KDE No Longer Competitive? Developer Calls It Quits

[phoronix]

Phoronix: KDE No Longer Competitive? Developer Calls It Quits

Peter Penz, the main developer of the Dolphin file manager for the KDE desktop and a K Desktop user since KDE v1.2, is calling it quits after contributing to KDE for more than the past half-decade. His reason for leaving the development of the popular open-source desktop environment is interesting...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTEyNzI

[Dan555a]

I'm trying my best where I have something to say.

[Panix]

It seems the modern desktops have been about adding more eye candy and fancy junk instead of improving productivity. Productivity meaning the desktop should basically get you what you need and *go away* when real applications are running. And the desktop paradigm has been hammered to death for 20+ years, there's not much more that really can be done with it that isn't generally side stepping and change for the sake of change. Btw I use windowmaker on my desktop dev machines and xfce on others. I tried kde for a short time last year and wasn't impressed, took that to xfce as well.

You took the words out of my mouth. KDE and Gnome (3) are junk. The design for Gnome 3 and Unity, for e.g., it's totally obvious that they only care about eye candy and designing these atrocities for mobile devices. I haven't heard of them making any ground so the desktop user gets to experience the garbage result.

As for KDE, it's another beast. Full of WTHs and constant freezes. Also, k-this, k-that but really they don't seem to care about functionality. It's just as long as it's pretty and people know they are using kde-junk.

[bnolsen]

It seems the modern desktops have been about adding more eye candy and fancy junk instead of improving productivity. Productivity meaning the desktop should basically get you what you need and *go away* when real applications are running. And the desktop paradigm has been hammered to death for 20+ years, there's not much more that really can be done with it that isn't generally side stepping and change for the sake of change. Btw I use windowmaker on my desktop dev machines and xfce on others. I tried kde for a short time last year and wasn't impressed, took that to xfce as well.

[varikonniemi]

Just recently it was announced that kwin gets a full-time developer. So some take off, others take over. I think KDE is really exciting especially now since the transition to qt5 brings so many new features.

And if i recall correctly, the biggest mess to untangle and rewrite was kwin to port it over to qt5 code. The other parts would be more straightforward work. So with that in mind the full time kwin dev sounds really even better.

[kayosiii]

As long as I feel my productivity and fun are best served by KDE, I am with it.

+1


(and another 8 characters)

[Leon55ia]

As long as I feel my productivity and fun are best served by KDE, I am with it.

[YeeP]

Love this forum!

Ok, I just got onto the KDE boat, and I am also having problems, but all in all I love it. I read through this thread and I have to say, I joined this forum purely for the nasty talk between people.... I know that sounds jacked up and really, it is. It reminds me of other forums that I am on which have nothing to do with computers... I didn't think this kind of combination existed.


Glad to be here, continue the shit talk.

[jirkam]

strange guy that developer

I do not understand that guy. First he spends a lot of effort on KDE and than he intentionally tries to damage it by a nasty criticism. This is a behavior of some psycho ex-girlfriend and not of an adult man.

I started using Linux on desktop several months ago. If there wasn't KDE, I would probably newer been able to make the switch. Thank you very much to all KDE developers!

[Sir_Brizz]

I don't really get this.

What other Desktop Environments are making usability improvements that KDE (overall) is not making?

Windows 8 is an unmitigated user experience disaster with a boatload of functionality that is hidden and non-obvious.

OSX Mountain Lion is part 2 of making OSX more like iOS, dumbing down the desktop environment to make it "idiot friendly".

Gnome Shell/Unity/Whatever other crappy forks are making the same mistakes as both Windows 8 and OSX.

It seems to me that KDE is the only mainstream DE that will, in the future, be usable at all. Up to now, they haven't made any concessions to the user experience just because they wanted to be "modern" or "forward thinking". Also, since 4.4, KDE has gotten significantly better and more stable, in my opinion. The design has been cleaned up a lot, and little functionality that I frequently use has been cleaned up and sped up. I keep using KDE because it is getting better and better with each release, for me.