[GTALUG] Desktop swap

[Michael Galea]

On 07/31/17 12:27, Evan Leibovitch via talk wrote:
> Hi all.
> 
> For about the mid-nineties to the late aughts, I was a heavy-duty KDE 
> fan. The integration and customization was what I needed, it was good 
> looking and functional.
> 
> Then it started getting more bloated and slower, seemingly outpacing the 
> increases in CPU speed and decreases in RAM cost. Or maybe it was just 
> the Kubuntu implementation. But I found that it wasn't working for me. 
> So I experimented for a while. Yech.
> 
> I found GNOME to be something of soap opera that required a whole set of 
> sub-choices (GNOME 2? GNOME 3? Mate? Unity? WTF?). My first GNOME 
> experiences (with the default position of icons moved from the sensible 
> bottom to the left) seemed more like an exercise in social engineering 
> (ie, what the devs wanted dumb users to do) rather than any real attempt 
> to make my computer less intrusive in the path to doing Real Stuff.
> 
> And then I discovered Linux Mint and its wonderful little Cinnamon 
> desktop. Yeah I know it's gtk based and has big chunks of GNOME in it, 
> but its look-and-feel seems less ... disruptive. It's served me well for 
> much of this decade.
> 
> But I still miss KDE. So I've been having another look. I've been 
> reading that prefer the Linux Mint version over Kubuntu, and that it's 
> still big but now much speedier.
> 
> I know it's technically possible to have both KDE and Cinnamon 
> physically installed on my Mint desktop. But I've also been reading that 
> the two systems are so different in default ways of doing things that 
> switching between them is an invitation for grief that will bork things. 
> Most of the forum stuff I've read says that it's much cleaner to do a 
> reinstall.
> 
> Has anyone else here played with systems that can casually switch 
> between KDE/Qt and GNOME/gtk? Is anyone here using current KDE?
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> - Evan
> 
> 
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I have been a long time KDE user and am using the latest KDE from Debian 
stretch.
I find it frisky enough for my desktop purposes. My desktop has a four 
core i5-2400 CPU @ 3.10GHz, which cpuinfo shows as being loaded to 1.77 Mhz.

Any complaints I have are more with the applications that run on KDE, 
most notably video editors such as openshot, kino and Kdenlive. I 
suspect that any instability is due to memory loss.  I only have 8 GB on 
the system.

Sometimes I find that chrome does not allow me switch to a new tab. A 
shutdown of that instance of chrome plus a restart and reopen of 
"recently closed" under history lets me continue.

Besides that, I have noted that after 1-2 months of continuous 
operation, KDE may lose "cut and paste" ability from consoles to 
completely graphical applications.  Another problem that rarely occurs 
is loss of "ALT TAB" for application switching.

I treat these occurrences as signal to "apt-get dist upgrade".

Things that KDE has learned to right IMHO are managing upgrades without 
losing audio device configuration or window treatment settings.  I used 
to have to invest time to restore these after some upgrades but this 
problem seems to have faded.

Disclosure: I run XFCE on the family media center (lightweight + 4 
second boot to myth + no passwords).  I run gnome on my laptop, when kde 
has a hissy fit with the bumblebee implementation of my video hardware.

-- 
Michael Galea