KDE 4.9 Is Faster & More Responsive

[1c3d0g]

Meaning, if I'm busy coding a webpage, some stupid system pop-up will not aggressively show itself and interrupt my work. Or, when I'm busy copying something to a USB disk, some stupid little "feature" will not magically decide to start-up (to "enhance" file indexing, for instance) and slow down my whole file transfer. Plus: with less features, the software will be more robust, because less things have to be taken into account (by the developers) like how the different parts might interact and conflict with each other. The attack vector of the software in question will also be scaled down, making the software less vulnerable to attacks.

Look, not all of us like there to be a billion features in a desktop. Why do I need to be forced-fed something I just don't want? KISS...most developers seem to have forgotten that.

[Awesomeness]

You can call it whatever you want, but for a lot of people, these light-weight desktops don't get in their way and actually allows them to get serious work done.

I never understood that claim. Which work do you get done with a desktop?

[LenS]

KDE

I'm very happy with the newer versions. The first 4.0 iteration was a disaster, the next 3 saw gradual improvement, but 4.4 wouldn't even run right on my computers, but starting at 4.5 I've seen a great DE evolving. RAM is cheap. 4Gigs is less than $40 and is more than enough even for win7, all my linux distros could do fine on half that. I rarely have over 1Gig in use so I don't understand what the bloat problem is. I don't see it. I like having options like monitoring RAM and CPU usage in the taskbar. All in all I think KDE is doing great. I can't wait to try out 4.9 when it hits the tumbleweed repositories. Keep up the good work!!!

[devsk]

You can call it whatever you want, but for a lot of people, these light-weight desktops don't get in their way and actually allows them to get serious work done. Different strokes for different folks.

Now you are talking! Respect what other users want from their desktop. It may not match with your needs, but its their needs. And features need code to be written, thus leading to the bloat you speak of.

[1c3d0g]

You can call it whatever you want, but for a lot of people, these light-weight desktops don't get in their way and actually allows them to get serious work done. Different strokes for different folks.

[devsk]

This is the purpose of LXDE, to keep it light without all the b.s. of other desktops.

I think someone aptly called it poverty desktop....

[Kano]

@siride

The Kanotix default install has got no virtuoso-minimal installed btw. That means no background processes that index the data by default. It is no problem to use a netbook with KDE 4 with it that way - 1 gb ram is definitely enough. Only when you have got a cpu with many cores and you want to use gcc with more theads this can be a problem. Like when you run make -j8 on a system with 2 gb ram and you want to surf in the net the same time then your ram will be full. So best is to have at least 1/2 * cores (including ht) gb ram when you want to compile without swap.

[1c3d0g]

If by "bloated" you mean "has features", then yes, it is. :-) LXDE can't even list your most recently used files and programs.
...

Why would I want it to do something useless like that? Just because YOU need a feature, does not mean it should be included in a DE. This is the purpose of LXDE, to keep it light without all the b.s. of other desktops. I respect that. If it's not for you, simply move on to a more "feature-full" DE.

[alcalde]

KDE is still far to bloated, sluggish and unstable to be considered a usable desktop environment. This latest update does nothing to address these flaws. The only sane desktops for power users and those who want to get work done are Xfce, LXDE and Cinnamon. The rest are junk.

If by "bloated" you mean "has features", then yes, it is. :-) LXDE can't even list your most recently used files and programs. This is why Windows users laugh at us. A ZDNet article this week was highlighting distro release candidates and right away a Windows user said of a screenshot showing LXDE, "How did a Windows 95 screenshot sneak in there?"

I can run KDE 4.7 on a laptop with a 1.8GHZ single core 32 bit Sempron CPU, 512MB of DDR, and a 4200RPM 70GB IDE hard drive. I tried running LXDE and XFCE on it and found a 50MB memory savings at the expense of incredible amounts of functionality. Besides the aforementioned recent files/programs, the LXDE menu had no search function, the file manager paled with the freeware replacement I'd used on Windows XP, and both LXDE and XFCE were anemic compared to KDE in terms of customization. I was unable to reproduce the power settings I had in KDE, and even configuring the touchpad was a nightmare - something as simple as configuring tap to click was very difficult, with one of the two refusing to remember the setting change and needing it to be done again with every boot. Neither had the ability to disable the touchpad while typing, either. The list of simple features that were missing went on and on, let alone missing KDE's advanced features - places/bookmarks accessible from file open/save menus, etc. I found both to be too far backwards for too little gain. If I saw no worthwhile gain on a 512MB antique laptop, I can't imagine why anyone would want to give up KDE on an average desktop.

I've been using Linux full time for just over 2 years now (as of Wednesday), which means 8+ hours a day of home work use on top of using it on my own time... and since I no longer own a TV, my KDE desktop does double duty as my TV. I've yet to experience this "sluggishness" you speak of, and it's certainly not unstable either - maybe you've only used it on a distro that ends in "buntu"? :-) I assure you I've been getting work done this whole time... data mining, programming, and assorted number crunching and data processing with RapidMiner, LibreOffice, PostgreSQL, SQLite, Free Pascal, Python, R, mathomatic, VirtualBox, GNUCash and others, along with personal use software such as SMPlayer, VLC, XBMC, Banshee, calibre, etc. Today I had a power problem that resulted in the power dropping just quickly enough to cause the system to reboot on two occasions within a half hour and I was very impressed to find that Linux, ext4 and KDE were able to recover very quickly and cleanly to the point you'd barely notice the extra reboot time and there were no anomalies with the desktop once I was back in. Firefox remembered what I was browsing and LibreOffice was able to recover an open file as well.

KDE is the last of the major desktops that still looks like a desktop and capable of competing (and beating) Windows 7's desktop on features and customizability. I don't think you should be unfairly beating up on it when it's doing an amazing job. The fact that a Windows user can take to it like a fish to water (and discover its own unique features later on) is a definite plus.

[GreatEmerald]

Whatever you say bro.

Indeed. "Visitors are kindly asked to not feed the trolls. It is for their own good. Thank you in advance."