Tux Machines

Jack Evans: Revisiting KDE

Posted by Roy Schestowitz on Jan 21, 2023

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 hearing critical 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 opinions 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.

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