Is KDE 5 Stable? It's Complex

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Is KDE 5 Stable? It's Complex

Last week was the much-viewed blog post asking whether KDE 5 is stable enough for normal users. There were lots of responses in our forums and elsewhere. Now, KWin developer Martin Gr??lin has come out with a blog post with a rebuttal to some of the complaints regarding KDE 5...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=KDE-5-Stability-Follow-Up

[schmidtbag]

One of the reasons I've used Arch was because I always found KDE more stable in rolling releases. I find KDE pretty stable overall anyway, but I don't use all of its features. I think coincidentally, the non-rolling-release distros are also the ones that come with the most clutter. For every feature you add you increase the chances of something breaking.

[mgraesslin]

What's that "KDE 5" thing you are writing about? Certainly nothing I wrote about in my blog post.

[chuckula]

What's that "KDE 5" thing you are writing about? Certainly nothing I wrote about in my blog post.

That's part of the problem right there. I get the whole marketing push, but the people who actually use KDE don't particularly care about the intricacies of the software dependencies that you've setup. I'm well aware that "KDE 5" isn't what you call Plasma desktop etc. etc. etc. but consumers REALLY don't care.

Additionally, the whole passing the buck over to Qt for many bugs might be technically accurate, but so what: It just means you need to work more closely with the Qt people to fix the bugs. *ESPECIALLY* when you went out of your way to relinquish control of chunks of KDE back to Qt for the KDE 5/Plasma5/etc/etc/etc release cycle.

P.S. --> I've been using KDE pretty much daily for 15 years since 2.0 was in beta. Plasma 5.4 is OK but still not perfect by a long shot.

[lunarcloud]

I'm well aware that "KDE 5" isn't what you call Plasma desktop etc. etc. etc. but consumers REALLY don't care.

But most news sites ARE getting the branding right. It's been more than 5 years now. You could just say "Are KDE's 5th Gen Products Stable?" or "Is KDE Software Stable?".

Plasma (Kubuntu 15.10) is constantly crashing on my NUC, but everything else is stable as heck. But you're certainly onto something - I'm not going to blame KF5 or Qt for being unstable though, even if that's where the bugs are, because it's not libraries, but applications that crash.

I think the big thing here is if it's so complicated for KDE, why isn't the same exact talk happening in the GNOME world right now? Is it because of Red Hat's money going into it?

[gbcox]

I'm well aware that "KDE 5" isn't what you call Plasma desktop etc. etc. etc. but consumers REALLY don't care.

Additionally, the whole passing the buck over to Qt for many bugs might be technically accurate, but so what: It just means you need to work more closely with the Qt people to fix the bugs. *ESPECIALLY* when you went out of your way to relinquish control of chunks of KDE back to Qt for the KDE 5/Plasma5/etc/etc/etc release cycle.

Agree about the branding part... I get it also, but being cute about KDE v. PLASMA especially when you completely understand the context appears to be just a deflection... whether intended or not.

I also echo the part regarding working with other folks to fix the bugs. I'm having problems with using Radeon and Plasma5 - others have reporting issues with Nvidia. I don't encounter the problem with Gnome3, Plasma4 or LXQt using Kwin. Is it just a coincidence? Perhaps... but to the normal customer all they know is Plasma5 doesn't work. If it is indeed a driver issue the Plasma team needs to concentrate on working with the driver folks to get these issues resolved.... because deserved or not, Plasma gets the blame.

[mgraesslin]

> Agree about the branding part... I get it also, but being cute about KDE v. PLASMA especially when you completely understand the context appears to be just a deflection... whether intended or not.

No, I think that's rather important here. I talked about Plasma and Plasma only. I didn't talk about Frameworks or Applications. I think that's really important to be precise what I talk about. I don't want people to wine about kdepim for example. That's nothing I work on and that's not what I talked about.

[tebruno99]

[ 6.804568] ksplashqml[1301]: segfault at 18 ip 00007fb19e182de8 sp 00007ffd0cc83fe0 error 4 in libqxcb.so[7fb19e139000+b5000]
[ 7.136418] klauncher[1327]: segfault at 18 ip 00007f0b49104de8 sp 00007ffcd52c3e30 error 4 in libqxcb.so[7f0b490bb000+b5000] [ 7.402958] ksmserver[1336]: segfault at 18 ip 00007fe636157de8 sp 00007ffd1185e0d0 error 4 in libqxcb.so[7fe63610e000+b5000]
[ 7.964446] sddm-greeter[1380]: segfault at 18 ip 00007f775fa5fde8 sp 00007ffe758558c0 error 4 in libqxcb.so[7f775fa16000+b5000]

Yep, happens every time power management turns the screen off, or you turn the monitor off. Its stable people!

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=343674

Though in their defense, Ubuntu is still using the older non-fixed qt5.4. (fix in qt5.5 not verified)

[Jumbotron]

That's part of the problem right there. I get the whole marketing push, but the people who actually use KDE don't particularly care about the intricacies of the software dependencies that you've setup. I'm well aware that "KDE 5" isn't what you call Plasma desktop etc. etc. etc. but consumers REALLY don't care.

Additionally, the whole passing the buck over to Qt for many bugs might be technically accurate, but so what: It just means you need to work more closely with the Qt people to fix the bugs. *ESPECIALLY* when you went out of your way to relinquish control of chunks of KDE back to Qt for the KDE 5/Plasma5/etc/etc/etc release cycle.

P.S. --> I've been using KDE pretty much daily for 15 years since 2.0 was in beta. Plasma 5.4 is OK but still not perfect by a long shot.

Exactly right. Too many "phreaks and geeks" working on the GNU/Linux stack who also take on the voodoo of "marketing". I had been in the field of marketing and advertising on and off for 20 years. The first thing you do in that field is recognize your target audience and realize they aren't really too bright. Sad, but true. Then you target key words and or emotions that will either trigger the response you want or embed the idea of your product in the consumer's mind. Ask yourself.....why DOES Intel include that stupid little jingle at the end of every computer manufacturer's commercial in TV ? AT....THE....VERY....END. Because the last thing the consumer sees and hears is "INTEL INSIDE......BA BING bing BING" !!

So....for Martin to get his panties in a wad and sniff about KDE 5 verbiage getting mixed up with Plasma Desktop.......nobody f**cking cares, Martin. For all the smart....and I do mean SMART people in the Linux sphere....you guys are really STUPID when it comes to marketing and even educating the broader public. That's PART OF YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TOO !

But here's the MAIN ISSUE with KDE 5. And yes, I meant what I said and used KDE 5 instead of "Plasma Desktop" for a reason. No one says "Windows Desktop" nor does anyone say "Mac Desktop". It's either just Windows or just Mac....or Mac OS X. Your ENTIRE system is KDE 5.....Plasma desktop and all. No one cares or understands the difference in userland. Get over it. And one more thing. When your new technology base outruns the present software stack you rely on that is NOT PART of KDE 5....you need to SLOW DOWN !!! I have now left KDE for the next 5 years as I had left GNOME years ago when they went full retard in GNOME 3. You guys in KDE land KNEW....KNEW....that shit was going to break and break hard once you left 4.12-4.14 series. You should have NOT let KDE 5 out of the bag to the wider public until you had confidence that the rest of the GNU/Linuix stack and toolset, including QT, had caught up to where you wanted to go.

Now....what you have in KDE 5 is Windows Vista. Mind you....I did not say Windows 8. That was GNOME 3. No....Windows Vista was Windows 7 before Microsoft had adequately Beta Tested it. But made the evil decision to allow the PAYING PUBLIC to Beta Test it. They had stripped WAY TOO MUCH out of Windows XP and the old DOS legacy crap before everyone else had a chance to catch up on the software, driver and toolchain side. And it was the beginning of Microsoft's decline.

KDE 5 is the beginning of KDE's decline....I'm afraid.

[schmidtbag]

> Agree about the branding part... I get it also, but being cute about KDE v. PLASMA especially when you completely understand the context appears to be just a deflection... whether intended or not.

No, I think that's rather important here. I talked about Plasma and Plasma only. I didn't talk about Frameworks or Applications. I think that's really important to be precise what I talk about. I don't want people to wine about kdepim for example. That's nothing I work on and that's not what I talked about.

I think the point to be made is anyone who isn't really well-acquainted with KDE/Plasma software tends to have a hard time understanding how and why the software is grouped/named the way it is. At a glance, it's all very ambiguous and misleading. It's somewhat pretentious to make a point of "I'm running KDE 4 with KF5 and Plasma 2". And even then - I may have stated that incorrectly. If I did, then that's exactly what's wrong with this naming scheme. To my knowledge, the intention is to make it all integrated, yet the proper/correct way of naming everything (according to you) suggests that isn't the case at all. I understand some of these things can run independently, but honestly, how many people do that and why is that a good enough reason to distinguish them?

TL;DR, it'd be a lot easier if you could just summarize the latest release of this software as simply "KDE5".