KDE should be the default Mint desktop

[flowerdealer]

With Ubuntu moving to Unity, and Gnome Shell not being quite "ready", in my opinion, and after using the Mint 10 KDE edition almost every day I think that KDE is finally ready and stable enough, it is just awesome. Again, this statement is only true now, before 4.6 there were still many rough edges, but KDE is finally polished enough. I think that if the Mint team invested more time even to polish the experience a bit more, it would be by far the best distribution out there.

Again, congratulations to the KDE team on 4.6, and to the Mint team for the KDE edition, really outstanding work.

[manny]

I agree with you. KDE is a beautiful desktop and has matured very nicely. LM should take KDE to a new level of excellence and it will rock the Linux world. Gnome will go the pains of a new desktop and Unity may not be the environment every one will love using. It just need LM KDE a few futures to make it the best of the best.

Linux Mint really Rocks!

[M_onkeyman]

Doesn't KDE use more resources than GNOME?

[dante19992]

I agree as well Gnome is really getting disappointing. I mean with gnome shell making it a requirement to search for the app you wish to use KDE is probably a better choice.

@M_onkeyman: Not really noticeably.

[flowerdealer]

I find that KDE has been greatly optimized, it used to be that it hogged a lot more resources than Gnome, but right now it seems like it is not far off from Grnome. If anything I'd say it seems to consume more battery life and energy on a laptop than Gnome does. And again, I'm only speaking about the latest release for KDE, on previous releases, yes, it was much heavier than Gnome.

[colyn]

Doesn't KDE use more resources than GNOME?

Not really..

KDE has changed a lot and now uses less system resources than the older version..

[dante19992]

Maybe Clem will listen to us?

[monkeyboy]

Clem said in his blog "No, not Unity. We’re going for Gnome 3 using a traditional desktop layout (no Gnome Shell). Of course you’ll be able to add Unity or Gnome Shell yourself, but by default the desktop will look similar to the one we’re using at the moment."

also from the blog 8% of the user base sampled used some form of KDE while 81% used Gnome so I am willing to bet that the "traditional" DE for 11 will be Gnome. However things can change and you never know what is waiting down the road. Enjoy

[mastablasta]

i tried to go Mint (with KDE), but unfortunatelly effects didn't work propperly and instead of showing small screens of runnig applications on mouseover it just gave a question mark. I freaked out and went with Kubuntu. IT all worked very well unitl i wanted to play AudioCD. It can not play it. Lame. Very lame... I wonder if this very basic function would work in Mint 10 out of the box?

[vaxxipooh]

i tried to go Mint (with KDE), but unfortunatelly effects didn't work propperly and instead of showing small screens of runnig applications on mouseover it just gave a question mark. I freaked out and went with Kubuntu. IT all worked very well unitl i wanted to play AudioCD. It can not play it. Lame. Very lame... I wonder if this very basic function would work in Mint 10 out of the box?

You can always try kscd for playing audio cd's http://www.kde.org/applications/multimedia/kscd/ it should be in the repos ...

[mastablasta]

You can always try kscd for playing audio cd's http://www.kde.org/applications/multimedia/kscd/ it should be in the repos ...

It's not the application's fault. Any application in GUI is unable to play AudioCD

[vaxxipooh]

You can always try kscd for playing audio cd's http://www.kde.org/applications/multimedia/kscd/ it should be in the repos ...

It's not the application's fault. Any application in GUI is unable to play AudioCD

Well i actually playing "Walter Trout" now in Kscd in Linux mint 10 - KDE 4.6.2 ... it works pretty well - are you sure you have an CD/DVD reader installed ?

[Zero Prime]

A couple of years ago I would have disagreed. I was a hardcore Gnome user and thought KDE 4.0 was pure junk. After trying out Mint 10 KDE with the latest updates, I have changes that view. KDE is now solid as well as beautiful. I effects are outstanding, right out of the box. The only problem I found, and I found that it's not just me, is the KDE Wallet thing. It makes it a real pain to install restricted drivers. Disabling this feature allows me to to install the additional drivers. I say, get rid of the wallet and KDE would be really close to perfect.

[dequire]

also from the blog 8% of the user base sampled used some form of KDE while 81% used Gnome so I am willing to bet that the "traditional" DE for 11 will be Gnome. However things can change and you never know what is waiting down the road. Enjoy

Unfortunately, this becomes somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophesy, in that many KDE users tend to move to Chakra or OpenSUSE or other distributions that cater more to KDE than either Ubuntu or Linux Mint does. I stay here on LM KDE (and also Kubuntu) because I want my "KDE voice" to be heard and counted on the number one and two fastest-growing distributions out there. So, I'm going to stay in that 8 percent. Hopefully, it will keep growing!

[monkeyboy]

also from the blog 8% of the user base sampled used some form of KDE while 81% used Gnome so I am willing to bet that the "traditional" DE for 11 will be Gnome. However things can change and you never know what is waiting down the road. Enjoy

Unfortunately, this becomes somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophesy, in that many KDE users tend to move to Chakra or OpenSUSE or other distributions that cater more to KDE than either Ubuntu or Linux Mint does. I stay here on LM KDE (and also Kubuntu) because I want my "KDE voice" to be heard and counted on the number one and two fastest-growing distributions out there. So, I'm going to stay in that 8 percent. Hopefully, it will keep growing!

Your right there is a "birds of a feather" effect in play when it comes to Gnome and Mint. Furthermore statistics should always be interpreted by the consumer but the numbers are still the numbers and they do point towards the current Gnome look and function.

[mastablasta]

A couple of years ago I would have disagreed. I was a hardcore Gnome user and thought KDE 4.0 was pure junk. After trying out Mint 10 KDE with the latest updates, I have changes that view. KDE is now solid as well as beautiful. I effects are outstanding, right out of the box. The only problem I found, and I found that it's not just me, is the KDE Wallet thing. It makes it a real pain to install restricted drivers. Disabling this feature allows me to to install the additional drivers. I say, get rid of the wallet and KDE would be really close to perfect.

isn't the wallet just holding in/saving the passwords?

[mastablasta]

You can always try kscd for playing audio cd's http://www.kde.org/applications/multimedia/kscd/ it should be in the repos ...

It's not the application's fault. Any application in GUI is unable to play AudioCD

Well i actually playing "Walter Trout" now in Kscd in Linux mint 10 - KDE 4.6.2 ... it works pretty well - are you sure you have an CD/DVD reader installed ?

I tried with kscd - says not disk, i even tried to upgrade to KDE 4.6.2 now it recognises the CD in Amarok, but it still doesn't play it.

Perahps yours works because you have different hardware. I have an older CD-RW and a new DVD-RW. Both work fine otherwise. But the system for some reason doesn't play the CD (only it plays it in CLI). But that's another topic.

[midas]

I would say, in the state Linux Mint KDE is today (I am running Julia KDE) it is simply not suited enough for people starting with linux and people who just wants everything working out of the box (aren't we all?). Don't get me wrong...I simply love Mint KDE 10 and the looks are really outstanding...even without desktop-effects and all the hypestuff that makes people to invent Unity or Gnome-shell (ahem)

But I would like to say Mint KDE could do (even) much better. KDE as a whole is in a state now (since long years) that it can outperform every other DE in terms of functionality and flexibility. The technique underneath is most innovative. It could become the default desktop for Mint if we could make it more simple, elegant and more meeting the needs of linux-beginners:

1. Mint KDE is simply to bloated and forms nearly a patchwork of packages...in fact, the tree and the forest-story
2. There are much too many repo's active (brrr...even google-apps) it could easily become a safety-issue and if one repo is off-line or even very slow, the update-proces is being canceled. Make it simpler!
3. Use as many KDE-applications as possible. Switch only to Gnome-applications for the sake of quality. Too many Gnome-applications will slow-down the whole distro.

I will try it out myself in the installation of the next Kubuntu Natty. I will keep you informed and meanwhile keep an eye on the release of Mint Katya KDE.

I am sure Linux Mint KDE could do much better!

[mastablasta]

3. Use as many KDE-applications as possible. Switch only to Gnome-applications for the sake of quality. Too many Gnome-applications will slow-down the whole distro.

good point plenty of KDE applications are better than Gnome or wih more functions. They are quite fresh.

[rec9140]

more meeting the needs of linux-beginners:

1. Mint KDE is simply to bloated and forms nearly a patchwork of packages...in fact, the tree and the forest-story

What is too bloated? ? ?

2. There are much too many repo's active (brrr...even google-apps) it could easily become a safety-issue and if one repo is off-line or even very slow, the update-proces is being canceled. Make it simpler!

I don't see this issue...having the repos you need enabled.. Part of what makes KMint all Minty and easy to use is all those repos! The control of those repos being up or down or changing IP's etc.. is out of the KMint teams control. Stoping the update is the best process, since updating something without all the pieces is not a good idea. I suppose that if there is an issue accessing a repo there could be a message that comes up that states what to do... that Boo will need to decide....

3. Use as many KDE-applications as possible. Switch only to Gnome-applications for the sake of quality. Too many Gnome-applications will slow-down the whole distro.

Again outline how this is an issue.. I don't see an issue... I find the program I need and move on.. Recently looking for some PDF tools and found what I need, only needed to skip one since it uses that disease of a framework.... Now if theres anything that should be removed from the repos its that and anything that uses that.

I will try it out myself in the installation of the next Kubuntu Natty. I will keep you informed and meanwhile keep an eye on the release of Mint Katya KDE.

KMint 10 is already AHEAD of upstream and there are changes in upstream that will require a lot of work to undo, like removal of the gstreamer backend to replace with the XINE one. I am already testing the beta 1 of upstream as sort of a pre-Kataya and theres lots of work to get back to KMint quality.

I am sure Linux Mint KDE could do much better!

Theres always ways to improve, but then when you consider the level at which upstream is at, versus KMint improving is not that hard.

I am strongly biased to KDE, even KDE 4.x over any other X DE, and if your coming from another OS in particular it will be much easier to migrate than another stinky foot DE.

I've been 100% Linux for 3 years, after dabbling for years with everything from 30+ 3.5" disks to Knoppix to MEPIS, and a slew of others...Why I use KMint over others... install and get to work.. that means I don't have to search out or install something to make MP3's work, or to encode MP3's streams... can't do that on Debian! (And for the record your either Debian based or your not in the game!) I have some very set ideas on what should be in the distro even for converts, newbies and power users.

The only way to make things easier for newbie and converts is not run them in to the brick wall of things like compiling (see the KPhotoAlbun thread, no way a newbie would resolve that mess! About an hour of compiling and dependency tracking, plus 2-3 days of follow up on various lists) or dependency(s). Get as much software in the distro on the DVD ready to go for them to try...

There are some VERY BAD HABITS that need to be unlearned by converts... unfortunately most are NOT WILLING to do to that. They just want to click on things and go on...so best to have the software they need installed ready to go so all they do is click... over time they may break their bad habits and learn the skills to get the most out of Linux. Sadly probably not...