Suggestion for KDE's future

Story: KDE Presents its Vision for the Future Total Replies: 8
Author Content
kikinovak

Apr 06, 2016
5:05 AM EDT
I've been a KDE user since 2.x, and a couple years ago, I definitely switched to Xfce. Here's a few suggestions to the KDE team.

1. Try to find a sane release cycle. Don't think "weeks" or "months". Think "years". I'd like to use your stuff in a production environment.

2. When releasing your stuff, it's nice to squash 95.341 bugs. It's less nice to introduce 102.982 new ones.

3. Try to get over the Sisyphos syndrome. Whenever the KDE team issues something *really* usable (like KDE 3.5.10 or KDE 4.14.3), they decide to let that rock roll down the hill and publish something completely new (4.0, 5.0) that has to be potty-trained from scratch.

Cheers from an IT professional and long-time Linux user.
jdixon

Apr 06, 2016
6:07 AM EDT
> 2. When releasing your stuff, it's nice to squash 95.341 bugs. It's less nice to introduce 102.982 new ones.

It's even less nice to yell at your users for complaining about them, as they've been known to do.
nmset

Apr 06, 2016
10:23 AM EDT
At the end of their article :

"If you share our vision you can also support us by helping to fund our work, either via a regular payment as an official Supporting Member or via a one-off donation."

No doubt, if every one pays a little, that would help them. I once made a small donation, I don't think of doing it regularly. If someone donates regularly to one project, he would soon find there are tens of similar projects he uses on a regular basis and the bill would soon be beyond his means. Hence, we cannot be overbearing with maintainers of KDE.

That's the unfortunate fate of open projects : very useful to millions of people, yet they are on their own because they started on their own. The Linux kernel put aside, I wonder how main contributors of such big projects earn a living. Any ideas ?
notbob

Apr 06, 2016
11:41 AM EDT
> I wonder how main contributors of such big projects earn a living.

Sell out to Microsoft?
gary_newell

Apr 07, 2016
5:17 PM EDT
KDE is probably my least favourite desktop environment. I wrote about Manjaro on KDE a few weeks ago and that is the best experience I have ever had with it but I would rather use GNOME or XFCE.

I don't get the whole activities thing if I am totally honest. I understand what they are but I'm not sure why I would ever need to use them.

The widgets are all fairly brick like. It is like a minecraft desktop. If Nintendo made a desktop environment they would make KDE and slap a great big Mario on it. It is a bit too cartoon-ish.

Used in its most basic form it is fine, a panel, menu and system icons. The widgets need to be more professional. The activities need to have a point rather than be a gimick.

I just don't see why KDE is better than XFCE or even for that matter Cinnamon or MATE.

With XFCE you can do so much to make it the way you like it. Add the slingscold dash, add panels where you want them, make one of the panels a dock or install Cairo dock. Choose between the standard menu and the whisker menu.

GNOME might not be as customisable but everything looks like it fits better. The applications seem to integrate very well. The keyboard shortcuts make it easy to navigate.

Dare I compare GNOME and KDE to the Blur and Oasis thing from the 1990s. In my opinion Oasis had more good songs but Blur had the best songs.

It is the same with GNOME and KDE. There is no doubt that there are more good GTK applications but KDE has probably some of the best ones. For instance I like Rhythmbox but I would say Clementine is my favourite audio player. Similarly I would say KDenlive is better than Openshot for video editing.

This has turned into a bit of a ramble but I think I have made my points.

mbaehrlxer

Apr 11, 2016
3:11 PM EDT
kphotoalbum, the only KDE app i am running. because no other application is as good for managing lots of images.
Ridcully

Apr 13, 2016
3:15 AM EDT
Thankyou kikinovak......in particular your comment #3. That resonates perfectly with my outlook on KDE......It really WAS a superb desktop.....now it's like a Swiss Army knife; you can fill in the blanks on that yourself. I wrote extensively on KDE in my series of articles; I even made suggestions on how they could improve the situation. I don't think anything got into their mental block.......and I'm still using KDE4.6.......it just works. Well, it does for me anyhow.
kikinovak

Apr 13, 2016
4:39 PM EDT
@Ridcully - If I had to use KDE, it would be either 4.13.3 on the upcoming Slackware 14.2, or 4.10.5 on CentOS 7. SolydK's implementation's not bad either.
Ridcully

Apr 13, 2016
6:02 PM EDT
Hi Kikinovak.......just for cynical interest I had a look at "latest version lists" for KDE. Shown below. One suspects that the current release is Plasma 5.6.2, but apparently KDE isn't called KDE any more, it's Plasma ? ...........It is interesting that both of us are either using or would consider using much earlier versions in the series 4 releases. Says it all really and thankfully, I am well out of it. That's personal of course; obviously there are others who absolutely love KDE/Plasma in its current version - I mean, the KDE team must know someone is using it.

KDE Releases Frameworks 5.21.0 9 April, 2016. KDE ships monthly release of KDE Frameworks 5, our modular Qt libraries.

KDE Releases Applications 16.04 Release Candidate

7 April, 2016. KDE ships KDE Applications 16.04 Release Candidate.

Plasma 5.6.2 Released 5 April, 2016. Plasma 5.6.2 release.

KDE Releases Applications 15.12.3 15 March, 2016. KDE ships KDE Applications 15.12.3.

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