It is complete, mature and works out-of-the-box.
For users it has sane defaults but provides virtually endless customization and contrary to other desktop environments, user customization is encourage.
For developers, it provides solid libraries to build upon, not like other libraries that are constantly changing and making developers' life harder.
And yet, people don't care about it.
It's the DE of the Steam Deck, for which was apparently 1.5 million units were already sold in May. That's certainly one of the most significant events for the Linux desktop.
If you search for videos and blog posts, Plasma is usually a second class citizen.
It's easy to split hairs over "true Linux" or whatnot, but I think it's far more valuable to celebrate wins like ChromeOS and SteamOS in the hopes of encouraging more of this. I think that's what gets us closer to the general ideas and ideals of "Linux" and or "Free Software" broadly.
It won't be "Year of the Linux Desktop," it will be "Years of many Linux Desktops."
Free software is important to me because it is supposed to enable users to take back control of their computing.
In practice, I literally just got a Chromebook for my daughter and I'm happy to report that Crostini is fine, and I'd venture to say that "a major OS with strong Native Linux Support built in" might even be more valuable than "abstaining" and fully sticking with pure "Free Software."
(For the record, I'm a huge fan of Stallman et al and I want people like him to keep doing what they do -- I just think that Stallman's value isn't in everyone doing exactly what Stallman says, more like looking at him as a platonic ideal that we should try for, but realistically will never reach.)
Like WSL is not something most people will use on Windows.
My concern here is a bit about non-free software, but mostly not: I'd not be very happy with a purely free software version of ChromeOS (which maybe ChromiumOS is by the way).
That being said, I did recently try KDE5 for the first time in ages about a year ago, and it is now (again) my favorite desktop environment.
The KDE devs are the ones who decided to call the alpha version 4.0 so I wouldn't put all the blame on the distros here.
I think the problem with KDE 4 was not just but also experimental technologies like Nepomuk (desktop search is great in theory, but an EU research project is probably not the best fit for a production DE), Akonadi (yay let's run a MySQL server on each desktop), Plasma widgets (if you thought one widget set was enough for a DE you thought wrong apparently) and Activities that just didn't provide enough value for the overhead and change that they forced onto the whole system. A more straightforward Qt4 upgrade of KDE 3 would not have been nearly as problematic.
They made a successful transition from KDE 4 to 5, and are committed to users needs, so we can expect a smoothly transition to Plasma 6.
Now, compare it to Gnome, where every release means deeply changes for both users and 3rd party developers, and Gnome developers simply don't care.
A lot of applications' first KDE4-based releases were missing features as well. I remember that my favorite app at the time, Amarok, took a long time to reach feature parity.
Eventually KDE4 did mature nicely, and the transition to KDE Frameworks 5 and Plasma 5 was way, way, smoother. There were enough little quirks to notice the transition was happening, but you had more or less harmonious coexistence between KDE4-based apps and KF5-based apps as the developers of KDE apps each migrated theirs over as they saw fit. There was no big moment of widespread breakage or loss of functionality.
Afaict they're taking the same approach to rebasing things on Qt 6. To me it seems like the painful transition between KDE3 and KDE4 is something the developer community learned very well from, but I haven't followed along with any discussions which would really show whether that's the case.
KDE4-based Amarok was its own trainwreck. Released without support for dynamic playlists based on hard filters because FUZZY FILTERS ARE THE FUTURE. And it managed to trash its database twice on my system. It's the music player that made me stop using a dedicated music player program.
More or less the same for me. I loved Amarok until KDE4, but had to abandon it then. For a few years I used an XMMS2 client I wrote myself, but I grew weary of keeping that updated so I switched to VLC, and later mpv, with playlists loaded from my (custom, but general purpose) file manager.
It works as you expect and you don't ever need to tweak it unless you're really into it, which makes it... boring. Boring is good. You don't want your desktop manager to distract you, it's there to help you!
As for library support, I looked into it but the only real options seem to be to write code in C++ (not a fan) or to use some high level abstraction (Python).
I like GTK for projects like gtk-rust. The relevant types and macros seem much better supported than any Qt binding I've seen so far, and the Qt ones often come with unsafe code blocks out of necessity.
My Rust GUI code will (sadly) be GTK based because of its decent support without too many hacks. That's quite sad, because GTK applications look very GNOME-like, even when running on Windows or macOS. An unfortunate result of their unwillingness to consider other options in the CSD/SSD fight.
Stupid stuff like the inability for applications to look native in any desktop environment is why I don't think we'll reach the year of the Linux desktop any time soon. The Linux desktop can't even run applications in a consistent style.
Any way, I hope KDE will in time grow more language diverse. I'd like to switch my code to a less opinionated code base.
Now that I'm actually using Windows again on a regular basis, it really baffles me that people say this. Like, turn dark mode on and have fun getting blinded when random parts of the builtin Settings app are actually links to Control Panel, which just doesn't support dark mode at all and uses totally different widgets. Or try to fight a headache when some Java app has really blurry font rendering for some reason, even though the toolkit looks semi-native for Windows apps from 10 years ago. And have fun with all the Electron apps that completely ignore the native look and feel.
There is no OS where all apps have visual consistency. Idk why people pretend this is uniquely a freedesktop problem.
However, in my opinion the inconsistencies are rarely ever by design, except for Electron/Tauri/etc. applications because web developers consider themselves above concepts like "consistency" and "using system standards". The move from native to specialised, slightly outdated browsers has been a regression in usability in many aspects and the proposed solutions seem to be to switch to a dedicated, up to date browser rather than to look for consistency. I usually run most Electron apps in my browser instead because the "native" part of the application never seems to add anything, really, though sometimes developers don't port features to the web version.
Qt can copy the native look and feel quite easily but GNOME chooses not to expose a usable native look and feel unless you port the entire thing over to GTK+. In return, GTK+ doesn't even try to come close to a native look and feel.
If Qt and Wine applications don't look entirely native, that's because of technical challenges or a lack of free time to invest in platform behaviour. In these opinionated desktop environments and SDKs, the problem is actually a conscious choice: "our system looks better than your so suck it" rather than "we don't have time to make our UI look perfect on your system".
When developers choose frameworks that don't look consistent that's either because of cost effectiveness, lack of knowledge of native languages, or sometimes simple laziness. Those reasons can be annoying but they're understandable. The real problem lies with the platforms themselves for not exposing easy methods to gain consistency. That's why I blame Electron more than Spotify or Slack, and why I have such a dislike of Java's GUI libraries, GTK+, and GNOME.
Did they break the integration approach the KDE folks use for getting GTK+ apps to look good with GTK4? I know there were other changes to how theming works that caused some controversy.
KDE is pretty great, though.
Once a long time ago there was also the licensing concern with Qt.
I'm sure it got a lot better, and people have even described Plasma 5.x as light weight. The times I tried it later, I liked it, but for the time being the Linux desktop has lost me and I'm using Mac :-)
Took a many years of me interface hopping around, but I'm back at kde. I was using mate, but I'm back at kde on arch.
Brightness controls are broken, both from the keyboard keys and plasma applet thing. echoing into /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/brightness still works fine at least...
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=454161
I can't drag windows between different virtual desktops from the desktop grid. Trying to drag one window drags all on that desktop and swaps them with the target desktop.
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=455268
Not introduced with this update but still broken: Every time I unplug and replug in my USB mouse, my inverse scroll direction preference isn't respected. I have to go into the mouse config GUI, uncheck it, apply, recheck it, and apply. Every time I plug in my mouse. Never in my 30 years of using computers have I see such basic functionality broken this badly. How how HOW does KDE not get a mouse configuration GUI to work correctly? Such basic functionality getting broken has seriously shaken my confidence in KDE as a whole. I just don't understand how something so basic and conceptually simple could break, let alone remain broken for so long.
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=435113
Other issues I've experienced in the past few months that have now seemingly resolved: Symlinks to files on my network share wouldn't thumbnail in the Folder View applet, but would in Dolphin. Power management (plugged in, unplugged, battery low, etc) notifications stopped working.
> And yet, people don't care about it.
I care, trust me. I really want to like KDE. But when each update inexplicably breaks basic functionality, how can I recommend this to any of my friends or family? I think they'd hate me for the recommendation.
It’s gotten better over the years but still has a long way to go. Something that would help a lot is if KDE came prepackaged with a handful of different full configurations that could be easily flipped between to serve as starting points.
And in the thousand options to twiddle, there aren't the options I want.
I'd like a panel that when vertical did not scale the controls on it, just kept them the same size but rearranged them. I want a 4- or 5-column vertical panel with nothing growing or shrinking in size.
I'd like the Xfce option to constrain the Start button to a single line of text+label.
I'd like the Xfce option to set the size and font of the clock.
I rather liked wm2. I would like the option of window title bars on the left or right edge, or even the bottom. Why not?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Wm2.png
I liked BeOS' title bars as tabs, not whole width. Can I have those, please?
Then if I stack windows on top of one another, I would like to move the tabs so they don't overlap. Or better still, have them automatically rearrange themselves.
I hate the trend of having no menu bar, just a hamburger menu. Can I disable that globally, please? I want a menu bar in every app, enforced by the desktop. Currently some apps have it, some don't.
I do not want desktop gadgets or widgets or plasmoids or whatever they are called. Not at all, not ever. A tick box to disable them globally might be useful? Maybe integrate with Conky for a desktop status monitor.
I used to have a machine with 3 screens arranged in a line, with the bottom edges level. (Don't have space in the home office, sadly.) If I can't have a working vertical taskbar, can I have one taskbar across the bottom of 2 or 3 screens, please? KDE 3 could do that no problem.
As a non default environment for most distros, I think this is the problem they face. Once you get into the people going into the customisation sphere, everyone has their own little dealbreakers like moving a window left repeatedly with keyboard hotkeys not wrapping into the next monitor, or the amount of spacing on titlebars or the way the dark theme handles the settings app
Why not make that an option in KDE?
It doesn't work as well as i3 or sway.
No, I daresay it doesn't work as well as a dedicated tiling WM, but I don't use tiling WMs. :-) I have used xNix environments with just a window manager in the past, and while it works, I am not someone who lives in a terminal. In fact I almost never use them, just for occasional admin stuff, like a morning update run. Apart from that, I barely touch them.
So for me, I like the comforts of a desktop, and I don't want to give that up. But I do like tiled windows sometimes, so something that gives me a bit of both is of potential interest, while a pure-play tiling WM isn't.
I found happiness in xfce4 (that beauty hasn't crashed even once in about 8 years of using it heavily), and then sway (same story, currently at two years).
Is the problem. Plasma has been my daily driver since 4.4, on Debian testing, on systems which I know beforehand wouldn't have any random issues (Debian-specific also).
Autohide panels is something Plasma seems to particularly struggle with. Sometimes the panel will start spazzing out, flickering and neither appearing nor disappearing, before finally crashing completely (and sometimes not coming back until I manually(!) restart plasma shell.)
I've switched from Gnome after 15 years to Plasma 5, and I've never been so happy.
Contrary to Gnome, Plasma is lightweight, works out of the box without 3rd party extensions, but yet 3rd party themes and extensions are 1st class citizens.
Until Ubuntu switches to KDE, I am stuck in the Gnome-lets-remove-desktop-icons-because world.
Myself I'm running XUbuntu (XFCE) as my daily driver, works excellently and I have no issues doing what I need to do.
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kubuntu
Edit: OK, "officially blessed".