KDE Down the Drain

So after around two weeks of KDE, a sizable amount of customizing and other randomness, I decided to toss all of it out the window and go back to my usual openbox+tint2 setup. Some install somewhere borked the Kwin compositing and I decided that there would be too much effort in trying to solve everything I wanted out of the environment.

Since I did stay in KDE for more than a couple of hours, I thought I would write some of my thoughts about the KDE environment so before I ever think to go and try it again, I read this post and decide otherwise. KDE is great...for the most part. You get some nice widgets, eyecandy, extra settings, etc. and has some awesome integration with kde-look/etc. One thing to note, most of the extra widgets...some of them are kind of useful, but most of them aren't particularly needed and the default ones also weren't exactly the greatest of widgets. There was an alternative analog clock instead of the digital one, but I usually keep my taskbar at like 20px and it is apparently determined to keep most of the little ticks shown, making reading it kind of a chore. Thus I did the compromise of using the digital clock which I didn't want to use because of the great issue where when you lock the widgets, the edge of the clock seems to move in perspective of the size of the taskbar...meaning I couldn't see the AM/PM without making the taskbar bigger (which I once again made the compromise to see my AM/PM). My clock ended up being a digital clock and caused my taskbar to be bigger than I would like...all for the sake of that am/pm and not on the edge of the screen look. Extra desktop effects were also fairly limited...and none of them looked particularly interesting either...the top rated one was called literally like "Cool effect" ._.

If there was any "Get the latest stuff" button that I liked, it was the ones that dealt with the themes and styles of the desktop. Those were integrated with kde-look spectacularly and was literally the only ones that I cared for. The widgets themselves were kind of annoying since I couldn't resize any of the ones on the taskbar, meaning I couldn't fix any of the issues I had with the widgets on the taskbar, aka the only place I wanted to have widgets. I tossed the virtual desktop switcher because apparently it's either large, or extra large and really I was fine with just using the desktop screen to flick through my virtual desktops.

Tilda also didn't want to play nicely with the compositor so I had to go with yakuake, which is decent in it's own right...but I needed to use a theme to deal with that annoying bar at the bottom and even then, I couldn't have it extend from the side or the bottom or anything. So much for customization...tilda has got a leg up on it. Although with that said, having most of the options magically get integrated with the systemsettings was really neat.

The final conclusion ends up being "sure KDE is extensible, not that any of the extended stuff are mega amazing or life changing..." Most of the stuff available in KDE just didn't suit my tastes and the only real incentive was how the theme of the desktop could be changed relatively easily, but otherwise there is nothing there for me (my splashscreen TT^TT).