25 years ago today, Matthias Ettrich sent an email to the de.comp.os.linux.misc newsgroup explaining a project he was working on. The latest and direct result of that email (plus a quarter of a century of relentless experimentation, development and innovation) has just landed in KDE’s repositories.
This time around, Plasma renews its looks and, not only do you get a new wallpaper, but also a gust of fresh air from an updated theme: Breeze – Blue Ocean. The new Breeze theme makes KDE apps and tools not only more attractive, but also easier to use both on the desktop and your phone and tablet.
Of course, looks are not the only you can expect from Plasma 25AE: extra speed, increased reliability and new features have also found their way into the app launcher, the software manager, the Wayland implementation, and most other Plasma tools and utilities.
Except for 1.0, I’ve used every release of KDE extensively, and its developers have every right to be damn proud of the amazing collection of frameworks and applications they’ve built. As with everything, KDE is not for everyone, but there’s no denying it’s a versatile, attractive, extensible, and fun to use environment.
Congrats to KDE (not sure how Plasma should be in the title as that is a fairly new thing).
I don’t really use KDE, but I did use 1.0 and 1.1, and have throughout the years tried it out to see if I like it, but always find a little something that irritates me enough to go back to Gnome.
One of the main reasons I started using Linux was to get away from Windows, and the original versions of KDE acted like Windows in many ways! This reminds me, i miss Enlightenment…
25 years?
I feel so old!
It’s still the only Linux desktop that doesn’t get in my way and just works.
Here’s to another 25.
In the past i opted for GNOME 2 and after Unity as my preferred choice for GNU/Linux on desktop. But i must say that in 2021 GNOME 2 is long gone and Unity is still available but it is not future proof anymore. Now i feel that there is a lack of general discussion involved. About the future of GNU/Linux on desktop. That is most popular distributions for desktop currently offer GNOME 3 over other options. But the thing is if you put stock Gnome Shell on one side and stock KDE on the other side. In all honesty for desktop purposes KDE is a clear winner in all regards. In addition KDE camp reassured us on multiple occasions they still take the desktop seriously. Where on the other hand Gnome Shell camp reassured us on multiple occasions they don’t plan to return and provide a sane desktop experience by default. This should get acknowledged and popular desktop distributions, such as the Ubuntu, should switch to KDE by default. There can still be Kubuntu and GNOME Ubuntu. But for Ubuntu i would like to get back to a sane and polished desktop environment and experience. All in all i feel that the time has come and that KDE deserves a honest shot.
Unity 7 and the future Unity 10 are actively developed.
Ha, Geck just can’t help but whine about Gnome 3. Funny thing is, I didn’t like it at first either. But then I tried Fedora with stock Gnome shell and watched a few tutorials on it and love it. It has the perfect mixture of staying out of your way, task switching and being minimal all in one. I use a few extensions because other software refuses to ditch systray icons. Though I do hate the 40+ dock at the bottom. I install the Vertical Overview extension to fix that.
You say i am whining about Gnome Shell but at the same time you say you use a bunch of extension to make Gnome Shell bearable and still you hate something about it. Hence you install more extensions on top of that to fix that. Knowing that Gnome Shell developers are frequently making statements against using themes or extensions as the defaults is what we all should be after. It is painfully obvious the Gnome Shell project has strayed away and people defending them in this madness are not making things better. This is not the future of GNU/Linux on desktop. GNU/Linux on desktop deserves better than that.
Unity 7 last stable release is 5 years old. I have seen projects like UnityX but i don’t know where they are going. In addition i doubt that Ubuntu will make it the default anytime soon.
Ubuntu Unity Remix is maintaining Unity 7.
I used Unity from the repositories and it worked fine. But it is not future proof. That is things like Wayland support are likely out of the picture. Hence there is little chance it could again become a default and sane desktop shell for Ubuntu. What i did is i installed Kubuntu 21.10 two days back. Did a fresh install and after using Gnome 2 and Unity now i must say i am back to a sane desktop experience with GNU/Linux. Integrated support for installing icon and desktop themes, dual pane file manager, highly customizable all around but sane defaults being used, desktop icons, application indicators … The reason i avoided KDE is i got a lot of crashes in the past years in a hour or two every time giving it a spin. Now i must say that it looks like this aspect of KDE improved vastly. As in the past two days the whole experience was smooth. I have listened to Gnome Shell developers, their claims, watched their actions closely. For years. My response to them now is you were mostly wrong on all accounts and claims. And due to that if you put Gnome Shell against KDE in 2021. If you are a sane person you must conclude Gnome Shell is lacking in majority of areas compared to KDE. KDE is much more suitable option an representation of GNU/Linux on desktop in 2021. Thank you KDE for staying true to yourself for 25 years. If KDE wouldn’t exist we would have to use Gnome Shell on desktop in 2021. Ouch.
KDE user since I first saw it, probably 1999.
28.8K dialup.
Preferred KDE on my GNU/Linux testing until moving away from Windows permanently in 2003.
Used it ever since. v1, v2, v3, v4 and plasma.
Installed it. Plasma is that kind of desktop environment that is so mature that I’m not afraid of pushing it to non-tech friends. It is that good 🙂
I love everything about KDE, but there are periods of its lifecycle where it becomes too unstable for my use cases
to use for anything really important, so I end up switching to gnome.
I never liked KDE in the pre-Plasma days, it always felt like way too much baggage for a simple desktop/workstation OS. Ever since I tried Plasma for the first time a few years ago, I now consider it the best overall full DE for Linux. It’s as light as Xfce but much more featureful, and as others have said it really does stay out of the way and let one get work done.
Also, most of the Plasma bits have been ported over to OpenBSD, not quite enough to run it as a full desktop on that OS yet, but if a workaround can be found for the increasing dependence on Wayland it might get there. It would be a nice alternative to Xfce and Gnome 3, both of which are usable but not perfect on that platform.