In search of the perfect KDE desktop.

[exploder]

I wanted KDE on one of my computers but everything I tried seemed to have some shortcomings in one area or another.... Recently in my spare time I gave kubuntu 10.04.1 another shot because my NVidea card seems to work best with the LTS release. I installed kubuntu 10.04, updated it and had a very slow login issue. I upgraded KDE to 4.5.3 from the ppa repo and the login issue was fixed. I went to set up KMail and discovered that some libs did not get pulled in from the upgrade for some reason. Starting KMail and PIM from the terminal a couple of times revealed what packages I needed to install and once these were installed KMail and PIM worked just as they should. Almost forgot, I had to install a package to get my sound working, I don't recall the package off the top of my head but I remember looking through the history in Synaptic and quickly discovered what the KDE upgrade had removed.

I installed the NVidea drivers and of course plymouth was destroyed... Boot up manager alone would not fix plymouth but a Google search and a copy and paste of a command into the terminal got plymouth to display. I should add, no text is showing on startup or shutdown, I was real happy about this! Occasionally the desktop was loading with a weird rectangle, kind of an outline at the top of the screen and sometimes the menu would display at the top of the screen.... I turned off the blur effect, changed compositing to use XRender and set the animation speed to instant, the desktop loads perfect every time now and it is very responsive. These setting also seemed to cure all of the refresh issues I usually see in menus and the desktop in general, it works just how I would expect it to now.

I added the extra repos and installed all of the multimedia codecs with no issues. I decided to use Totem as my default video player. I know, most of you are thinking why Totem? Totem just works and it does not have the double buffering problems and full screen issues with Apple trailers that MPlayer has. I installed KDiskfree because kubuntu did not appear to have any disk usage utilities by default. I also installed Firefox and Synaptic, had to fix the appearance of Synaptic but a Google search provided the answer pretty quick. (Yeah, I don't memorize this stuff. )

All this sounds like a lot of work but in the end it really paid off. I finished up by using the KDE 4.6.0 default wallpaper, even found it in my 1920 x 1080 resolution. My graphics drivers work perfectly, the system is fast and everything works without issues!

[beli0135]

I am also KDE guy, I just dislike gnome very much.
I bought newest laptop and had problems with older versions of linux (particulary openSUSE or anything older than ... about now)

Utterly BEST implementation of KDE you can EVER have is with openSUSE. To my newest machine, current 11.3 version does not work particulary well, so I am waiting till march to get it.
Meanwhile...
Meanwhile I needed some KDE distro. Gnome is good for who likes it, for me, its a lightyear retarded comparing to KDE and just impossible to work on. That's just me.

Ok, so I gone from Sabayon, Fedora, LMDE, Mint, Pardus, Kubuntu..

Kubuntu is unfortunate distro. Avoid it. Its botched. Cannonical just doesnt know how to bundle KDE, you will have more problems than you'd like.
Fedora is just so unstable, not worth it.
Sabayon is pretty good, my recommendations.
Pardus - excellent KDE implementation, however, not too many packages available, and Skype is not bundled yet, so not for me. Need skype
LMDE - no, installing KDE from APT didnt go pretty well

So I kept ugly gnome, as Mint is only good distro that worked OK and as expected.
Yesterday I saw KDE 4.6 got out on Kubuntu repos, so I put repo and installed it. Yea, good, works. So now I have Mint with KDE.

Only remark I have that it is not that polished as in openSUSE, and not so fast as there.
I will wait stable 11.4 of openSUSE to go out to give a try.

[craig10x]

I worked with KDE for awhile and went back to gnome...yeah, i give you it's a bit prettier then gnome, but gnome doesn't look that bad, especially in Mint 10 with Clem's "mint x" default theme...which gives it a very mac-ish or kde type of metal look...and even the Home folder looks pretty nice with the cute green icons...

Mint 10 is probably one of the nicest renditions of gnome i have seen...anyway, i have LMDE 64 bit now and it doesn't really bother me that there isn't a kde version..i am cool with using it the way it is...

However, there are two favorite kde applications i do use on it...and that is K3B and Amarok...two kde apps i absolutely LOVE
And they run fine in gnome...

By the way, VLC (which is already installed in Mint) is an excellent video player...when playing videos, i always use it over Totem or MPlayer...
You get better quality images in it...

[Elisa]

...

I just wonder why u gave Kubuntu and not MINT KDE 9 ? Mint is cool, IMHO much handy and comfortable than KUbuntu...

[DrHu]

Aha!, the eminently customizable via menus, KDE desktop

Customizing the system is part of the fun of Linux

• Heh, not everything in the world can be about business, its not all work!

[deleted]

Aha!, the eminently customizable via menus, KDE desktop

Customizing the system is part of the fun of Linux

• Heh, not everything in the world can be about business, its not all work!

Aha! Too bad you can't add an "Open in terminal" for your desktop context menu on KDE
I think Fedora or was it OpenSUSE who added it, but only by hacking the source...
I like the way KDE handles the desktop shortcuts, too. The are easily configurable and easy to configure to "run as root". And of course K3B. I think both DEs have pluses and minuses. I'm currently running gnome, but to me desktop environments are fungible, tho I like them.
-Hinto

[exploder]

I just wonder why u gave Kubuntu and not MINT KDE 9 ? Mint is cool, IMHO much handy and comfortable than KUbuntu...

I wanted to piece the system together myself. For the most part I wanted to keep the system as KDE centric as possible with the exception of Firefox, Synaptic and Totem. I did try VLC, it was fine with everything except Apple trailers, Totem just worked with everything I tried. I might try Mint 10 KDE because it will come stock with KDE 4.6.0. My main goal is to have things light (Well, light for KDE),fast and stable. At the moment the LTS has the best kernel and drivers for my NVidea graphics, this was not the case when the LTS was first released.....

I used the kubuntu 10.04.1 32 bit iso to avoid random lock ups, graphics card issues and to avoid issues with full screen flash. Sometimes it's just fun to put something together myself.

[deleted]

Now that you mention it, what was the KDE replacement for KPackage? CLI? Surely not.
-H

[exploder]

Now that you mention it, what was the KDE replacement for KPackage? CLI? Surely not.

KPackagekit was the default in kubuntu.... It sucked. Synaptic is so much quicker and easier to use.

[exploder]

Well, switched to Mint 10 KDE! The rumors about kwin behaving much better in KDE 4.6.0 are true, my graphics card is working perfectly and fixing plymouth was just a couple of mouse clicks.

[dawgdoc]

Well, switched to Mint 10 KDE!

Ain't it great to be a tester of the RC. You will make the rest of us jealous.

[exploder]

Ain't it great to be a tester of the RC. You will make the rest of us jealous.

It will be worth the wait. After changing some settings because of my hardware, the system seems solid. I can't get full screen flash to work but again, it's probably my graphics card... Oh well, I can live with it until I figure something out. All in all I really like KDE 4.6.0.

[exploder]

Woo hoo! I have full screen flash! Desktop Effects are now using OpenGL and OpenGL screen savers are working like a charm. I installed the NVidea 270.18 drivers from the xswat repo. The system is quick and everything is working like it should.