XFCE vs KDE

[Moltke]

It's really surprising how small KDE's memory usage is. Especially if you turn off the animations in "appearance." It's down around Linux Lite, Lubuntu. (It's based on qt, like Lubuntu's desktop).

Yes, it wasn't always like that though. I remember trying KDE in the past and it was quite a heavy desktop using a large amount of resources, now they've made a great job.

I'm not in love with the start menu. It feels a little clunky the way you have to click menu items to drill deeper. I like how Linux Lite (and MX, other Xfce desktops) expand as you hover over a menu item.). It feels tedious that way. It has a lot of settings which could also feel tedious at first. But, now it's nice to have all that. It's very well organized.

You don't have to click, at all. Use arrow keys + Alt to navigate the menu and/or click on super/win key and start typing the name of the program you're looking for, Also, you could just click on the desktop or press Alt+Space keys and start typing, krunner, which I forgot to mention before (how could I), will list every single possible  match from local files to your browser bookmarks in a drop-down menu fashion for your query. This is by far the best feature/tool any desktop could ever dream having, and KDE does!

It sounds like the is a rebellion among Xfce's fans. I guess Xfce is making some changes they don't like. So, that would be good to have a choice with Linux Lite. That might appeal to people. (I don't know how Jerry does it all.)

I don't think it 's anything like that, many people will still use XFCE since it is a great desktop, personally, the main reason I'm feeling more and more attracted to KDE is the fact that I don't have to use the mouse for almost everything like I do in xfce, I only use it when a certain action can't be done via keyboard,  otherwise I key my way around it In fairness, xfce is easier to set up and use in just a matter of minutes while in KDE you have to spend a fair amount of time learning what does what before it works the way you want it to. I'm using KDE on Debian Buster, I installed Buster via a netinst.iso, then installed KDE and apps on it.

[az2020]

One thing I'm not liking is KDE "wallet." Every time I boot, kwallet asks me for a password just to connect to my own wifi from my own computer (which I logged into with my own username and password). That doesn't seem well thought out. I've got a feeling it serves a very good purpose and in the future we're all going to be using wallets. But, right now, I'm not liking it.

I setup my old laptop to seed torrents 24x7, and hold less-used files (a NAS device). I configured NFS (I started with samba, but it seemed slow transferring files. I read NFS is faster. It does seem to be.). It works perfectly when I mount the share from KDE's command line. But, when I configure fstab to mount at boot, it fails. I think because the system won't start the wifi until the desktop appears and kwallet asks for its password.

I've asked on the Kubuntu forum for help with this. It's not the end of the world. I can use the command-line mount. But, something about kwallet seems more than I'd like to get into.

Another problem I'm encountering is that the shutdown takes 3-5 minutes unless I open a terminal window and unmount the NFS share before shutting down. I read somewhere that this can be because KDE (or systemd?) shuts down the network before unmounting the share. (That's actually what caused me to think about how the network isn't starting until well after the desktop is present. ha. I probably never have realized fstab mounting is failing due to that, if I hadn't read about the possible reason for the shutdown hang.).

This is the first time I've used NFS. I might experience similar difficulty on any distro. I wouldn't blame KDE for all of it. But, the part about delaying network connectivity until after you're into your desktop seems like a problem. [I'll edit this post when I learn more about how to deal with that. Googling about it, I see a lot. But, it's not always clear what is the official answer versus quick/dirty hacks. It's also not clear which hacks are for Plasma 4 or 5. I'm going to wait and see if I can get an answer from someone who knows.]

[Moltke]

One thing I'm not liking is KDE "wallet." Every time I boot, kwallet asks me for a password just to connect to my own wifi from my own computer (

You can deactivate it in systemsettings.

[az2020]

One thing I'm not liking is KDE "wallet." Every time I boot, kwallet asks me for a password just to connect to my own wifi from my own computer (

You can deactivate it in systemsettings.

Thanks(?). Your comment caused me to look deeper and find that option in System Settings->Personalization->Account Details.

However... turning off the wallet causes Kubuntu to prompt for wifi *each* time I boot.  All I've done is exchange one annoyance for another. (Plus, all my Google Chrome credentials disappeared. I had no idea I was that "into" the wallet all this time.).

I turned it back on until I can learn more. I don't want to rant too much about it yet. Maybe it's a good thing, and I just don't understand it. I can see how transporting a wallet around with your web-site logins could be nice. It's just the wifi part that's annoying. (Plus, if you log into your session, why supply yet another password to the wallet. That seems overdone.).

But, I could live with that. Maybe I'm just averse to change. I try to keep an open mind. What really strikes me as a real problem is the network connection not being established until long after the desktop appears. You can't automount NFS shares. (Samba might not work either.). I *assume* that's my problem mounting. It could be something else. This is the first time I've used NFS.

[ldcdc]

Sorry for raising this thread from the dead, but I have a small point to add about KDE, given the "windows like" approach that Linux Lite takes.

There's a bug/feature, depends on how you see it, that makes Trash not work as expected for "external" drives/partitions - at least with the default mounting permissions. Essentially, "move to trash" for files on "external" drives, results in files being copied to ~/.local/share/Trash. Perhaps Linux Lite could either change the default mounting permissions to work around it, or change the plasma code itself. In any case, out of the box Trash will not work as expected in KDE, and someone "moving to trash" his/her media files, will result in lots of file copying, possibly even filling up /home or  /.

See https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=76380

Don't get me wrong, I like KDE/Plasma. I've always loved the KDE set of apps; I love their depth when it comes to features/options. There's no perfect desktop, and one must be willing to make a compromise here and there (or build his oen? ). I became tired of Gnome and the constant "we know best, you don't need this feature anymore" approach, so after years of using vanilla Ubuntu, I looked around for something a bit different. The choice came down to KDE or XFCE. Linux Lite, being Ubuntu based, was a possible variant for me. I went for Kubuntu though, for a reason that Jerry noted at some point in this thread: the bigger devs team at KDE felt like the safer bet for the future.

But, later down the road, perhaps LinuxLite will be the right distro for me, if a KDE flavour is added.

[TheDead]

Thread not dead! (That would make a nice t-shirt slogan )

That soo made me think of Officespace!

Um, yeeah! About that KDE version....

[trinidad]

[member=11791]az2020[/member]  You can just store the wifi password in root system wide using network manager. It will then auto-connect before you even log in if you like. At some point you must have checked a dialogue box that saved your wifi password to kwallet is all that's going on. Use network manager to store your wifi password. Set up your connection again and save it from network manager and if it prompts you to save to kwallet don't. I test Kubuntu too right now and I don't have the problem you describe... but then Network Manager is one of my favorite pieces of Linux software and usually the first one I use after installation.

[member=20274]ldcdc[/member]  This is not really a bug but more like an opinion. I recommend not using trash directly on any external drive. Create a file called standby or something and move files you are not sure about deleting to it instead of your ~/trash folder. I have always thought implementations of trash folders on Linux to be unnecessary given the way Linux updates and the file paths it uses compared to MS. This is also one of the many reasons that high end large system MS OEM desktops often ship with two disks, one SSD one HDD.

KDE in general, especially with SUSE and Kubuntu, is designed to be idiot proof, that is reliable OOTB  and as feature rich as Linux can be. This makes the interface confusing at times... but generally stable enough to endure operator error.

TC

[ldcdc]

[member=5916]trinidad[/member]:

True, it could be a matter of opinion. It is probably why it's been like that for so many years. It's just not how Windows works out of the box, as far as I can remember, and LL's goal is to be as familiar as possible. LL switching to KDE would imply trying to be both as Windows-like and as XFCE-like as possible.

When it comes to moving files manually instead of deleting, that doesn't fit my typical work process. Even most people's IMHO. Say I'm sorting out image/video files. Instead of deleting from the viewer itself, I would have to hit Ctrl-X, switch to a file manager window, hit Ctrl-P, go back to the image viewer. Then do that for hundreds of files.

True, sometimes I might be able to get away with using very large thumbnails, and skip a couple of steps there, use drag and drop etc. No matter what though, it's pretty hard to beat just hitting Del, and do that at any time, without all the preparation.

I have always thought implementations of trash folders on Linux to be unnecessary given the way Linux updates and the file paths it uses compared to MS.

True, the lack of actual zeroing out could have led to an easier "Undelete" process. We just don't have it though. And there are too many file systems, each with its own limitations.

[Moltke]

This week in KDE https://pointieststick.com/2020/04/24/th...s-for-you/

[trinidad]

Don't know if you saw this: https://pointieststick.com/category/new-...endliness/

Definitely going the right direction.

TC