KDE at 30

Kye

The master of ceremonies is a proper creature: https://floss.social/@kde/116673618808097094 edit: I appreciate the quality of discussion below, so far.

pelagicAustral

I will donate my entire pension if they make it so I can have a Windows 2000 theme that actually works and doesnt require me to hack a dozen files each time they push and update.

iLoveOncall

I feel quite repulsed by the fact that the first thing you see when opening the post is a huge donation card.

F3nd0

It's impressive for the project to have come so far. Between the oversimplified, hyper-opinionated GNOME, the rock-solid but dull and minimal XFCE, the nostalgic MATE, and whatever Enlightenment is doing these days, it’s nice to have a continually polished, modern, well-integrated yet customisable experience like KDE, even today. And save for Akonadi (which just never seems to work reliably, rendering software like KMail useless), it’s been a pretty stable one for me, too. Here’s to another 30 years!

ACS_Solver

One of the most impressive and useful free software projects. My first experience was being totally confused by KDE 1 during my first attempts to use Linux, and I'm writing this from my KDE desktop. Other than the really bad KDE 4 release, the project has consistently been great for me. I've submitted a few smaller patches over the years and that experience was also low friction for a project of this size. KDE is highly customizable, full of power user features but also really simple with its current defaults (looks pretty much like Windows) and generally robust. Shoutout to some KDE applications like Okular (great document viewer), Kate (solid tech editor), Krusader (double pane file manager) and KolourPaint (a simple image editor even I can use).

ChrisArchitect

Talk from Grazer Linuxtage conf earlier this year: KDE: 30 years of the Linux desktop https://media.ccc.de/v/glt26-691-kde-30-years-of-the-linux-d...

tycoon666

KDE beta2 was my first.

badsectoracula

I don't really use Plasma itself (and soon i wont even be able to if the rumors of them dropping X11 support are to be believed) but i do use various KDE apps, like Krita (which i use for most painting stuff), Kate (my main programming editor, coupled with clangd for C/C++ programming), KolourPaint, Spectacle, Ghostwriter, etc and in general i find KDE/Qt apps to be more to my liking in their UX than anything based on Gtk (or at least Gtk3-or-later, Gtk2 stuff is for the most part fine).

discreteevent

Quick, clean and easy to use. I've only been using it for a year but I'm definitely not going back.

sqircles

I have long held a bias of KDE being the clunky and slow option from trial in the ~early-oughts. Within the past month or so I installed it to give it a spin and haven't switched back to XFCE since. It strikes a good balance of customization / speed / taste / and just working out of the box. Thanks KDE team!

LandoCalrissian

Love KDE, I think plasma is really great. KDE connect is a program I think people sleep on, I use it all the time.

thom

It feels to me that a lot of the bigger ideas in KDE fell away over the years. In the 2000s I would log in every morning, open a KWord doc in one Konqueror tab, a KSpread sheet in another, and some browser tabs alongside them, then I'd launch Kate and open some files over SSH or FTP and get to work. It felt like someone had really embraced OO and applied it to every part of the desktop, and I assume something like KParts and KIOSlaves still exist. But for the most part, I use KDE now as a bog standard boring Linux desktop that just works. I am grateful that it hasn't been dumbed down quite as much as GNOME over the years, but I hope they have a few bold experiments left in them (and would love to hear what I'm missing if it's already there!)

gritspants

I hope someone comes along with a better recollection than I have. When KDE 1 came out there were some bitter licensing discussions on /. and elsewhere, largely regarding Qt. I had high hopes for Enlightenment and later Gnome but they mostly seemed to fail.

NoboruWataya

It's been a long time since I've used KDE but I have fond memories of it. When I first started using Linux I was impressed by how integrated and polished it was. A lot of the KDE-branded software was high quality, too (I remember Akregator and Kate in particular). It seemed to me, at the time, the best introduction to Linux for someone coming from Windows. That must have been about 20 years ago(!). I've since come to prefer a more lightweight and minimalist setup but it's great to see KDE still going strong.

trostaft

Truthfully, I like the more opinionated visual design of GNOME, but I moved to KDE long ago for VRR and better fractional scaling support. They just got it right and working. Huge props to the team, I know that's very difficult. EDIT: On a side note, is anyone informed about the state of VRR + fractional scaling + general gaming on GNOME? Has it gotten better?

newsoftheday

Please do not drop X11 in Kubuntu, Wayland performs poorly and weirdly. X11 rocks.

vitorsr

I recently installed Fedora Kinoite [1] and I have been very pleasantly surprised by how stable and performant it is. I am afraid I cannot say the same for their new KDE Linux distribution [2] which in my opinion was a bit unpolished at the time. Both are immutable desktop distributions. The good news, I guess, is Kinoite stands to benefit from KDE Linux development because it mostly depends on Flatpak to install programs which means all of the KDE ecosystem will eventually be available at Flathub [3] as first-class citizens with reasonable maturity. [1] https://fedoraproject.org/atomic-desktops/kinoite/ [2] https://linux.kde.org/ [3] https://flathub.org/en/apps/collection/developer/KDE/1

swordzen

Apple's Safari was built on top Konqueror / KHTML. KDE deserves a lot of credit. I still use Konsole a lot.

lowleveldesign

A bit tangential, but can you recommend any GUI applications for monitoring the system? The KDE's defualt system monitor is a bit heavy and does not provide much insights. I switched to Linux some time ago as my main system, but I miss a tool such as System Informer [1]. [1] https://www.systeminformer.com/

pmkary

Their design is getting too sterile and grey. I was a bit sad of seeing the screenshots.