I have long held a bias of KDE being the clunky and slow option from trial in the ~early-oughts. Within the past month or so I installed it to give it a spin and haven't switched back to XFCE since. It strikes a good balance of customization / speed / taste / and just working out of the box. Thanks KDE team!
One of the most impressive and useful free software projects. My first experience was being totally confused by KDE 1 during my first attempts to use Linux, and I'm writing this from my KDE desktop.<p>Other than the really bad KDE 4 release, the project has consistently been great for me. I've submitted a few smaller patches over the years and that experience was also low friction for a project of this size. KDE is highly customizable, full of power user features but also really simple with its current defaults (looks pretty much like Windows) and generally robust.<p>Shoutout to some KDE applications like Okular (great document viewer), Kate (solid tech editor), Krusader (double pane file manager) and KolourPaint (a simple image editor even I can use).
I remember when it first came out. Very impressive at the time. I was never a fan though personally, I always hated the look of KDE. I used it recently on CachyOS for fun and it worked great, just not for me visually. I'm glad it exists, I just wish there was something visually appealing with less settings bloat. It feels like going to a diner with 300 items on the menu and they're all sorta half baked.
I don't really use Plasma itself (and soon i wont even be able to if the rumors of them dropping X11 support are to be believed) but i do use various KDE apps, like Krita (which i use for most painting stuff), Kate (my main programming editor, coupled with clangd for C/C++ programming), KolourPaint, Spectacle, Ghostwriter, etc and in general i find KDE/Qt apps to be more to my liking in their UX than anything based on Gtk (or at least Gtk3-or-later, Gtk2 stuff is for the most part fine).
I will donate my entire pension if they make it so I can have a Windows 2000 theme that actually works and doesnt require me to hack a dozen files each time they push and update.
Quick, clean and easy to use. I've only been using it for a year but I'm definitely not going back.
It's impressive for the project to have come so far. Between the oversimplified, hyper-opinionated GNOME, the rock-solid but dull and minimal XFCE, the nostalgic MATE, and whatever Enlightenment is doing these days, it’s nice to have a continually polished, modern, well-integrated yet customisable experience like KDE, even today. And save for Akonadi (which just never seems to work reliably, rendering software like KMail useless), it’s been a pretty stable one for me, too. Here’s to another 30 years!
KDE beta2 was my first.
Talk from Grazer Linuxtage conf earlier this year:<p><i>KDE: 30 years of the Linux desktop</i><p><a href="https://media.ccc.de/v/glt26-691-kde-30-years-of-the-linux-desktop" rel="nofollow">https://media.ccc.de/v/glt26-691-kde-30-years-of-the-linux-d...</a>
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I lament the times when open source projects were open source software projects instead of political platforms for people who arrogantly think that their private political opinion is important enough to overshadow the project they participate in.<p>This will undoubtedly create tensions and will lead to fewer donations, thus having a negative impact on KDE.
The Free Software community has always been political. Where have you been?<p>Introducing a non-binary mascot for KDE is no more or less political than for example Richard Stallman demanding that printer drivers should be free, back in the 1980s. And same way the use and preference of the term "open source" over "free software" -- or vice versa -- is also very political because it depends on if one wants to go with the described values or not necessarily want to stand behind them.<p>The Free software community involves people, and with people come shared values and politics. That's kinda what "community" implies. And if we really want to go into it, given the circumstances of the invention of things like computers, the Internet, etc. it'd be very erroneous to asset that software in general has ever been value-free or non-political. Computing artillery trajectories is political just the same way as promotion of LGBTQ+ people, even if people get more upset about the latter rather than the more kinetic kinds of politics implied by howitzers et al.
It's Pride Month and the organization is doing Pride things, its not that complicated.<p>> This will undoubtedly create tensions and will lead to fewer donations, thus having a negative impact on KDE.<p>"undoubtedly" is absurd here. Does KDE really have a stable of consistent transphobes donating? Do they outweigh additional donations from supporting the LGBTQ community?<p>Regardless, if the only point of KDE were to make money it wouldn't be a non-profit. Extremely passionate people are often passionate about a lot of things beyond just what you want from them. KDE is a community project and that community loves and accepts non-binary people.
> open source software projects instead of political platforms<p>OSS and FOSS movements themselves were political platforms, so this has never been true. Your problem is that you just have some issue with this one
With all due respect: it is just a picture of a cute lizard.<p>Thinking practically, having a male and female lizard is sort of inconvenient for a mascot, since leaving one out is a message in itself. Having a genderless mascot with art assets ready to go makes practical sense to me.
> since leaving one out is a message in itself<p>Side question: why would having a male or female mascot be "a message in itself"? Why do people want to see a message, and especially a $currentDayPolitics one, in every single thing? A mascot can be a cute mascot without having to represent anything more than exactly that.<p>Just as a random example: Let's say some OG founder of a project had a cute dog named Laila, and the project makes this dog its mascot. Why should that be a problem, AT ALL?<p>And what's even worse, if you think this "everything has a message and we have to be super careful what the message is" thing through, the conclusion is: No project ever again can have a solely male or female mascot. Which is of course absurd.<p>And this whole "we need to send the RIGHT message" thing falls apart with time anyway, because what the right message is, WILL change over time. You're not at the end of all human enlightenment.
I mean it's not a HUGE issue by any means, just sort of inconvenient.<p>Like, most mascots aren't in gendered pairs normally (like your dog example!), you just have 1 option to represent the thing. People see Laila the dog and think "oh yeah, LailaOS".<p>But given you have 2 mascots, with 1 being pretty ambiguous, but the other being dressed in a pink dress with bows, it does mean you probably want to use both when presenting KDE, just so you're not accidentally saying "this is the KDE event for men" or "this is the KDE event for women". If you made your mascot the AIGA bathroom symbols, you'd have the same issue.<p>My thinking about the "right" message is just that... I don't think that's what they want to tell people right now, in our current time. Everyone can use KDE. It's not a historical impact sort of thing.<p>Again, not a huge issue really. Just seems practical. Hopefully I'm getting that across. Sorry if I'm not.
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The presented mascot is not genderless, but non-binary. The situation you describe has hardly improved with their introduction.
They could have hung a Star of David pendant around its neck and it would still have been “just” a cute lizard, and surely only an anti-Semite would object to such neutral, normalizing messaging?
No it is not just a picture, it is also a descriptive text and specific emojis attached. I don't think anyone would have raised an eye if it was just for the picture.
For many people open source <i>is</i> political.
This is just concern trolling, so let's not pretend otherwise.<p>If a non-binary mascot "creates tensions" then by all accounts you should go outside and touch some grass.
I think it’s a little different to simply have the mascot than it is to make their introduction an officially endorsed celebration of ‘pride month’ and have them ‘presiding over KDE’s 30th anniversary celebrations’. If something has a greater chance to ‘create tensions’, it’s probably the latter, for better or worse.
I used to think this way but with the rise of fascism pretty much everywhere I think it's important to know what I am consuming and what they support now.<p>Is it perfect? No. Does it piss some people off? Probably, and I don't care.<p>Also it's a cute fucking lizard.
Since when was someone's gender or sexuality a "political opinion"?
Honestly, when was open source <i>not</i> political? Look at early GNU writing. The topics have change but it being political absolutely have not.
Minor nitpick but s/open source/free software<p>But yes, the free software movement is political, and the FSF is by all intents a political organization with a specific political goal and message.<p>Politics is multifaceted, it doesn't purely relate to government either. Politics is how humans decide who gets what, when and how. You can't run a community or organization without politics.
I do feel bad for the amorphous people who through their lack of parenting, discipline, and accomplishment have become victim to the evil that has been pervasively and subversively spreading to collect the souls of the weakest among us. For lack of a proper community (family, friends) they take their unaccomplished selves to the dark corners of the internet with degenerates and failures artificially prop each other up and victimize those who do not engage in their false reality, false truth, true pity.<p>I feel bad for them because they are victims, but I also feel righteous anger at those in power (intelligensia, media, govt) who prey on their weak hearts to lead them to victimhood and to a mental handicap to make them political puppets.
Found the edge lord. You gotta step up your troll game, this is weak. Grok can do better.
What are you talking about mate? It’s just a cute little mascot?
I feel quite repulsed by the fact that the first thing you see when opening the post is a huge donation card.