MX Linux Forum

Posted: **Thu Apr 02, 2020 12:46 pm**

It's been a couple of weeks now of using and refining KDE. For some reason it's taken a lot of work to get everything going right. At times I was ready to pack it in, but visiting my old MX19 default install convinced me it was time to forge ahead.

Almost everything is working right now, and I'm glad I stuck with it. KDE is the most elegant DE I've ever used. The depth of the options are overwhelming at first, and the aesthetics are superb. The ecosystem of associated programs is excellent, and as is not the case with other DE's, most of their dependencies are already onboard.

The "feeling" this give me is that this is a whole new OS. KDE was my first real DE, many years ago, I think it was on PCLinux. After a long circuitous route for both of us, I am using it again now, and the hit to resources is negligible.

There are some bugs here and there. Some of my keyboard shortcuts still aren't working right. I can't map easystroke to minimize windows. Dolphin's ability to reorder Places is buggy. But overall, a truly great DE and a major step forward. Glad I made the transition.

https://i.postimg.cc/W3CLL81Y/KDE-desktop.png

Posted: **Thu Apr 02, 2020 2:31 pm**

How are you finding KDE on resources? I have had a similar experience to you with KDE - tried it many years ago, and was overwhelmed with its options and its resource footprint. I only recently heard that it can be light on resources if properly configured.

Posted: **Thu Apr 02, 2020 2:50 pm**

I'm on a Vista-era tower - C2D, 6GB ram, SSD (makes a huge difference). I'm delighted by KDE's resource usage. Perhaps a bit slower booting up, but beyond that no real difference in performance.

Posted: **Thu Apr 02, 2020 2:51 pm**

Nice Lexham interlinear. Regarding theWord app - is that the Windows version running on wine? Or is there a Linux version floating around somewhere?

Posted: **Thu Apr 02, 2020 3:01 pm**

Your conky shows kde using 2.9GB RAM! Wow! And that is considered low on resources ...

Posted: **Thu Apr 02, 2020 3:10 pm**

anticapitalista wrote: Thu Apr 02, 2020 3:01 pm Your conky shows kde using 2.9GB RAM! Wow! And that is considered low on resources ...

I'm using 9.03GB right now with XFCE.

Posted: **Thu Apr 02, 2020 3:20 pm**

andyprough wrote: Thu Apr 02, 2020 2:51 pm ...Regarding theWord app - is that the Windows version running on wine? Or is there a Linux version floating around somewhere?

It would have to be the Windnoise version on Wine. I find, though it needs alot of customizing, it functions way better the e-Sword.

https://i.postimg.cc/L5rg23KW/Screenshot-1.png

BTW, in my case, on some installs, I have to copy the .exe file to Wine's C: drive and execute it there to get it to install without error.

Posted: **Thu Apr 02, 2020 4:08 pm**

andyprough wrote: Thu Apr 02, 2020 3:10 pm
anticapitalista wrote: Thu Apr 02, 2020 3:01 pm Your conky shows kde using 2.9GB RAM! Wow! And that is considered low on resources ...
I'm using 9.03GB right now with XFCE.

If I add up all the RAM on all my boxes, I have less than that available

Posted: **Thu Apr 02, 2020 4:24 pm**

I regularly use 3 to 4 GB whether XFCE or KDE. Some of that may be cached. I have 16 GB Ram in the machine. It seems the more ram you have the more the system uses.

Posted: **Thu Apr 02, 2020 4:26 pm**

andyprough wrote: Thu Apr 02, 2020 2:51 pm Nice Lexham interlinear. Regarding theWord app - is that the Windows version running on wine? Or is there a Linux version floating around somewhere?

Yes, theWord is on Wine. Super prog. Runs very well that way. It's about the only thing I use Wine for.

No, Costas has said he will not port theWord to Linux.

Posted: **Thu Apr 02, 2020 4:28 pm**

It looks like paul1149 has Vivaldi running in that KDE screenshot. And Vivaldi can be a resource hog all by itself, regardless of DE.

Posted: **Thu Apr 02, 2020 4:31 pm**

anticapitalista wrote: Thu Apr 02, 2020 3:01 pm Your conky shows kde using 2.9GB RAM! Wow! And that is considered low on resources ...

You scared me there. :) I looked and it's true. Then I simply closed Vivaldi, with many tabs open (though most are hibernating), and many extensions running, and it dropped to 1.16GB, for a session that's been up and active for seven hours.

I don't look at the resource level often, but just on the human level I've not seen any significant difference in performance between K and X on my machine.

Posted: **Thu Apr 02, 2020 4:37 pm**

imschmeg wrote: Thu Apr 02, 2020 4:28 pm It looks like paul1149 has Vivaldi running in that KDE screenshot. And Vivaldi can be a resource hog all by itself, regardless of DE.

That's it. And can you believe how beautiful those icons are for Vivaldi, Libreoffice, and the rest? This is a treat for the eyes. Even the icon for xfce's terminal (looks like a "G"; just north of the vivaldi launcher on the panel) is classy. (The XFCE terminal is FAR better than KDE's Konsole).

Posted: **Thu Apr 02, 2020 4:47 pm**

anticapitalista wrote: Thu Apr 02, 2020 3:01 pm Your conky shows kde using 2.9GB RAM! Wow! And that is considered low on resources ...

I've just tried the Debian 10.3 Plasma live image and it boots to the desktop with 415MiB used (according to free(1)), which almost exactly same as the MX-19.2 live image. 4GiB of RAM were assigned to the VM in both cases.

Posted: **Thu Apr 02, 2020 4:49 pm**

And can you believe how beautiful those icons are for Vivaldi, Libreoffice, and the rest? This is a treat for the eyes.

Not for my eyes. I'm a Papirus icon fan-boy, and I only use solid color backgrounds. I am attracted to KDE for other reasons: it's migration to Wayland but without adopting CSD, and its ability to tailor window decorations/theming on a per-app basis.

When I see typical KDE Plasma-ized wallpaper and icons, I can only think of those lines from the Sound of Silence: "When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light, That split the night" and "And the people bowed and prayed, To the neon god they made."

Posted: **Thu Apr 09, 2020 12:58 pm**

I've had KDE debian with 350-400 MB Ram usage. KDE has become almost, but not quite, comparable to XFCE in resource usage. The little difference that still exists hardly matetrs if one has 4 GB+ ram. Of course, aesthetics is subjective so I'm not going into that debate.

Posted: **Fri Apr 10, 2020 7:16 am**

I am interested in KDE; I've installed it a number of times. But it does not seem to play well with my Android phone - at least I've not been able to get it to do so.

<This is where someone get's to point at me, laugh, and provide comment on how to do it right!> :)

I plug the phone into the computer (USB).

With KDE I can not seem to be able to copy large numbers of files to/from phone to/from the computer. The first few will go, but anything over about 20 and it stalls. Likewise, getting a directory listing of a folder with a lot of files - just doesn't happen with KDE.

The above will work quite well with MATE, Xfce, and even Cinnamon.

Posted: **Mon Apr 27, 2020 9:29 am**

One further thought. Somewhere, probably the wiki, Jerry mentions that the font smoothing in KDE might not be as good as it is in XFCE. I have found this to be true. There has been a small degradation in the browser, much of which I was able to deal with by font substitution in local .css files, so it's seldom a problem. The biggest hit has been in Wine, where the fonts really lack their previous quality. I spend time there in a Bible program, which is all about reading, and it has hurt. Some of it font substitution has done well with, but some seems intractable. I didn't see a font anti-aliasing setting under Wine Configuration, which I'm quite sure had been there, but I did find a script that accomplishes the job. But it made no difference.

Posted: **Mon Apr 27, 2020 5:31 pm**

paul1149 wrote: Mon Apr 27, 2020 9:29 am One further thought. Somewhere, probably the wiki, Jerry mentions that the font smoothing in KDE might not be as good as it is in XFCE. I have found this to be true. There has been a small degradation in the browser, much of which I was able to deal with by font substitution in local .css files, so it's seldom a problem. The biggest hit has been in Wine, where the fonts really lack their previous quality. I spend time there in a Bible program, which is all about reading, and it has hurt. Some of it font substitution has done well with, but some seems intractable. I didn't see a font anti-aliasing setting under Wine Configuration, which I'm quite sure had been there, but I did find a script that accomplishes the job. But it made no difference.

My experience is that KDE or Qt is just as good at rendering fonts as GTK. In a GTK environment Qt applications seem to follow GTK font settings very closely. In a Qt environment only the font, but not the font settings are carried over to GTK applications. So in a KDE/Qt environment you often end up with different looking font rendering in Qt and GTK applications.

I don't think any KDE distro can be called polished until they fix GTK applications obeying Qt font settings. Or create a GTK module like KDE, but they forgot to include font rendering settings. One other problem worth mentioning is that it is highly likely that installing KDE with another desktop environment will mess with fonts in the other environment. The KDE GTK module can do just that.

KDE is impressive and may be the future given the direction of GTK, but I also find it intrusive/busy from a UI perspective - not relaxing. If I can get rid of Plasma shell which I consider the weak part of KDE and install Liquid shell, then maybe it will be another experience. Plasma takes longer than Windows from login to desktop and that alone feels weird. Simplicity and modularity make things easier for both devs and users. Make Dolphin standalone, make Plasma Media Center standalone. The vision behind KDE is probably to create something "integrated", but doing that is time consuming and for users it can be frustrating dealing with dependencies.

Fun fact: The most successful KDE distro on Distrowatch is KDE Neon ranked 11. antiX is number 12!!! Manjaro is number 2, but they list 11 different DEs.

Posted: **Mon Apr 27, 2020 5:54 pm**

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.

Posted: **Mon Apr 27, 2020 6:27 pm**

@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.

Posted: **Mon Apr 27, 2020 6:49 pm**

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.

Posted: **Mon Apr 27, 2020 7:04 pm**

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.

Posted: **Mon Apr 27, 2020 7:32 pm**

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.

Posted: **Mon Apr 27, 2020 7:36 pm**

richb wrote: Mon Apr 27, 2020 5:54 pm 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.

Posted: **Mon Apr 27, 2020 7:46 pm**

imschmeg wrote: Mon Apr 27, 2020 7:32 pm 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.

Posted: **Mon Apr 27, 2020 8:30 pm**

dreamer wrote: Mon Apr 27, 2020 7:36 pm
richb wrote: Mon Apr 27, 2020 5:54 pm 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.

Posted: **Mon Apr 27, 2020 8:36 pm**

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...

Posted: **Tue Apr 28, 2020 2:23 am**

paul1149 wrote: Mon Apr 27, 2020 6:27 pm 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.

Posted: **Tue Apr 28, 2020 7:14 am**

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.

Posted: **Tue Apr 28, 2020 7:37 am**

While I'm at it, there is one other problem with KDE. Apparently the problem rests with QT, in that mouse wheel scroll at times unpredictably jumps all over the place. A search on ``` qt scrolling jump bug ``` will reveal various permutations of the bug. I experience it here in Vivaldi quite regularly. An annoyance, but not a deal-breaker.

Posted: **Tue Apr 28, 2020 7:39 am**

I love KDE. On a machine I have htop shows 550MG of use once it enters the environment. an official version of KDE based on MX linux would be ideal!

Posted: **Tue Apr 28, 2020 8:14 am**

KDE is good and bad for me. The good is lots of settings and eye candy. Low usage of RAM on Plasma 5 unlike 4. Good support community. The bad. Lots of settings. Awful application options. No Whisker menu option. None of the application menus come close to the natural feeling and ease of resizing of the Whisker menu. One application menu is like it came from Windows 98se, the other looks like a menu from Windows 8, the other one with selections on the bottom and going back and forth looking for categories is awkward. There seems to be a new one that looks a little bit like from Mate. Can't resize the application menus. Developers are reluctant to come out with a Whisker menu. Very bad documentation. There is no way to open Dolphin as root in a current session. You have to log out and log in as root in order to do tasks that require root access.

Posted: **Tue Apr 28, 2020 8:35 am**

@Sparky -Yeah, I'd love a MX-KDE version, but that's up to the devs.

@mauser -I'm ok with the main Menu options in kde. I use the full screen "Application Dashboard". Yes, sometimes the options can be overwhelming; it's a learning curve. Dolphin has a root actions plugin, available through synaptic. For hundreds of other dolphin plugins, check out the kde store:

https://store.kde.org/browse/cat/102/order/latest/

Posted: **Tue Apr 28, 2020 9:29 am**

paul1149 wrote: Tue Apr 28, 2020 8:35 am @Sparky -Yeah, I'd love a MX-KDE version, but that's up to the devs.

@mauser -I'm ok with the main Menu options in kde. I use the full screen "Application Dashboard". Yes, sometimes the options can be overwhelming; it's a learning curve. Dolphin has a root actions plugin, available through synaptic. For hundreds of other dolphin plugins, check out the kde store:

https://store.kde.org/browse/cat/102/order/latest/

Thank you. Good to know Dolphin has the capability of opening as root.

Posted: **Tue Apr 28, 2020 10:01 am**

@JeffA, looks like I've solved the font problem in Wine/theWord. DejaVu Sans does a great job on English, Greek, and Hebrew. I'm converting the dictionary/commentary modules to it right now.

Posted: **Tue Apr 28, 2020 10:49 am**

Mauser wrote: Tue Apr 28, 2020 8:14 am KDE is good and bad for me. The good is lots of settings and eye candy. Low usage of RAM on Plasma 5 unlike 4. Good support community. The bad. Lots of settings. Awful application options. No Whisker menu option. None of the application menus come close to the natural feeling and ease of resizing of the Whisker menu. One application menu is like it came from Windows 98se, the other looks like a menu from Windows 8, the other one with selections on the bottom and going back and forth looking for categories is awkward. There seems to be a new one that looks a little bit like from Mate. Can't resize the application menus. Developers are reluctant to come out with a Whisker menu. Very bad documentation. There is no way to open Dolphin as root in a current session. You have to log out and log in as root in order to do tasks that require root access.

Or download thunar which you can run as root. I use thunar for root access and dolphin for everything else.

Posted: **Tue Apr 28, 2020 1:07 pm**

paul1149 wrote: Tue Apr 28, 2020 10:01 am @JeffA, looks like I've solved the font problem in Wine/theWord. DejaVu Sans does a great job on English, Greek, and Hebrew. I'm converting the dictionary/commentary modules to it right now.

Great!

I recall I also had to play around quite a bit with fonts to get Hebrew and Greek to look well.

Under preferences I have DejaVu Serif for default Greek and Default Book view font. So I assume DejaVu Sans should work just as well. For default Hebrew font I have Ezra SIL.

I don't remember the details as to why I ended up with Ezra SIL for Hebrew, but it seems to be working well.

Posted: **Tue Apr 28, 2020 1:16 pm**

paul1149 wrote: Tue Apr 28, 2020 10:01 am @JeffA, looks like I've solved the font problem in Wine/theWord. DejaVu Sans does a great job on English, Greek, and Hebrew. I'm converting the dictionary/commentary modules to it right now.

Also under Module Properties > Settings and Actions, you have the option to use default fonts instead of the fonts defined in the module. I think that might keep you from having to convert the modules?

Posted: **Tue Apr 28, 2020 2:10 pm**

richb wrote: Tue Apr 28, 2020 10:49 am
Mauser wrote: Tue Apr 28, 2020 8:14 am
Or download thunar which you can run as root. I use thunar for root access and dolphin for everything else.

Cool.

Posted: **Tue Apr 28, 2020 2:12 pm**

JeffA wrote: Tue Apr 28, 2020 1:07 pm Under preferences I have DejaVu Serif for default Greek and Default Book view font.

Thanks, I had forgotten about that. I've specced DejaVu Sans for default book font, and it has helped a few of the books.

The individual module 'use default font' setting is only for non-user modules, which would be the ones affected by the global setting, above. Most of my commentaries and dictionaries I have made User modules so I can play with them, so they have to be changed individually, as I understand it.

I've done most of the modules now, and the results are very good. Definitely readable again.

Thanks again.

Posted: **Tue Apr 28, 2020 3:53 pm**

Can you imagine having this conversation about Windows/Mac? Do they even offer any optional desktop environment?

The wonders of linux!

Posted: **Tue Apr 28, 2020 4:01 pm**

anticapitalista wrote: Tue Apr 28, 2020 3:53 pm The wonders of linux!

All the good work that goes into it is appreciated on a daily basis. There's too much centralized control of things, in my view, and Linux is a way of resisting that. So far everyone I've turned onto MX either likes it or loves it.

Posted: **Wed Apr 29, 2020 2:24 pm**

I'm sorry if I should put in a new thread, but I thought it might be ok. Question I have: in KDE after logging in the conky widget displays information: users logon 2. In console who returns one user tty and one pts. Of course both, belong to me. There is only one user in xfce. Why is it so?

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