Is KDE 5 Stable? It's Complex

[Citan]

Nice one, Luke_Wolf. One of my favorite Adam Sandler films.

But you did not refute ANY of my points. The KDE ecosystem is the Windows Vista of Linux. Period. End of Story.

Maybe in two years when most of the regressions from the KDE 4 ecosystem to KDE 5 ecosystem have been hammered out for ALL OF THE STACK FROM GUI TO APPS TO FRAMEWORK, ETC......will I take another look. But as of now KDE 5 is not ready for general use or PARTICULARLY enterprise use. Period. End of story.

Maybe in two years....KDE 5 will finally be the Windows 7 of the Linux World. Let's hope to God it does not become like GNOME 3 which is the Windows 8 of the Linux World.

The last sane GUI for Linux was GNOME 2. Which is why MATE is so great. Cinnamon.....meh.....nice try.....better than KDE 5 at least. Only Unity is worse than KDE 5 at this point. But Shuttleworth and crew are doing all they can do to screw up Debian so bad as to drive EVERYONE over to Fedora.

Hi all!
Hey, this is a rather unorthodox and interesting way to open a discussion: closing it in the first sentence. Nice!

Seriously though, did something particularly bad happen to you with "KDE 5"? Because you seem overly rageous.

The main problem of KDE has been pointed out already: guys make components, not a full OS. The only thing you could reproach them is to have been a bit overly optimistic regarding the actual stability of 5.x development.
As a non-tech user, I would have liked better if they had told the same as with KDE 4.x: "It's NOT for end-users YET". Then the responsability of bad user experience would have relied solely on distributions.

So, I agree with you in that there is indeed a communication/marketing problem in regards with how they present the 5.x to end-users. Because even if most problem actually come from how distributions manage their packages, they could have anticipated it.

With that said... KDE is NOT Windows. Emphasize the NOT. The last iteration of KDE 4.x is extremely stable and powerful. So, unless you really have a very good reason to stay on 5.x, just stay on 4.x for a few more months. Nobody puts a gun on anyone's head to force using 5.x and 4.12 is great on every aspect.

One of the great benefits of GNU/Linux based OS is that you always have the freedom to choose and change desktop environment. So, use it!

[lunarcloud]

[...] Must be a Brit. That disqualifies you from a lot of things [...] Nothing was ad hominem. [...] Tighten up Linux phreaks and geeks. All of you have had 25 + years to get your shit straight. [...] Stick that in your bangers and mash, mate.

You're aware that
A) "Ad hominem" is insulting an individual when you should be arguing their points, which is what you did in your response to me (what he was referring to) and also what you were just doing to him.
B) "25+ years"/"your shit" Who, specifically? KDE was founded in 1996, only 19 years ago not 25. You think that in all that time, it's the same exact people? The same companies? Making desktop OS software is a moving target, and as we can see from http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...2014-Q4-Report GNOME's polish probably comes in great part from its higher level of financial support. Do you mean Linux? It's just a kernel with software people write for it. I think that Google has done a great job with making a consumer friendly OS with Linux. It just takes huge money to get that level of polish.
C) Stop speaking in all-caps and insulting people. That style of response comes off as belligerent and unwilling to listen.

[lostparadise]

Hi all!
Hey, this is a rather unorthodox and interesting way to open a discussion: closing it in the first sentence. Nice!

Seriously though, did something particularly bad happen to you with "KDE 5"? Because you seem overly rageous.

The main problem of KDE has been pointed out already: guys make components, not a full OS. The only thing you could reproach them is to have been a bit overly optimistic regarding the actual stability of 5.x development.
As a non-tech user, I would have liked better if they had told the same as with KDE 4.x: "It's NOT for end-users YET". Then the responsability of bad user experience would have relied solely on distributions.

So, I agree with you in that there is indeed a communication/marketing problem in regards with how they present the 5.x to end-users. Because even if most problem actually come from how distributions manage their packages, they could have anticipated it.

With that said... KDE is NOT Windows. Emphasize the NOT. The last iteration of KDE 4.x is extremely stable and powerful. So, unless you really have a very good reason to stay on 5.x, just stay on 4.x for a few more months. Nobody puts a gun on anyone's head to force using 5.x and 4.12 is great on every aspect.

One of the great benefits of GNU/Linux based OS is that you always have the freedom to choose and change desktop environment. So, use it!

Guys remember what happened a few years back in 2007/2008 when KDE 4 appeared. The situation was even worse than it is now... KDE 4 , 4.1 , 4.2 , 4.3 ware close to unusable...
After 4.4 or 4.5 KDE started getting stable and in my opinion became the best DE available...And keep in mind that the release cycle was 6 months, not 4 as it is now...
So be patient...plasma 4.6-4.7 will be as solid as 4.12 was and then thinks we be even better...Thats the way thinks work, and if you want my opinion this is the magic...Don't forget there is always the option of using a stable and not frequent updated DE (e.g. Unity) and distribution...

[Awesomeness]

Plasma 4.2.1 was totally fine. Under openSUSE even earlier releases (SUSE backported 4.2 stuff to 4.1).
Plasma 5 is alright since 5.3.

[ksanger]

My conclusion. KDE 5.5.1 might be stable if you only have ONE Monitor. I know its not stable with two.

After reading everything I could find over the past two weeks, I just spent two days installing openSuse Leap 42.1 with KDE 5. Today I ran into the multiple monitor issue where one monitor is deleted, goes black, and everything you just set up goes away. Until you set it up again, reboot, and repeat multiple times. Found warnings in the warning log file that the monitor was constantly being shut down. That was after loading software to create the log files. Then I found the bug report that states it might be fixed in KDE 5.6 while Leap is on 5.5.1. I was hoping that waiting six months after its release would result in a stable long term O.S. to use for the next few years.

But I was wrong.

Unlike mentioned earlier, we do not have a choice to go back to KDE 4. Distros running KDE 4 won't be valid much longer. I'm updating from Ubuntu 12.04 as I was having more and more problems. 12.04 nags me to update to 14.04. Check Disk runs at every boot. Network Certificates become corrupted and that's happening more often. Then Chrome told me it was no longer supported even though Ubuntu support will last till next Spring. Right now I'm bummed out. Having a desktop built with a built in time bomb that may destroy my work at any time is not a stable long term release. Could try to update to KDE 5.6 but its not due for Leap until late this year. Might try Leap with Gnome after reading more. Or maybe load up Ubuntu 14.04 LTS where they've had two years to fix stuff and not break too much more. Or maybe go to Tumbleweed, update just enough with KDE 5.6 and Qt so that dual monitors work, then only install security updates until they make me install more.

Leap would be easy if I only used one monitor, didn't use network printers, didn't use a network scanner, didn't use internet devices, didn't use share drives, and didn't remote into other machines. Actually I was really liking it until one monitor went dark even with the amount of time I put in to make all of the above work. I like that we may setup linux to do all of this. I liked Leap's speed. I liked having applications open in multiple desktops with icons on the bottom bar making it simple to switch. I hated Ubuntu with file menus on the top bar that changed depending upon the active window. I'm getting use to kdesu, kwrite, konsole, ..., though I wish the application names didn't have to change. It was difficult figuring out what a fish: was for the first time. Plus googling openSuse Leap 42.1 anything is a lot of extra typing. It needs a simpler unique name.

I really don't want to slow down and use multiple virtual machines running on a simple stable platform. I think that's the problem with a lot of the reviews I've read. Installing an O.S. as a vm and telling us its the best O.S. in 2016 doesn't really indicate what issues you are going to have for your application. I expected issues with dual monitors and an AMD ATI Radeon card. Unfortunately I had found a review stating that Leap with KDE 5.5 had fixed that. Since then I've found a bug report stating that we need KDE 5.6.1. Surprisingly after installing the AMD fglrx driver both displays were automatically setup to extend my desktop. I didn't even have to switch them around.

A lot of stuff installed in Leap with little effort. Unless you had to deal with the firewall. I found that my eth0 connection was configured to automatically select a zone, while the firewall did not assign eth0 to a zone. So even though I was adding custom rules they were having no effect. Changing the network to place eth0 in the Internal Zone, then adding Internal Zone custom rules did the trick.

I guess I just have to own up to the fact that I am a geek, I need Tumbleweed, and I'll be upgrading my O.S. every week instead of every five years. O well at least Tumbleweed should have KDE 5.6.1 after it updates But first I'll see if I can easily recover the blacked out monitor with a script file and a reboot. I saw that somewhere.