It’s been years since I last used the KDE desktop environment. Unfortunately, I
don’t have an exact screenshot of my desktop when I last used KDE, but from
memory it probably looked a lot like this:
Looking back I’m not sure the Oxygen theme has aged particularly well, but this
picture fills me with nostalgia and so will always have a special place in my
heart.
Over the years KDE has (unfairly in my eyes) had a fairly negative reputation,
and stereotyped for being quite buggy and resource hungry. I don’t recall being
effected by these issues described first hand, but just hearing negative
sentiments like this left me with a negative impression and drove me away from
using KDE. So although I do have fond memories of this desktop, they were
tainted by the consensus of a few vocal Linux enthusiasts at the time. I was
young and impressionable, and wanted to use to use the ‘best’ thing, even if
that meant not being able to form my own independent assessment.
Consequently I was content to stay on Gnome desktop (and various forks) for most
of my time on Linux. But that all changed pretty recently. I wanted to revisit
KDE and see if this reputation was still warranted. I think part of me wanted to
make amends and give some love to a Desktop environment I felt I’d never really
given an honest chance.
Largely I was inspired to give KDE another try after seeing some pretty positive
recent momentum in the community. A prime example is TechHut releasing this
video:
I follow Nate Graham on his blog “Adventures in Linux and
KDE” who’s posts frequently hit the front-page of
/r/linux, which makes developments in KDE
impossible to ignore. It’s really impressive to see the volume of improvements
that go into the desktop each week.
All of this positive sustained coverage culminated in me caving and deciding to
see what all the fuss was about.
I opted to install Open SUSE Tumbleweed because I fancied trying out a rolling
release distribution and wanted an up-to-date KDE experience without having to
jump through hoops. I briefly toyed with the idea of trying KDE Neon, but
ultimately wanted something different then another Ubuntu based distribution.
Disclaimer At the time of writing I’m on KDE Plasma version 5.26.5.
Applets
I always found the applets on Gnome to be a bit frustrating, and find much great
utility from their KDE counterparts. Frequently on Gnome I’d be forced to open
up system settings to perform some basic action, like switching/connecting a
Bluetooth device or altering specific device volume.
Whereas on KDE applets typically quickly allow me to to perform the required
action without having to dive into the full settings. On Gnome there’s a
patchwork of 3rd party
extensions that fill this niche but I find myself much preferring the out of the box
experience offered by KDE.
Multi Monitor Support
To my surprise everything just works, I haven’t had a single issue with
multi-monitor support so far
