Hello folks. I use many distro from Debian to Fedora to OpenSuse and Arch. I also use many window managers like i3, dwm and qtile. On desktop environment, I use XFCE the most. Currently, I am looking to try something new, hence KDE.

I am looking for something with a beautiful UI and works out of the box. So, something on the same spectrum as XFCE but more pretty.

I tried out the distros with preinstalled KDE: Fedora KDE, Manjaro KDE, Kubuntu.

The good: KDE is beautiful and very easy to use. I actually enjoy using my computer more.

The bad: it crashes… a lot even when I turn off all the animations. My system is not that slow: AMD 7 Pro with 64 GB of RAM. Some examples:

  • Logging in, KDE hangs for 30 seconds. Even when I finally see the desktop, I would need to wait a further 10 seconds to finally able to interact, i.e. click and open stuff.

  • After resume suspend, system would hang and there is nothing I can do except for a forced reboot.

  • Browsing the web with only 3 tabs opened, KDE also hang.

As much as I hate GNOME, everything just works. I installed the GNOME flavors of above distros and never experience any hiccups.

If KDE works for you, do you use a preinstalled distro and which one? How about if you install KDE from scratch, like Arch?

  • highduc@lemmy.ml
    0·
    1 year ago

    Is KDE actually good or it is overrated?

    That’s like a trick question 😀
    If I say it’s good, and that contradicts your own experience with it, you can say “see it’s overrated, people say it’s good, but in fact I know it sucks.”

    I use it on Arch but I’ve seen people using it on Fedora and it looked good and stable.

    Did you try to look into it, see what’s causing the problems?
    In my experience having used Linux and KDE Plasma for about a decade now, if you wanna have a good time you’re going to have to figure stuff out, check the logs, troubleshoot, look it up online, etc.
    If you expect to go through different distros to find one that “just works” you’ll be disappointed, and you’ll be wasting your time. Issues can be hardware-specific, maybe you just need to pass a parameter to the kernel, or change a config somewhere or something like that…

    • corvus@lemmy.ml
      0·
      1 year ago

      I’ve been using Debian with KDE Plasma for over a decade and I can count the crashes with the fingers of one hand.

  • Dizzy Devil Ducky@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    So far, as a more casual user, using the preconfigured Plasma on MX, I have had only minor grievances that truly effect me and only somehow only broke it maybe 1-2 times.

  • pogodem0n@lemmy.world
    0·
    1 year ago

    It is great. I have been using Linux for about three years and majority of that was with KDE Plasma and its Wayland session. Most of that time was with Arch and Fedora and it was all smooth sailing.

    It was faster and smoother than GNOME Shell, Cinnamon or any other desktop I have tried.

    It may have slightly more bugs compared to GNOME Shell due to sheer amount of features it has.

    As others have mentioned, you might have a hardware issue that coincidentally pops up with Plasma.

  • Engywook@lemm.ee
    0·
    1 year ago

    I use it daily and it occasionally may crap out, but it may happen maybe once every few weeks. Can’t comment about GPU and the likes as I only have an Intel iGPU which works just fine.

  • Ephera@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    openSUSE has the best integration of KDE, but I wouldn’t expect to see issues like yours on any distro, really…

  • monovergent@lemmy.ml
    0·
    1 year ago

    In my experience, KDE can run just fine, but it is seemingly pickier about drivers and hardware (I’ve had a loose DisplayPort connection crash it several times) than other desktop environments.

  • Fushuan [he/him]@lemm.ee
    0·
    1 year ago

    I had issues like that about a week ago, when gaming the system was super sluggish. It turns out that an update put the render under CPU instead of GPU, as in, without hardware acceleration, or software based.

  • JTskulk@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    I’ve never had issues like that on Kubuntu, Debian, or EndeavourOS. KDE is great and I love it.

  • Eyedust@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    Vanilla Arch is much easier to install than it used to be. Connect to wifi via terminal commands or connect ethernet, enter archinstall and go down the list.

    I’ve only ever had the waking from sleep problem, but it’s consistent in other DE’s for me. I have a desktop so I just turn that and hibernate off.

    I had a known problem with krunner not opening after first run unless you killed the process, but I got rofi and customized it to the teeth instead. Found out that I love rofi. I probably won’t go back to krunner even it gets fixed now.

    • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
      0·
      1 year ago

      Arch is much more difficult to install now than it used to be as well. I remember when Arch had an installer.

        • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
          0·
          1 year ago

          Huh? Interesting, guess I’m out of the loop, since the install guide doesn’t mention it I didn’t even realize this got added back to the iso. When was that? I should check this out, I really missed the installer all these years, I understand why they did removed it originally, but if you know what you’re doing it’s just tedious work.

  • pineapple@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    Kde works great for me, I don’t have any special hardware. I have used it with fedora and bazzite.

  • nafzib@lemmy.world
    0·
    1 year ago

    KDE just works on my machine, which is lower specs than yours. I’ve never had it crash. I use Endeavor OS, so it came with it by default (which was part of the reason I chose it).

    Edit: I don’t do much tweaking of the KDE settings other than the main color scheme. I also have never had an issue with waking from sleep on Endeavor (but I recall in years past that was an issue with most distros I tried and unrelated to KDE since I was less a fan of its style back then and didn’t use KDE). My set up is a normal desktop PC that I use daily for everything, including gaming.