I think the opposite is true actually...
|
| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| cmost Jun 16, 2013 11:16 AM EDT |
I am a long time KDE user who fled to Gnome 2.x back in the bad old days where KDE 4 first took shape, and as a then Gnome user I fled back to the more mature KDE 4.5.x when the awful mess that is Gnome 3 reared it's ugly head. As a former long-time Mint user, I have tried Cinnamon off and on since version 1.4. Hands down, KDE is the more mature of the two desktops and it is by far my favorite. This makes since when one considers that Cinnamon is a still a baby when it comes to desktop environments and has a lot of growing up to do. That's the primary reason it is so simple and lightweight at the moment. Moreover, KDE is developed by and for those who like to have total control over every aspect of their desktop down to the most minuscule detail. Obviously having limitless options might overwhelm some users. Cinnamon is intended more for less experienced users who want things to just work while being intuitive, simple and pretty. Personally I believe having all these choices is great! Everyone can use what works for themselves while allowing others to do the same. |
| Fettoosh Jun 16, 2013 11:39 AM EDT |
I have never used Cinnamon. Actually, in my opinion, KDE 4.x is so good it doesn't give other DEs any chance. |
| notbob Jun 16, 2013 12:00 PM EDT |
Not sure why I need the evil axis of bloat (stingy, neopuke, alsonasty) , but I use KDE. Well, kinda. I LOAD KDE, then toss the DE part and run fluxbox. All the goodies with none of the bloat. Even the evil axis is stifled. If someone would care to explain what EA actually does and why I might need it, I may one day use it. Until then, it's jes bloat. ;) |
| jdixon Jun 16, 2013 12:14 PM EDT |
> Actually, in my opinion, KDE 4.x is so good it doesn't give other DEs any chance. Funny, I could say pretty much the same thing about XFCE. |
| seatex Jun 16, 2013 1:48 PM EDT |
> Funny, I could say pretty much the same thing about XFCE. I concur. XFCE is fast and made for productivity. |
| gus3 Jun 16, 2013 6:20 PM EDT |
Straight-up Sawfish FTW! I am far more productive with Sawfish than nearly any other X manager. |
| Steven_Rosenber Jun 16, 2013 7:11 PM EDT |
+1 for XFCE |
| gary_newell Jun 17, 2013 3:24 AM EDT |
Personally I have never been a fan of KDE. It is like eating a roast dinner on a hot summers day, far too stodgy. I have used Cinnamon and really like it but I am also still a fan of Gnome. I also really like XFCE. To be honest I even prefer Unity over KDE. |
| skelband Jun 17, 2013 3:13 PM EDT |
<sarcasm> You're all wrong. vi is the best without a doubt! :D </sarcasm> |
| gus3 Jun 17, 2013 4:13 PM EDT |
@skelband, vi is not a Desktop Environment. Emacs, on the other hand, predates them all! |
| BernardSwiss Jun 17, 2013 7:14 PM EDT |
You know (speaking as a Vim user) I believe gus3 has a point... |
| jdixon Jun 17, 2013 8:25 PM EDT |
> You know (speaking as a Vim user) I believe gus3 has a point... Yes, he does. |
| theboomboomcars Jun 17, 2013 11:05 PM EDT |
I personally don't see anything wrong with a non sequitur side in a discussion about which DE is the best. Since the best DE is all opinion, since we all care about different things we can't come to a common definition of what is best in a DE, some one can have a different definition of what a DE is and add just as much to the discussion. |
| jdixon Jun 18, 2013 6:22 AM EDT |
> Since the best DE is all opinion,,, Well, that was sort of my point. |
| Fettoosh Jun 18, 2013 8:44 AM EDT |
Quoting:Well, that was sort of my point. Isn't that what I explicitly said in my statement quoted below? Quoting:Actually, in my opinion ... |
| jdixon Jun 18, 2013 10:11 AM EDT |
> Isn't that what I explicitly said in my statement quoted below? Yes, it was. And I was merely reiterating it. |
| skelband Jun 18, 2013 12:17 PM EDT |
Well no-one has mentioned MATE, so I will put up my vote for that.
Interestingly, I think that it's biggest advantage for me is its familiarity (with Gnome 2 of course). It's strange that we see a lot of comment from the Gnome developer camp about people being change averse. AFAIC, if it works and suits your workflow, why change it? MATE's biggest strength for me is exactly that it *doesn't* change. |
| seatex Jun 18, 2013 1:52 PM EDT |
skelband - You made a great point about the Gnome 2 familiarity being a strong case for MATE. I currently have Xubuntu 13.04 and Linux Mint 15 MATE installed on my trusty (circa 2006) Intel dual-core laptop. I do like the classic interface of the old Gnome 2 that MATE offers. However, XFCE (at least with Xubuntu 13.04) is noticeably faster on my laptop. My laptop has a Core2Duo T7200 @ 2GHz, 2GB DDR2 & Intel 945GM graphics. I love both XFCE and MATE. But, if I had to choose one, I think I would favor XFCE's speed and lower resources. BTW, the first thing I do after installing an XFCE distro is remove the dock and drop the top panel to the bottom of the screen. |
| vainrveenr Jun 18, 2013 3:53 PM EDT |
Quoting:Well, kinda. I LOAD KDE, then toss the DE part and run fluxbox. All the goodies with none of the bloat. Even the evil axis is stifled. If someone would care to explain what EA actually does and why I might need it, I may one day use it. Until then, it's jes bloat. Indeed, other distros specifically avoid similar such "bloat" as this. For example: - CrunchBang Linux uses the Openbox WM. - Besides using the Openbox WM, Puppy Linux uses Joe's WM. - Besides using the Openbox WM, Lubuntu uses the Lightweight X11 DE (technically, LXDE is more than simply a WM). - Bodhi Linux uses the Enlightenment WM. |
| lietkynes Jun 18, 2013 6:39 PM EDT |
I think notbob makes an interesting point, albeit not a new one. In particular, I want to ask the question, "when is it ok to put up with the 'bloat'?" 1. Resource hungry bloat: KDE seems to have bloat in areas that don't benefit me in any way. Admittedly nepomuk is an interesting idea that I never use. The list of bloat is endless for most people (under the assumption that bloat is defined by the work paradigm of each person). The fact is that many of these tools (nepomuk in particular, even with it getting better) utilize a lot of resources and help a limited number of people (source non-existent...limited experience). Granted, disabling _some_ of these is a trivial task. 2. Broken bloat: KDE is a good DE that suffers from the curse caused by having too many moving parts. It is all over the spectrum with it's applications/services; from absolutely stable (stastically speaking...worth pointing out the obvious), to cripplingly unstable. More in the middle we have Activities, that seem to crash/behave erratically often enough to raise some questions on my part. The Kalligra suite is an example of something being unusable due to instability in stressful situations. These are two main types of bloat that break my experience with KDE and make me ask the question..."should I put up with it, considering the benefits of using KDE?". For the most part, I'd say nope. KDE is bloated due the desire to keep the system ahead of the game (nepomuk) and customizable (widgets, activities, etc). Many of these tools require changes in my work patterns, which is hard for me to even do one step at a time. Others force me to ignore their very existence. Experience may vary, but KDE is a bitter-sweet topic for me. I keep it on my family's computer, and it works fairly well on OpenSuSe. At work, no thanks. I keep xfce4.10 and i3. Note: I don't expect them to oversimplify their desktop environment...but I'd like so see them focus on stability rather than innovation. Consistency is worth a lot to me. |
| theboomboomcars Jun 18, 2013 11:10 PM EDT |
BernardSwiss and Jdixon, somehow I missed your comments, just consider me a late bandwagon jumper. :) I am also guessing that that was gus' intention as well. |
| notbob Jun 19, 2013 9:23 AM EDT |
lietkynes wrote:Note: I don't expect them to oversimplify their desktop environment...but I'd like so see them focus on stability rather than innovation Such is the beauty of fluxbox. Completely kills all the iffy unstable nonsense that IS KDE and leaves you with only the better really useful stable apps. I always open up 5 konsoles, seamonkey, and kmixer automatically, then call up whatever else I need from the FB cursor menus which are KDE centric by default. Granted, FB menus are a bit out of date, offering older version names of KDE programs like okular and gwenview, but the programs/menus are easily changed and many of FBs menu choices are still relevant, like K3B, kate, konsole, dolphin, etc. I guess FB is a poor choice only if you are one of those desktop users that jes can't stand to not revel in desktop visual real estate. Wallpapers, tiled windows, transparent xterms, and all that useless silliness. I couldn't care less. Being an old geezer, I max every window I have open and toggle between 'em or change workspaces, etc, all keyboard shortcuts. Otherwise, it's ideal. I can call up any of KDEs very nice useful programs with a minimum of background bloat or instability. My only real kvetch with KDE is their abandonment of some really great programs, like quanta+ and cutting adrift krita for totally questionable apps like the EA. It's development for the sake of development. I'm put in mind of that asinine statement by one of the linux developers, I forget which, that trumpeted his groups great success in making their project more accessible and easy for developers to develop. !?!?!? WTF!? And here I thought improvement should be to make it more accessible to the end user. Silly me. BTW, I finally figured out what all that EA nonsense is. It's for PIMs, personal information management meta data. YEE GODS!! I don't put ANY personal information on my computer! Why would I? The internet has done everything in its power to suck the user dry of any and all personal information and I'm gonna use an iffy bloated family of programs to help organize it all for 'em? GTFOH!! ;) |
| Fettoosh Jun 19, 2013 10:00 AM EDT |
Quoting:"when is it ok to put up with the 'bloat'?" First you have to define what "Bloat" is. Bloat is in the eye of the beholder. I don't consider lots of features that don't consume resources when one can easily shut them down and don't bother users who hardly acknowledge their existence. One man's bloat is another man's richness. Quoting:1. Resource hungry bloat: .... I used to shutdown Desktop Search services when they were still under development, now I run them all the time and hardly notice them. Of course one will notice them initially, but when done indexing a whole lot of junk everyone has on their desktops, they no longer take much resources and are very useful to those who need them. Those who don't need them, like you said, turn them off if they are not idle already. Quoting:2. Broken bloat: .... We are talking about DE, what does many applications have to do with that knowing one can use other better applications on different DEes? Everyone knows that on any Linux DE, users can mix and match applications any way they want to suit their needs, so what is the problem with that? If an application that is still in development giving a user some headache, I am sure s/he won't stick with it and would look for another one that is better. One of the most interesting characteristics about Linux is the abundance of choice. In my opinion, you don't seem to have any valid point and you just repeating what you have heard so many times when KDE 4.x was still in development. Quoting:I keep it on my family's computer, I wonder why! Quoting:Note: I don't expect them to oversimplify their desktop environment...but I'd like so see them focus on stability rather than innovation. Consistency is worth a lot to me. I fully agree and I believe recently the KDE team is doing just that. They are getting more careful about releasing software and more conscious about software stability and reliability. |
| Fettoosh Jun 19, 2013 10:05 AM EDT |
@notbob, Not everyone is notbob. |
| notbob Jun 19, 2013 11:51 AM EDT |
@fettoosh, Thank you for that perfect example of bloat. ;) |
| gus3 Jun 19, 2013 12:36 PM EDT |
If people start making negative comparisons to Microsoft Windows, it's bloat. |
| lietkynes Jun 19, 2013 1:55 PM EDT |
@ Fettosh "In my opinion, you don't seem to have any valid point and you just repeating what you have heard so many times when KDE 4.x was still in development." -> Unwarranted insult taken; makes me not really care to address any of your other points. The only thing I'll bother to say is that I have KDE on my family's computer because _I_ force them to use it. Because _I_ like certain aspects of the DE and am willing to give it a chance at the expense of my family. |
| Fettoosh Jun 20, 2013 12:05 PM EDT |
Quoting:Unwarranted insult taken; @lietkynes, No insult intended, Sorry and I apologize if you see it that way. It is just the way some people keep repeating the same from so long ago when KDE came out. No one can doubt that early version of KDE 4 had suffered from missing features, many bugs, and slow performance. But that has been gone already for some time now. Instead of rewarding the KDE team by praising them on a great job (in my opinion), they keep bashing it for problems that happened during its early development. Like I said, someone's bloat is someone else's richness. It also depends on what type of hardware it is running on. It actually does need more resources, but that is only because it also offers far more features, capabilities, and better DE/applications than any other DE out there. To me that is not bloat, it is richness and catering to all levels of users. I have been running KDE for many years and I don't see any bloat. I am sure many others (Over 50% of Linux user) are happy using KDE. |
| JaseP Jun 20, 2013 3:41 PM EDT |
Currently I run Kubuntu 12.04 on most of my systems, except for my daughter's HTPC, which runs Xubuntu 12.04 (need a lighter DE for that ASUS EEE Box 202 machine),... I too defected to Gnome 2.X from the debacle that was KDE 4.0... But currently, KDE 4.8.X+ is just fine, but when too much XFCE does just great too... I won't touch Gnome 3.X with a 10-foot pole,... that belongs to someone else... |
| DiBosco Jun 20, 2013 5:46 PM EDT |
Admittedly I run the really superb Mageia on fairly modern machines with plenty of resource, but KDE4 is snappy, *beautiful*, so much more flexible than any other DE I've tried.(*) Unless the machine is several years old, I don't see any worthwhile speed increase with something like XFCE or IceWM and I do see a loss of a lot of functionality. Akonadi and nepomuk get uninstalled immediately though. * Never tried Gnome properly, but had a go with most of the others at some point. |
| jdixon Jun 20, 2013 6:00 PM EDT |
> Instead of rewarding the KDE team by praising them on a great job (in my opinion), they keep bashing it for problems that happened during its early development. So developers ignoring user feedback and calling their users names is now "problems"? I'll have to remember that. KDE may work very well now. I'll probably never know. I have better things to do with my time than worry about the latest release from a group of complete a******s. |
| seatex Jun 20, 2013 6:22 PM EDT |
Does anyone else have a problem with having to uninstall parts of a DE immediately after installing it, just to make it more stable? |
| notbob Jun 20, 2013 6:29 PM EDT |
I don't uninstall anything. I do a full KDE 4 install. I jes don't run it. |
| seatex Jun 20, 2013 7:38 PM EDT |
> I don't uninstall anything. I do a full KDE 4 install. I jes don't run it. What I mean is, even the KDE users that praise it admit they have to remove parts of it to make it run well. And this is a few years after the fiasco that was the KDE 4 launch. Personally, I was a full-time KDE 3.x user and was very happy with it. But after the problems with the transition to 4.x, I moved on and never looked back. I did the same thing with Gnome after they decided to test their users' loyalty with Gnome 3. Do I even want to continue running a DE whose developers treat their users with such disregard? Nope. And I don't feel like giving them a second chance to do it again. I try to learn from past mistakes. |
| Fettoosh Jun 20, 2013 9:09 PM EDT |
Quoting:I do see a loss of a lot of functionality. Akonadi and nepomuk get uninstalled immediately though. I am not sure you need to de-install them to prevent them from using resources, you just have to stop/turn them off. Quoting:What I mean is, even the KDE users that praise it admit they have to remove parts of it to make it run well. I believe this is a misconception from the early days of KDE 4. Never had to remove anything and it runs perfectly fine and has been steadily improving since 4.8. Quoting:So developers ignoring user feedback and calling their users names is now "problems"? I'll have to remember that. ... If that was true, and it is a big if, yes it is a problem. But when they are busy fixing bugs and the onslaught of name calling, like yours above, most probably some KDE developers got so pis*ed off at the bashing had no choice but to just ignore such comments or reciprocate the nasty comments. I personally don't blame them especially when they are writing code for free. If they have taken some of the comments seriously and followed their path, we wouldn't have the modern and advanced KDE 4.x we have now and probably stuck with something similar to Trinity. I wonder how many users are using Trinity at this time. KDE 4.x is the only DE that is capable of unifying core code that will run on different hardware devices (Desktop, Laptop, Netbook, Tablet & phone) and change the interface automatically depending on the hardware used at the time, or by user option, without logout/login or rebooting. That wouldn't have been possible with out the Plasma Workspaces developed for KDE 4. On the top of that, Plasma Active for Tablets will allow users to run a full fledged Linux OS complete with many applications that are being adapted to Touch Screen interface on various devices. I suggest to everyone who keeps bashing or even just criticising KDE 4, to ask themselves a simple question: When KDE is a totally Free and Open Source Software, why, what and who is benefiting from persisting on bashing it? KDE developers didn't and are not going to listen to those who call for stagnation, but will listen to new ideas, ways of doing things, new technologies, improvement, advancements, etc. So what is the use of constant bashing? KDE has its users who are very pleased and happily giving feedbacks, suggestions, requests, and helping in debugging; may be that is all what its developers need or want. ....eor...... |
| jdixon Jun 21, 2013 12:14 AM EDT |
> If that was true, and it is a big if, yes it is a problem. As with most of history, different people will interpret events differently. We each make our decisions according to our interpretations. |
| notbob Jun 21, 2013 8:03 AM EDT |
> What I mean is, even the KDE users that praise it admit they have to remove parts of it to make it run well. I use it. Maybe not praise it, but for the most part it has what I need. And, there is no need to remove anything. Jes run another DE that doesn't call up all those bloat/unstable KDE features. They only run if you actually invoke KDE. I do not, so it's a non-issue. Perhaps this is jes a Slackware thing. I don't know. I do know Slackware comes with 6 WM/DEs, KDE being the default. I can choose not to run KDE and instead run fluxbox or blackbox or xfce or whatever, but that in no way hinders the use of native KDE applications, which can be called up from anywhere, including the command line. If I do a full install of Slackware, which I do, the full KDE monty is present. I typically run konsole, okular, gwenview, krita, kate, kmixer, occasionally dolphin and/or konquerer, etc. But, bloat and instability is not an issue cuz the EA and a few other background KDE annoyances are not running. In short, I have my cake and can eat it, too. Can't all linux distros do this? |
| jdixon Jun 21, 2013 9:23 AM EDT |
> Can't all linux distros do this? They could, but by and large they don't seem to. |
| CFWhitman Jun 21, 2013 11:40 AM EDT |
I never have trouble running KDE applications on various Linux distributions even though I'm very rarely actually logged into KDE. I use K3B often from other desktops (XFCE, Fluxbox, Openbox). The only thing is that when you install a KDE program, the list of dependencies is long if you haven't already installed KDE itself, so it takes longer to install the first one that you install than it normally would. |
| seatex Jun 21, 2013 11:50 AM EDT |
notbob - Interesting. I am in the process of setting up a Slackware workstation for a client (with XFCE). I am going to keep that in mind as I go through the installation process. |
| notbob Jun 21, 2013 3:58 PM EDT |
@seatex I'm not sure if Pat V sets up FB menus to reflect his preference for KDE, but I suspect he does. No doubt you can customize xfce menus, as well, if Pat hasn't already done so (he adores KDE). I can invoke any KDE program from the command line, an FB cursor menu, or the FB pop-up run box (alt-F2). OR, set 'em up to automatically start upon boot of x. So many choices. ;) |
Posting in this forum is limited to members of the group: [ForumMods, SITEADMINS, MEMBERS.]
Becoming a member of LXer is easy and free. Join Us!