Story

I'm not totally smitten with KDE, but when I want a "full" desktop, I always choose it over Gnome. I liked Gnome 1 quite a bit; Gnome 2 less, Gnome 3 and Unity not at all. Meanwhile, KDE gives me what I want on Linux, which is lots and lots of tweakability. People say it's too complicated but I like it. That said, I'm hugely nostalgic for KDE3. It does "look" visually a bit old these days, but it was a damned usable desktop. KDE4 is slicker and better looking in so many aspects, but the Plasma Desktop with its widgets really doesn't wow me.

I give this project credit though, for running a properly-managed project. With the exception of the KDE4.0 debacle, they've generally kept the project moving forward with sensible design choices. I know why they abandoned KDE3 and redid the desktop in a way that each built component can be repurposed. It was a lot of work but I think from a design/architecture perspective they are much better placed now to grow and innovate in the future, so good on 'em. If KDE5 is truly faster, better optimized, and less memory intensive, that's also a huge win.

That said, maybe I'm getting curmudgeonly, but I truly find all I really need in a Linux desktop is a file manager, task tray for a few apps that require it, and a launcher. Windowmaker still offers me all of that, plus full keystroke configurability for things I do often like minimizing or shading windows pulling up the launcher, and so on. I have trouble seeing what else the enormous Desktops really provide at this point. Lastly, I find for some reason, whenever I leave a bittorrent client running for a long time on KDE4 things start to come unglued and eventually the GUI crashes. I am pretty careful to make sure whenever I am torrenting I'm doing so from Openbox or Windowmaker or something like that. Not sure what the deal is, but it's proof they've got some work to do.

Meanwhile, congrats KDE team. I will absolutely look forward to installing this.