Why do you prefer KDE?

[Frank Steinmetzger]

On Sat, Dec 21, 2013 at 06:45:13PM -0800, Bruce Byfield wrote:

> As you may have heard, KDE recently topped the Linux Journal's Readers' Choice 
> Awards.
> 
> That got me thinking. Why do people prefer KDE?

Back in the days of KDE 3, when I started using Linux (2006), I liked it
because of the digital (7-segment) clock. :-D
I detested the Gnome look back then, but really enjoyed the KDE3 look,
most prominently the Cyrstal SVG icons. I clinged on KDE3 for a long
time. (Though not for Konqueror as a browser, it lagged behind even
then). Gentoo allowed me to keep it far longer than many other distros
would have. KDE3 was just the snappiest thing ever.

Eventually I moved over to 4, still because I hated the Gnome 2 look
(they waste far too much screen space). I also like the application
ecosystem, like the editor component, the KIO stack, KDE-wide password
storage, some nice (external) tools: Filelight, KCharSelect, kmplot,
Krusader, Kile, Gwenview (the KDE3 version), Okular and Konversation.
I, too, fell victim to Akonadi tiredness, so I switched to mutt 2 years
ago, but I still have KMail at hand, it does look nice and it gets
better again over time (but still no match in speed to mutt, especially
for mailing lists with 100s or 1000s of mails).

> What advantages do you think it has over other desktop environments?

One word: Customisability. I am also a heavy customiser and like
adopting my computing environment to *my* needs and wishes. I like that
you can put your panel (any number of panels) anywhere you want. You
don't have to see a stupid panel that constantly tells you your own
name. To me it's unbelievable that there are desktops out there that
don't even let you choose another base font.
KWin window rules are great, like “put mplayer always on top and on all
desktops”. 3D effects are not only nice (some of them anyway), but also
helpful, like seeing all open windows at once and filtering through
them.
Keyboard shortcuts allow for very fast interaction -- I assigned almost
the entire alphabet to some action or application via the Meta key. And
in almost every program you can assign keys to all sorts of actions.

I am also grateful that not all of the “good old stuff” is thrown away
just because some hipster-inspired paradigm-of-the-month emerged from
another project. One example is the kickoff-style menu -- to many
animations, too much waiting, scrolling and clicking. I prefer the
old-style menu and apreciate it still being there. And while I (think I)
understand the notion of activities, I'm fine with virtual desktops.

In recent time my interaction became more console-based: mc/ranger, vim,
mutt. Historically I never used graphical network setups, instead always
did it using system services. Plus I don't really like the network
manager applet, mostly b/c it's no real window that can be alt-tabbed
to. Plasmoids are nice on the one hand -- they allow for a very flexible
setup of panel and desktop -- on the other hand the Plasma UI sometimes
is very annonying (e.g. non-standard behavior of scrollbars).

There are of course some nags... Konsole font replacement bug (though a
Qt problem), Power profiles on laptops, multi-monitor glitches,
scrolling in Dolphin, Plasma layout bugs, drag+drop to Gimp, Kiosk mode
missing from KDE3 (would be nice for a throw-away guest login similar to
what Ubuntu offers). But that wasn't your question, so unlike Duncan, I
leave it at that one paragraph. ;-)

-- 
Gruß | Greetings | Qapla’
Please do not share anything from, with or about me with any Facebook service.

Guillotine operator wanted.  Chance to get ahead.
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