever and only popular for political reasons.

~~~
adrusi
I found gnome 3 really appealing when I switched from OS X to Linux on the
desktop.

~~~
qwerty456127
Isn't Unity a way better and a way closer to OS X?

~~~
adrusi
Certainly gnome felt more familiar than unity. What felt truly closest was
elementaryOS's pantheon.

~~~
qwerty456127
What does Gnome 3 have in common with macOS at all? I use a MacBook every day
yet every time I've given Gnome 3 a try it seemed a way too bizarre to me. It
doesn't even have a traditional dock (unless you install one).

~~~
adrusi
Compare OS X Lion's mission control[1] with gnome 3's dash[2]. By the time I
switched to Linux, I never used the dock, instead launching applications with
Alfred/spotlight (and switching with some combination of cmd+tab, mission
control, and spaces track pad gestures). Gnome 3 maps super+tab to alt+tab
which was great for my muscle memory since my super key was where my command
key used to be.

What I found annoying about gnome 3 was the persistent useless panel at the
top of the screen (I still use gnome at work and I use the dash-to-panel
extension[3] to make it slightly less useless).

[1] [http://obamapacman.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Mission-
Co...](http://obamapacman.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Mission-Control-OS-X-
Lion-10.7.jpg)

[2]
[https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/en.linux/images/9/97/GNO...](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/en.linux/images/9/97/GNOME_Shell.png/revision/latest?cb=20150816153038)

[3] [https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1160/dash-to-
panel/](https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1160/dash-to-panel/)

~~~
qwerty456127
I see. Thank you for explaining. As for me macOS is just the dock, the global
menu (both replicated and enhanced nicely in Unity, as well as in KDE though
KDE global menu works with Qt apps only and Unity global menu works with Gtk
apps only) and a BSD terminal :-) As for Mission Control - I have never used
it on Mac but on KDE moving the mouse cursor to the top left corner of the
screen shows all the windows in the manner looking a lot like the screenshot
in the Wikipedia article for Mission Control. As for the Gnome 3 top panel - I
agree it is the most pointless part of it, I wish it could host the
application menu the way it does in macOS and Unity. The problem is Linux apps
seemingly lack a standard for this so it wouldn't work with all the apps,
that's why I've came to the conclusion I don't need a top panel at all.

~~~
seba_dos1
KDE's global menu works with practically everything now, thanks to gmenu-
dbusmenu-proxy.

~~~
qwerty456127
By the way, isn't there something like this for launcher icon based
indicators? Many apps show some status (e.g. number of unread messages,
operation progress etc) as an overlay to their icons in the Unity launcher
panel. Many apps (e.g. Krusader) do the same in KDE. Some (e.g. Chrome) do
this in both the mentioned DEs but many non-KDE apps (e.g. Telegram) fail to
do this in KDE.

------
Jonnax
KDE is excellent. Always seemed it got a lot of negativity from people that
only perceived Linux as an operating system that should be run on a 5 year old
laptop.

~~~
nnq
There's also the folks who end up having to use Ubuntu LTS (16.x) for various
reasons, and if they ever try KDE on it will be doomed to inevitably hate
it... Hope the story doesn't repeat with their next LTS version.

(Maybe the KDE foundation should dedicate manpower/resources to the Kubuntu
project before their LTS releases or something, as they'd massively increase
their usage base this way...)

~~~
jcfrei
Which distro should you use for KDE?

~~~
bmn__
opensuse

~~~
Mister_Snuggles
OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, in my view. That way you get all of the new goodies soon
after they’re released, and thanks to the automated testing there’s usually no
significant breakage.

------
drewg123
I use KDE because the window manager is easily configurable to do what I want
(even if it is weird).

When I moved from running CTWM to a real desktop environment in ~2001, I
submitted patches to both KDE and Gnome to add support for my oddball WM
config (basically mapping move/resize/iconify to alt+mouse button press). KDE
merged my patch. Gnome closed my bug request, saying that what I wanted to do
were against the their design guidelines. So I've been using KDE for most of 2
decades..

------
nnq
Let's just hope the next Ubuntu LTS version doesn't pack up a "doomed to be
buggy and perpetually outdated except security fixes" version of KDE :| ...

Choosing to use Ubuntu 16 LTS, I gave up considering KDE as an option after
_trying hard_ to put up either with the official repo one or a newer
unofficial one ( _both_ were buggy and unstable, and lacked _essential_
features to me like Win+<number> task switching shortcut that _is_ available
in latest KDE, and especially combining this with drag-and-drop freely
reorderable taskbar entries to actually enable my "standard" worflow that I
can use fine in Windows 10, Unity, or Xfce+custom dock).

Hope the Kubuntu guys take care not to shit the bed with the LTS release
(because their non-LTS one were always fine, like in not just up to date as
expected, but _waay more stable_ too!)...

~~~
vbsteven
You should try the KDE Neon distro. It uses Ubuntu LTS as a base and adds the
latest and greatest KDE release on top.

~~~
type0
It doesn't handle dependencies very, some software becomes installable because
you can get package conflicts. Fedora KDE spin is better but doesn't run as
good on laptops unless you tweak it, both are unsuitable for new Linux users.
Is there a good KDE distro that can be recommended to Windows or Mac refugees?

~~~
qwerty456127
I am extremely happy with Manjaro. The only problem is it doesn't include a
WiFi driver to support 2013 MacBook Air, you will have to install it manually
if you have this model.

------
stewbrew
"Totally configurable, which is ESSENTIAL for new users who want their Linux
desktop configured to emulate the exact rendering of Windows (XP or 7)"

Funny argument after Windows 8. So KDE gets marketed as ressort for confused
windows xp users?

I enjoyed customizing my workspace for years. Now I use gnome shell, I relax
and don't waste brain cycles on irrelevant stuff like which icons show up here
or there. I don't use my desktop to do work or anything meaningful.

~~~
simion314
Configuring KDE and apps is more then GUI customization.

The file manager has many options that anyone that does any work would be
useful, like tabs, splitting the screen, icons/list/detailed view of files,
opening a terminal inside the file manager,previews, FTP integrations and all
of this is an option, including that you can configure the toolbars to
show/hide buttons.

Other example(maybe other DEs have this too) I can have tabs in the terminal
app (konsole) and in the tabs that I am SSHed in I use different color
scheme(with red on black) so I am aware and not run dangerous commands on a
remote server.

My point is that a KDE user is not one that chooses KDE over Gnome due to UI
but is more about functionality.

~~~
stewbrew
At what costs wrt ressource usage & startup time do you get these features?
IIRC KDE comes last in all tests about DE performance. I could become
potentially interested in KDE if this had changed over the years.

~~~
simion314
Startup is not important if you start the DE once a day, it is like saying
Notepad is better then Visual Studio for coding because it starts faster. As
of CPU and memory use KDE is not the most bloated DE, This is a myth so you
should recheck things with latest versions of KDE,GNOME,XFCE and the
others.(use what is better for you but you should not stay away from KDE
because of memory or CPU usage)

I agree that a WM will have less features and eat less memory so if you do not
need the features of KDE use a WM. Also you can disable some of KDE features
like compositing, akonadi if those are the things you do not need.

~~~
stewbrew
I think this was the test I vaguely remembered. Anyway, such a test probably
doesn't really say much.

[https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubu-1704...](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubu-1704-desktops&num=3)

~~~
simion314
Interesting,I can't find the link where I seen a benchmmark where KDE used
less RAM then XFCE and Gnome3 ,it may differ for different people since Gnome
is leaking memory for some people but I also seen reports of plasma leaking(it
seems to be more rare)

I am running an older version of KDE and my plasma uses less then 230MB in
total(including shared memory)where only one instance of Chrome uses 450Mb and
Xorg uses more then plasma for me (it may differ for other versions and
configurations)

------
tonyedgecombe
I tried most of the popular desktops last year and KDE was the best in terms
of dealing with high-dpi displays. Not perfect but better than most.

It wasn't stable for me though and it generally felt sluggish so in the end I
switched to Apple.

~~~
iforgotpassword
that seems to be a common theme with kde and to a lesser degree gnome. they
moved to 'features and innovation first' years ago and it shows. sure its nice
that Linux is becoming more accessible for 'normal' people but for me both kde
and gnome are getting in my way more and more while stability is suboptimal. i
switched from kde to gnome around 2010 then xfce in 2012 and finally i3 in
late 2013. for the rest of the apps i'm always looking for the leanest and
least sophisticated solution that has enough features and suit my needs. these
also tend to be pretty reliable.

like you said, if i really needed all those fancy features and eyecandy I'd
rather switch to apple or microsoft.

I'm still taking a look at kde and gnome once a year or so, especially since
kde5 looked really clean and nice, but it just isn't there yet..

~~~
emilsedgh
I've always loved KDE and has been a contributor. So take my work with a grain
of salt.

But KDE is pretty light these days and it doesn't really get in the way. It's
really polished.

2010 was the KDE 4.x times and it was indeed a bad time for the project.

Things are quite different now.

~~~
iforgotpassword
i agree that 5 is much better. ever since my kde fanboy coworker upgraded to
5, the amount of cursing about different things (mostly akonadi and kmail) was
greatly reduced, but akonadi still seems to be a troubled child.

~~~
simion314
You can not use akonadi or kmail, I did not had a good experience with them
either on older KDE so I do not used them, I use Thunderbird for mail and
akonadi is off.

------
olavgg
Since Unity became the default in Ubuntu, I've been using KDE. Was very happy
with the 4.x, but not so happy with the bump to 5.x. I've been using 5.x daily
since the beginning. Mostly it works really well, though I still have to
restart plasma or desktop effects daily. I'm not sure if it related to a bug
with Nvidia. I also have an issue with framerate drops with Dota 2. But except
from those minor issues, it works really really well, but I still feel that
the latest 4.x was more stable than the current 5.x

~~~
walkingolof
Then you be happy to know that Unity is no more on Ubuntu, it got canned when
they ended their phone/tablet plans. The new default is Gnome, which has grown
into a fantastic distraction free DE

------
nkkollaw
KDE is great. One reason for the votes might however be that GNOME has been
alienating both users and developers for a while now with idiotic ideas, and
people are fed up with it.

~~~
simion314
Exactly, they managed to irritate the users and developers of the other DEs
and WMs, the GTK changes made some important apps(like wireshark, Subsurface)
and DEs(LXDE and Budgie) to switch to Qt

------
Fnoord
If anything this survey shows how hopelessly fractured the GNOME desktop
community is. Add GNOME, Cinnamon, MATE, and Unity and you get 41% (vs KDE's
single 35%).

I'd say that -unfortunately- the DE/WM world is irrelevant these days. We need
decent UIs & OSes for the mobile world; Android and iOS need competition. The
latter is proprietary, the former partly FOSS but data hungry.

~~~
O_H_E
Waiting to see how well will Plasma mobile be on the librem phone

------
seba_dos1
Not surprising at all, with GNOME 3 being what it is. Configuring, getting
help, discussing and contributing to Plasma is a breeze. In contrast, GNOME
camp feels like a bunch of very opinionated people that just know better how
their users (and other DEs too, when it comes to interoperability) should
behave.

~~~
bmn__
Can you give me a recommendation where to go for getting help?

~~~
seba_dos1
#plasma on Freenode seems like a good start, had some friendly on-spot
conversations there.

------
goblins
I shall have to try KDE. I've been an xfce user for years but have been
hearing good things about KDE.

~~~
ahartmetz
Protip: Use krunner (Alt-Space) to launch applications once you know their
names. It has autocompletion and many neat features such as web shortcuts:
Type gg: or dd: <search terms> to open a tab in your configured default
browser with Google or DuckDuckGo search. Not very discoverable but very
convenient. You can also create your own web shortcuts in KDE system settings.

krunner also supports opening Kate (the KDE editor, roughly similar to Sublime
Text) sessions directly.

~~~
abrowne
It's also a calculator and unit converter!

------
k_bx
GNOME Shell on Ubuntu 17.10 is eating >1Gb RAM, I think it might be a good
time to try KDE (unfortunately, it didn't work to just apt install kubuntu-
desktop, so I'll have to do that via clean install sometime later).

~~~
y4mi
You should be able to choose the windowmanager at login once youve installed
it like that.

Its probably a menu in the top right corner of either your username 'tile' or
the screen, depending on your login manager

~~~
k_bx
Thanks, I'm quite an experienced Linux user (>10 years). The problems I've had
are way beyond this (bootloop, black screen, freezes, had to do a recover from
a liveusb etc. etc.)

------
eximius
This is surprising to me in that I don't know anyone who uses KDE.

As someone who uses Cinnamon as my day to day at home and Awesome at work,
what would entice me to switch?

~~~
Multicomp
I started with Cinnamon, then switched to KDE. Mostly because it was more
intuitive for me, 2% because I liked the new Konquii branding enough to try it
that first time.

Now when people want to try "that Linux thing" I hand them Debian KDE if they
are a Windows user since it is closer to Windows start menu out of the box, at
least for my purposes.

------
cygned
GNOME 2. Although I started with a lovely KDE with Open SUSE 10.1, GNOME (with
Ubuntu) was my tool of choice.

I mostly use headless Linux these days, but when I have a GUI at hand, I
always miss the old GNOME. I heard there are some continuation project,
haven’t looked into them yet, though.

~~~
satbyy
The name you're looking for is MATE desktop. I've been using it for many years
because I never liked Gnome 3 (constant churn, breaking plugins, themes etc).
I'm using it on Debian but there's also Ubuntu MATE and Fedora & Opensuse
spins

------
digi_owl
On a different note, KDE3 still existing in the form of the Trinity DE.

[http://www.trinitydesktop.org/](http://www.trinitydesktop.org/)

------
DiabloD3
I don't really see the point of this poll: Pantheon wasn't an option in it.
Makes the rest look like jokes.

~~~
gregopet
I see it's written mostly in Vala - I must confess I have a deep prejudice
against Vala, mostly because it seems silly and complicated and just wrong to
me to take a programming language and then compile it to C and then further
compile it to machine code. We have that situation in Javascript land but at
least there it was kind of unavoidable for a very long time.

That said, I may take Pantheon for a spin - I've been a happy KDE user for
many years but I never mind trying new things and perhaps learning something
new. Everything I've tried so far made me return back to KDE but one must keep
an open mind.

~~~
pjmlp
> I see it's written mostly in Vala - I must confess I have a deep prejudice
> against Vala, mostly because it seems silly and complicated and just wrong
> to me to take a programming language and then compile it to C and then
> further compile it to machine code.

You mean like Objective-C, C++, Eiffel, Scheme, Nim?

Compiling to another native language is a shortcut to avoid implementing a
complete compiler backend.

With C being the best option as target language on UNIX systems, given its
ubiquity.

~~~
iforgotpassword
C++? Unless you're talking about the very first compiler ever or some toy
project, you're wrong, and I'd actually guess the same is true for obj-c.

~~~
pjmlp
Of course I am speaking about CFront.

C++ first compiler that actually generated native code without going through C
was written by Walter Bright sold by Zortech, which then sparked the race from
all other compiler vendors.

Objective-C started as a macro processor for C, hence the [ ] syntax and @
prefixes, to make it easier to find them.

Nowadays the macro processor is gone, but at assembly level Objective-C code
still gets translated into a bunch of objc_msgSend() and similar calls.

~~~
Longhanks
And objc_msgsend is implemented in Assembler. ObjC does NOT get compiled to C
first.

~~~
pjmlp
That optimization came later in the game.

Again, the point is that Objective-C started as macro processor generating C
code, which gregopet states it is silly for Vala devs to choose the same path
as Brad Cox and Tom Love decided for their language.

------
Kenji
Not surprising at all.

