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?
openSUSE has the best integration of KDE, but I wouldn’t expect to see issues like yours on any distro, really…
KDE just works on my machine, which is lower specs than yours. I’ve never had it crash. I use Endeavor OS, so it came with it by default (which was part of the reason I chose it).
Edit: I don’t do much tweaking of the KDE settings other than the main color scheme. I also have never had an issue with waking from sleep on Endeavor (but I recall in years past that was an issue with most distros I tried and unrelated to KDE since I was less a fan of its style back then and didn’t use KDE). My set up is a normal desktop PC that I use daily for everything, including gaming.
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.
It has many preloaded features. You will use only a few of them.
no, if you have qtile set up, it will be a better experience
I use arch and so I get the latest kde releases and sometimes things are buggy. But usually those are fixed next update. But yes, it is beautiful but man it’s not as stable as something like gnome
Plasma 6 started very prone to crashes in my laptop when it released. I like how it works a lot more than Gnome, but Plasma tends to be buggier for me too.
This last month I’ve been having rendering issues in a lot of software, like Firefox and Okular in Fedora 41 (and now 42). I don’t know where they came from as it was pretty much perfect last month.
Sometimes I think I’d prefer to return to xfce in laptop (like I tend to use in desktops) or use labwc.
I don’t like it, too much desk space wasted on useless crapola. I use Mate, a nice clean desktop with a simple pull-down menu leaving the majority of the space free for work.
KDE lets the user customize how much desk space is wasted on “useless crapola”.
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
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.
KDE is just KDE. It has clear pros and cons. Hopefully one day they will take care of the cons.
I’ve been daily driving Fedora KDE on two different systems (both all AMD, one laptop and one desktop) for nearly half a year and have experienced almost zero crashes or other issues. Maybe it’s something to do with your hardware? I do know of some issues with NVIDIA graphics cards on KDE, so that might be a cause.
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.
Kde works great for me, I don’t have any special hardware. I have used it with fedora and bazzite.
Sounds familiar. I have tried it with many distros and it just isn’t usable. Gave up and ended up liking cinnamon more anyway.
