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

Tue Oct 29 12:13:37 GMT 2013

I'm going to disagree with you there DE. KDE is the most user friendly of
desktops I've yet found. Odd behavior plagues all desktops, especially
windoze. That Unity insanity which Windows 8 apparently attempted to
mirror, trying to walk a new user through that garbage is like trying to
learn a foreign language AS you are teaching it to somebody else.  Gnome
just seems primitive and unfriendly to me. It's usable but I suffer plenty
of odd behavior under Gnome, probably more than under KDE.  I have my own
gripes about KDE (I still mourn the loss of Kedit for example. More so, so
many of KDE's default apps are so lame when compared to other KDE apps
availible). My biggest gripe is Dolphin which is all but unavoidable
because opening up removable drives is a real pain with far better file
managers. The whole single click thing which cannot be modified too a
double click makes file transfers from disks an effort in frustration. I
don't want to OPEN the thing, just because my control or shift key is not
quite pressed hard enough. I might want to click on it so I can right click
and view information or open with something other than default. Gah I HATE
using Dolphin for file management.

My complaints however are generally mild. The interface is highly
customizable, friendly and I spend my time doing stuff WITH my computer not
TOO it. KDE + Linux is an awesome combo. I can take a noob or an
experienced user and they are able to sit down with little or no KDE
experience and have at it. My daughter was 8 years old and without having
to teach her anything really she was able to sit down and use my KDE
machines. People look at Gnome or Unity or most other desktops and wonder
just how to get started and what to do.  I still prefer KDE 3 over KDE 4,
but the future of KDE has more than enough promise to stay with KDE. Just
wish I could get Kedit back and change the default file manager for
removable media.

On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 5:40 AM, dE <de.techno at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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<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<http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=94642>
>> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.**cgi?id=248186<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<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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> This message is from the kde mailing list.
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