KDE 4 sucks

[reptor]

I've use Debian Linux for a long time and the latest major version update from Lenny to Squeeze changed KDE from version 3 to 4 and I think the KDE project has lost their collective marbles! KDE 4 is horribly slow and buggy (I had a few crashes every month). I really didn't think this would happen but I've changed to Gnome and it is much faster, "snappier", on the exact same computer. I'm really disappointed at what the KDE project has done.

Seriously, KDE 4 feels slower than Java-based IDEs such as Eclipse or Netbeans. When it's like that you know things are seriously going wrong somewhere. KDE 4 is a major setback for the KDE project and if I were leading some organisation such as a company, there would be no way I would have KDE 4 installed on the company's computers. I guess it may not be a huge problem if you have new and very fast computers but even then you would be running slow code when you could be running fast code and for a desktop environment performance is certainly critical.

One thing I really liked KDE 3 and Linux in general about was that it was faster than Windows XP and clearly much faster and lighter than Vista. It looks like the KDE project tried to copy Vista / 7 features and turned into crap as a result of this major rewrite. I'm not saying adding more features or improving old features shouldn't be done, I'm saying don't sacrifice (much) performance for it.

I hope they can get some sense into it sooner rather than later. I can tell you the Windows XP desktop environment is clearly faster on this computer compared to KDE 4. As it stands now, KDE 4 can't be used on older computers because of poor performance. This means one major selling point of using Linux over Windows is gone. It can be solved by not using KDE 4 but that's probably not what the KDE project is going to recommend?

[jacmoe]

Nice rant.

What KDE 4 are you using?
4.6.3 ?

I stopped using Gnome for the same reason: it felt too slow and sluggish.
That, and because KDE is much better at running Gnome apps than Gnome is at running KDE apps.

Each to his own.
That's the beauty of Linux.

[jacmoe]

What distribution are you using KDE with, if I may ask?

If you say 'KUbuntu' then it's no wonder why KDE is slow. That's the worst KDE based distribution there is..

[CABAListic]

Same for me, when KDE 4 was released, it died for me. It was horribly unstable and had nothing to offer to me in terms of usability or features. It was at that time I switched from Kubuntu to standard Ubuntu.
Apparently, many of the bugs have been fixed in the meantime, but I just don't feel like trying again. I don't know why I would.

[betajaen]

I use Gnome on Arch. It's quite nippy on my Netbook.

I don't think I would switch to KDE though.

[reptor]

I used the version which comes with Debian Squeeze.

I am just about to run apt-get purge on it

[jacmoe]

Debian Sid.
aptosid, actually.
I made the switch from Gnome (always been a Gnome user) when KDE reached 4.5. It's been very tempting since 4.3, actually. But 4.5 made me switch.
4.6.x rocks even more. Good performance tweaks. More interface polish.

In all fairness to Gnome: I used it on Ubuntu/Mint - not fair (as that distro is slow).

However, if you want raw speed, then maybe LXDE?

[betajaen]

My Guest User doesn't use a window manager at all, it justs runs Firefox in .xinitrc and quits when Firefox exits. Then again, I don't use a graphical login manager either, and I start Gnome with StartX.

In most cases, Windows Managers are overrated.

[jacmoe]

Just FYI:
Debian Squeeze means slow KDE, unfortunately.
http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/reviews/debi ... ze-review/
KDE 4.4 is somewhat buggy..

Go Sid.

[jacmoe]

In most cases, Windows Managers are overrated.

I just knew you'd say that.

[dermont]

Pretty much agree with OP though I guess a number of Ubuntu users may switch to KDE when the Classic Gnome is gone in 11.10.

What are others peoples views on Gnome Shell(Gnome3) / Unity; I dislike both. Anyone recommend a distro that is using Gnome3 without Gnome Shell (Classic Desktop) as default?

[reptor]

I used xfce for some time as a quick cure (it was installed by default?) before installing Gnome. Xfce performance is good, but it's too basic feature-wise. I may try this LXDE too out of curiosity.


And indeed, I have to mention Debian Squeeze has Gnome 2.30.2 at the moment. I am a bit afraid of what will happen with Gnome 3... but I think this change won't happen until next major version update of Debian.




I quite like Debian in general. I don't mind some software being older than what seems to be "cool" right now, just as long as it all just works and performs well. Only very rarely do I have to install a newer version of some program than what Debian provides. In fact I believe many Linux distros out there update to new program versions way too quickly. But I guess this is the nature of the beast, the open-source project world. It has good sides to it and bad sides to it.

It just sucks to be at the receiving end as an end-user when a project such as a desktop environment project has screwed up. Changing a browser icon to have Christmas decorations and let it stay like that for half a year is a tiny issue compared to performance problems and crashes.


Although I have to adjust this complaint a bit - in fact we can blame the Debian project for using KDE 4 when it clearly was not ready. I would have been fine with continuing to use KDE 3 despite of the fact that I liked the screenshots of KDE 4. I guess I don't care about "shiny" so much that I would give up a lot of desktop performance for it.

[jacmoe]

What I like about Debian Sid is this:

Mercurial 1.8.3
GCC 4.6.0
svn 1.6.17
cmake 2.8.4
Qt Framework 4.7.3
ogre3d 1.7.3
Boost 1.46.1
Blender 2.57.2
Cg Toolkit 2.10017
nvidia 270.41.19
KDE 4.6.3

I can see that the list is already out of date.. But it shows that I'm on all the newest stuff. From the official repositories.
It changes as much as 4 times a day, so if something breaks, it's usually fixed asap.
Notice that I can just apt-get install the newest Blender?
And Ogre 1.7.3?
I kind of like that.

[jacmoe]

What are others peoples views on Gnome Shell(Gnome3) / Unity; I dislike both. Anyone recommend a distro that is using Gnome3 without Gnome Shell (Classic Desktop) as default?

I really don't like where the Gnome project is heading..

As for a Gnomish desktop, maybe LXDE?
It's based on GTK+ too..

[reptor]

I did use some testing version of Debian some years ago. But I gave up on it as it was just too unstable for me. It actually broke many times so that it was very hard to fix, like for example package dependencies system would break and then updating would become impossible unless you would know how to fix the problem. As an end-user I don't want to deal with that sort of problems.

[jacmoe]

Me neither.
Which is why I use aptosid.
I wrote a review of it on my blog - but the conclusion is that Debian Sid, by means of aptosid, is more stable than any Ubuntu/Mint I've ever run.
I just visit the aptosid forum before dist-upgrading to see if there's any upgrade issues. If there is, I just wait until the coast is clear.
The aptosid team also patches Debian sometimes (and contributes back) and has a custom kernel which is more modern.

I don't think I could handle Sid on my own, to be honest.
The best of both worlds, IMO.

Enough evangelizing - choice is good.

<edit>
Another aptosid review is here-> my-move-from-arch-to-aptosid

[ppClarity]

I loved Ubuntu for being Debian-without-politics. Sadly it seems that Shuttleworth came down with a case of George Lucas disease and stopped listening to his fan base. 3D desktop and tons of features that try to think for me? DO NOT WANT, I've got real work to do. I gave up on GNOME and KDE years ago.

I'm currently using Xubuntu (xfce), but am considering LXDE.

[merlinblack]

Pretty much agree with OP though I guess a number of Ubuntu users may switch to KDE when the Classic Gnome is gone in 11.10.

What are others peoples views on Gnome Shell(Gnome3) / Unity; I dislike both. Anyone recommend a distro that is using Gnome3 without Gnome Shell (Classic Desktop) as default?

I'm using GNOME3 at home (Fedora15) and Unity at work. Unity is growing on me, but I like the window management of GNOME3 i.e. the Mac style expose more. However I'm probably not your average user - a keyboard junky, having multiple desktops on multiple screens littered with terminals, some running vim. There are some really annoying things in both however, like in Unity having to focus an app before its menu is available (Something I don't like about Mac's either) and having to hack on desktop files to be able to start multiple instances of a program easily from the dock. GIMP comes to mind as something that is harder to use under Unity - the menus are too far away from your mouse. GNOME3 has that silly "hide the shutdown option" to "encourage" people to use suspend instead (as if that actually works on most machines) .... what were they smoking?!!!

I found KDE3 too bling and toy like for my tastes, I haven't really tried it much at all, and haven't been tempted by KDE4.

Interestingly I finding OSX Lion not bad as long as you have a multitouch trackpad, but has its share of "Why can't you do...? Damn it, do it the long/hard/annoying way then."

I only use Win7 to launch games really which it seems to do OK.

[jacmoe]

I found KDE3 too bling and toy like for my tastes, I haven't really tried it much at all, and haven't been tempted by KDE4.

KDE3 and KDE4 are two really different beasts.
It was not until KDE 4.6 that I made the switch from Gnome.
The difference is Plasma.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_(KDE)

To be honest, I even think it looks better than OS X.

general-desktop.png

http://kde.org/announcements/4.7/

[EricB]

Reminds me of the words of the great BronzeBeard Henry,

"Is speed so dear, or stability so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty Tux! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me openbox or give me death!"



Though I have been tempted to switch to awesome... maybe when I work on the linux port of Gear City

EDIT: Guess when you talk about wm you ought to post screenies

screenie.jpg

[jacmoe]

Each to his own - but nice buttocks.

[Sslaxx]

Pretty much agree with OP though I guess a number of Ubuntu users may switch to KDE when the Classic Gnome is gone in 11.10.

What are others peoples views on Gnome Shell(Gnome3) / Unity; I dislike both. Anyone recommend a distro that is using Gnome3 without Gnome Shell (Classic Desktop) as default?

I've already made the switch to Kubuntu, was planning on doing it as soon as I heard of the removal of the classic UI. Might switch to another distro at some point, but I've no particular issues with it so far. No speed issues either - and I say that running on an aging rig with no 3D drivers installed (Nvidia 7300GT). Unity didn't do it for me on the desktop, and some of the decisions they've been making for it regarding 11.10 just leave me cold. Not sure about GNOME 3.

[jacmoe]

Just though I'd revive this topic to tell you that there's a new desktop environment out called Razor-qt:

06.EditDesktopMenu.png

I really like that it's based on Qt.

[runfrodorun]

The way I handled KDE 4 is I uninstalled X11 and went back to old-school lynx and vi. I always liked KDE 2 and 3 as well, but I might have to try this new Qt based environment...oh there I go getting excited about linux again...

[merlinblack]

Razor-Qt looks interesting. Think my old laptop might get pulled out of wardrobe. Their logo is clever too