KDE's rough edges... what are your experiences?

[dE]

On 10/27/13 12:24, Michael wrote:
> Hi peops,
>
> I somewhat force myself to use KDE (once again), even though I am very
> likely to get annoyed rather fast when it comes to the KDE-specific
> kind of issues. Issues, I have never seen with any other project to
> that extent. And I ask myself, if others are annoyed too there or am I
> just a whiny little bitch and no one else really bothers there?
>
> To describe the kind of issues I am referring to, some examples:
> 1.) KSysGuard: I just closed a program via its own menu (file ->
> close), wondered why even after several minutes (and even now, half an
> hour later) KSysGuard still showed that process, so I did look with
> "ps" and to my surprise, the process is *not* there anymore, but
> KSysGuard shows it nevertheless in the "process table".
> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=261255
>
> 2.) Panels: Changed the "alignment" on one panel (for DualHead
> "mirrored" panel setup), one should think now the alignment is changed
> like in any other tool (mostly word processing tools I guess) but well,
> it is not, widgets and stuff still want to "fall" to the left. I guess
> because of that and other "bugs" there, several issues arise.
> http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=94642
> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=248186
> http://askubuntu.com/questions/116040/how-to-right-align-widgets-in-panel-in-kubuntu-11-10
>
> 3.) Widgets, plasmoids, generel KDE features: Yeah well, really nice
> design (mostly), but from a usability standpoint? Often a mess. First
> one sees a feature and thinks "Great" and later on he might realize how
> bad that feature is implemented. I don't want to get into details yet,
> as this mail is going to be long enough already, but if there is any
> need and someone has no idea what I am talking about here, just ask. But
> remember, I don't say all and everything is implemented badly, with
> KDE-stuff it just looks to me the tendency is there that stuff gets
> implemented in a rather weird / bad / less- to un-usable way.
>
> 4.) Weird messages and... stuff: Be it annoying phonon messages that a
> audio device was removed, though it definitely was NOT, power-manager
> framework telling me it doesn't work because of... yada yada, but it
> does work nevertheless, starting others DEs stuff while KDE is running
> (or the other way around) might screw things up bigtime, configuration
> tends be be trashed every now and then, from one moment to the next (in
> the process of configuring KDE for example, so no change to the
> installed packages or other changes to the system) KDE may start to
> behave "weird". Like starting KDE-apps (dolphin) takes several minutes
> while other apps just start fast as before, context-menu might need
> *minutes* to open, shutdown-, reboot-, logout-popup takes minutes to
> show...
>
> And a bunch of other stuff that might just happen when using KDE that
> somewhat feels... well... awkward, weird, annoying. Bottom line, it
> feels like a lot of rough edges and that those edges might be smoothed
> out eventually, but apparently it looks like they don't, as where I
> pointed out links to bugtracker or forum-posts, the issues are as old as
> Methusalems grandpa. With other DEs (Gnome2 + 3, Mate, Xfce, LXDE, e17)
> I have never seen that amount of "roughness". They might have other
> "issues", like the apparent need the Gnome-devs feel to get rid of
> every useful feature ;) (well, I could be more fair there, but I am on
> a KDE list anyway, so no need for gnome-devs-understaning, right? *g*),
> but I always had the feeling the "rough" edges were smoothed out from
> release to release. I was not always happy with the way issues were
> addressed, but at least I could understand why it makes sense for some
> or even most users to have an issue resolved in that particular way it
> was addressed with.
>
> Granted, not all issues will face on every system, something triggers
> the issues, sure. Not all users will think some stuff is implemented
> weird and in a rather un-usable state (even if I think something must
> be wrong with them then, as I can even understand the Gnome-decisions
> and way of implementing things!), not everyone has the same need and
> idea for a feature and how to implement it. Some may never have any
> issue whatsoever, be it just coincidence or they just don't use that
> particular feature or at least not in a way that the issues would show
> itself.
>
> So, that all said, what do you guys, users and maybe even developers of
> KDE, think? I don't want to come around as rude or overly harsh, as
> really, I think KDE is a great Desktop Environment, it just has some
> really rough edges. Is it just me, or are others also thinking KDE
> could / should invest more efforts in QA and maybe less in implementing
> new stuff? I know, "send patch" yada yada... that does not apply here,
> at least not well enough.
>
> Optimistic greetings
> Michael
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I think KDE is not suitable for production environment. Just for casual 
enthusiasts.

As of your problems -- if you continue to use KDE, you'll get used to 
it. For e.g. now removable disks will now show up in device manager. 
I've to restart KDE to fix it.

I think the most stable release of KDE is at best beta.
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