Comment by hathawsh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hathawsh | Hacker News Reader

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I understand why Ubuntu doesn't switch the default to KDE; there's too much history and people would recoil at such a big change. That said, I always run Kubuntu rather than the default Ubuntu desktop and I'm really happy with it. Switching to KDE is almost as smooth as it can possibly be: once I have Ubuntu installed, all I have to do is "sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop" and then choose KDE at login.

Some of the reasons I really like KDE:

* I have keyboard shortcuts for switching desktops; I feel much more productive with 9 easily accessible virtual desktops. I use the "windows" key, sometimes called "meta": meta-Q, meta-W, meta-E, meta-A, etc.

* I've added rules for automatically changing the window title bar colors to make it easier to distinguish between very similar-looking windows. My Sublime Text windows in particular have a different bar color for each project. Sometimes I have as many as 4 projects open at once.

* I can lay out and enhance my screen any way I like. KDE doesn't quibble and even encourages it.

For anyone like me who loved KDE 3 and then was profoundly disappointed by the big changes and rewrites in 4, I have to say KDE 5 is back to being brilliant.

It's also the only desktop I know with a Fuzzy Clock that can be set to "accuracy=halfling" so you know when second breakfast has turned into elevenses.

It hadn't occured to me until now to try going back to kubuntu though (having been on Arch since KDE4).

Try Manjaro. Based on Arch with KDE Plasma desktop. It's awesome.

Thanks. I'm currently using Antergos, which I understand is roughly the same thing, with the difference being whether or not you use Arch's repos.

KDE is honestly amazing. My environment is exactly they way I want it, every shortcut does exactly what I want.

I used Gnome before it for a while. I remember writing extensions for it and fixing other people's extensions. I remember logging in to some crash message every day, possibly because of the idiotic way extensions work: they just monkeypatch the actual DE code (?!?!??!)

KDE provides all the functionality that I need without extensions. Nothing crashes, ever.

I think Gnome is fine for people that are OK with default settings. For anyone that needs more, Gnome just doesn't suffice.

I currently run Budgie Desktop (specifically Budgie Ubuntu 18.04 LTS). IIRC, it's based on Gnome (not sure which version) - but it doesn't feel like it.

Maybe this isn't what you like - but to me, it's the closest I've come to having a "MacOS"-like interface on my Linux desktop.

I've heard a lot of grief people have on MacOS (maybe it's just the people I hang around with?) - but I honestly like it, for the most part. It has its quirks, true. But overall, Apple did a helluva job in making it "just work".

Ubuntu Budgie seems to come closest to that experience, without the Apple tax (ie - the hardware - stuff is expensive).

I have long stayed away from KDE because it used to require better hardware than Gnome, which requires better hardware than Xfce. I haven't even kept up with KDE's performance and hardware usage on older systems. Does it still need better hardware compared to Gnome (for a machine that's, say more than a few years old)?

I am running KDE full time off of a 6 year-old laptop featureing an i54xxu and an integrated HD4400. I'd say anything older and not intelish might be problematic but I have no problems running all the bells and whistles of those sweet animations and wobbly windows.

Gnome still leaks and Nautilus is still an old asthmatic tractor though. Nautilus is 50% of the reasons why I switched to kubuntu and I still keep on using awesome-wm when sysadmining. edit: Now that I think about it I also upgraded to an SSD some months after switching to KDE so maybe gnome is way snappier on that same machine and I wouldn't feel the same about it.

Frankly, I seem to remember the KDE harware thing is like 15 years old.

I've had an impression that the slow computer I've used worked better by default playing videos in Kubuntu than either Lubuntu or Xubuntu. If some internet sites are to be believed, something something compositors video players hardware acceleration whatever:

https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=212094

And all that problems still appear strange to me, as the computer is not too old, it just has slower processor, whereas I've had better experience playing videos on the notebook bought in 2000, in Windows XP (using open source mplayer!)

And using some of the "lighter" editions apparently doesn't mean "plays better" just... something (as some don't even have an official goal anymore to be actually better on older hardware).

Maybe someone here can explain what is the best way to play videos on slower (from a perspective of the developers who probably have 500 W graphic cards, because "who doesn't"?) machines. I have, more or less, accepted that I still can't expect that from Linuxes:

Relevant: https://xkcd.com/619/

Just one data point but compare the RAM usages in this comparison: http://archive.fo/eB8If

I think I read somewhere that kde has improved even more since tha.

> rules for auto color change top bars

Is this specific to KDE? This sounds like a really nice feature for when I’ve got tons of windows floating around. I’m a big fan of obvious tells so you can get your bearings at a glance.

KDE was always brilliant in functionality, but unprofessional looking. I've settled on Mate, but it could use some more KDE-style functionality.

What distro do you use for kde5?

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