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:

  • 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.

  • After resume suspend, system would hang and there is nothing I can do except for a forced reboot.

  • 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?

  • serenissi@lemmy.world
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    11 days ago

    You say KDE hangs, but what component hangs actually? It it plasmashell (other apps work but panel is dead?)? Kwin (windows move/respond to input?)? KDE apps?

    I would suggest you to install a distro with kde (fedora KDE edition or open SUSE, not neon) if you’re not confident with administration. Use something like Kinoite for accidental breakage protection, or if you want to keep /home as is, install fedora 42 inplace (the new installer).

    Not only my experience but also that of many KDE devs say that fedora KDE is probably the best mainline KDE experience (ignoring niche distros or customized KDE).

    Also, don’t use xorg session. Always log in to default wayland session unless you have incompatible usecase (in that case you know what you’re doing).

    • ikidd@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      Fedora’s KDE is bulletproof on any of my installed systems (8 or 9 of them, completely different hardware including AMD). Now Kubuntu, on the other hand, has always been a shitshow, I’ve never had it work right for more than a couple days at a time.

  • Dizzy Devil Ducky@lemm.ee
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    12 days ago

    So far, as a more casual user, using the preconfigured Plasma on MX, I have had only minor grievances that truly effect me and only somehow only broke it maybe 1-2 times.

  • monovergent 🛠️@lemmy.ml
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    12 days ago

    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.

  • lattrommi@lemmy.ml
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    12 days ago

    There is a bug that is open right now which sounds like it might be one you were experiencing or possibly explains part of the issues.

    https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=501073

    Like the web browsing might have been from middle clicking, which causes a lengthy hang and resuming from suspend and powerdevil are a prime suspect for it.

    The login wait might be an issue I vaguely recall about the splash screen and that disabling it removed the startup hang.

    I’ve been exclusively using Manjaro KDE since September of 2021 and the linked issue I started getting a couple months ago and it’s gotten bad enough to make me want to start hopping again.

  • krimson@lemmy.world
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    12 days ago

    I gave KDE a serious go again recently but it has some really annoying bugs on multi (3) display systems that affect me but probably not the grand majority of KDE users. Reported the issue, debugged it extensively, pinpointed the exact problem in the bug report and how to reproduce it (found out it also happened on dual screen setups). Then nothing happened. Ticket went quiet and it has been several months now.

    I also had plenty of crashes in KDE apps.

    I completely get the volunteer basis that KDE builds on, and I am not complaining that my issues do not get fixed. I understand it is being mostly built and maintained by people in their spare time and my issues are probably low priority. But for me personally it is stuff like this that makes KDE unusable as a daily driver.

  • Engywook@lemm.ee
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    12 days ago

    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.

  • stembolts@programming.dev
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    12 days ago

    KDE Manjaro running on 4 or 5 of my machines, pure stability. It sounds like a hardware issue.

    Here are my suggestions to diagnose this.

    Option 1. Setup an ssh server, connect from a second computer (or phone via Termux), execute $journalctl -fe, and observe the journal from your second device when the crash occurs. That should help pinpoint the issue.

    Option 2. If you don’t have a second device, use a non-gui tty, access via Ctrl+Alt+F1. (Usually terminals are available F1 thru F6). Once again execute $journalctl -fe and observe it during the crash.

    Tbh option 2 may just be easier especially if you have minimal knowledge of ssh. Good luck, ping me back if you find this helpful and would like more perspective, and apologies if this doesn’t help you.

    If the entire computer crashes, boot into a terminal and browse journalctl history of previous boots, sorry I don’t have these commands off the top of my head but if you need them and ask I will get them for you.

  • pineapple@lemmy.ml
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    11 days ago

    Kde works great for me, I don’t have any special hardware. I have used it with fedora and bazzite.

  • Lettuce eat lettuce@lemmy.ml
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    11 days ago

    I’ve been using KDE for over 4 years on over a dozen different machines and 5+ distros and I’ve never had major problems with crashing.

    I do experience small bugs fairly often. Maybe once every month or two, little glitches or odd window behavior. Nothing huge, but they do happen. To be fair, I like to modify and customize KDE quite a bit, so that is probably causing some of my issues.

    In my experience, Cinnamon is the most stable DE I’ve used by far. Least amount of random bugs, simple but stable. I don’t think I’ve ever had Cinnamon crash on me actually.

  • Fushuan [he/him]@lemm.ee
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    12 days ago

    I had issues like that about a week ago, when gaming the system was super sluggish. It turns out that an update put the render under CPU instead of GPU, as in, without hardware acceleration, or software based.

  • /home/pineapplelover@lemm.ee
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    11 days ago

    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

  • Eyedust@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    11 days ago

    Vanilla Arch is much easier to install than it used to be. Connect to wifi via terminal commands or connect ethernet, enter archinstall and go down the list.

    I’ve only ever had the waking from sleep problem, but it’s consistent in other DE’s for me. I have a desktop so I just turn that and hibernate off.

    I had a known problem with krunner not opening after first run unless you killed the process, but I got rofi and customized it to the teeth instead. Found out that I love rofi. I probably won’t go back to krunner even it gets fixed now.

    • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
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      11 days ago

      Arch is much more difficult to install now than it used to be as well. I remember when Arch had an installer.

        • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
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          11 days ago

          Huh? Interesting, guess I’m out of the loop, since the install guide doesn’t mention it I didn’t even realize this got added back to the iso. When was that? I should check this out, I really missed the installer all these years, I understand why they did removed it originally, but if you know what you’re doing it’s just tedious work.

  • Ephera@lemmy.ml
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    12 days ago

    openSUSE has the best integration of KDE, but I wouldn’t expect to see issues like yours on any distro, really…