KDE-based Distros

Curiosity

Early 2012, after some periods of time using Fedora, i was quite happy with the system that I have. I was a GNOME Shell fan right from its debut in Fedora. However, since the commotion that started when Unity DE was released by Canonical on Ubuntu, I had a lot of thinking when it comes to choice of DE.

Previously, the choice of a person's Linux DE always boils down to one of two options; Gnome (Classic) or KDE. For new Linux users (like me), if most of your friends are using Gnome, you'll end up using Gnome as well. The same also goes for KDE. In my case, none of my friends used linux, and i just happened to start with Gnome Classic (Ubuntu 10.10). With this line of thought, I was curious; How would it feel to try out KDE?

Opensuse - KDE

I did a quick search on the net, about recommended distros for trying out KDE. Most sites and reviews recommended Opensuse. Opensuse was supposed to be the simplest to use, and most friendly. It also has a special config tool called yast, which is developed by the opensuse team to make configuration easy.

The outcome of my trials with Opensuse, was not good. From my experience, it was difficult to configure. I must have done something wrong because it consumed lots of ram, and the whole desktop experience felt very sluggish. The desktop looks nice though. After several updates, the system just won't boot anymore, so i just gave up.

Fedora - KDE

I thought to myself that maybe i should just stick with a distro that I know worked on my system. So, I installed Fedora with KDE. Things just work as usual. Fedora's version of KDE felt very plain. KDE boasts a lot of customizability, probably too much for me. KDE has a lot of similarity to Win7 desktop layout, but with much more "Bling" factor, probably too much for me. Although it was a bit faster than my opensuse install, it was still slower than Gnome version.

Most of the tools of Fedora was already familiar to me. It was still a chore to set up properly, but it works.

At this point, I was already so used to the simplicity provided by Gnome3, such that I was having problems using KDE. The default apps in gnome also felt very familiar, while the KDE apps felt "strange and unfriendly" to me. I didn't quite like the default look of KDE, and although it offers a lot of customization options, it felt like configuring my favourite desktop would take a lot of work. I find myself installing a lot of gtk apps that I was used to, such Rhythmbox.

Chakralinux

I was not quite satisfied with KDE on Fedora. I felt that it would take too much effort to get from a fresh install, to a comfortable and familiar to use system. This is a big concern for me because Fedora releases a new version twice a year, and I still prefer a fresh install than an upgrade. The performance was just slightly worse than Fedora Gnome, and was not worth switching to KDE.

At this point, I was still interested in trying out KDE distros, just to see if I might like it more than Gnome 3. Then, I discovered Chakra Linux. Chakra is a half-rolling distro. You install it once, and just update continuously without the need for a reinstall. I figured this to be worth a try.

Chakra is also a KDE-only distro. Its software repos, only provide qt based apps, no gtk-based packages. Some really famous GTK packages, such as Firefox, are shipped as bundles. This principle allows the developers to keep the distro clean, and simple to maintain and develop. Chakra was also derived from Archlinux.

Being based on Archlinux, Chakra linux is fast. Very fast. The exclusive use of qt based apps also puts things into perspective for me, as to how a pure KDE/qt desktop feels like. With the addition of some gtk apps, the system is mostly good.

Final Thoughts

In the end, I decided that KDE is just not for me. Some people might actually love its similarity to the windows desktop layout, but for me, it is not very appealing. I'm not saying KDE is bad, no, far from it. I just did not have a very good experience with it, and when I did, it does not appeal to me so much. Maybe it's just because I got so used to gnome 2 & 3, that I just immediately rejected KDE. In my opinion, KDE is a good and solid DE, and some of the distros based on it are quite solid and fast.

I was going to try other distros such as Kubuntu, just to see if a more "user-friendly" distro might change my mind. However, I felt that my opinion about the DE itself won't change much. So, the 3 distros above are the only KDE-based distros that I have tried, and I probably won't try KDE any more, not in the near future at least. KDE distros are good. KDE is good, just not for me.