MX Linux Forum

MX KDE is so much fun! I hope a day comes that MX KDE officially becomes a distro.
It's pure heaven using it as is, an official distro would be heavenly!

It's nice to see someone happy...

Sparky wrote: Mon Jun 22, 2020 5:25 pm MX KDE is so much fun! I hope a day comes that MX KDE officially becomes a distro.
It's pure heaven using it as is, an official distro would be heavenly!

Agreed, I love it. Although I'm starting to play with dwm now and that's a lot of fun too.

I recently installed KDE/Plasma Debian 10 and it is a nice DE. It's surprising that it only used about 500 mb ram on a fresh boot, making it one of the lightest Linux desktops. I remember not long ago when everyone said how much they loved KDE but it used too much ram. How times have changed :)

Thing is, even if it seems to use less RAM, the fancy effects do take a toll in performance. Opening a program is a bit slower than for XFCE.

In VM, the sluggishness is noticeable. You can turn them all off, in which case it's not as interesting anymore.

But on real metal, it really feels considerably lighter than it used to be.

I find the time to open a program in KDE imperceptible as compared to XFCE. I do have relatively fast hardware. On slower hardware I am sure that is the case and KDE may not be the best choice for those machines.

Sparky wrote: Mon Jun 22, 2020 5:25 pm I hope a day comes that MX KDE officially becomes a distro.

I hope this never happens, if KDE would be the only flavor. I tried KDE couple times, I was lost, completely clueless where is what, or how to do anything. I always used Xfce only. Xfce means home for me.

I remember from ms/windows time, what bothered me the most was, that they always moved things around with new version and I couldn't find things any more, or do them the way I used to. I hated this with a passion. With every new windows version I had to start learning things again. What a pain and a waste of time! When I tried KDE I felt the same.

If MX ever decides to go KDE only, without also Xfce, I would probably be forced to move somewhere else, which would be painful for me. So, in all my selfishness, I truly hope this never happens, even if KDE would use only 25% of resources Xfce uses. Who cares about few extra % of resources used, even older computers are now powerful enough...

If MX ever does switch to KDE as the default DE the first thing I would do after an install (and after running the initial updates) is install Xfce from MXPI -> Popular Apps -> Desktop Environments then select it as my default on the login screen so I could feel at home again.

JayM wrote: Mon Jun 22, 2020 10:45 pm If MX ever does switch to KDE as the default DE the first thing I would do after an install (and after running the initial updates) is install Xfce from MXPI -> Popular Apps -> Desktop Environments then select it as my default on the login screen so I could feel at home again.

That won't happen, but there might be a KDE version in the works... who knows...

Some of us know! But there are absolutely no plans to drop the XFCE version. KDE would be an addition to the MX line.

Launching apps in KDE isn't any slower than XFCE for my hardware. I think an additional KDE official version would give a choice to the users and is very positive if it happens.

It could be possible if it comes with a minimal setup as well. Though I would not change my existing Gnome, I would dislike it to the same extent if there would only be an official full Gnome version. If two official iso... KDE-full and KDE-core would be great!!!

Sparky wrote: Tue Jun 23, 2020 6:19 am Launching apps in KDE isn't any slower than XFCE for my hardware. I think an additional KDE official version would give a choice to the users and is very positive if it happens.

I personally dislike KDE but I agree with you. It would be better if people had an official, fully-supportedl KDE version of MX Linux rather than unofficial respins. Linux is all about choice, after all, and KDE respins and installations seem to be very popular.

It's funny but I used the KDE version of PCLinuxOS for years, and when I decided to switch I went with the KDE version of Linux Mint Sylvia (18.3), and when I learned that Tara (Mint version 19) would be dropping KDE I almost went distro-hopping again. I eventually tried the Cinnamon version of Tara and liked it well enough. Between PCLinuxOS and Mint I did rather a lot of distro-testing (I wouldn't exactly call it hopping as I didn't actually install very many of them) and one of the deal-breakers for me was whether or not they had KDE versions. I began using MX 18.1 after I decided to put my Asus Zenbook up for sale and switch back to using my circa-2010 desktop PC, and after a learning curve I came to prefer Xfce. I've forgotten most of what I knew about KDE Plasma because now, every time I try to do things like setting Dolphin's defaults I have a devil of a time finding where those settings are. Take single vs. double-click to open files for example: this setting isn't actually in Dolphin, it's located somewhere else in the DE which makes no sense to me. It would be like if in MX this setting could only be found in MX Tweak rather than (also) in Thunar.

Tl:dr version: I used to be a KDE man for many years. Now it's Xfce for me but an official KDE version would be a good thing.

Stevo wrote: Tue Jun 23, 2020 1:34 am Some of us know! But there are absolutely no plans to drop the XFCE version. KDE would be an addition to the MX line.

The tension builds... I love surprises

Right now, it's meant to be a full featured KDE with the XFCE or MX standard apps replaced with KDE or QT equivalents if they aren't serious downgrades: Kate or Kwrite instead of Featherpad, for example, and K3b for ISO burning. But Firefox and LibreOffice will remain; those aren't going to be replaced by Konqueror and Calligra for the sake of ideology. There is much discussion going on as to what to add and remove.

As for a minimal edition, that could be made in half an hour by removing most of the apps and doing a respin.

I maintain about 10 machines for general use in my small business. I just recently moved 8 of them to Kubuntu because I rely on Dolphin. I particularly like its previews on the right "information panel" which is a more familiar setup for my former windows explorer users. I turn off all the special effects (even compositing) and I experience very acceptable speed. I don't care for the look of the menu system as much as Whisker, but editing the menu it is tremendously easier than with XFCE. Baloo doesn't slow me down and the options that it adds to dolphin for file searching, recent files, search by type, etc. are very worthwhile for me, as is krunner.

If indeed some news is in the works, I hope the developers will be able to adapt so as to give us the most up-to-date packages from kde possible. Maintaining all my machines is so much easier using the MX snapshot/liveusb tool. I've found that Systemback works in 20.04 kubuntu and has some of that functionality, but not like the MX tools.

I really look forward to coming back to MX!

So far, it looks impossible to get a newer KDE into Buster without an upgrade of Qt 5, which would break many other Qt apps in the repo.

That's one way that KDE and GNOME differ from XFCE, Enlightenment, Cinnamon, etc.: it's much much simpler to backport the latter.

The default KDE/Plasma in Buster seemed pretty nice. Is there a big advantage for the work involved to bump up to a slightly newer version?

Without getting into the detailed differences between the older KDE and the latest, one good reason is not to put out an official MX KDE release with a stale version of KDE.

Though we can't update the KDE base, we can update certain KDE applications, such as Kdenlive, Marble-KDE, Digikam, and some others.

MX KDE would be great !!! Pretty much the only thing I dislike about MX is that it has no offcially supported KDE. I'm using Dolphin, Krusader , Kate, Konsole ,Yakuake, Nomacs (already was installed with XFCE) , Digikam, SMplayer, Qbittorrent , all QT apps and all but the SMplayer , Qbittorrent and Nomacs are KDE apps which integrate just that little bit better in a full (or better yet minimal) KDE Plasma Desktop. Also had a little trouble with XFCE compositor but that was easy enough to fix. Not to mention every QT app looks a bit funky in XFCE or any other GTK based DEs like Gnome or Budgie. But I'm biased towards QT apps and KDE in general so it could be that.

Looking forward to KDE MX in the future. Hopefully not too distant future. :)

If you guys decided to offer and support a KDE release, that would bring me back into the fold and I'd be able to offer a lot of feedback and perhaps a little bit of help.

Uh oh. That may have just queered it.

Like richb said, one issue might be that it does not appear to be possible on buster base to have a newer plasma version than 5.14. Certain improvements in plasma or its related apps were introduced in later versions.

uncle mark wrote: Mon Jun 29, 2020 9:00 am If you guys decided to offer and support a KDE release, that would bring me back into the fold and I'd be able to offer a lot of feedback and perhaps a little bit of help.

Uh oh. That may have just queered it.

Stop the presses!!!!

Time to switch distros...

Norbert Preining released the KDE 5.19.2 packages for Debian a few days ago: https://www.preining.info/blog/2020/06/ ... or-debian/

I'll upgrade my MX19.2, see if anything is broken. Could anyone tell me which MX qt apps will not work with the newer version of qt? I couldn't find any of the MX tools not working last time.

Jerry3904 wrote: Mon Jun 29, 2020 9:43 am Time to switch distros...

<sniffle>
I'm touched.
</sniffle>

andyprough wrote: Mon Jun 29, 2020 10:26 am Norbert Preining released the KDE 5.19.2 packages for Debian a few days ago: https://www.preining.info/blog/2020/06/ ... or-debian/

I'll upgrade my MX19.2, see if anything is broken. Could anyone tell me which MX qt apps will not work with the newer version of qt? I couldn't find any of the MX tools not working last time.

That will be interesting.

andyprough wrote: Mon Jun 29, 2020 10:26 amI'll upgrade my MX19.2, see if anything is broken.

beware, these packages are meant for debian unstable (sid)

andyprough wrote: Mon Jun 29, 2020 10:26 am Norbert Preining released the KDE 5.19.2 packages for Debian a few days ago: https://www.preining.info/blog/2020/06/ ... or-debian/

I'll upgrade my MX19.2, see if anything is broken. Could anyone tell me which MX qt apps will not work with the newer version of qt? I couldn't find any of the MX tools not working last time.

Could you test nomacs, ksnip, featherpad, virtualbox, clementine as well after you upgrade? I believe those are all Qt apps.

We have to consider other Qt-using programs in Stable repo, not just the MX apps themselves.

asqwerth wrote: Mon Jun 29, 2020 9:18 am Like richb said, one issue might be that it does not appear to be possible on buster base to have a newer plasma version than 5.14. Certain improvements in plasma or its related apps were introduced in later versions.

Latest and greatest should take a back seat to stability.

uncle mark wrote: Mon Jun 29, 2020 1:05 pm

asqwerth wrote: Mon Jun 29, 2020 9:18 am Like richb said, one issue might be that it does not appear to be possible on buster base to have a newer plasma version than 5.14. Certain improvements in plasma or its related apps were introduced in later versions.

Latest and greatest should take a back seat to stability.

Not in the DNA for MX Devs to do otherwise.

asqwerth wrote: Mon Jun 29, 2020 12:35 pm

andyprough wrote: Mon Jun 29, 2020 10:26 am Norbert Preining released the KDE 5.19.2 packages for Debian a few days ago: https://www.preining.info/blog/2020/06/ ... or-debian/

I'll upgrade my MX19.2, see if anything is broken. Could anyone tell me which MX qt apps will not work with the newer version of qt? I couldn't find any of the MX tools not working last time.

Could you test nomacs, ksnip, featherpad, virtualbox, clementine as well after you upgrade? I believe those are all Qt apps.

We have to consider other Qt-using programs in Stable repo, not just the MX apps themselves.

KDE upgraded from 5.18.5 to 5.19.2 successfully with no apparent breakage. I've attached the apt history log for that upgrade.
I then disabled Norbert's KDE repos and the Sid repo (which I had used to support the install of Norbert's packages), and checked on nomacs, ksnip, featherpad, virtualbox, and clementine:
1. nomacs - the installed version is 3.14.2+dfsg-0.1~mx19+1. Worked well - opened any pictures I pointed it at.
2. ksnip - I did not have that installed previously. MX installed version 1.6.2-1mx19+1 from the MX repo. Also worked fine - I was able to take a snip of a region of the screen and save it.
3. featherpad - the installed version is 0.14.2-0.1~mx19+1. This worked great, extremely fast. I was able to create a new text document and save it.
4. virtualbox - this will not install from the MX Package Installer or from Synaptic (either vbox versions 6.1.2, 6.1.6, or 6.1.10), complaining that the python3 version is too high at 3.8.2-3, and requiring a python3 version that is less than 3.8. When I try to force a downgrade to python3 version 3.7.3-1 in Debian stable, apt requires the removal of mx-apps, mx-idevice-mounter, along with the removal of the following:
apt-xapian-index, blueman, catfish, dh-python, gdebi, gdebi-core, gufw, hplip, lightdm-gtk-greeter-mx19, lightdm-gtk-greeter-settings, mugshot, onboard, onboard-data, pdfarranger, pdfshuffler, python3-apt, python3-cairo, python3-cups, python3-cupshelpers, python3dbus, python3-distutils, python3-gi, python3-gi-cairo, python3-lib2to3, python3-pil, python3-pyqt5, python3-reportlab, python3-reportlab-accel, python3-sip, python3-smbc, python3-xapian, system-config-printer, system-config-printer-common, system-config-printer-udev, touchpad-indicator.
5. clementine - the installed version is 1.3.1+git609-g623a53681+dfsg-1. It works like normal, plays my music.

Yeah...now you have a FrankenSystem. I hope you either backed up first, or that is just an experimental install that can be sacrificed.

Stevo wrote: Tue Jun 30, 2020 12:16 am Yeah...now you have a FrankenSystem. I hope you either backed up first, or that is just an experimental install that can be sacrificed.

Experimental in a vm - not a problem at all. I was expecting to break it at some point, just wanted to see how far it would go. Getting this far and only losing vbox is not bad, and I would hope that vbox might work with this more recent version of python3 soon.

Just installed MX KDE today, switched from Mint, for daily R&D work and play in home.
MX KDE is surprisely perfect till now.

This is not the official KDE thread. This is a user made one.

viewtopic.php?f=94&t=59297

This link leads to where you need to be.

Stevo wrote: Tue Jun 23, 2020 1:34 am Some of us know! But there are absolutely no plans to drop the XFCE version. KDE would be an addition to the MX line.

Phew! Glad to hear that!

Patiently waiting for KDE rc1...

XFCE is cool but KDE behaves best on my laptop.

Vrrm vrrmm!!

danielson wrote: Tue Jul 28, 2020 5:41 pm Patiently waiting for KDE rc1...

XFCE is cool but KDE behaves best on my laptop.

Vrrm vrrmm!!

Is that the sound of the fan?

Fans are always good to have.

To be "the" fan is too high a grade for me (blushing). :)

Gosh, where's Steve Martin when you need him?!

I find this discussion to be very interesting! Back in the mid to late days of our previous distribution, Simply MEPIS, I used to create respins of MEPIS using either Xfce or LXDE in place of KDE. All three were usable; the Xfce and LXDE versions back then were somewhat lighter in resource consumption.

I have at least four partitions using products "in the family": MX Linux 19.2 Xfce, MX Linux 19.2 KDE, antiX 19.2.1 Base, antiX 19.2.1 runit, and I have several live instances of these and others. I use Debian and other Debian derivatives too, and I have no particular personal preferences when it comes to systemd - I think the method is "unusual" compared to what I've learned over the past twenty years, but on the systems where I've actually used it, they work fine. As far as MEPIS, MX Linux and antiX history, I've never had major issues. In all the years that we've had base levels and releases, I've only encountered a few installation related defects that I've reported - and they were so long ago, plus they were in Alpha 1 builds, that I can't even remember the issues. Any other problems I've ever encountered have been minor application related issues; I always report issues - either to the distribution or to the application for the things that interest me; as a result, the stuff I use each day has outstanding reliability, and the software I've mentioned definitely qualifies - always first rate software!

Over the past couple of years (now retired) I still benefit from GREAT software. I thank everyone who contributes - developers, writers, testers, artists, reviewers, and community members; it all adds up to very usable, high quality work.