Why linux mint NEEDS to make KDE its default UI

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Madone

Why linux mint NEEDS to make KDE its default UI

Post by Madone »

This is my first post here but I have been using linux mint on the side for a while now and its good but for Linux mint 12 I think a switch to KDE as the main UI is not only a good idea but an idea that is necessary to avoid issues with Gnome 3 and unity.
Lets face it:
Unity, Gnome Shell and standard Gnome 3 suck and are abominations that are needed to be avoided ESPECIALLY for a distro like linux mint that offers a windows like interface for new users.
In fact I can give many good reasons why Mint NEEDS KDE4 to remain user friendly and accessible to its target audience:
1: Gnome 3 is broken and mostly uncustomizable, you cant move the panels, you cant delete the panels. Plus the Mint team will need to recode mintmenu to GTK3 soon so the best solution is to dump Gnome 3 and its uncustomizable interface, abandon mint menu, recode mints apps for KDE (as like I said they will have to be recoded to GTK3 anyhow and why waste time on that when QT is superior to GTK any day) and ditch GTK altogether.
2: Unity is broken and uncustomizable
3: KDE is severely neglected by Ubuntu and its developers, Kubuntu is a sham and maybe Mint can take KDE under its wing. It needs themes and artwork so it will take time to get out but not much longer then a gnome release.
4: KDE is just simply better for the desktop interface, both Gnome 3 and Unity are more for touch screen interfaces or a mobile phone. I use a desktop dammit not a friggin iphone.
For a desktop KDE has better menu layouts, flexibility and customization then Gnome 3 and unity.
5: KDE is better for Mints target audience
6: KDE is currently more stable
7: KDE just looks better by default
and most importantly:
8: KDE just works

Gnome 3 is a mistake, Unity is a joke.
KDE is superior in every way, so make KDE mint more of a priority as its will be better then the craptastic Gnome 3 and unity any day.
lmintnewb

Re: Why linux mint NEEDS to make KDE its default UI

Post by lmintnewb »

Good ... craptastic is catching on. It's long since not been given its rightful place and used enough in the IT vocabulary and english language as far as I've been concerned. As for kde. Arguments made by the OP, seem to make sense. I mean the gnome 3 and unity thing. Which way Mint HQ decides to go, is their headache and problem to work out, shrugs. Hmmmm Mint mobile ? Sounds like an interesting idea whatever else happens. Well for Mint anyway ... Why not, they have a release for just about everything else. Why not tack on one spec meant for mobile computing ? ... More shrugs.

:D

After thoughts ... Not like the DE world begins and ends with gnome and kde. There are apparently endless options by way of DE and WM's in the nix world. Still Mint HQ is in a better position to know which ones are best for this derivative work of buntu. Not my call, concern or headache. Just saying, have seen plenty of distro's doing great stuff with something other than pure kde or gnome. Much less the weird buntist unity everyone keeps ragging on. But that's buntu ... still sticking by my own personal theory that the word ubuntu, really means bad bodily odors in some obscure african dialect.

After all this time does the ugly truth finally come out !?!?!? That ubuntu really means fart in Swahili ?
AdamS

Re: Why linux mint NEEDS to make KDE its default UI

Post by AdamS »

mint goes KDE, I cant use mint.

Cant stand it, clients hate it.

KDE = annoying as it gets.

Almost worse then unity (almost)
monkeyboy

Re: Why linux mint NEEDS to make KDE its default UI

Post by monkeyboy »

Folks never seem to give up on getting KDE as the main. What i find really amusing is the wide variety of approaches that get employed in the arguments.
kernowmint

Re: Why linux mint NEEDS to make KDE its default UI

Post by kernowmint »

I'm not a great KDE fan myself, but I suppose it doesn't really matter what the default Mint desktop is, so long as we have a choice of some others as well. That's what I like about Linux, having choices. Yes, I know I could switch distros, but I've only just switched to Mint from Ubuntu and I wouldn't want to have to change distros again for a while. I'd just like Mint to continue to give me a choice of DE, regardless of which one was the default.
technoferret

Re: Why linux mint NEEDS to make KDE its default UI

Post by technoferret »

Where do these people come from ??

It's a free world ( well the linux one is anyway ), If the OP wants a KDE3 system then he can go and download one, there are plenty out there.
Why start whining that LM should change just for him ?

IT'S FREE, IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT AS IT IS, THEN GO SOMEWHERE ELSE

(you could always pay £199 for Windows 7 Ultimate (£199 more than you paid for LM) and then ask MS to change it to KDE, I'm sure they'd take your request seriously)
ThistleWeb

Re: Why linux mint NEEDS to make KDE its default UI

Post by ThistleWeb »

Madone wrote:1: Gnome 3 is broken and mostly uncustomizable, you cant move the panels, you cant delete the panels. Plus the Mint team will need to recode mintmenu to GTK3 soon so the best solution is to dump Gnome 3 and its uncustomizable interface, abandon mint menu, recode mints apps for KDE (as like I said they will have to be recoded to GTK3 anyhow and why waste time on that when QT is superior to GTK any day) and ditch GTK altogether.
2: Unity is broken and uncustomizable
Would you be advocating abandoing KDE 4.0? Sticking with Gnome, because ....well, do a find / replace on your post to swap GTK for QT, and Gnome for KDE.

It was an early release then, it wasn't customisable so early in it's development, it had a lot of stuff missing or yet to be added? It took a couple of years to get to 4.6 which is now FINALLY ready for the masses. All of the criticisms you level at both Gnome 3 and Unity also apply to KDE 4.0

If everyone abandoned KDE 4.0 where would it be now? Maybe 4.1, still buggy, still crashy, still hatrdware issues? If everyone abandons it, it gets no developer time, bug reports, patches, features etc. Yet this is what you propose for Gnome 3 and Unity. Unity is Canonicals baby, it's up to them how it develops, while it's not for you, it's not anywhere near as bad as some make it out to be. Gnome 3 is a pretty major change with Gnome Shell, but again, not for everyone. Gnome 3 is getting the UI makeover to function very close to Gnome 2, it's all about time and resources.

You may or may not have noticed, but in the wider Linux community, the switch to KDE4 made a LOT of people abandon it in favour of GTK and mostly Gnome. I'd be very surprised if KDE was anywhere near as popular as Gnome now. Take a look around general Linux sites, forums, podcasts, you'll see a trend. Almost everyone has great things to say about KDE4 and how well it's coming along, but hardly ANYONE chooses to use it as their main DE. Like anything, there's always a few, but they are as much an endangered species as Fluxbox fans. Why this is? I have no idea, I suspect many left at KDE4.0 and found a home elsewhere that they've no desire to go back, or they don't like the whole plasma widgets way of having to reorganise their workflow just to fit with what KDE think is right. Maybe they found that they don't need a space shuttle cockpit control panel just to run a desktop or laptop PC, specially if they leave most of the defaults as they come.

Mint is about new users to Linux, which means users unfamiliar with the whole concept. The simpler you can make things, the better. KDE has never been aimed at that, it's always been a DE for people who want to get under the bonnet and customise to the nth degree. All of those abilities just heap layer upon layer upon layer of confusion on people who are already tentatively making their first steps on a new OS, with all the changes it entails. Perhaps you'd have more luck convincing Fedora to switch their default to KDE, Fedora have a different demographic in mind, a more technical demographic of experienced users.
DrHu

Re: Why linux mint NEEDS to make KDE its default UI

Post by DrHu »

Madone wrote:This is my first post here but I have been using linux mint on the side for a while now and its good but for Linux mint 12 I think a switch to KDE as the main UI is not only a good idea but an idea that is necessary to avoid issues with Gnome 3 and unity.
That is not going to happen, especially with the Ubuntu upstream being used for mint versions (Gnome anyway!)
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/kdegnome
Arguments for and against each of the two main desktop contenders are all over the internet (web), and don't get us very far
  • I am satisfied if both keep developing their ideas and cross-pollinating from each other and windows and Apple's OSX as much as they want to
    --but I have gone the simpler route of using LXDE, I don't need all the extra hand-holding/eye candy effects that modern desktop OS generate to entice new users: I surely don't
I have used KDE 3.5x and KDE 4x, 4.5x; which at the beginning was annoying, before they managed to get some of the bugs worked out, and get support for all(or almost all) the kde 3x apps that people used
  • I started with Gnome, when I began using Mint, and while I found its configuration options less useful than the kde 3.5x options available, I could live with the look and functions, especially when I turned off compiz and all animation effects
    --I have since adapted LXDE, which is more of a Linux classic menu, and like it just fine, although it could be helped a little with menu editing options, no doubt that will show up at some point; meanwhile text editing the .desktop settings is good enough and not all that tough really!..
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/LXDE
Last edited by DrHu on Thu Jun 30, 2011 5:58 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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linuxviolin
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Re: Why linux mint NEEDS to make KDE its default UI

Post by linuxviolin »

technoferret wrote:If the OP wants a KDE3 system then he can go and download one, there are plenty out there.
No.
K.I.S.S. ===> "Keep It Simple, Stupid"
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." (Leonardo da Vinci)
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." (Albert Einstein)
d00med

Re: Why linux mint NEEDS to make KDE its default UI

Post by d00med »

Lord no.
Habitual

Re: Why linux mint NEEDS to make KDE its default UI

Post by Habitual »

technoferret wrote:...IT'S FREE, IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT AS IT IS, THEN GO SOMEWHERE ELSE
Can I get an "AMEN"?
lmintnewb

Re: Why linux mint NEEDS to make KDE its default UI

Post by lmintnewb »

AMEN Habitual ... and AMEN Dr. Hu !!!

lol ... Don't really like or need tons of eye candy either. Plenty of WM's out there being used to good affect in plenty of nix distro's. I'm more concerned with speed, stability and performance than eye candy. Doesn't mean anything I'm running has to be ugly ( it's not, is attractive enough ), setup intensive or CLI only. Is a bit more involved to customize appearances. But in giving up the eye candy and ease of applying visual layout changes I get the things that matter more to me. Am more than happy with the trade off.

Don't know enough about the coding particulars, upstream impacts ... the nuts and bolts challenges Mint HQ faces in getting a distro out and keeping it up. So am free to leave those decisions to them and just enjoy and use the end resulting software. If I like it .... or not, if I prefer the use of other things out in the nixverse more. Gotta wuv nix for all the freedoms and choices it has !!!

LM, is good stuff. I'm sure ( hopefully ), they'll make some good decisions to keep Linux Mint in the good graces of their userbase and fans.
Last edited by lmintnewb on Thu Jun 30, 2011 7:34 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Why linux mint NEEDS to make KDE its default UI

Post by chiefjim »

I was once a fan of KDE back in the 3.5 days with PCLinuxOS. Then came KDE 4

Was very disappointed and began searching. Eventually finding happiness with Mint.

I personally do not understand the appeal some have with flashy DE's. A DE should be like a refrigerator, a simple to use device to reach the contents inside.
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kvv

Re: Why linux mint NEEDS to make KDE its default UI

Post by kvv »

Madone wrote:In fact I can give many good reasons why Mint NEEDS KDE4 to remain user friendly and accessible to its target audience:
1: Gnome 3 is broken and mostly uncustomizable, you cant move the panels, you cant delete the panels. Plus the Mint team will need to recode mintmenu to GTK3 soon so the best solution is to dump Gnome 3 and its uncustomizable interface, abandon mint menu, recode mints apps for KDE (as like I said they will have to be recoded to GTK3 anyhow and why waste time on that when QT is superior to GTK any day) and ditch GTK altogether.
3: KDE is severely neglected by Ubuntu and its developers, Kubuntu is a sham and maybe Mint can take KDE under its wing. It needs themes and artwork so it will take time to get out but not much longer then a gnome release.
4: KDE is just simply better for the desktop interface, both Gnome 3 and Unity are more for touch screen interfaces or a mobile phone. I use a desktop dammit not a friggin iphone.
For a desktop KDE has better menu layouts, flexibility and customization then Gnome 3 and unity.
6: KDE is currently more stable
1. Gnome 3 is customizable. Panels are customizable. It has almost all the functions that gnome 2 had with Gnome Tweak Tool. It will only increase as time goes on. But yeah, I agree with you on the other front.
4. "Severely neglected" is somewhat harsh. I have used Kubuntu, and I loved it. But I value simplicity over eye candy.
5. KDE is better wrt touch-screen than gnome 3. Gnome 3 is just as desktop oriented as gnome 2 is. KDE does have more detailed menu structures, but this unfortunately is why I don't like it as much. Expose often used functions, hide others in a 'gconf-editor' is what I like. YMMV.
6. It became stable only in KDE4.6 which is kinda sad. I predict that gnome 3 will become stable enough by November, for Linux Mint's use. If not, it will indeed be good if they give more love to kde and xfce for the next release.

I like gnome, it's simple but does not lack in eye candy.
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Re: Why linux mint NEEDS to make KDE its default UI

Post by linuxviolin »

kvv wrote:1. Gnome 3 is customizable. Panels are customizable. It has almost all the functions that gnome 2 had with Gnome Tweak Tool. It will only increase as time goes on. But yeah, I agree with you on the other front.
4. "Severely neglected" is somewhat harsh. I have used Kubuntu, and I loved it. But I value simplicity over eye candy.
5. KDE is better wrt touch-screen than gnome 3. Gnome 3 is just as desktop oriented as gnome 2 is. KDE does have more detailed menu structures, but this unfortunately is why I don't like it as much. Expose often used functions, hide others in a 'gconf-editor' is what I like. YMMV.
6. It became stable only in KDE4.6 which is kinda sad. I predict that gnome 3 will become stable enough by November, for Linux Mint's use. If not, it will indeed be good if they give more love to kde and xfce for the next release.

I like gnome, it's simple but does not lack in eye candy.
GNOME3 is cra*, stupidity and the demise of the entire GNOME project.

Even File management is discouraged in both GNOME 3 and Ubuntu’s Unity, but for older or experienced users, it remains a basic function of system management. (from GNOME vs. KDE Apps: Which Are Best For You?, by Bruce Byfield)

I would also like to quote a blog post about GNOME 3 to show once more why GNOME 3 is sh**.

Bastien Nocera: we’re not designing a desktop for people who like to choose:
Christoph Wickert has a bitter blog post, GNOME developer quote of the day. As a (co-)maintainer of several terminals in Fedora (Terminal, LXTerminal, ROXTerm, sakura, LilyTerm), he wanted to know how could the users be able to choose the default terminal emulator in GNOME3:
When I asked how to do all this in GNOME 3, Bastien (who helped to invent this nice mechanism in GNOME 2) after a little back and forth told me how things work in GNOME 3. They don’t…
This “We are not designing a desktop for people who …” has become a new meme. GNOME 3 is not designed for people

- who want to minimize windows
- who want to change the theme, icons or fonts
- who want to configure power management actions
- who want to use panel applets/extensions that can easily be added or removed
- who want to select their native language on the login screen instead of having to re-login after they have changed it in the control center
- who want to use their keyboard layout so they can actually log in
- who want to shutdown their computers from within a GNOME session

and many other people I forgot. If GNOME continues to narrow down their target audience like this, I wonder if there is actually somebody left.

Simple tasks like selecting a preferred application are made very hard just to then claim “This is something only hackers do”. In the past one could just remove the accessibility or bluetooth icons from the panel by not starting them, now one needs to write extensions for that purpose. One even needs an extension to move the clock. But wait: Is GNOME 3 designed for people that know how to write extensions?
Well, actually, some if not most of these missing features (except for the lack of a Minimize button!) are not necessarily by design, but only because GNOME3 is still young. However, GNOME3 is also not for people who want a taskbar — and it will keep being so!

GNOME3 is not for users. GNOME3 is not for productivity. GNOME3 is not for mentally sane people. GNOME3 is the demise of the entire GNOME project.

Of course, the last musketeer to believe in GNOME2 is Juan “ElNushio” Rodriguez, with his amazing BlueBubble build of GNOME 2.32 for F15…
Quite edifying, isn't it?
Last edited by linuxviolin on Fri Jul 01, 2011 11:38 am, edited 1 time in total.
K.I.S.S. ===> "Keep It Simple, Stupid"
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." (Leonardo da Vinci)
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." (Albert Einstein)
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Re: Why linux mint NEEDS to make KDE its default UI

Post by MALsPa »

linuxviolin wrote:GNOME3 is cra*, stupidity and the demise of the entire GNOME project.
:lol:

I wish I could see 5 years into the future, to see if GNOME3 actually turns out to be "the demise of the entire GNOME project!"

I'd be fine with either KDE or Xfce as the default GUI in Mint. But no matter what the default is, I'm sure Clem & Co. will do a good job with it.
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Re: Why linux mint NEEDS to make KDE its default UI

Post by linuxviolin »

MALsPa wrote:no matter what the default is, I'm sure Clem & Co. will do a good job with it.
I hope... :wink: :mrgreen:
K.I.S.S. ===> "Keep It Simple, Stupid"
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." (Leonardo da Vinci)
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." (Albert Einstein)
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Re: Why linux mint NEEDS to make KDE its default UI

Post by darknetmatrix »

why not a fork of gnome 2? it's just an idea.
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Re: Why linux mint NEEDS to make KDE its default UI

Post by MALsPa »

drumBE wrote:why not a fork of gnome 2? it's just an idea.
Anyone know if something like that is in the works?

But, I don't know. I mean, how many of you are using Trinity (the project that tries to keep KDE 3.5 alive)? I loved KDE 3.5, but I haven't bothered with Trinity. Just seems like it isn't gonna go anywhere; sometimes ya can't go back, better to just let it rest in peace.
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Re: Why linux mint NEEDS to make KDE its default UI

Post by linuxviolin »

drumBE wrote:why not a fork of gnome 2? it's just an idea.
Well, for KDE you have TDE, Trinity Desktop Environment, for KDE 3.5 But who, what distros use it? Nobody. The project is almost nonexistent...
MALsPa wrote:Just seems like it isn't gonna go anywhere
Yes, absolutely.

For GNOME 2, if you fork it also, you would have probably the same result... As I said, "the last musketeer to believe in GNOME2 is Juan “ElNushio” Rodriguez, with his amazing BlueBubble build of GNOME 2.32 for F15…"
K.I.S.S. ===> "Keep It Simple, Stupid"
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." (Leonardo da Vinci)
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." (Albert Einstein)
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