Total KDE fan and that's all I run at home. It's an interesting study also in desktop environment and software written in C++ and just how hard it is to get something that works for most people. Mistakes, corrections, building the basic blocks like Qt in the early days and keeping a bunch of people with differing cultures / tastes / backgrounds/needs motivated to make it better every day - fascinating achievement.
Thank you KDE folks - I contribute in terms of bug reports and attempts at fixes sometimes but this time I am signing up for a monthly donation - I encourage people to do what they can to keep a good thing going! https://kde.org/donate/
Been using for over 20 years now. KDE is really the best. Consistent between releases, stable, infinitely customizable, but works great out of the box with features you'd expect and often years ahead of the commercial competition in terms of new features. Every moment I spend in macos or windows for work is pure torture.
I used the betas, KDE 1-3, skipped 4 an 5, and I'm now back on the 6 train. It's really nice, and I try to use something else every now and then and I'm back in KDE a few weeks after.
I'm so glad KDE exists to take a stand for the power user and customizability, while GNOME sinks ever more into androidification. Like come on, it's a desktop pc with a mouse and keyboard, not a fucking tablet where every icon needs to be 2 miles wide. Without KDE, linux would not be usable as a daily driver for me.
The ancient Windows desktops were quite good so if something tried to emulate them that would be a reasonable goal.
I have no idea how modern KDE is, because I abandoned KDE due to the KDE 4 disaster. Nonetheless, KDE 3.5 was much better than Windows XP, even if its default configuration was somewhat similar.
Actually I consider KDE 3.5 the best desktop environment that I have ever seen, much better not only than the contemporaneous Windows XP, but also than the contemporaneous Mac OS X. The reason was that KDE 3.5 had an extreme customizability, so everyone could reconfigure it according to their tastes, so it no longer resembled any other desktop environment. Unfortunately, almost everything that I liked in KDE 3.5 was removed in KDE 4 and replaced with rigid choices that I disliked.
After KDE 4, I never had the courage to try KDE again (I fled to the refuge of XFCE), but I hope that it has recovered and now it is at least at the level of its past glory, if not better.
> ... because I abandoned KDE due to the KDE 4 disaster.
I totally hated that whole mess. It almost ruined KDE for me. The real disaster there wasn't that KDE released v4 prematurely, but that they didn't make it crystal clear to the distro maintainers (and end-users) that it was not ready for "prime time" use yet (it was basically "pre-release"/alpha quality), and the major distros of the time jumped on making it the default (forced it on everyone) when it was still basically utterly broken compared to the prior versions of KDE (which had become overall quite solid and reliable by that point).
I've become a big fan of CultRepo's documentaries. If you enjoyed this one, I highly recommend checking out their catalogue of free, high-quality content (https://www.cultrepo.com/films).
They cover a wide range of topics, from C++ and Java to Node.js, Kubernetes, React, and Vue.js. I particularly enjoyed the Java documentary, which offered fascinating insights into the differences between the Sun and Oracle eras, many of which I never would have expected.
Total KDE fan and that's all I run at home. It's an interesting study also in desktop environment and software written in C++ and just how hard it is to get something that works for most people. Mistakes, corrections, building the basic blocks like Qt in the early days and keeping a bunch of people with differing cultures / tastes / backgrounds/needs motivated to make it better every day - fascinating achievement.
Thank you KDE folks - I contribute in terms of bug reports and attempts at fixes sometimes but this time I am signing up for a monthly donation - I encourage people to do what they can to keep a good thing going! https://kde.org/donate/
Been using for over 20 years now. KDE is really the best. Consistent between releases, stable, infinitely customizable, but works great out of the box with features you'd expect and often years ahead of the commercial competition in terms of new features. Every moment I spend in macos or windows for work is pure torture.
I used the betas, KDE 1-3, skipped 4 an 5, and I'm now back on the 6 train. It's really nice, and I try to use something else every now and then and I'm back in KDE a few weeks after.
Wonderful quality documentary, just like KDE itself. Really nice to see people behind my favorite software.
I'm so glad KDE exists to take a stand for the power user and customizability, while GNOME sinks ever more into androidification. Like come on, it's a desktop pc with a mouse and keyboard, not a fucking tablet where every icon needs to be 2 miles wide. Without KDE, linux would not be usable as a daily driver for me.
I've been using gnome for the past 10 years. Every time I try to use KDE it feels like a wannabe Windows DE, in it's default configuration anyway.
The ancient Windows desktops were quite good so if something tried to emulate them that would be a reasonable goal.
I have no idea how modern KDE is, because I abandoned KDE due to the KDE 4 disaster. Nonetheless, KDE 3.5 was much better than Windows XP, even if its default configuration was somewhat similar.
Actually I consider KDE 3.5 the best desktop environment that I have ever seen, much better not only than the contemporaneous Windows XP, but also than the contemporaneous Mac OS X. The reason was that KDE 3.5 had an extreme customizability, so everyone could reconfigure it according to their tastes, so it no longer resembled any other desktop environment. Unfortunately, almost everything that I liked in KDE 3.5 was removed in KDE 4 and replaced with rigid choices that I disliked.
After KDE 4, I never had the courage to try KDE again (I fled to the refuge of XFCE), but I hope that it has recovered and now it is at least at the level of its past glory, if not better.
Yep. I used KDE from the early betas until KDE 4 and escaped at that point to the i3/sway world.
KDE 6 is really good tho. It's so fast, works great, Dolphin is the absolute best file manager there is...
> ... because I abandoned KDE due to the KDE 4 disaster.
I totally hated that whole mess. It almost ruined KDE for me. The real disaster there wasn't that KDE released v4 prematurely, but that they didn't make it crystal clear to the distro maintainers (and end-users) that it was not ready for "prime time" use yet (it was basically "pre-release"/alpha quality), and the major distros of the time jumped on making it the default (forced it on everyone) when it was still basically utterly broken compared to the prior versions of KDE (which had become overall quite solid and reliable by that point).
Yeah KDE mimics Windows, Cinnamon mimics MacOS, and GNOME mimics Android. That's sort of the intention, so you can keep your workflow.
Cinnamon definitely mimics classic Windows... That's essentially its entire point.
GNOME is the mishmash of macos and, like you said, mobile design.
And Windows mimics KDE. It's a loop.
I wish I could have a DE that looks like KDE 3 or before...
A great way to start my morning, thank you for posting
It is very hard to imagine what life would be without the awesomeness that KDE is.
I've become a big fan of CultRepo's documentaries. If you enjoyed this one, I highly recommend checking out their catalogue of free, high-quality content (https://www.cultrepo.com/films).
They cover a wide range of topics, from C++ and Java to Node.js, Kubernetes, React, and Vue.js. I particularly enjoyed the Java documentary, which offered fascinating insights into the differences between the Sun and Oracle eras, many of which I never would have expected.