KDE 4 was a disaster for pretty much everyone. I _loved_ KDE 3. It was consistent, accessible enough for newbies, infinitely configurable for power users. The desktop of freedom in all that meant.
Then KDE 4 happened.
I never used KDE again as my daily driver until Plasma 6. 16 long years mourning what I lost. Sure XFCE and Gnome were totally ok but they lacked something.
What is sad, I think, is that during those times, KDE lost a lot of its artistic community who back in the days were releasing hundreds of themes every months. Most were awful but some were gems and anyway the configuration options always allowed you to transform KDE into your thing.
It’s slowly coming back but it’s not there yet and it’s not as easy as yesterday.
I remember working on a KDE 4 desktop. I had like 3-4 applications with icons in the status bar. Every couple of seconds they got redrawn... i believe they recalculated the spacing between them when each icon was updated, because they simply ... moved around a few pixels on every update.
I couldn't help but notice the movement which did wonders for my concentration on work.
I already had an Apple laptop, so when I got a new desktop I built it to be a hassle free hackintosh. As much as a hackintosh could be hassle free.
In the mean time I've switched my desktops to Apple as well so now I'm complaining when Cook doesn't take his dried frog pills in time.
Same. I remember they made a big song and dance about KDE 4, then when all the complaints started rolling in they pretended it was not meant for end-users and blamed the people complaining for expecting too much. They literally published a press release telling people how great the new major version was and then acted like it was unreasonable to treat it as anything other than an early alpha. I kept checking back in with the point releases, but even years later it still wasn’t as good as KDE 3.5. They had zero humility and zero accountability for the debacle, it was always somebody else’s fault.
Then KDE 4 happened.
I never used KDE again as my daily driver until Plasma 6. 16 long years mourning what I lost. Sure XFCE and Gnome were totally ok but they lacked something.
What is sad, I think, is that during those times, KDE lost a lot of its artistic community who back in the days were releasing hundreds of themes every months. Most were awful but some were gems and anyway the configuration options always allowed you to transform KDE into your thing.
It’s slowly coming back but it’s not there yet and it’s not as easy as yesterday.