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I had a brief (really brief, like an hour) stint with KDE5
Posted: Mon Dec 09, 2019 2:46 pm
by Eadwine Rose
I am fiddling around with fresh installs and such on different SSDs in my system. Finding out LOADS of things and learning way more than I bargained for, but so far.. despite it being annoying at times, it still is fun.
So.. today I decided to put a clean install to tinker with on one of the SSDs. And then to install KDE5 on it using MXPI.
The install went just peachy, updated everything, then installed KDE5 and even found out how to log into it (which I forgot to look up how to but DID remember it was somewhere on the screen with the login fields).
In this brief hour long stint I managed to:
- 1. make it freeze all save for the mouse, needing a hardware reset, simply by adjusting the panel height.
2. lose my main screen's desktop background, dunno why that happened but needed to log out and in to get it back.
3. find out that root actions in Dolphin are teh gone. Needs installing an extra package to get that back, thank you to Richb for knowing which one.
4. find out that to start Synaptic it wants your USER password. Entering your root pass like you would expect it to makes Synaptic unresponsive and throws up the screen "do you wish to end or wait?"
5. finally get into the syslog, only to see that kde throws these errors in there about org.kde.runners.baloo, in fact riddling syslog with that.
6. really realize that xfce is more stable to use, that even as a noob it never did the 1&2 on me even though I did stupid bleep back when.
7. run right back to mama 
Yeah.. my experimenting days.. err minutes! with KDE5 are over
Re: I had a brief (really brief, like an hour) stint with KDE5
Posted: Mon Dec 09, 2019 3:02 pm
by Head_on_a_Stick
The Plasma desktop is utterly gorgeous (and pretty lightweight these days) but it's too fiddly by far — even the knobs have knobs on them
Baloo is the indexing system, turn that off unless you have an SSD:
Re: I had a brief (really brief, like an hour) stint with KDE5
Posted: Mon Dec 09, 2019 3:06 pm
by Eadwine Rose
I have 4 SSDs.. so.. can't turn that off.
In any case.. not going back in there. Not even poking it with a ten foot pole
Re: I had a brief (really brief, like an hour) stint with KDE5
Posted: Mon Dec 09, 2019 3:17 pm
by Head_on_a_Stick
Eadwine Rose wrote: Mon Dec 09, 2019 3:06 pm
I have 4 SSDs.. so.. can't turn that off.
Well it's not needed for SSDs, it just won't slow the system down so much if you have them.
Indexing stores the location of all of the files on the system (and their contents as well if desired) to speed up searches from the desktop.
Anyway, I don't like Plasma either :P
Re: I had a brief (really brief, like an hour) stint with KDE5
Posted: Mon Dec 09, 2019 5:41 pm
by Stevo
If we ever did an official Plasma release, I don't doubt we would have it preconfigured to work around those problems, like we've had to do with Debian's XFCE.
You could also have tried one of the unofficial KDE MX respins to see if those are less problematic, even in a Live session or in a virtual machine.
Re: I had a brief (really brief, like an hour) stint with KDE5
Posted: Tue Dec 10, 2019 3:40 am
by Eadwine Rose
True, I could have, but I wanted to do it myself
Re: I had a brief (really brief, like an hour) stint with KDE5
Posted: Tue Dec 10, 2019 3:44 am
by junoluna
nice that we have choice
i installed KDE a week or so ago as an experiment and have found it brilliant..
in my case, it is using 15% of my 3,5 gigs of ram at start up compared to xfce's 23% ....
it also uses far less RAM once I have apps running... i have tried comparing with the same 5 apps open and a torrent client open for 2 hours ... )42% compared with 62%)
left on overnight the difference is even greater with the same processes running
I like KDE so much that i have now installed it on my other systems .... though i also like xfce ... it's the operating system that is most important for me ... think i can cope with any DE ... (except Gnome and anything that involves tiling)
Re: I had a brief (really brief, like an hour) stint with KDE5
Posted: Tue Dec 10, 2019 4:20 am
by Eadwine Rose
That is the great thing about this huh.. the choice we have :)
Re: I had a brief (really brief, like an hour) stint with KDE5
Posted: Tue Dec 10, 2019 4:24 am
by junoluna
yes ... the choice is wonderful
now if only i could get roadblox to work on MX, i could fully convert my daughters .... they pretty envious of all the tinkering we can do with linux but that dam game has them bound to windows
Re: I had a brief (really brief, like an hour) stint with KDE5
Posted: Tue Dec 10, 2019 4:40 am
by asqwerth
I like the fancy frosted translucent glass effect you can get in Plasma on dolphin, konsole, and the right click context menus. I have that on my KDE Neon install.
But it's true there are just tons and tons of control and tweak settings available. It can be overwhelming.
I'm just not as familiar with Plasma compared with gtk-based DE.
Re: I had a brief (really brief, like an hour) stint with KDE5
Posted: Tue Dec 10, 2019 9:43 pm
by Stevo
junoluna wrote: Tue Dec 10, 2019 4:24 am
yes ... the choice is wonderful
now if only i could get roadblox to work on MX, i could fully convert my daughters .... they pretty envious of all the tinkering we can do with linux but that dam game has them bound to windows
Google keeps giving me "Roblox" when I search for "roadblox"--do you have a link for it?
Re: I had a brief (really brief, like an hour) stint with KDE5
Posted: Tue Dec 10, 2019 9:45 pm
by junoluna
Stevo wrote: Tue Dec 10, 2019 9:43 pm
Google keeps giving me "Roblox" when I search for "roadblox"--do you have a link for it?
sorry stevo...my fault
i mean roblox ... i really should know that ... they have cost me enough money
Re: I had a brief (really brief, like an hour) stint with KDE5
Posted: Tue Dec 10, 2019 10:14 pm
by andyprough
junoluna wrote: Tue Dec 10, 2019 9:45 pm
Stevo wrote: Tue Dec 10, 2019 9:43 pm
Google keeps giving me "Roblox" when I search for "roadblox"--do you have a link for it?
sorry stevo...my fault
i mean roblox ... i really should know that ... they have cost me enough money
Brinker7 is a Roblox dev that is a GNU/Linux advocate. He has put together a package called "Grapejuice" that allows you to install and run Roblox using wine:
https://gitlab.com/brinkervii/grapejuice
Could be worth checking into. The current instructions are for Ubuntu and require using some PPA's, so I haven't tried it myself.
Re: I had a brief (really brief, like an hour) stint with KDE5
Posted: Tue Dec 10, 2019 10:22 pm
by junoluna
thank you
i came across that package when i was trying to find a way of getting it to play on linux - was a work in progress at the time
will check again
Re: I had a brief (really brief, like an hour) stint with KDE5
Posted: Tue Dec 10, 2019 11:22 pm
by figueroa
I totally don't understand the attraction of wanting to run a different desktop on a distribution (MX) that is quite XFCE-centric, and XFCE being so excellent and well integrated in MX. (Even plain vanilla self-installed from scratch XFCE is relatively easy to configure and maintain.) But, your experience should be a lesson to others. Once upon a time (10 years ago, maybe), Linus Torvalds wrote that he didn't understand why anybody would run anything other than KDE. Then KDE developers shot themselves in the foot and Linus became a Gnome user and advocate. Along the way, both KDE, then Gnome, became what I would call "too big for their britches." It's their way or the highway, and I've found them both ultimately hard to maintain -- more of a hobby than a way to get work done. This is the reason why Cinnamon and Mate were developed (more sanity) and why XFCE has become such a popular standard desktop in so many distributions. As always YMMV.
Re: I had a brief (really brief, like an hour) stint with KDE5
Posted: Wed Dec 11, 2019 1:03 am
by andyprough
figueroa wrote: Tue Dec 10, 2019 11:22 pm
I totally don't understand the attraction of wanting to run a different desktop on a distribution (MX) that is quite XFCE-centric, and XFCE being so excellent and well integrated in MX. (Even plain vanilla self-installed from scratch XFCE is relatively easy to configure and maintain.) But, your experience should be a lesson to others. Once upon a time (10 years ago, maybe), Linus Torvalds wrote that he didn't understand why anybody would run anything other than KDE. Then KDE developers shot themselves in the foot and Linus became a Gnome user and advocate. Along the way, both KDE, then Gnome, became what I would call "too big for their britches." It's their way or the highway, and I've found them both ultimately hard to maintain -- more of a hobby than a way to get work done. This is the reason why Cinnamon and Mate were developed (more sanity) and why XFCE has become such a popular standard desktop in so many distributions. As always YMMV.
You should stick with XFCE. Finding a DE that makes you happy and that you aren't having to fight against is an experience you should enjoy for as long as possible. It doesn't matter which DE you use - what matters is that the one you choose fits you well like a favorite glove fits your hand.
Re: I had a brief (really brief, like an hour) stint with KDE5
Posted: Wed Dec 11, 2019 6:52 am
by richb
KDE, actually Plasma now, is a desktop environment that has developed over the years to be very good. Why use a different DE with MX? Users have different tastes and preferences. If they prefer the Plasma model why not use it. They still get the the MX Tools and the app packages chosen by MX.
Re: I had a brief (really brief, like an hour) stint with KDE5
Posted: Sun Dec 22, 2019 12:09 pm
by keyfitter
I haven't liked KDE since the 3.xx versions. I had too many bad experiences with the later versions, so I have stuck with xfce for quite a few years now because it does what I need it to do.