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Ask Slashdot: Is KDE Dying?
Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday August 20, 2016 @11:34PM from the demise-of-desktop-development? dept. A long-time loyal KDE user "always felt that it was the more complete and integrated of the many Linux desktop environments...thus having the most potential to win over new Linux converts." And while still using KDE exclusively without any major functional issues, now Slashdot reader fwells shares concerns about the future of desktop development, along with a personal opinion -- that KDE is becoming stale and stagnant: KDE-Look.org, once a fairly vibrant and active contributory site, has become a virtual ghost town... Various core KDE components and features are quite broken and have been so for some time... KDEPIM/KMail frankly seems targeted specifically at the poweruser, maintaining over many years its rather plain and arguably retro interface. The Konqueror web browser has been a virtual carcass for several years, yet it mysteriously remains an integral component...
So, back to my opening question... Is KDE Dying? Has innovation and development evaporated in a development world dominated by the mobile device? And, if so, can it be reinvigorated? Will the pendulum ever swing back? Can it? Should it? The original submission has some additional thoughts on Windows 10 and desktop development -- but also specific complaints about KDE's Recent Items/Application Launcher History and the KDE theming engine (which "seems disjointed and rather non-intuitive".) The argument seems to be that KDE lacks curb appeal to fulfill that form-over- function preference of the larger community of users, so instead it's really retaining the practical appeal of "my 12 year old Chevy truck, feature rich for its time... Solid and reliable, but definitely starting to fade and certainly lacking some modern creature comforts."
So leave your own thoughts in the comments. Does desktop development need to be reinvigorated in a world focused on mobile devices -- and if so, what is its future? And is KDE slowly dying? free kde linux
→ How SSL/TLS Encryption Hides Malware What the GNOME Desktop Gets Right and KDE Gets Wrong KDE Turns 19 KDE Plasma 5.5 Has Matured Past the Point of Plasma 4 Project Neon Will Bring Users Up-to-Date KDE Packages Submission: Is KDE Dying? New Linux Trojan Is A DDoS Tool, a Bitcoin Miner, and Web Ransomware Ask Slashdot: Is KDE Dying? 199 More | Reply Login Ask Slashdot: Is KDE Dying?
Post Load All Comments S30e aFruchll 27909 A Cbbomremvieantetsd L0o Hg iIdnd/eCnreate an Account C/Soemaments Filter: AScllore: I5nsightful I4nformative I3nteresting F2unny 1The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way. ›0 W-1 hat does Netcraft say? (Score:3, Interesting) b19y 90 1M0o0r0e1 |0 R00ep1l0y1 L0o0g1i1n ( 652467 ) on Saturday August 20, 2016 @11:38PM (#52741041) P erhaps the users have spoken and most prefer the Gnome2/MATE/Cinnamon style interface. The rest of us are on Awesome, Xfce or something else. NRicepklny atom Teh:i s Share tPwaisttsewr ofardce: b6o-o2k0 lcinhkaeradcinte rs long F laPgu basli cIn Taeprpmroipnraial te
UsiLnogg CIninn amFoorgno t( Syocuorr pea:s2s)word? by HalAtWork ( 926717 ) Close Fits all my and family's needs. Most of my GUI apps are GTK but QT ones fit in fine. Close Re:What does Netcraft say? (Score:5, Insightful) by Daemonik ( 171801 ) on Sunday August 21, 2016 @03:56AM (#52741785) Homepage The 'people' didn't choose Gnome, much in the same way the 'people' haven't chosen systemd. The distribution packagers chose to make Gnome their default and the 'people' once presented with a choice tend to stick to that choice. Until the last 5-10 years there were only a couple of distro's that really took the effort to showcase KDE, mostly Mandrake and SuSE. The sad thing was Gnome was never up to KDE's maturity and cohesion. It was launched and chosen as the default because of baseless fears over the licensing of Qt back in the 90's, not technical ability. Reply to This Parent Share twitter facebook linkedin Flag as Inappropriate
Re: (Score:3, Informative) by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) It was launched and chosen as the default because of baseless fears over the licensing of Qt back in the 90's, Back in the 90s the license was an issue. It's not the same now.
Re: (Score:3, Informative) by donaldm ( 919619 ) Linux was never alive to begin with. It's market share has always been in the toilet. Nobody takes it seriously as an operating system. You are quite right Linux's market share is so abysmal that billions of people actually use it daily without being aware of it. If you are going to Troll, do it properly.
Re: (Score:3) by ITRambo ( 1467509 ) About 2% of desktop users use Linux. That's about 30 million, not billions.
Re: What does Netcraft say? (Score:4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 21, 2016 @01:53AM (#52741481) Android. Web servers. Routers. Switches. Billions. Reply to This Parent Share twitter facebook linkedin Flag as Inappropriate
Re: What does Netcraft say? (Score:3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward Those aren't desktop users. They're not relevant to a discussion about desktop environments. You wouldn't run KDE on a switch. That would be stupid.
Re: (Score:2) by tezbobobo ( 879983 ) OP has a valid point actually. The article isn't talking about the 'billion's of devices - it is specifically talking about the desktop platform. I believe that Linux constitutes between 5-10% of desktop use. Considering it is free, that's pretty crap.
Re: What does Netcraft say? (Score:4, Interesting) by Zontar The Mindless ( 9002 )
Re: (Score:3, Funny) by Bing Tsher E ( 943915 ) Billions of people use processors that run only Machine Language programs that load from the reset vector. Mice, graphics card, the controller chips inside hard drives, etc. There's even a 'multiplier effect' because every Linux computer in operation has a handful of these processors inside it. So the Machine Language 'Operating System' is 20-500 times more popular than any PC operating system, and thousands to hundreds of thousands of times more popular than Linux. This popularity measure is based on the
It better not be. (Score:4, Interesting) by Zombie Ryushu ( 803103 ) on Saturday August 20, 2016 @11:38PM (#52741047) KDE is the Gold standard in Linux Desktops. It has the most utilitarian behavior of all of the existing Linux desktops. Reply to This Share twitter facebook linkedin Flag as Inappropriate
Re:It better not be. (Score:5, Interesting) by HiThere ( 15173 )
Re: (Score:2) by Blaskowicz ( 634489 ) I feel like Mate (or Gnome 2 in things like RHEL 6 and Open Solaris variants) is very susceptible to a theme or icons being slightly off. It can look crappy, or slightly like crap. Mint exists as a whole distro to provide a theme for Mate and its GTK siblings :), even there there's a tiny little bit of variation available by default and that's all. You may slightly tweak the font rendering or hide a few desktop icons etc. rather than messing too much with the themes. If you thought Ubuntu 8.04 or Debian lenn
Re: (Score:2) by thsths ( 31372 ) Actually, I think KDE 1.1 was the best KDE ever. It had some quite innovative features, such as desktop level workers, and a desktop level VFS, which actually worked. KDE never quite reached the same level of functionality later - there was too much change for change sake. KDE4 was a disaster on release, that is correct. So unfortunately, there is no Linux DE that I actually like. Things were so promising when Gnome and KDE appeared, but soon the fragmentation set in, and now we have 6 or 7 DEs, and none of
Re: (Score:3) by fnj ( 64210 ) When I saw KDE5 on Ubuntu I immediately reinstalled Debian. Uproariously silly non sequitur. You can run basically ANY of the DEs and WMs on ANY distro. There are these convenient things you may have heard of called packages and meta-packages.
Re:It better not be. (Score:5, Informative) by drinkypoo ( 153816 )
Re: (Score:2) by Tehrasha ( 624164 ) I have always thought that the popularity of KDE was due primarily to its familiarity, being very similar to the Windows desktop environment, and early on the massive proliferation of Knoppix LiveCDs. I used KDE early on (1.x), but moved to Gnome because it allowed many more user tweakable options for customizing the desktop. Over the years, Gnome has become less and less friendly to customization, and with the arrival of Unity, I jumped over to MATE.
Re: (Score:3) by Gavagai80 ( 1275204 ) I loved gnome 1 for the customization options, but switched to KDE when gnome 2 came out removing all the options. KDE went through the same thing removing options with KDE 4 and again with Plasma 5, though... and of course gnome repeated it with gnome 3. Perhaps KDE dying will be a good thing, it'll prevent removing any more features from it.
Re: (Score:3) by donaldm ( 919619 ) nope. MATE and CINNAMON have that. KDE is a relic of bygone era, smarter people have moved on I have used Mint and personally I still like KDE which I have as part of my Fedora 24 spin. KDE to me still has the more configurable graphical interface out of all the window and session managers and I have used pretty much all of the competing offerings. Of course, if you like a particular GUI over another then that is fine. At least with Linux and all the distributions out there you have compleat freedom to choose what you like and configure it to your tastes, which is how it should be unlike a certain
Re:It better not be. (Score:5, Funny) by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Sunday August 21, 2016 @02:32AM (#52741577) Now that's said can we please comment on how emacs is better then vi or vice versa. As a desktop environment? Probably Emacs. Reply to This Parent Share twitter facebook linkedin Flag as Inappropriate
Re: (Score:2) by Kremmy ( 793693 ) There is much to be learned from the past.
Re: (Score:2) by Vlijmen Fileer ( 120268 ) That actually looks objectively exactly like what a window manager should look like.
Re: (Score:2) by dbraden ( 214956 ) Which distro would you say currently does XFCE the best?
How Active Does Development Need to Be? (Score:5, Interesting) by damn_registrars ( 1103043 )
That and of course I still do a huge part of my most important work from the command line. That won't change any time soon, so as far as that is concerned it matters not at all whether or not any additional new features are ever incorporated into the environment. Reply to This Share twitter facebook linkedin Flag as Inappropriate
Re: (Score:3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant ( 803320 ) I don't know that maintaining a web browser in the face of Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera and the rest makes any sense? Also, a standalone mail client? I haven't used one of those in nearly 5 years now. So, do I care that it hasn't updated? Do its users want it to become more like Outlook? I think probably not. My gripe with KDE the last time I tried to use it was lack of font scaling support for 4K screens... I assume that KDE5 is addressing that, but how well? Next time I set up a desktop I might try it,
Re:How Active Does Development Need to Be? (Score:4, Interesting) by damn_registrars ( 1103043 )
Opera I haven't used in a long time, and the last time I tried to use it I found it quite broken in *nix. Maybe it's better now? As for Edge, I'm not aware of a system upon which you could have both KDE and Edge. If you know of such a beast, feel free to enlighten me. Also, a standalone mail client? I haven't used one of those in nearly 5 years now. So, do I care that it hasn't updated? Do its users want it to become more like Outlook? I think probably not. There is still demand for a standalone mail client, though I can't say I've used KMail much. I use Thunderbird religiously. I most certainly do not want it to look any more like Outlook, in fact I value how much it looks like the old Netscape Communicator. My gripe with KDE the last time I tried to use it was lack of font scaling support for 4K screens. Holy first world problems, batman. If I ever find myself with that much disposable income ... Reply to This Parent Share twitter facebook linkedin Flag as Inappropriate
Re: (Score:2) by fredgiblet ( 1063752 ) The question is is it worth the developers time to continue working on it when there's so many other options available. From what I can gather the KDE devs think no, but keep it around for Reasons (tm).
Re: (Score:2) by Dracos ( 107777 ) Precisely. Lack of activity can mean death or maturity. I use KDE because I can make it behave exactly the way I want (with about three exceptions that aren't outright bugs), it doesn't try to hold my hand longer than I want, doesn't talk down to me, and doesn't deliberately try to be oversimplified or minimal or trendy.
Re: (Score:2) by YukariHirai ( 2674609 ) I'm not sure how active desktop development needs to be for a single *nix desktop environment. Back in the day, it was the difference between useful and soon to be useless, but these days not very. It's also not really that vital that all the applications I use are the ones provided by my desktop environment. So Konqueror hasn't really kept up? Big deal, I mostly use a mix of Firefox and Chromium anyway. KMail old and ugly? Doesn't matter, I never use an email client these days. And if I did, it would likely be Thunderbird anyway. So all I truly need from a desktop environment is that it looks and beha
Re: (Score:2) by Zontar The Mindless ( 9002 ) KMail is nice and fast for opening linked/downloaded .eml files. May not be part of your workflow, but it's a daily part of mine. (In one of our bug systems, patches to a given bug automatically get attached to that bug report's page from the generated commit mails as .eml files.) But I use TBird for "real" mail.
It's not really dead (Score:3, Funny) by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Saturday August 20, 2016 @11:50PM (#52741081) As long as you remember it. Reply to This Share twitter facebook linkedin Flag as Inappropriate
Re: (Score:2) by swalve ( 1980968 ) It was a hell of a thing when Spock died.
Re: (Score:2) by WheezyJoe ( 1168567 ) Psssh. He was never really dead. You knew there'd be another movie bringing him back somehow.
Re: (Score:2) by WheezyJoe ( 1168567 ) I'd heard that story, that Nimoy had to be enticed to agree to do the movie by way of the best death scene ever. But something doesn't jive. First, if he wanted to be done with it, then what convinced him to sign-on with that crappy follow-up? He could have said just said no (but I suppose there was a very big check). Second, the only reason Paramount did Kahn was because MP made money (in spite of its problems). So, a pattern had already been established that if Trek makes money Paramount's gonna make mo
Re: (Score:2) by fredgiblet ( 1063752 ) Check the director listing on Search for Spock. That's why he agreed to do it.
Re: (Score:2) by thinkwaitfast ( 4150389 ) then what convinced him to sign-on with that crappy follow-up? I've read that it was James Horner.
Re: (Score:2) by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) Im glad at least one person got the Seinfeld tie-in!
Did KDE survive KDE3-KDE4? (Score:5, Interesting) by Skewray ( 896393 ) on Saturday August 20, 2016 @11:55PM (#52741097) Homepage I never got over the KDE3 to KDE4 transition, and switched to something else. I think KDE4 was too complex to survive long-term. Reply to This Share twitter facebook linkedin Flag as Inappropriate
Re: (Score:2) by JoeMerchant ( 803320 ) Good thing they're working on KDE5, then.
Re: (Score:2) by hawkeyeMI ( 412577 ) I just posted basically the same thing below. I think that's where it started dying.
Re:Did KDE survive KDE3-KDE4? (Score:5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 21, 2016 @12:17AM (#52741179) No, it didn't survive. KDE4 sucked. It sucked so hard and the developers wouldn't admit to it. They first blamed the distributions for shipping 4.0, which was supposed to be "Beta quality," except that there were a whole 2 years of 3.9-BETAs and 4.0 had a big release party from KDE themselves when it went gold. It was a bullshit excuse. Then they kept saying "4.2 will have feature parity with KDE3", followed by "4.3" then "4.4" etc... Finally, when KDE4 was still a pile of shit 2 years after release, they started blaming the users for not having standard configuration hardware (never- mind that only KDE struggled with graphics, and no other environment). When they continued to bleed users, the developers renamed the project about half a dozen times so that the remaining users wouldn't even know where to complain about the krashes. Oh that crash that keeps happening and can be easily replicated? Yeah, that's not the KDE SC's fault, that's nepomuk / akanodi / strigi / phonon / your graphics. Except only KDE depended on those shitty back-ends in the first place. Then there was another rebrand with KDE 5, where it became Plasma Desktop, and SC applications? Are you still following through the name changes? Because most people gave up by this point. The stability never returned from the 3.x days. KDE is a user-hostile community; the devs deserve to be shot for ruining a good thing, and of course they will blame somebody else, anything else for their inadequacies. The only people still using KDE are newbies who want eye candy to show off in Youtube videos. Those of use who want to get work done have long since moved on. I hear that besides a few bugs and quirks, KDE 5 is almost usable. Great. We're now nine years out since KDE 3.5. The fact that this story exists on Slashdot is enough proof that KDE is dead. Reply to This Parent Share twitter facebook linkedin Flag as Inappropriate
Re: (Score:3) by Zontar The Mindless ( 9002 ) I've been using KDE for over a decade, and in fact am using it right now. Feel free to call me a noob if that makes you feel better, though.
Re:Did KDE survive KDE3-KDE4? (Score:5, Informative) by WheezyJoe ( 1168567 ) <{moc.eticxe} {ta} {ggef}> on Sunday August 21, 2016 @12:21AM (#52741195) The KDE transition sure seemed to coincide with developers losing interest. Sure there's Krita [wikipedia.org], and Konqueror makes for a pretty good file explorer, but in the list [wikipedia.org] of apps made for KDE, there's nothing that's, you know, killer. Instead, most K apps that don't look derelict look more like demos, half-baked to show off a feature of the toolkit-under-development rather than something you'd actually have confidence to rely on for the foreseeable future. This is disappointing. I've used it for years in the 2.0-3.0 days and always felt that KDE had the edge over GNOME. But for one reason or another, the apps aren't there, so a K desktop is basically a K window manager + file explorer, on which you run GTK apps and LibreOffice (i.e., another GTK app), even though the K team posts one announcement [kde.org] after another [kde.org] how KDE's underpinnings are cutting-edge. Reply to This Parent Share twitter facebook linkedin Flag as Inappropriate
We're All Dying (Score:3, Insightful) by cosm ( 1072588 )
Smart phones got better. Distractions got more distracting. The canonical hacker breed is dying. You feel it. We all feel it.
Where's that fucking apps appidy app guy when you need him. He's got it right you know. The borg-like proliferation of technology has reached the point such that there is no wonder to the up and coming generations in terms of "how can I make this better", moreover it's become "how can I get moar"
Is this new? No. Bread and circuses have existed for decades. But the rate of new bread and new circuses is unprecedented. Enjoy tomorrowland. It will be fucking lame and owned by Pepsi and Microsoft. Reply to This Share twitter facebook linkedin Flag as Inappropriate
Re: (Score:3) by iggymanz ( 596061 ) not true, their are good desktops that have taken over from the archaic relics of the past decades (GNOME, KDE). MATE and CINNAMON is where it's at. XFCE4 is quite good too
Re: (Score:2) by Blaskowicz ( 634489 ) And there's pcmanfm-qt 0.10, which I found out is in the Ubuntu 16.04 repos. wow! This thing is fast. Just a file manager. Worth a try even if you're running a GTK 2 / GTK 3 desktop, actually it's a bit better since you will not mistake it for your main file manager.
Re: (Score:2) by donaldm ( 919619 ) not true, their are good desktops that have taken over from the archaic relics of the past decades (GNOME, KDE). MATE and CINNAMON is where it's at. XFCE4 is quite good too You do know that Xfce and KDE [wikipedia.org] were first started in 1996 and Gnome [wikipedia.org] released in 1999. So saying that KDE and Gnome are relics compared to Xfce is totally wrong. Basically as far as computing goes all Desktops and/or Session Mangers either stagnate or evolve and most including KDE have evolved. Of course, personal preferences are at play here. In case you are wondering MATE [wikipedia.org] and CINNAMON [wikipedia.org] are both spinoffs of Gnome. As for which desktop is better, personally I like KDE plasma and I have used pretty
Re:We're All Dying (Score:5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 21, 2016 @04:16AM (#52741831) I went Windows 98->RH w/GNOME 1 (for about 3 days)->RH w/Afterstep->RH or Gentoo w/WindowMaker (for about 10 years)->Gentoo w/KDE (~6 months?)->Windows 7->OS X (ongoing). One day I just got annoyed with poor integration in WindowMaker and decided to try KDE, purely for decent drag & drop between apps. Found a few other apps which were better integrated, like Amarok. Strangely, it was frustration with Amarok which eventually made me try Win7. Over the WindowMaker period I tried many variations of GNOME, KDE, Xfce, Enlightenment and many others I've simply forgotten. Never for serious work (WindowMaker filled that niche the best), just to see how they were doing. Never been impressed with GNOME - it feels like an unrelated grab bag of apps with some common skin elements, configuration and integration is extremely inconsistent, the DE itself is the same. Xfce feels like an beta-release of a pimped TWM, featuring annoying UI/font scaling errors and occasional code bugs, with the bare features of WindowMaker but none of the polish. E was nice to look at but lacked functionality, especially during the 12-year release hole. KDE was the only contender and it was basically Windows XP with double-bevelled buttons and slightly buggy IPC. In the end I realised I was spending more time getting KDE to work properly than using it (Amarok at the time, but there were a collection of annoyances) that it was just easier to buy and use Windows. I still had Linux servers and Xmingw worked on Windows, so why not? What I'd like to know is why all those big open-source projects which everyone in the early 2000s thought would be Windows-killers "real soon now", turned out to be utter UI and usability train wrecks - GNOME, KDE and Firefox would be the best examples. In each project there seems to be a turning point where the devs went from heavily-engaged in the community to preaching their own virtues from ivory towers, releasing unusable crap or just pissing people off. Around the same time, myself and (it seems) many others decided that it was all too much pain and went elsewhere. What happened there? Why? Reply to This Parent Share twitter facebook linkedin Flag as Inappropriate
Re:We're All Dying (Score:5, Interesting) by Nemyst ( 1383049 ) on Sunday August 21, 2016 @12:10AM (#52741147) Homepage The "hacker" crowd is most definitely not dying, it's simply facing demographic changes. We used to be everything there was when it came to computers, both users and contributors. Now, there are billions of end users who don't give a toss about how it works so long as it does. We're no longer the majority, or even a dominant force.
However, that does not mean that the crowd is shrinking. Proportionally, it might be, but in absolute terms it's far more likely to be growing and to keep growing as more and more people have access to a computer from a young age, therefore exposing them to technology and allowing them to choose this path if they feel an affinity with it. Things are definitely changing, but don't go tombstone shopping just yet. Reply to This Parent Share twitter facebook linkedin Flag as Inappropriate
Re: (Score:2) by cosm ( 1072588 ) Now, there are billions of end users who don't give a toss about how it works so long as it does. We're no longer the majority, or even a dominant force My point reiterated.
Re:We're All Dying (Score:5, Insightful) by somenickname ( 1270442 ) on Sunday August 21, 2016 @12:42AM (#52741267) I think it's more that hobby contributors have been replaced by corporate paid, "my way or the highway" contributors. That has had both positive and negative effects but, to me, the most noticeable effect is that projects have formed agendas that in *no way* reflect the actual users of those projects. You see it happening in almost all the big projects now. Users hate Gnome 3? Too fucking bad. Users hate KDE4? Too fucking bad. Users hate the loss of functionality in Wayland? Too fucking bad. Systemd has consumed the userland? Tough shit. Maybe it's just the changing of the old guard to the new guard but, frankly, I have no desire to live in the world that the new guard is creating. They aren't improving things, they are taking a page out of the Microsoft playbook and trying to co-opt them for personal or corporate gain. Reply to This Parent Share twitter facebook linkedin Flag as Inappropriate
Re: (Score:2) by Waccoon ( 1186667 ) The real problem is that profit is very much a part of human nature we can't seem to conquer. FOSS developers and projects aren't known for making money, but they manage to gain profit other ways. Most notably, fame, ego, and the thrill of power. It's sad how many "libre" projects are run by power freaks that will actively tell the community that their complaints shall fall on deaf ears. They like to tell you that if you don't like it you can change it, but that's not practical when things are hard-coded
Re: (Score:2) by thinkwaitfast ( 4150389 ) I thought the point of foss was that if you didn't like something, you were free to change it yourself. For that reason I've never had a complaint since I started using it in 1994.
Re: (Score:2) by jbolden ( 176878 ) Users like systemd its old school admins who are throwing a fit. Users mostly want graphical responsiveness it is old school Unix guys that don't think responsiveness is worth losing network transparency (which they don't really have anymore even with X). Users want mobile integration it is old school Linux guys (hey you are old school now) that want a more classic desktop. The problem isn't users but a small subset of users that are disproportionately on /.
Re: (Score:3) by physicsphairy ( 720718 ) I represent someone in that demographic from a small engineering school. Among my admittedly non-mainstream group of friends I'd guess at least half know what KDE is. I'm not sure how many actually use it vs. GNOME, but it's common for them to have a Linux or Mac laptop. Laptops have become work devices -- they're what you take to project and study groups. *nix works great for that, and easy to get everyone using the same software (within a college student's budget, no less). I'm sure other places are diffe
Re: (Score:2) by thinkwaitfast ( 4150389 ) But the rate of new bread and new circuses is unprecedented. I dunno. All the "new" stuff seems to be the same as the old stuff with a new GUI. I used to get excited at least once a week with some new tech and used to devour magazines daily at the local library. I remember going from a hercules graphics card to cga was a revolutionary upgrade in capability. Now most new graphics are met with a yawn.
Re: (Score:2) by jbolden ( 176878 ) The canonical hacker breed if fine. The kids are doing all sorts of exciting web based stuff. They grew up in an environment where windows was stagnant, and the desktop apps on it were cumbersome and deeply entrenched. Web was vibrant, mobile is vibrant and the gaming platforms are vibrant. Same way our generation doesn't have a bunch of the mainframe / mini hackers who loved to reconfigure the OS directly because well by the time we came up mainframes and minis were dying and no one was letting a 12 ye
Re: (Score:2) by smallfries ( 601545 ) Just because there is more noise, and the ratio to the amount of signal has changed, does not mean that there is less signal. Hackers always were a rare breed. They still are.
Re: (Score:2) by thinkwaitfast ( 4150389 ) It's the future. Might as well embrace and try to profit from it.
KDE was overkill (Score:2) by hduff ( 570443 ) For me, KDE was too feature rich with more sizzle than steak. I gave it up when KDE 3 was launched and moved to Icewm, then to LXDE, and now using LXQT.
It's been dying since KDE3 (Score:3) by hawkeyeMI ( 412577 )
Re: (Score:2) by SlashdotOgre ( 739181 ) I definitely mark the beginning of their decline as their transition away from KDE3. Several excellent, mature apps were either effectively killed (i.e. Konqueror) or neutered (i.e. Amarok). Lots of customizability (arguably KDE's key feature) disappeared, and for a long time, lots of core functionality was broken. This wouldn't have been as much of a problem had certain distros not decided to jump to KDE4 way too early in its life cycle leading to bad experiences for both new and existing users. I don'
Re: (Score:2) by Gavagai80 ( 1275204 ) I use konqueror every day as my default file manager. Reports of its death are greatly exaggerated.
Re: (Score:2) by jbolden ( 176878 ) Gnome transition was a different thing. Gnome foundation made a clear choice after Maemo's failure that flexibility for mobile not parity with Windows was the top priority. You may not agree with the choice but that wasn't just bells and whistles. Gnome 3 may be a failure. But the success of iOS shows that their idea could have worked were it better executed. Subject (Score:3) by MBGMorden ( 803437 ) on Sunday August 21, 2016 @12:11AM (#52741153) Honestly, yes. KDE was the first desktop environment I tried when I started dabbling around in Linux back in the late 90's. I continued to use KDE for several years into the 3.0 series because compared to Gnome it just felt more polished and capable. As a matter of fact I remember at some point one of the big Linux groups (may have been a branch of Red Hat) announced that they'd be adopting Gnome as their "official" platform and I immediately though "Well, that's the end of Linux as a desktop option, because Gnome sucks.". Somewhere along the way though KDE did indeed stagnate, and Gnome and even XFCE started to feel just a little more put together. Eventually Gnome went a little off the rails too but thankfully Mint forked off Cinnamon and it is wonderful IMHO (though I did successfully use XFCE for a bit while Cinnamon was still stabilizing). I still will download and boot into some of the other DE's like KDE every now and then, but none of them feel right. Cinnamon on the other hand has manged to keep pace with technology and looks like not trying to upend the entire UI paradigm. Unless it changes drastically though, I no longer have any interest in KDE - and my interest in Gnome is limited only to backporting the useful bits into Cinnamon. Reply to This Share twitter facebook linkedin Flag as Inappropriate
A view from a user (Score:4, Interesting) by Frank Burly ( 4247955 ) on Sunday August 21, 2016 @12:25AM (#52741217) I no longer follow Aaron Siego's blog or planetkde very closely, but KDE seems to be improving and remains the least annoying DE for me. However, the curb appeal is an issue and Konqueror does indeed seem dead and I don't think there are enough developers who want it working to revive it. I think most of the problems are from the heavy redevelopment for Plasma 5+ combined with the lack of a major distro to underwrite it. We see Gnome flailing around and paying developers to do the things users hate, and a small contingent of hobbiests and grantees keeping Mate going. KDE is trying to push things forward with a similarly small developer base. I don't think there are many users who want to return to KDE 3.5 (as good as it was). Kontact/Kmail is retro looking, but only marginally compared to the Evolution screenshots I just looked at. The problem with Kmail is the backend, Akonadi, which frequently misbehaves and offers no practical advantage (except to developers, who could access the unified backend if they were working on PIM programs, which they aren't.) Reply to This Share twitter facebook linkedin Flag as Inappropriate
Re: (Score:2) by Zontar The Mindless ( 9002 ) ... Konqueror does indeed seem dead and I don't think there are enough developers who want it working to revive it. Dolphin works quite well and is highly configurable. Give it a spin. Although your remarks concerning Akonadi are spot-on. What the heck does a DE need its own DB server running all the time for anyway? (Especially given that MariaDB is NOT by any stretch of the imagination a drop-in replacement for MySQL, which I *do* need on my system, but that's for another rant...)
Re: (Score:2) by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) and remains the least annoying DE for me The fact that this is it's qualification shows that there is something fundamentally wrong with DEs.
How to advocate for desktop dev in a phone world? (Score:5, Insightful) by ErichTheRed ( 39327 ) on Sunday August 21, 2016 @12:27AM (#52741223) One of the problems with anything desktop-related is the fact that it's all getting drowned out by people beating the phone-and-tablet drum. Developers are cargo-culting the mobile design paradigm, even on applications that are aimed at desktop users. I do systems integration work with a focus on end user computing, so I see lots of user-facing software from many vendors. I swear that the big offshore code shops have all just started using the same "touch-first" AngularJS user interface framework and swap in company logos when they build a new web front end for something. I'm a big desktop fan - and a big terminal/command line fan. People laugh at me for using Midnight Commander for file operations on my various computers...but it's way faster than navigating a GUI or the command line if you know what you're doing! The problem is that the desktop and even the laptop form factor isn't the default anymore for most people. They've become almost a niche now, even in businesses. Most people want the Surface-style convertible tablets now where I work, and I've still got my boring ThinkPad collection. I'm also a cross-platform kind of guy, but I find myself on Windows machines most of the time. Microsoft actually did the right thing with Windows 10, walking back some of the 8.x "touch-only, tablet-only" craziness. It's not Windows 7, but in my mind it's a good compromise between the two worlds. If most people are mashing the screens on their Surface, you can't get away with Windows 7-sized user interface elements. I wish they'd let people theme Windows 10, but that's a different story. On the Linux side, I do wonder if having several choices for desktop environments, all with extremely different ecosystems, is the right thing. It's nice to have a million ways to do things, but Apple was able to do a decent UI on top of UNIX that hides everything UNIXy about MacOS until the user gets down into the details. The fragmentation of the Linux desktop is one of the things slowing adoption. Some of the more modern Linux desktop environments have gotten more love recently, and are a better choice for the new user. But, just like CDE on the old UNIX platforms, I'm sure KDE will be kicking around for ages. Just like me and my Midnight Commander... Reply to This Share twitter facebook linkedin Flag as Inappropriate
Re:How to advocate for desktop dev in a phone worl (Score:5, Insightful) by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) on Sunday August 21, 2016 @01:23AM (#52741379) A lot of tech people tend to forget that for most people, a computer is not an end unto itself. It's just another tool for getting their real work done. Why "advocate" a desktop if people can get their work done on a tablet or phone? A desktop system has a lot of complexity that, for most people, probably tends to get in the way of actually getting their work done as much as it helps them. I say, just use the simplest tool fit for the job, nothing more. People laugh at me for using Midnight Commander for file operations on my various computers...but it's way faster than navigating a GUI or the command line if you know what you're doing! I'd argue that very few people's productivity is measured in how efficient their file operations are. It's sort of like believing you're going to be vastly more efficient as a programmer if you memorize a bunch of keyboard shortcuts or type 60wpm instead of 30. Unlike the movies [hackertyper.com], programming isn't about how fast you type. If it works for you, fantastic. But don't kid yourself... you use it because it's what you know and you're comfortable with it. People hate change, because change forces cognitive dissonance, meaning you have to focus more on the task rather than the work you're trying to get done until the new system is committed to muscle memory. That means many people hate change even if it's change for the better, let alone if it's just change for change's sake. Reply to This Parent Share twitter facebook linkedin Flag as Inappropriate
Re: (Score:2) by epyT-R ( 613989 ) I say, just use the simplest tool fit for the job, nothing more. So give them a pencil and a pad of paper, right? Simpler is not always better. Even for someone who hunts and pecks, a keyboard with properly designed local software is a lot more productive for most people than laggy, underpowered touchscreen devices coupled with badly designed SaaS interfaces. If it works for you, fantastic. But don't kid yourself... you use it because it's what you know and you're comfortable with it. People hate change, because change forces cognitive dissonance, meaning you have to focus more on the task rather than the work you're trying to get done until the new system is committed to muscle memory. That means many people hate change even if it's change for the better, let alone if it's just change for change's sake. That's just it. The foisting of mobile interfaces on everyone is a case of change for change's sake. This is an appeal to novelty. Newer isn't always better. Changing a long held process better come with some ser
Re: (Score:2) by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) So give them a pencil and a pad of paper, right? Simpler is not always better. You didn't read the entire sentence. "Fit for the job". If there are two tools fit for the job, a simple and a complicated then simple is nearly universally better. The job needs to include not only the task but the intended output too. If I want to write a good argument to a colleague, then then a typed email is the the best tool for the job. If I want to let him know that when he gets back to his desk his boss was looking for him, a scribble on a post it in the middle of his screen is the best tool for a
Re: (Score:2) by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) Anyone who ... don't ... Ladies and gentlemen my grammar skills brought to you by Sunday morning and a broken coffee machine.
Re: (Score:3) by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) So give them a pencil and a pad of paper, right? Simpler is not always better. Even for someone who hunts and pecks, a keyboard with properly designed local software is a lot more productive for most people than laggy, underpowered touchscreen devices coupled with badly designed SaaS interfaces. Not at all. "The simplest tool fit for the job." If that's a desktop, fine. But not all work is that complex, or requires what are literally the equivalent of yesteryear's supercomputers sitting on a desk. Maybe some people need a laptop, since they're on the go. Or maybe even just a tablet with detachable keyboard, if all they really need is a browser to run some lightweight web apps. My point is that we as techies really shouldn't be so attached to a particular form factor that not everyone requires.
Re: (Score:2) by jbolden ( 176878 ) The foisting of mobile on everybody was a solution to how to leverage network advantages over a huge range of physical typographies. Whole classes of problems like maintaining phone contact lists (what's Bill's mother's phone number since he goes over to her place every other Wednesday night) are simply gone. Literally billions of new people have a programable high powered digital device in the last decade who did not before. Among the 1st world who had computers they not only have a computer somewhere i
Re: (Score:2) by ShakaUVM ( 157947 ) >A lot of tech people tend to forget that for most people, a computer is not an end unto itself. It's just another tool for getting their real work done. Why "advocate" a desktop if people can get their work done on a tablet or phone? A desktop system has a lot of complexity that, for most people, probably tends to get in the way of actually getting their work done as much as it helps them. Tablets and phones are consumption devices, not creation devices. They are a hideously bad match for trying to do an
since when is power user bad? (Score:2) by epyT-R ( 613989 ) KDEPIM/KMail frankly seems targeted specifically at the poweruser, maintaining over many years its rather plain and arguably retro interface. If 'power user' in this case means 'not technical but very proficient at using the computer', then there is no problem here. The last thing linux (or anything really) needs is yet another one of those stupid hipster interfaces with oversized widgets, wasted whitespace, reduced functionality, and 'cloud integration' user-hostility disguised as we-care-about-you plastered all over it.
Re: (Score:2) by Gavagai80 ( 1275204 ) Linux needs a stupid hipster interface. What it doesn't need is to eliminate all of the smart non-hipster interfaces. KDE is not meant for that crowd, and we need that diversity of purpose.
umm all modern desktop environments suck (Score:2) by Chris ( 4631445 ) The only advancement to any desktop environment which seems to really exist compared to KDE 3.x is search. I'm seriously thinking of returning to KDE 3 and putting my money into helping the developers of the Trinity Desktop Environment (KDE 3.x) resurrect it. It needs some work to bring it up to speed, and more so properly maintain it, but it seems to have the most potential of all the desktop environments. I thought it was dead, but I'm no longer convinced of that. Mainly because it's not an impossibility,
Post Bait. (Score:5, Interesting) by ElectricPrism ( 4235775 ) on Sunday August 21, 2016 @01:13AM (#52741347) This article is post bait. 1. Lure passionate people into highly upsetting or controversial hypothetical statement. 2. Popcorn 3. Watch the war break out between the factions 4. Profit SEO comments and data 5. Popularity++ KDE is not dying. On GamingOnLinux statistics KDE is the #1 used Desktop Environment https://www.gamingonlinux.com/... [gamingonlinux.com] Is the author blind? Perhaps specific tools and websites that were once cutting edge have gone stale, but seriously - Konqueror? You mean that thing that was replaced by Dolphin? Someone should tell the author there's a reason why X Y and Z tools have not been renovated - usually because there are better options available. Reply to This Share twitter facebook linkedin Flag as Inappropriate
Re: (Score:2) by kuzb ( 724081 ) Nails are rarely hit so squarely on the head. Slashdot is like buzzfeed for nerds these days.
+1 insightful (Score:2) by Xtifr ( 1323 ) I'd mod you up if I hadn't already posted. :)
the terminal illnes began with KDE4 (Score:2) by bferrell ( 253291 ) And the ideal of "break everything, we have a new idea!" rose. Plasma took it further down that road. Plasma5 dug the grave
Stillborn (Score:2) by Vlijmen Fileer ( 120268 ) It never lived. It was ridiculously bloated and psychedelically confused from the absolute beginning, and it still is. They had a small windows of opportunity when Gnome was abusing its users in a most foul way, "starting all over again" and basically delivering a window interface lacking even the most basic functionality for a fairly long time. But that time has gone.
What doesn't it do ? (Score:4, Insightful) by Archfeld ( 6757 )
Re: (Score:2) by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) Despite the industries' desire to convince us that change for change sake is a good thing Anyone who thinks change is for change's sake doesn't understand the change. Change doesn't always need to be for positive UI reasons, and sometimes a paint job is important even if you don't know why. Kind of like that "new" version of windows that you talk about, which must be change for change sake despite the fact that there are plenty of published documents showing why certain decisions were made. e.g. to you the wider window borders may be change for change sake, to me it makes using the window manager
My Limited Experiences With KDE (Score:3) by BrendaEM ( 871664 ) on Sunday August 21, 2016 @02:15AM (#52741537) Homepage I have preferred GTK applications mainly because they seem more structured from a user's standpoint. My preferred desktop experience is with Cinnamon. KDE seemed to have a lot of configuration, but many apps that were written for KDE, all look strikingly dissimilar from one another. It's not that they weren't "clean" because "clean" really means that we are removing useful functionality for the sake of over zealous artistic motivations or when people are too lazy to maintain the code under the buttons, but the applications lacked uniformity. I am sure that a lot of people really worked hard on it. It helped move the Linux desktop forward--especially in the late 1990s. There were questions as to whether or not it was really open, or perhaps Gnome wouldn't have been created. I wonder of the implications of a KDE failure, when a good number of applications use its toolkit. Reply to This Share twitter facebook linkedin Flag as Inappropriate
Looks sooo dated (Score:5, Funny) by Billly Gates ( 198444 ) on Sunday August 21, 2016 @02:40AM (#52741597) Journal It has too many colors and skumorphism with 3d icons showing what the computer can do with even file menus!! eww like soo last decade. I want a cell phone interface. It needs to be like 1990 to be more modern with no multitasking and complete flat with low colors and blinding white in the background. Man, we just want to consume content and nothing elzse. These things like options are for old people. Why can't there be decisions made for us with humburger menus like our phones to emulate 5 inch screens. Man unhip and these things called desktops are so old school for old people who think you need to write scripts and thing and stuff. Guess they haven't discovered the app store to solve every problem Reply to This Share twitter facebook linkedin Flag as Inappropriate
is lack of development a problem? (Score:2) by belmolis ( 702863 ) Why is lack of development necessarily a problem? Lots of very useful programs have seen little development recently because they already do well what they are supposed to do. In the case of user interfaces, it is far from clear to me that development represents progress. Personally, as someone who makes heavy use of the command-line and has zero interest in copying MS Windows, I was quite happy with the window managers of a decade ago and currently have to spend time setting up a new machine to configure G
Re: (Score:3) by Teun ( 17872 ) Lack of development is a problem when the underlying DE is changed (for good reasons) but development of the applications is not keeping up and they are no longer available on the new platform. Examples, the KIPI plugins, a couple of nice Plasma Widgets like Quick Access, weather, localize calender etc.
I still love KDE (Score:2) by freedom_surfer ( 203272 ) KDE is still my preferred Linux desktop. It does what I need and I find its features make my workflow more efficient. I still find valid users for lighter weight desktops, but day to day its KDE for me.
Law of headlines (Score:2) by Xtifr ( 1323 ) Once again, I think we can turn to Betteridge's law of headlines [wikipedia.org]: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." :) Haven't used KDE since the V4 release myself, but I still tend to suspect that Betteridge probably applies here.
The "gleeful adoption" of Windows 10? (Score:3, Interesting) by jez9999 ( 618189 ) on Sunday August 21, 2016 @07:52AM (#52742347) Homepage Journal Who the hell has "gleefully adopted" Windows 10 apart from MS fanbois? It's so appalling I'm literally thinking of quitting .NET development rather than eventually being forced to use it. And no, its UI isn't even good. It's shitty monochrome icons and minimalistic 2d bullshit. Windows 7 and Mint Cinnamon look a lot nicer. Reply to This Share twitter facebook linkedin Flag as Inappropriate
Re:konqueror best filemanager (Score:4, Informative) by donaldm ( 919619 ) on Sunday August 21, 2016 @12:13AM (#52741167) Konqueror would seem to be the best file manager for power users and programmers. it's very configurable. I don't think I could find as good a replacement for it. Konqueror is a web browser and it does work very well if you wish to make it a file manager, however, it is nowhere near as good as Dolphin which is so configurable that IMHO puts all other file managers to shame. I follow the Unix paradigm. "The right tool for the right job" and using a Web Browser as a file manager is not really using the right tool. If you have Fedora 24, KDE spin it ships standard with QupZilla which is sort of like Chrome (pretty much all browsers are sort of like Chrome) except it gives you allot more privacy and it actually does quite well on many browser benchmarks. Yes, I know you can easily lock down Chrome although good luck with a certain operating system which I won't name. Reply to This Parent Share twitter facebook linkedin Flag as Inappropriate
Re:konqueror best filemanager (Score:4, Insightful) by hey! ( 33014 ) on Sunday August 21, 2016 @12:42AM (#52741265) Homepage Journal Konqueror would seem to be the best file manager for power users and programmers. As far as I can see, file management really isn't a big deal for programmers. IDE, source control system, build automation tools, web browser, and of course a shell with the usual POSIX utility suite -- each of those things is a big deal. But Finder vs. Windows File Explorer vs. Thunar vs. Nautilus? I'd be curious if anyone can show that the choice has any measurable impact on productivity. It seems to me purely a matter of taste. I stopped using KDE and Gnome years ago, except to try them out periodically to see where they're headed. And pretty much it's places I don't particularly care about. I won't be arrogant and say that makes them bad or stupid, it's just means they're not for me. To me the desktop wars are like college basketball; if other people are into it that's fine by me, as long as it isn't compulsory. If there are enough people who DO want to go where these projects are heading, then KDE and Gnome will do fine. If they aren't, well, I'd feel sorry for all the people who put so much work into them. There was a time when these projects were critical to the future of software, but not anymore. Pretty much any one desktop system could disappear over night -- even (or perhaps especially) Windows. -- and it wouldn't be the end of the world. There's a healthy field of choices now, which is good for users if rough on the legacy of pioneering developers. Reply to This Parent Share twitter facebook linkedin Flag as Inappropriate
Re: (Score:3) by Zontar The Mindless ( 9002 ) That was true 3-4 years ago, but no longer. You should really try out Dolphin--I think you'll find that it now has all the useful features from Konq. It also supports the fish: handler for protocol-agnostic remote usage (FTP, SSH, etc.).
Re: (Score:2) by Zontar The Mindless ( 9002 ) People actually use Konsole? Given that Yakuake [kde.org] is a thing?
Re: (Score:2) by thinkwaitfast ( 4150389 ) An iphone has better specs than my university's Cray in the mid 90's.
Re: (Score:2) by thinkwaitfast ( 4150389 ) there are too few developers volunteering their time and expertise to open source projects. Doesn't that imply most itches have been scratched?
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