KDE onboarding is good now
KDE’s efforts to improve contributor onboarding and developer documentation are widely welcomed, but they surface deeper tensions around project direction, tooling, and funding. Users argue over the desktop’s quality and stability—ranging from “months of uptime” to frequent crashes—and over an annual donation notification that some see as intrusive while others view it as essential for independent funding. Developers also debate the complexity of KDE’s C++/QML stack and custom build tools, with some calling for more standard package managers and broader language bindings to lower the barrier to contributing.
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.