KDE No Longer Competitive? Developer Calls It Quits

[Alex Sarmiento]

Default kde file manager was konqueror, which is still superior to dolphin(konqueror is quite useless as web browser, but best feature rich file manager for kde). I always replace dolphin with konqueror as default file manager.

As matter of fact, i found konqueror to be good enough as a web browser and very primitive as a file manager. Dolphin is the best file manager for Linux.

[asdx]

KDE 4.8.4 is working great and it's very stable for me as well, I don't experience any crashes anymore.

However, these two bugs are fucking annoying, I'm hoping that somebody will fix them soon.

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=278724
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=224447

These two are related to the panel.

[Larian]

KDE doesn't interact with hardware directly; ALSA does. KDE uses PulseAudio if it's available (like Gnome) so the hardware is always as supported in KDE as it's in any other desktop environment that uses PA. Your problems were related to configuration which couldn't be any easier than what it's with Veromix.

It's as if the door to the land of the wee-brained folk was unlocked and left unguarded for a time.

I know good and well it was a configuration problem. And no amount of fiddling with the configuration options solved it. (Getting tired of repeating myself here.) That's why we used a different distro. If there was an easy fix, it was neither obvious nor available on numerous forums we checked. I wonder if you are intentionally misunderstanding me.

Ehh... what? KDE has always been about the possibility to configure just about everything. The unified experience is what Gnome is going after.

You didn't read a word I said.

If you have multiple output sources then there's no possible way to define what is the wanted output. ALSA-mixer then again doesn't have anything to do with KDE and it shouldn't be used if you are running PulseAudio.

This objection is as dumb as it is completely irrelevant to anything we've been talking about. FYI, we disabled onboard audio in the BIOS and there was only ONE output it could choose from. And it was turned off by default. And another thing, saying that you shouldn't touch alsamixer with pulse? I've had to do that to get hardware to work (See also: ASUS P7P55D-E PRO motherboard and it's shitty drivers), because PA didn't know it's ass from a hole in the ground.

If a system detects an HDMI connection it should make that the default option. Period. Then at least you'll get audio of some kind.

[Alex Sarmiento]

I think he's actually saying that it's very difficult to program with little reward. Today, what appears to be simple is really complex. Steve Jobs and Apple have moved computing into a user-friendly simplified direction, and that is good... but it means one needs to come up with innovative methods, yet have complex, feature rich abilities.

After 6 years of work Peter can't see much changed, even though there has been a horde of work. I programme myself and I can understand this.

Example some people are also good at graphics and others with structure. Someone can spend a day doing an icon, where another a few hours. A whole day for an icon, means you sacrifice your life. KDE is a project with few workers, so getting supporters means a lot of work is done by those that are active and it can be inefficient and detrimental to one's life.

Peter is saying he's near burnt out.

Well, I've been a mac user for years and i got tired from mac os, and now i am using KDE. I am going to get tired from Linux too and ill switch to mac os again. I think that he just got tired too, that's it.

But what i was trying to say is not what he means, is what he said. There's a lot of software bloat, even web bloat as he pointed out.

[droste]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=278724

I had that too after a fresh install and as already mentioned in the bug report this http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=96351#p201489 "fixes" it. (well not a real fix, but you only have to do it once after a fresh install)

[asdx]

I had that too after a fresh install and as already mentioned in the bug report this http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=96351#p201489 "fixes" it. (well not a real fix, but you only have to do it once after a fresh install)

I left a comment in that forum thread.

[Jebril]

I've used every DE except for KDE honestly. Gnome, LXDE, XFCE, Cinnamon/Mate, and Enlightenment.

The only thing that stopped me from using KDE is the ridiculous amount of options and how much of a cluster it looked like to me. This guy is spot on when he talks about the UI, pretty sad because he probably understands the problems with KDE more than most people there. It's not too many options per say but the UI behind it that's off putting for me.

[rainbyte]

It's as if the door to the land of the wee-brained folk was unlocked and left unguarded for a time.

I know good and well it was a configuration problem. And no amount of fiddling with the configuration options solved it. (Getting tired of repeating myself here.) That's why we used a different distro. If there was an easy fix, it was neither obvious nor available on numerous forums we checked. I wonder if you are intentionally misunderstanding me.

You didn't read a word I said.

This objection is as dumb as it is completely irrelevant to anything we've been talking about. FYI, we disabled onboard audio in the BIOS and there was only ONE output it could choose from. And it was turned off by default. And another thing, saying that you shouldn't touch alsamixer with pulse? I've had to do that to get hardware to work (See also: ASUS P7P55D-E PRO motherboard and it's shitty drivers), because PA didn't know it's ass from a hole in the ground.

If a system detects an HDMI connection it should make that the default option. Period. Then at least you'll get audio of some kind.

I think that you had a configuration problem with the pulseaudio layer, it's not kde fault (kde only manages audio through alsa and pulseaudio via gstreamer or vlc phonon plugins)...

Could it be an alsa or pulseaudio bug? HDMI output sometimes doesn't work ok with some new cards... Maybe the other distro had an updated pulseaudio (1.x vs 2.x) or alsa package? (I noticed many improvements in pulseaudio 2.x and last alsa versions)

I use toslink optical audio output here (I have hdmi on my screen, but I prefer a direct cable to my digital audio receiver), and I have to configure it manually (but that's not bad because I know there isn't many people using optical output)... It isn't difficult neither, I only have to select the output under system settings or using pavucontrol (that's even easier if you change settings several times)...

What happens if you have a PC with 4 soundcards like the other desktop I have here? The user has to be able to select the soundcard without problems, that's why pulseaudio came to the scene...

I don't think that HDMI should be the default... There are more users with normal analog speakers than people using hdmi audio, and there are also other configurations...

EDIT: fixed some typos

[1c3d0g]

Well, for a lightweight alternative, there's Razor-QT, like LXDE, but Qt instead of GTK+. Still, I don't understand why people are so obsessed about running the DE's native apps, it's NOT an all-or-nothing approach! I use KDE but still have LibreOffice, VLC, Chrome and other non-native apps as my default programs. What's the damn problem? I really don't get it. This in-fighting is so ridiculous is isn't even worth typing anymore. And it's exactly because of all this nonsense that Linux cannot easily gain new users, as there is a constant rift between users and developers themselves.

[jmcharron]

I'm still using 3.5.10 from the OpenSuSE Build Service on my OpenSuSE 12.1 and Tumbleweed installs. On my desktop I tried using the KDE4 that comes standard with 12.1, I think its 4.7 anyways I found it mildly unstable and it seemed sluggish compared the old KDE 3.5 and the OpenSuSE Build Service does such a wonderful job of maintaining 3.5 I haven't been forced to migrate.