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:
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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.
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After resume suspend, system would hang and there is nothing I can do except for a forced reboot.
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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?
Look at the reddit called “unixporn” and search for Xfce. You ll see what’s possible with Xfce. For me the KDE crashes are a dealbreaker. My Xfce setup is so simplified, that nothing can be ugly. I use Bspwm for the windows and stripped down Xfce panel (dont touch third party status bars, such as polybar, its waste of time if you already have Xfce). No menu such as Whisker menu, but Rofi instead. I got Xfce stability without the old looking.
I use Fedora KDE, and I don’t think ive ever seen crashes that bad on my system (AMD CPU and GPU). I used to have a small problem with RADV crashing during video playback, but that solved itself after a few updates.
Do you have an nvidia GPU? It’s the most important thing to know.
Agreed, have had issues with especially older nvidia cards, 840 and 970. Atleast until I switched to prop. Driver
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…I’ve been using Debian with KDE Plasma for over a decade and I can count the crashes with the fingers of one hand.
For what it’s worth, I experience none of that. My laptop is absolutely rock solid with KDE, it’s like a MacBook you pull it out of your backpack and it’s ready to go before I’m even done opening the screen.
My desktop is currently just over 5 days of continuous uptime (no sleep). I’ve crashed more often because of ZFS than KDE.
Both are ArchLinux. I also have a friend on Bazzite that doesn’t have issues with KDE either, and it runs great in my VM.
Those all sound like possible graphics driver issues.
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.
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.
I’ve had no problems with Plasma on Debian. I think the problem is probably the ubuntu, fedora, etc.
Fedora’s KDE is bulletproof on any of my installed systems (8 or 9 of them, completely different hardware including AMD). Now Kubuntu, on the other hand, has always been a shitshow, I’ve never had it work right for more than a couple days at a time.
It has many preloaded features. You will use only a few of them.
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.
openSUSE has the best integration of KDE, but I wouldn’t expect to see issues like yours on any distro, really…
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.
I’ve never had issues like that on Kubuntu, Debian, or EndeavourOS. KDE is great and I love it.
I’ve been using Fedora KDE for…months? Maybe a year now? And I’ve yet to see it hang or crash.
I use KDE with Chimera Linux which is only in beta. Rock solid.
