Ask Slashdot: Why Aren't You Running KDE? 818
First time accepted submitter mike_toscano writes "At least some of us have recently seen Linus' most recent comments on his experience with Gnome 3 — he didn't have many nice things to say about it and as you know, he's not the only one. On the other hand, there have been some great reviews and comparisons of KDE with the other options (like this one) lately. Sure, early releases of 4.x were painful but the desktop today is fully-functional and polished. So the question: To those who run *nix desktops and are frustrated by the latest Gnome variants, why aren't you running KDE? To clarify, I'm not asking which desktop is better. I'm really talking to the people who have already decided they don't like the new Gnome & Unity but aren't using KDE. If you don't like KDE or Gnome, why not?"
Because I run XFCE (Score:5, Insightful)
Why am I not Running KDE? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Between Personal Life and Work (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Because I run XFCE (Score:5, Insightful)
Worst "start" menu ever (Score:3, Insightful)
I used it for a short time. Couldn't get over how poorly designed the start menu is. All I really want is (1) the ability to start programs and (2) the ability to switch between said programs. KDE does (2) well, but (1) sucks. Maybe this has been fixed by now, but GNOME's ctrl+space+"fi"+enter is significantly faster than KDE's click+click+click+click+...
I left KDE for GNOME... (Score:4, Insightful)
because with KDE 4 they change the fundamental design philosophy of the project. I didn't want easy of use, I wanted control, which I why I originally left GNOME for KDE before that.
Now with GNOME making the same design choices, I'm left with MATE, which is just a fork of the the GNOME I want to use, but it's still lacking right now.
I understand that they want the interface to be easy for anyone to approach, but what about those of us who want to do more than just browse the web and share pictures of the grandkids?
I'm loosing all the features of the Linux Desktop that I left Windows for in the first place. *sigh
I have tried to but it's too weird (Score:5, Insightful)
KDE is one of the few environments that actually works with my setup of four monitors in a dual twinview (xinerama) configuration. Unity and GNOME3 do not work at all with this setup, they render only on half the screens, the mouse doesn't work at all, and other problems.
Currently I have to run a bastardized mix of XFCE and OpenBox to get everything to work because the XFCE window manager doesn't work correctly either. MATE (GNOME2) desktop seems to work and I have been thinking of switching (back) to it but it seems kind of buggy. It will probably end up being what I use though.
But on topic, I would love to just use KDE because it works right out of the box without me having to tweak or worry about anything. BUT, it's just too weird and often has annoying bugs/crashes (sort of like Opera actually). It looks weird and doesn't work like I think. I can't really explain exactly what it is other than "weird". It feels confusing and hard to use. If I could pick one example application that showcases the weirdness of KDE it would be the Amarok app. Good grief that thing is bizarre. The UI is so funky and doesn't work anything like what I need. For me that app is a good reflection of KDE as a whole. Bizarre, ugly, and unintuitive UI. I can't get any work done in that.
Still prefer Gnome 2, now Mate (Score:4, Insightful)
Now that Mate is available on a somewhat stable basis for Fedora 16 and 17 (external repo), I have no reason to change. Gnome 2 worked well for me, and I like the look and feel.
KDE still doesn't feel right to me somehow. Personal preference, obviously. And part of it might just be the way Fedora packages it. Oddly enough KDE apps look and feel great with the Gtk theme when run under the Mate desktop.
If I was stuck with Gnome 3, I'd give KDE a serious look, but since there are now good alternatives (XFCE, Mate, Cinnamon), I'll be trying them first.
Because I don't like Linux (Score:1, Insightful)
And that's why i follow Haiku. It's fast, it's consistent and there isn't a billion distro's to worry about. Until all the GNU/Linux distro's can agree on one solid OS to focus on and cure the massive problem of fragmentation from one platform to another, i'll stick to Haiku.
Because I hate using a mouse (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't like the requirement of moving my hand off the keyboard and over to the mouse just so I can navigate.
It's i3 for me.
Plus, the start menu paradigm is retarded, and the last time I bothered trying KDE they were just trying their hardest to be a shinier, blingier Windows.
Until they fuck it up (Score:2, Insightful)
Having seen the KDE people screw this up once already, many aren't interested in having it screwed up again in KDE 5.0 . KDE needs to make people understand that they admit they fucked up before and vow not to do it again.
Re:and Fluxbox (Score:3, Insightful)
And if you miss your $favouriteKDEapp or $favouriteGNOMEapp, remember that the executable can be launched from a terminal window.
I'm finding this less and less true as KDE apps become more tied in with each other (kind of like a certain other much maligned OS). They all expect a bunch of services to be running in the background and properly configured. You almost have to setup a kde desktop minus the actual desktop just to run tools like dolphin. Gnome was always this way (I still remember when launching gnome's editor would kick off nautilis).
Re:Two words: nepomuk and akonadi (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not just that nepomuk and akonadi are poorly implemented, I personally don't like the idea of a semantic desktop. Why index everything? In years of use I've never had the need. These things need to be optional. Without them I would try KDE and I am one of the guys who was abandoned by gnome (happy xfce user now).
Re:fvwm (Score:5, Insightful)
Same here. Since being exposed to the fvwm-pager more than 20 years ago on SunOS, I am not happy without at least 3x2 desktops and usually have 3x3 with edge scroll. I also use the auto-raiser, tuned exactly to my reflexes.
Why people go for eye-candy over functionality in a tool is beyond me.
Re:I left KDE for GNOME... (Score:2, Insightful)
Move away from the stupidity that is KDE and Gnome. These people do not understand the Unix philosophy and are trying for an all-integrated bloated monster a la MS Windows.
Personally, I recommend fvwm2. Takes some time to configure exactly how you want, but then you have never to touch it again. My current configuration is based on a SunOS one, that I had to fix exactly once in 20 years, when fvwm2 came out. I use it on several machines by just copying the config file.
Re:Worst "start" menu ever (Score:5, Insightful)
I actually wasn't aware that that exists. In GNOME, clicking the "Activities" button brings up this menu, so I found it almost immediately.
your argument seems dishonest.
Or you know, it's possible to use a system and not suddenly know everything about it..
Re:because.. (Score:0, Insightful)
K stands for Krap.
That about sums it up for me. All the terribly misspelled apps that start with 'k'. It's like that old copy of "The Far Side" where every single cartoon is listed in the 'Index' starting with "The one about..."
What the hell is the point of alphabetizing your menus when everything starts with 'k'. And where's my chat program. Must be 'kchat' or something lik...oh...'kopete'...? Really? Huh--never would have guessed that was a chat program in a million years. What about a web brow...'konquorer'? Seriously? Is that german for 'web browser' or something?
Pass.
I'll stick with xfce and 'normal' app names...
XFCE Convert (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Found happiness elsewhere (Score:5, Insightful)
ditto.
i haven't run kde since openlinux (yes, i bought it at retail way back when. wtf was i thinking).. it was gnome after that until ubuntu and gnome3 fucked that up. now it's xfce and lxde:
xfce is the new gnome2, and lxde is the new xfce.
Re:I left KDE for GNOME... (Score:5, Insightful)
These people do not understand the Unix philosophy and are trying for an all-integrated bloated monster a la MS Windows.
I think KDE understands it supremely well. They try to provide a collection of single-purpose components that get put together in cool ways. For example, KIO slaves provide filesystem-like interfaces to various protocols like HTTP, SFTP, Samba, etc. KHTML (and later WebKit) provides a HTML renderer, DOM, and JavaScript environment. Glue them together one way and you have the Konqueror web browser. Combine them another way and you have KMail. Neither of those are "all-integrated bloated monsters", but sets of components working together to perform a larger job. Isn't that The Unix Way?
Re:Found happiness elsewhere (Score:5, Insightful)
The distro maintainers are absolutely at fault. They are under no obligation to include anything from an upstream project. To use the obligatory car analogy, suppose a car company is building a car from a big box of parts, and their job is to use these free parts to make a car that works well for people for practical purposes. One of the parts in the box is a really cool new engine, but it only runs on natural gas (not commonly available for refueling) and it has all kinds of bugs and problems. Why would the company put that new engine in their car, instead of the (also freely available) gasoline piston engine they have available, which works well and has few problems, when they can wait for the people making that engine to improve it to the point where it's better than the gas engine, or at least a worthwhile alternative that they can offer to customers?
The reason the distros include this buggy new software as soon as it's available, replacing the more stable but older versions, is because they want to advertise how they have the fancy new item; they want to look like they're cutting-edge. This is a bad way to go about things though; it just shows they don't do any real testing (obviously no user testing, so that users can tell them "this thing sucks balls! give me the old one back!"). People who want to get real work done don't want to be beta testers for every new thing out there. But by the same token, they also don't want to be stuck with ancient (and buggy) versions of software just because someone arbitrarily set a "freeze" date at some point, like they do with Debian "Stable". Pragmatic people wanting the best productivity want the latest stable versions of software, so they have all the security fixes and bug-fixes, but without any beta testing; that stuff should be left in experimental branches. They do want recent versions of the kernel, however, so they get good hardware support; highly stable software isn't much use if it doesn't run on your hardware and you have to go track down a 3-year-old system to run it on. They also want the latest bug fixes and updates for things like browsers; a browser isn't very useful if it's years out of date and doesn't show websites properly (e.g., doesn't have full HTML5 support). But a desktop environment is different; there's few compatibility worries there--it doesn't restrict what hardware you can run, or affect what websites you can see, it's mainly just a user interface. But it's how you do all your interaction with your computer, so it needs to be more stable and usable than anything else on your computer.
Re:Found happiness elsewhere (Score:4, Insightful)
Somehow people got the idea stuck in their heads, that Linux HAS to be loved by the mere *users*... even the most incompetent (and loudest) ones.
If you want to get people off of MS products, isn't that the ultimate goal? Trust me, I am not saying "you" have to use what the consumer would. Generally we don't anyway. Even if I have to use Windows most people walking by my desk are puzzled by things like Xming, a few dozen putty terminals, etc.. etc.. The tools we need for our jobs are different than, lets say, a secretary.
Giving "you" the ability to have things that you want in a desktop is not bad in any way. But the default layer presented to a consumer should make it, in your words, "loved by the mere *users*". If it can't, or won't, then nothing will ever change.
Gnome is holding back the Linux desktop (Score:3, Insightful)