In general, KDE as a desktop has been and continues to be very stable on my specific platform. In specific, certain apps that are either a "part" of KDE or are otherwise associated with KDE are not always so good. When that happens, they are no longer a part of my computing real estate -- replaced with some other Linux choice. Who knows, the offending apps may come back in somewhere down the line; and some others may go out.

The result is that today KDE 4.4.4 with KMplayer/Mplayer, Thunderbird, Lightning, and Firebird and without Amarok and Kontact is stable and useful. Please don't take it personally devs, if you're on here, it's just the way it is.

In reality, every distro and distro update that I've used over the years from back in the day (RedHat 5.2) to today (Kubuntu Lucid) has been a constant improvement in installation, utility, and stability. Every distro and distro update has needed some tweaking to get it to that point. No problem; don't worry, be happy; whatever it takes to get through the day; it's all good folks.

I won't deny improvements over the releases, but I still feel it'll be a while yet before KDE is completely dependable to go on for years or more without needing maintenance.

Note: KDE 4.0 crashed every three to five minutes. 4.1 crashed every 10 to 30 minutes. 4.2 crashed every 45 minutes to about a week. 4.3 was about a week to a month, and 4.4 was about 2 weeks to a month. (This only covers crashes that the system could actually get out of)

It's probably worthy to note that considering the systems fragile state, I thought I might as well jump ship if HAL is being removed (which, to my knowledge, means it's replacement will not be as stable, at least not with the first release)

Dante Ashton wrote:Note: KDE 4.0 crashed every three to five minutes. 4.1 crashed every 10 to 30 minutes. 4.2 crashed every 45 minutes to about a week. 4.3 was about a week to a month, and 4.4 was about 2 weeks to a month. (This only covers crashes that the system could actually get out of)

What?
I don't even remember a single crash during my KDE 4.2 days.

Then either I've got the unluckiest hardware line-up in the world, or something very strange is happening.

Dante Ashton wrote: ...

It's probably worthy to note that considering the systems fragile state, I thought I might as well jump ship if HAL is being removed (which, to my knowledge, means it's replacement will not be as stable, at least not with the first release)

That's a good point, and something to watch closely. Since kubuntu Lucid is an LTS distro, I'll wait as long as possible should HAL be kicked off the bus soon.

Dante Ashton wrote:Then either I've got the unluckiest hardware line-up in the world, or something very strange is happening.

Or the other way around.. I might've been really lucky.

jglen490 wrote:

Dante Ashton wrote: ...

It's probably worthy to note that considering the systems fragile state, I thought I might as well jump ship if HAL is being removed (which, to my knowledge, means it's replacement will not be as stable, at least not with the first release)

That's a good point, and something to watch closely. Since kubuntu Lucid is an LTS distro, I'll wait as long as possible should HAL be kicked off the bus soon.

Preciesly, better to be cautious here; it's been confirmed that KDE is not ready for HAL's replacement, and I do worry about my Android phone and dedicated MP3 players no longer showing up in KDE, (or my laptops webcam and microphone, which only just started working in KDE, yet strangely has always worked in Ubuntu...hmm...the mystery deepens!

Please note, that if you use many third party applets, plugins, etc, then any bugs or missing implementations in them can cause the hosting application ( Plasma for applets, all applications for styles, KWin for window decorations, etc. ) to experience crashes which appear to be caused by the hosting application itself, but are in fact caused by memory corruption due to bugs in the third party components themselves.

bcooksley wrote:Please note, that if you use many third party applets, plugins, etc, then any bugs or missing implementations in them can cause the hosting application ( Plasma for applets, all applications for styles, KWin for window decorations, etc. ) to experience crashes which appear to be caused by the hosting application itself, but are in fact caused by memory corruption due to bugs in the third party components themselves.

It did strike me that some applets I used were not entirely stable.

But as I said, I did have a few installs where I changed nothing, including the applets and themes,

Well as any true Archer I'll say most of the problems you face wouldn't be problems if you would use Arch
I won't go in to listing them (I hope you do realise, that while the previous statement could be true it is also a bit of a joke)
Anyway, I kind of agree that in some aspects KDE lags behind Gnome, but then again for me it's miles away in other aspects. Thankfully for me I don't need, notice, care about negative aspects that much.
But on the end, when you put it that all you wish to do is write on Open Office, listen to music and watch movies; well I use KDE exactly the same purpose and it works...
But back when I was using Kubuntu I did lost my patience with it and went back to Windows XP for quite sometime. I might have used Kubuntu to an extent after going back, but I changed to Arch soon and used KDEmod (Chakra) repos for KDE and well I'm sold!
Everything that I need works.

Anyway I hope, as others said before me, that you submitted bugs that you found, and maybe adding some ideas on how to improve KDE to brainstorm section.
And on the end whatever works for you, if it's Gnome so be it, if it's Windows so be it, if it's OS X so be it...

PS.: I don't know who and where called you MS Shill; I guess Ubuntu Forums - because it's popular there to accuse everyone who doesn't agree with you as such... But if I would be a mod this would be a banable offence.

GNOME is definitely more stable, and about toolkits, well gtk+ is much more polished than qt. i mean, qt has thousands of bugs, its probably most advanced gui toolkit, but thats the reason why its so unstable, and buggy. They hurry to add features without stabilizing them. While gtk+ is not that much feature rich, its perfectly stable, no glitching, no stopping bugs. I also strongly believe that gnome 3 will be much more stable than kde 4.0 was, although gnome-shell interface is horrible.

Primoz wrote:Well as any true Archer I'll say most of the problems you face wouldn't be problems if you would use Arch
I won't go in to listing them (I hope you do realise, that while the previous statement could be true it is also a bit of a joke)
Anyway, I kind of agree that in some aspects KDE lags behind Gnome, but then again for me it's miles away in other aspects. Thankfully for me I don't need, notice, care about negative aspects that much.
But on the end, when you put it that all you wish to do is write on Open Office, listen to music and watch movies; well I use KDE exactly the same purpose and it works...
But back when I was using Kubuntu I did lost my patience with it and went back to Windows XP for quite sometime. I might have used Kubuntu to an extent after going back, but I changed to Arch soon and used KDEmod (Chakra) repos for KDE and well I'm sold!
Everything that I need works.

Anyway I hope, as others said before me, that you submitted bugs that you found, and maybe adding some ideas on how to improve KDE to brainstorm section.
And on the end whatever works for you, if it's Gnome so be it, if it's Windows so be it, if it's OS X so be it...

PS.: I don't know who and where called you MS Shill; I guess Ubuntu Forums - because it's popular there to accuse everyone who doesn't agree with you as such... But if I would be a mod this would be a banable offence.

Arch always seemed a bit too advanced for me; it isn't so much that I don't want to learn new things, it's more a case of NEEDING to learn new things about Linux.

Some people (including this forum) have expressed shock that I've never compiled anything. Ever, for instance

Your right, I'm pretty sure it was the Ubuntu forums.

I'm sure you CAN do these basic things on KDE, but I swear I've spent more time in the last year reinstalling then I have watched movies. The lack of polish in Kubuntu, in comparison to Ubuntu (no offence to the Kubuntu devs, Ubuntu IS in the spotlight, after all) does show, and gets a little tiresome at times (No software centre, No Ubuntu One, no Music Store, etc etc)

Dante Ashton wrote:<snip> The lack of polish in Kubuntu, in comparison to Ubuntu (no offence to the Kubuntu devs, Ubuntu IS in the spotlight, after all) does show, and gets a little tiresome at times (No software centre, No Ubuntu One, no Music Store, etc etc)

Then why, if you believe this, don't you use/try a kde-centric distro or if you're fixated on a *buntu then what about Mint

Dante Ashton wrote:I'm sure you CAN do these basic things on KDE, but I swear I've spent more time in the last year reinstalling then I have watched movies. The lack of polish in Kubuntu, in comparison to Ubuntu (no offence to the Kubuntu devs, Ubuntu IS in the spotlight, after all) does show, and gets a little tiresome at times (No software centre, No Ubuntu One, no Music Store, etc etc)

Agreed, but that is a distro related issue.

Dante Ashton wrote:Sorry chaps, I've left KDE for GNOME.

Then go.
Nobody cares.