KDE onboarding is good now

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Donation notification and “ads” concerns

  • One thread dominates around KDE’s annual donation notification.
  • Critics describe it as “nagware” / ad-like, violating expectations for a desktop and reflecting “greed” and politicization.
  • Others stress it appears once a year, is easily disabled (per‑app notification setting), and has significantly improved funding without corporate capture.
  • Some users actually like the reminder; others who already donate just want an easier way to turn it off.
  • Disagreement over whether this is fundamentally different from Wikipedia‑style funding prompts or whether any in‑product ask is unacceptable.

Stability and everyday usability

  • Experiences diverge sharply.
  • Some report Plasma crashes multiple times per day, or frequent minor component crashes, and see KDE’s “KrashDE” reputation as deserved.
  • Many others say they haven’t seen a Plasma crash in years, with session uptimes in months; for them Plasma 6 is the best desktop they’ve ever used.
  • Several suggest hardware or driver issues (especially early Ryzen and some GPUs, notably Nvidia driver bugs) and rolling‑distro inconsistencies as likely culprits.
  • Distinction is made between full session crashes vs. quick restarts of the shell, where apps stay running and impact is minor.

Developer onboarding, docs, and technology stack

  • Documentation is widely acknowledged as crucial and often neglected elsewhere; several commenters praise KDE’s docs and community help.
  • Others find KDE development daunting: complex C++/Qt/QML layering, painful kdesrc‑build dependency juggling, and steep learning curve for things like Akonadi.
  • Debate over QML: one side calls it a bad JS‑like layer and claims “modern KDE apps must use QML”; others respond that many apps are still QWidget‑based and QML is more UI markup than application logic.
  • Python/PySide bindings exist but are seen as incomplete; serious work often still requires C++.

Build and packaging tooling (Craft, vcpkg, Microsoft)

  • Craft, KDE’s cross‑platform build/packaging tool, is criticized as fragile, slow, and off‑putting to casual contributors.
  • Some advocate using vcpkg or other mainstream C++ package managers to ease cross‑platform work (especially for Windows/macOS releases).
  • Pushback emphasizes avoiding Microsoft‑controlled tooling for ideological and strategic reasons, plus a broader skepticism of NIH vs. dogfooding FOSS tools.

Miscellaneous

  • Some users highlight Plasma’s strengths: HiDPI handling, flexibility, Activities/workspaces model, and rapid recent progress.
  • Others still find KDE too buggy and prefer GNOME or lighter DEs (XFCE, LXQt).
  • A few note that the article is really about “contributor onboarding,” and the title invited broader, somewhat off‑topic arguments.