
KDE Frameworks 5 Tech Preview - conductor
http://dot.kde.org/2014/01/07/frameworks-5-tech-preview/
======
Crito
I guess it is not reasonable to expect KDE to stop 'being KDE', but I am a
little disappointed to see that they don't really seem to have shifted their
emphasis anymore in the "lightweight" direction.

I used to be a KDE user, up until about 4.2 (I even used 4.0), but after that
I stopped and switched to a lightweight window manager. Most linux desktop
users that I interact with often have done the same, more or less at the same
time. There is probably some selection bias going on here or something, but
from my perspective it seems like the linux desktop zeitgeist is moving
towards barebones tiling window managers, rather than traditional desktop
environments, perhaps as the dream of _" Linux for the proverbial
grandmother"_ is slowly abandoned _(or perhaps as the idea of the native GUI
application dies, in favor of browsers (which provide the same facilities
regardless of your WM /DE) and terminals)_.

~~~
GuiA
I've observed the same phenomenon. I use xmonad on my Linux box (arch), and
most of my friends use awesome/ion3/openbox/xfce/etc.

I agree with your assessment that everything being in the browser now is
probably amongst the primary causes for it. As a developer, everything I do is
either in a terminal or in a browser; and tiling managers are just much better
and efficient for that user persona. And if you're a nerd but still want to
use a floating wm (why would you!?), then there's almost no reason to use
Gnome/KDE over a more lightweight alternative.

The users who (debatably) benefit from non-tiling WMs (the computer using
grandpa, but also designers, 3D modelers, engineers who work using CAD
programs, accountants, etc. etc. etc.) are all on Windows/OSX anyway, with
little reason to move to Linux ever (and when they do use Linux, for example
to process bigdata®, they do so over SSH on EC2 anyway).

So what's the future for Gnome/KDE? Obviously they'll always be there for
people who are first discovering Linux and need something familiar to navigate
around; but I doubt they'll ever have the popularity they had in the early
2000s.

I for one am looking forward to a year 2030 where nerds still use tiling
window managers and "ugly" terminals :)

Addendum: I guess SteamOS could sway a lot of gamers towards Linux; and that
uses Gnome. So who knows, maybe the Gnome community can get a boost from that.

~~~
laumars
I'm a nerd who spends most of his time in "ugly" terminals; but KDE is still
my preferred DE.

Since I use tmux heavily and am often found browsing the net in lynx (or just
curl when I'm looking for something specific), I could get away without Xorg
completely if I had to. But KDE just seems to compliment my workflow nicely.

Everyone is different though. I wouldn't ever push my preferred WM/DE's onto
anyone else any more than I'd expect to like whatever set up they've fallen in
love for.

~~~
GuiA
Interesting. Is there anything specific about KDE's workflow that you like and
haven't seen elsewhere? When did you start using KDE? If you discovered Linux
today, how likely do you think you'd be to use KDE?

(i'm writing a toy WM + DE stuff in my free time, and am curious to hear about
all of that :)

~~~
laumars
I've been using KDE for years. I can't remember exactly how long, but I
vaguely recall getting excited about a magazine which had KDE2 on it's cover
disc, so I must have been using it since the later versions of 1.

Some stuff that I like about KDE4 are (in no particular order):

o Dolphin - it's a fantastic file manager which has all the features you'd
expect from a powerful modern file manager yet in a clean and uncluttered
interface. Yet everything is easy locate and enable as and when I need

o Unified / Integrated components - I can be running Dolphin and hit [F4] and
a Konsole terminal pane will attach to the bottom of the file manager; already
cd'ed to the directory I'm browsing. And as it's KDE Konsole, all of my
profiles et al from the standalone terminal emulator will be available.

o Taskbar - while I might dislike Windows as an OS (personal preference; not
trying to start a flamewar), I do think the taskbar was a stroke of genius.
The Windows taskbar peaked at Windows 2000 / XP (minus the themes). The KDE
taskbar has the same clean layout that I liked from Windows 2000.

o KWin Compositing - I used to dislike KWin and much prefer Compiz, and in
many ways Compiz is still probably preferable. But these days KWin is actually
pretty decent on it's own; which is handy because I don't have a whole lot of
time to spend making a computer look pretty. So it's nice to have an "out of
the box" solution that comes with KDE4 rather than having to install lots of
additional glitter manually.

o Krunner - [F2] then type any application or document name and it pops up.
Hugely convenient.

o Configuration - I work as a Linux and UNIX systems administrator by trade,
so sometimes I just can't be bothered to configure things the "proper" way if
I just need to quickly add a printer to CUPS (for example). KDE comes with
some pretty decent control panel applets for desktop administration. Though I
really dislike how they've grouped the items in System Settings - which makes
it just as counter intuitive to find items as it is in Windows Control Panel
when you're unfamiliar with Windows.

o Snap Regions - I know most WMs support that these days, but it was less
common when that feature was released in KDE4.0 (or at least that's what I
seem to recall. I might be wrong about that).

o Sane defaults - for the most part, I find I don't have to do much to make
KDE usable.

I know most of what I've described can be done in other WM/DEs, but I've
always just felt at home in KDE. Maybe part of it is just because I've been
using it for so many years on so many different distros (SuSE, Arch, Mandrake,
Slackware, etc) or maybe it's because many of the distros I've ran on my
desktop have been KDE-centric (eg SuSE, Slackware) or at last been one of the
few to do decent packages for KDE (I'm still not convinced KDE4 on Kubuntu
isn't total garbage where as Arch seems to suit KDE well). But KDE just feels
like home.

The only other environment I've felt comfortable in was Awesome, which,
weirdly, is the polar opposite of KDE. Most of the other DE's look pretty but
I'm quickly bored of them (which I'm guessing is exactly how you and many
others feel about KDE4?)

As for if I discovered Linux today; who knows what I'd be using. Probably
Awesome because I'd want to think of myself as "l33t".

Good luck with your DE/WM project by the way. That's quite a daunting project
you've taken on - but I can imagine it'll be great fun too.

~~~
GuiA
Awesome! Thanks a lot for this detailed list. Very instructive :) The last
version of KDE I used was in the early 3, and it seems like there's a lot of
new stuff I missed.

------
8ig8
I haven't thought about KDE in a while. When I first installed RH Linux
(5.1?), Gnome was the dominant windows manager (I think, that's what I
initially ended up with). Gnome was okay, but when I found and switched to
KDE, I felt like Linux could really take on Windows 95. KDE was so _clean_
compared to Gnome. It was beautiful.

If I recall, KDE seemed odd because it was developed by a commercial entity.
Gnome was developed by individual _hackers_. Funny, though, since RH was
commercializing Linux at the time. I was happy to buy the box since
downloading over dial up seemed impossible.

I'm sure my history is off, but KDE is a good memory.

My favorite memory from that era was the bumper sticker I got at the Raleigh
Linux convention:

"In a world without fences, who needs Gates?"

~~~
Shamanmuni
The problem at that time was that Qt wasn't free nor open sourc software (you
could see the code but could not redistribute modifications). Both GTK and
Gnome were started as truly free alternatives to Qt and KDE. If only Qt had
implemented a dual licensed model like they do now, the history of Linux's DEs
would be very different.

~~~
pjmlp
The fact that Qt is C++ also played a role.

I have always sided with C++ in the usual C vs C++ wars, since I know the
language (1993).

My first Linux distribution was Slackware 2.0 back in 1995, before GNOME or
KDE existed and many used twm as their window manager.

Having been part of the gtkmm mailing list for a while, mainly due to my
dislike on those days of Qt using moc, I can tell there were quite some heated
discussions in the usual C vs C++ style.

So C guys would side with GTK, C++ with Qt and not many in the GTK world cared
about us in gtkmm.

