[Discuss] After many years with KDE, I am about to move on to XFCE

[Alan W. Irwin]

Sometimes human inertia is a bad thing, and this is one of those
instances.

I have known for years that KDE was not a very good fit for my simple
desktop needs.  For example, I use no desktop icons, I select some
appropriate picture for the virtual desktop backgrounds, and I use a
panel to launch a small number of my favorite apps and keep track of
all apps I have launched on various virtual desktops via a pager.  But
otherwise I simply launch apps from the bash command line using some
terminal emulator such as xterm or konsole. Nevertheless, despite the
bad fit I stuck with KDE principally because KDE configuration was
relatively simple (say, compared to fvwm, my desktop before I switched
to KDE version 2 way back when), and KDE allowed me much more
configuration freedom than GNOME to conveniently arrange my simple
desktop just like I wanted it to be.

But over the course of many years my trust in KDE gradually eroded as
the KDE tax (all those KDE applications such as Akonadi being run in
the background to help implement the "semantic desktop") increased.  I
don't use the semantic desktop because I prefer results from the
"locate" command or the powerful combination of "find" and "grep" from
the command line to do the same job in a much simpler way.  So again
this was an example of KDE being a bad fit for my needs.  But I
continued nevertheless until yesterday when the final straws that helped
to break the camel's back were the following:

* Unlike KDE from Debian Jessie, configuration of the latest KDE from
   Debian Buster would not allow me (for my own good???) to have a
   digital clock that displayed the date and time in my preferred iso
   date/time + day of week format.  So this was an example of KDE not
   giving me the configuration freedom that originally drew me to that
   desktop.

* I was getting annoyed at all the desktop notices being generated by
   KDE by default.  Do I seriously have to receive notice that I have
   just shifted to a new desktop in the pager?  I am pretty sure there
   will be a way to quiet those stupid notices, but still it is yet
   another KDE irritation for my use case.

* Unlike KDE from Debian Jessie, the latest KDE desktop from
   Debian Buster implemented X network transparency in a bad way.  This
   issue showed up because I was running KDE on my fast computer (the
   one with the currently badly supported AMD RX 550 graphics card that
   I needed to bypass) and displaying those remote results on a
   different slow computer in the way implemented by xdm on the fast
   computer and the "X -query <hostname>" command on the slow computer.
   The usual outstanding response I have gotten for years with that
   "X terminal" method is you get the same KDE desktop speed of the fast
   computer whether
   sitting at the slow or fast computer.  But those expected good
   results are not realized for KDE from Debian Buster because the
   keyboard (although, interestingly not the mouse) shows substantial
   annoying latency if the keyboard is being used to control a
   KDE desktop on a different machine.

   I will report this keyboard latency issue as a KDE bug (for the
   benefit of those who would like to use KDE in a network transparent
   way) since it turns out XFCE (version 4.12 from Debian Buster) does
   not have this keyboard latency issue with the same "X -query" method
   on the slow computer.  Furthermore, starting from scratch with no
   prior XFCE configuration experience at all, I got my XFCE desktop
   configured just the way that was possible for the Debian Jessie
   version of KDE (including custom date/time format) in roughly one
   half hour!  So at the present time it appears XFCE is ideal for my
   simple desktop needs, and I am kicking myself that through inertia I
   stuck with KDE much too long, and I did not try XFCE a lot sooner!


So the moral of this story is if your Linux desktop is right for your
particular needs, then stick with it.  But if it is not quite right
for your needs (i.e., it is annoying you in any way) then it is likely
time to explore the many other Linux desktop choices out there to see
if you can find a better fit for your needs.

Alan
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Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state
implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); the Time
Ephemerides project (timeephem.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting
software package (plplot.sf.net); the libLASi project
(unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net);
and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net).
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Linux-powered Science
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