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How to speed up the KDE 4.8.0 desktop.

I have installed the KDE 4.8.0 desktop on Ubuntu 12.04 and this KDE release is the fastest yet, everything works very well, adding new themes, splash screens and window decorations works perfectly. Many people hate what Canonical are doing with the Unity desktop and the KDE desktop is a nice alternative to the increasingly strange features they are bringing to the formerly fun to use Ubuntu desktop. They will alienate the very users they are trying to bring from Windows. But the KDE desktop is familiar to former Windows users, this is why I am recommending the KDE desktop for Ubuntu. If you have the misfortune of having installed the Ubuntu live CD with Unity, then you may install the KDE desktop thusly: sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop. These are KDE packages I have installed on my system, the  kubuntu-low-fat-settings package configures the KDE desktop with different settings than the default KDE installation making it run very fast indeed. This is the key to a fast KDE desktop experience. I kept the Lightdm login manager instead of using KDM, but the experience of using the KDE 4.8 release is very fast compared to using the KDE 4.6 desktop on Fedora.installation of themes and window decorations works flawlessly, the Unity desktop does not allow this at all, or any real form of configuration other than changing the wallpaper.

john@deep-thought ~ $ ls -hula /var/cache/apt/archives/ | grep kubuntu
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   15K  27-01-12 08:33 pm kubuntu-debug-installer_11.10ubuntu1_i386.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   96K  27-01-12 08:33 pm kubuntu-default-settings_1%3a12.04ubuntu1_all.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  3.7K  27-01-12 08:33 pm kubuntu-desktop_1.246_i386.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  6.9M  27-01-12 08:33 pm kubuntu-docs_11.10ubuntu2_all.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   58K  27-01-12 08:33 pm kubuntu-firefox-installer_11.10ubuntu1_i386.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  3.3K  27-01-12 08:28 pm kubuntu-low-fat-settings_11.10ubuntu3_all.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  5.3K  27-01-12 08:33 pm kubuntu-netbook-default-settings_11.10ubuntu2_all.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   39K  27-01-12 08:33 pm kubuntu-notification-helper_11.10ubuntu1_i386.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  7.0K  27-01-12 08:33 pm kubuntu-web-shortcuts_11.10ubuntu2_all.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   25K  27-01-12 08:33 pm plymouth-theme-kubuntu-logo_1%3a12.04ubuntu1_i386.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  4.6K  27-01-12 08:33 pm plymouth-theme-kubuntu-text_0.8.2-2ubuntu28_i386.deb
john@deep-thought ~ $

And now the Ubuntu Unity HUD is in vogue now with the Canonical developers. That is the thing with computers these days, there are apps in the mobile application stores that allow people to divide by ten to calculate the amount they are to tithe to the local church. Surely they can not work that out in their head? God help us all. More information on the KDE 4.8.0 desktop here. http://www.kde.org/announcements/4.8/. This is shaping up to be the best contender for your desktop Linux environment, Gnome 3 is annoying, and Unity just plain sucks, so the best choice is KDE 4.8.

KDE 4.8 Plasma desktop.
KDE 4.8 Plasma desktop.

Some people prefer the Gnome 2 desktop instead, but I have not had any luck installing the MATE packages on Ubuntu 12.04, they conflict with existing packages. So I decided to move from Xfce 4 to KDE 4.8 and the experience has been a very positive one. Amongst the new features is a Gnome Shell styled system that allows the user to write simple scripts in Javascript to customize the desktop environment. Hopefully this will result in a horde of useful scripts to extend the KDE Plasma desktop. I am not sure if they will create a Mozilla styled extensions website as they did with the Gnome Shell desktop, but they certainly would feature them on the kde-look website. To revert to the KDE classic menu, you must first click the New Activity button on the top right of the desktop and click Unlock Widgets, then right-click on the Kicker menu and select Classic Menu. This is my preferred menu style.

So give the KDE desktop a try someday, just make sure to install the kubuntu-low-fat-settings_11.10ubuntu3_all.deb package to increase the speed of your KDE desktop and do away with the unnecessary bloat.

2 thoughts on “How to speed up the KDE 4.8.0 desktop.”

  1. Thanks for your comment, the KDE desktop, being just like the Windows interface is the most familiar if you are moving from Windows. And it does just work very well indeed. The Unity desktop makes no sense at all.

    Reply

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