20 Years of KDE

[Snowhog]

There's an article in the KDE.news RSS section in Articles about KDE's upcoming 20th anniversary. 20 years! Wow. Check it out. There's a free downloadable .pdf book as well.

[GreyGeek]

I began using Linux with RH5.0 beginning in May of 1998. That fall, during September, I was browsing a computer mag and saw a story about KDE 1.0 Beta being featured in SuSE. That;s when I moved to SuSE. Regardless of the distro I used I always had KDE on my desktop. No exception. I moved from Mandriva to Kubuntu because Kubuntu was putting KDE4 on their desktop almost a year before Mandriva was. KDE5 is going through a rough time right now, not nearly as bad as the 3 to 4 move, and just like 4 Plasma 5 will shine.

[oshunluvr]

I don't remember the exact year, but I was using OS/2 Warp and it went unsupported for non-commercial users so I looked for something else. I found Mandrake (Mandriva's predecessor) and installed it from a stack of 3.5" floppies! Had to be 95-96ish. I don't remember the Mandrake KDE version either (maybe Mandrake 3?). Later i tried Gnome and hated it right away. I dabbled with XFCE and LXDE on a mini HP netbook before landing on E17 (Enlightenment) which was perfect on the low-powered and small screen mini. I had a laptop that Mandrake (7?) didn't work well on (some unsupported hardware) and found PCLinuxOS which worked perfectly. Stayed there until the forum deteriorated into a haven for Fascists, then found Kubuntu 9.04.

Although I agree with GG, I'll stay the issues I'm having with P5 are not near of the level (IMO) we went though getting from 3 to 4 and it soooo much faster and already very solid. It's a winner in my book.

[Rod J]

My first experience with Linux was around 2000 with RH6.4 then later Mandrake both with KDE desktop (can't remember which version it was). I dabbled with Linux for a while, but never really took it seriously as a replacement for Windows 98/XP until about 2008 when I tried Ubuntu 8.04. I was amazed how much it had improved from the Mandrake days! Even though it was the Gnome desktop it was stable and ran really well. I used Ubuntu for several years dual booting with WinXP but gradually stopped using WinXP in favour of Ubuntu. When Ubuntu went with Unity I came back to KDE with Kubuntu 11.04. My present system has no Windows on it at all, just Kubuntu 14.04 and 16.04. I'm warming to Plasma5 which is running very well on my bare metal install but for some reason the Virtualbox version crashes constantly. Yes, I agree that eventually Plasma5 is going to be great and already is to some extant. It is noticeably quicker and seems to use less CPU than K14.04 does on this system.

[GreyGeek]

I don't remember the exact year, but I was using OS/2 Warp and it went unsupported for non-commercial users so I looked for something else. I found Mandrake (Mandriva's predecessor) and installed it from a stack of 3.5" floppies! Had to be 95-96ish. I don't remember the Mandrake KDE version either (maybe Mandrake 3?). Later i tried Gnome and hated it right away. I dabbled with XFCE and LXDE on a mini HP netbook before landing on E17 (Enlightenment) which was perfect on the low-powered and small screen mini. I had a laptop that Mandrake (7?) didn't work well on (some unsupported hardware) and found PCLinuxOS which worked perfectly. Stayed there until the forum deteriorated into a haven for Fascists, then found Kubuntu 9.04.

Although I agree with GG, I'll stay the issues I'm having with P5 are not near of the level (IMO) we went though getting from 3 to 4 and it soooo much faster and already very solid. It's a winner in my book.

Wow, oshunluver, our experiences parallell somewhat closely! I had been using Win95 which came with the Sony desktop I had purchased on Dec 27,1997, Before that I was using OS/2 and had installed Win3.11FWG in its DOS box. Between Jan 1, 1998 and May 1st, 1998 my Win95 crashed multiple times per day. As a developer I was forced to save every two or three minutes to avoid loosing too much. I got tired of it and went to Barnes & Nobel to find a copy of OS/2 in order to revert back to it. While there I happened to see a paperback book titled "Learn Linux in 24 Hours", by Bill Brush. It had a copy of RH5.0 on a CD in back. For $25 how could I lose? It was the best investment I ever made.

After Novell bought SuSE in 2002 I went to Mandrake. Then I tried, in no particular order, KNOPPIX, MEPIS, LibreNet, PCLinuxOS, openSUSE, Mandriva, and several others. None for more than a few months, except PCLinuxOS, which I ran for 18 months at the time it was at the top of DistroWatch. I just wasn't happy with what I was seeing. I went back to Mandriva for a year or so and then tried Kubuntu 9.04, as I mentioned above. I've been with Kubuntu every since.

BTW, I decided to reinstall 16.04 and did so last night. WOW! Blazing speed again. From boot up to a working desktop in 30 seconds. Instant appearance of Dolphin or any other app I run. Feels good again! I log out before I shut down so it takes only 30 seconds, max.

[Qqmike]

Remember the whole deal about KDE. Going back, way back to when you all first tried Linux. Your Linux pals would direct you to an easy KDE distro to try out, telling you, for example, "Kubuntu (6.06, for example) has a look and feel very similar to your Windows XP -- you'll have no problem learning it." And that was just about exactly the case. You try it out, with a nice KDE interface, like it, and being new to Linux you are thrilled at the challenge and opportunity to try other distros, usually several other distros, and you do, and so on like that ... and now here we are!

[MoonRise]

At least I can say I've been using and happy with KDE for half that time. Wow! 20 years! I remember the days of 3.x when I tried Kubuntu 5.10.