A few hours ago, Nate Graham, from KDE and famous mainly for publishing every week the news that has occurred in the project in which he collaborates, confirmed it. In reality it was an open secret, but there is part of the Linux community that did not know it. KDE 4 was a disaster, to the point of being responsible for what began as Kool Desktop Environment being thought to be full of bugs. Now with plasma 6.0 Now available, that can be left behind.
Graham hopes that "This helps banish those painful memories of KDE 4 that are already 16 years old«. According to him, we are facing a new KDE, and that would be demonstrated with the information that he has been collecting from the community, with the comments, the feedback direct and indirect, since it has delved into social networks to see what those who have already tried it really thought. And the curious thing is that the reviews are mostly positive, and that has practically only been able to be used in Kde neon and this is where things have turned out worst.
Plasma 6.0: harder, better, faster, stronger
Graham explains So:
«The KDE Mega-Release came out last Tuesday, and I'm happy to report that it went well. Initial impressions appear to be overwhelmingly positive. I've been doing some extra bug triage and social media monitoring since then to see if there were any major issues, and so far things are looking great on the bug front as well. I think our 3 months of quality control were worth it. Congratulations to everyone for a job well done. Hopefully this helps banish those painful memories from 16 years ago of KDE 4. Now it's a new KDE. Harder, better, faster, stronger!«.
There were more problems in KDE neon, but they have not given details about it. It is known that they have released a second update to fix it and it is recommended to update as soon as possible.
Even so, it seems little considering that they gave us a zero-point with as many changes as those included in Plasma 6.0. The tweaks are not only in what is seen, in parts like the new overview or the floating panels; furthermore, also built the foundation for changes that will come later.
What happened in KDE 4 and why its bad reputation?
KDE 4 arrived in 2008. 10 years had passed since the release of KDE 1, but it was still in its infancy. It was a complete rewrite…and it didn't turn out as well as they would have liked. It had its lights and shadows, the lights being things like fluidity and the shadows being seen in the form of errors.
I tried it in Kubuntu in 2016, when I was looking for anything other than Unity. I remember well what I felt: in the Live Session everything was perfect, and that made me install it on my old laptop. Once the system started, the desktop was fluid and customizable, and reminded me of GNOME 2.x that I used before in Ubuntu, but improved.
The well of my joy was placed those bugs that diminished the user experience. I thought there was some compatibility problem with my laptop, but the fact was that I couldn't use it. And that was when KDE began to gain fame. buggy.
And then came Plasma 5
During that same 2016 came plasma 5, already with the name change that remains until today. At that point the direction to follow began to be found, the right path, and maturity began to arrive. In my specific case, I gave it another chance in 2019, and the problems of the past had already been solved. So I stayed on KDE.
5 years have passed since that moment, and the time has not passed in vain. Now we have Plasma 6.0 available, and KDE is convinced that maturity is now total. It has gotten to the point where they hope to release only two major versions a year because so many changes are not necessary so quickly.
KDE 4 did a lot of damage to the project, due to its bad reputation, but decisions such as those of Valve with the Steam Deck, Manjaro with its console, or Ubuntu Studio and EndeavorOS, which have opted by default for Plasma, seem to indicate that the situation is being reversed. Let it continue like this.