My thoughts on KDE

[paul1149]

@dreamer, thank you for that explanation. We seem to be in a problematic transition period regarding GTK. I know whenever I do updates I get a good dozen warnings about deprecated GTK themes (or something like that).

Most of all I wish Wine would handle the fonts better; I could live with the rest.

But still, all in all KDE has taken MX up a quantum leap in configurability, user control of things, and power of the applications set. I am super pleased. I still have this noisome problem of the Meta key not calling the Menu (I have to set Meta-a to do that), but one day I'll get to the root of it.

I do find quite a few extra seconds involved in the boot to Desktop with KDE. I'm willing to pay that price though.

I just put MX19 on a customer's laptop - it was a typical 11" Celeron, 2GB, 32GB eMMC deal. I switched it over to KDE, but then decided the stock XFCE would be better for him, a Linux newcomer, and for me, who didn't have hours to make sure KDE was set up to be carefree for him. So I took the unit back to XFCE.

I know nothing about Plasma v. Neon. Will have to look into that.

[imschmeg]

In my quest to learn to love KDE, I have been playing with KDE in a Debian bullseye/sid VM, and have managed to get the footprint down quite low - around 400MB. However, I cannot figure out why it takes KDE so long to launch applications. In the desktops I use now with MX (Xfce, Fluxbox, IceWM), launching a light application like a terminal window is nearly instantaneous, but in KDE it takes about 2 seconds. Is this typical of KDE? Is there some set of settings I should be looking at to fix this? I also have a Lubuntu VM using LXQT, and it launches apps very quickly, so this isn't a problem with QT itself.

[paul1149]

Vivaldi fully loaded is a slow-opener here, but that's inherent to the prog, with all its javascript. theWord Bible program on Wine is noticeably slower than in XFCE.

But Terminal (I use the xfce terminal, not konsole) manifests in less than half a second. LibreOffice is very spiffy. Kate (text editor), Cherrytree, Waterfox without many extensions - all fast. So basically, no problem except for Wine.

[imschmeg]

I've got Mate as well as KDE installed in that VM, so I can compare the speeds. Mate opening either Mate terminal or Konsole is nearly instantaneous, but KDE opening either takes 2 seconds. I'm sure it's some strange setting in KDE that's doing this, it's just that, KDE being KDE, it would probably take an eternity to find that setting by trial and error. Another issue with KDE is that it doesn't like being in a virtio QEMU window as much as Mate does. I can't get KDE to resize to fill up the window (without magnification), and have to use some set resolution like 1600x900. Mate has no issues, and takes up whatever space the QEMU virtio window gives it. I've tried other QEMU display drivers with KDE, and it likes them even less.

[dreamer]

As long as we are giving opinions, I find KDE extremely fast loading and fonts look good to me. Once set up to my liking it stays out of the way, not intrusive at all.

Intrusive was probably too strong. The login to desktop time with KDE is a real problem in my experience. I wish KDE was something else, more like LXQt. LXQt needs more devs and love, that's why I haven't jumped ship from GTK3 yet. And the problem with GTK fonts in Qt environments. I would suggest MATE as an alternative to Xfce, but since it is based on GTK3 it is destined to become crap (GTK4).

We should all use what we like, there are options after all.

[paul1149]

it's just that, KDE being KDE, it would probably take an eternity to find that setting by trial and error.

You've got that right. I shared up-thread how this install has been an uphill climb from Day One. A few times I was ready to pack it in, but I had a sense that I needed to stick with it, that it would be worth it to do so, and that kept me going.

[richb]

As long as we are giving opinions, I find KDE extremely fast loading and fonts look good to me. Once set up to my liking it stays out of the way, not intrusive at all.

Intrusive was probably too strong. The login to desktop time with KDE is a real problem in my experience. I wish KDE was something else, more like LXQt. LXQt needs more devs and love, that's why I haven't jumped ship from GTK3 yet. And the problem with GTK fonts in Qt environments. I would suggest MATE as an alternative to Xfce, but since it is based on GTK3 it is destined to become crap (GTK4).

We should all use what we like, there are options after all.

I guess it depends on your system. Desktop load is very fast for me. It seems faster than XFCE. I like KDE, I also like XFCE.

[imschmeg]

I just found part of the slowdown! As I was playing with it now, noticing the bouncing mouse cursor during app startup delays, it occurred to me that this bouncing mouse cursor animation could be the problem. It took a few minutes, not the eternity I feared, to find the way to disable that animation:
System Settings->Personalization->Applications->Launch Feedback->Cursor->No Feeback, and unchecking Task Manager->Enable Animation. There's still about a second delay vs. Mate's nearly instantaneous response. With that bit of unexpected success, I'm now determined to figure out how to get rid of the remaining delay...

[JeffA]

Most of all I wish Wine would handle the fonts better; I could live with the rest.

Paul, have you tried this:

Run in terminal:

Code: Select all

bash winefontssmoothing_en.sh

Then select 3 Subpixel smoothing (ClearType) RGB


Or:
Run in terminal:

Code: Select all

regedit

or

Code: Select all

wine regedit

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]
"FontSmoothing"="2"
"FontSmoothingType"=dword:00000002
"FontSmoothingGamma"=dword:00000578
"FontSmoothingOrientation"=dword:00000001


I would sometimes have bad fonts in theWord after updates until someone reminded me to try the above. I haven't had font problems since and use theWord regularly. I've never tried KDE however, I'm happy with XFCE.

[paul1149]

Thanks, @JeffA, that did help somewhat. Strange, that is the script I had run, but evidently it didn't take, because I didn't have all those specs in my Registry before running it again Between the "semibold" font varieties and now this, most of theWord is decent. theWord has a utility for replacing fonts in modules, so I will have to run it again on a few of them. The problem usually is that the fonts that look best here for English do not support Hebrew, and often Greek fully. So it's a balancing act.