I don't really have a strong opinion about that. Perhaps, it would make sence to drop KDE and include Mate instead.

I personally think that KDE has become too much associated with how Slackware looked across the years, plus with the modernization efforts made by Pat and the team lately the maintenance of more mainstream software has become much more of a breeze than it has before... And from my experience Mate doesn't offer much compared to XFCE, except for probably a catchier name...

Dropping KDE is unlikely if I understand well, Mate has been already suggested, if not included it will continue to be provided by Willy. This has already been discussed including in this sticky thread.

I agree with Xfce and Mate similarities.

But KDE is very huge to maintain. Now probably Gnome3 has even less dependencies than KDE5.

Also, I don't believe that KDE5 will replace KDE4 any time soon.

I'm a happy mate user but don't see the need to make it part of the official Slackware distro, at least not as long as willysr maintains the msb packages and AlienBob offers mate isos.

I try MATE but I don't like, it sems too slow so by XFCE it's possible to obtain the same desktop look.

2 members found this post helpful.

It appears that KDEv4 was officially discontinued in 2015/August (however, I notice a few security patches have been released since then).

It appears that development of KDEv4 ceased several years before the Meltdown/Spectre fiasco became known. Consequently, I expect KDEv4 has none of the 'hardening' which has been put into software which is in current development. (See the "VII. Mitigation Options" section of spectreattack.com/spectre.pdf.)

No.

1 members found this post helpful.

Oh for cryin' out loud! Gnome, which spunoff Mate, is now so incredibly woven with systemd and all the other apps and systems that caused Patrick to abandon Gnome support and go with KDE as default FIFTEEN years ago, BEFORE all that crap became standard in Gnome and the gnome-based, this is an insane argument.

Given that, it's pretty safe to conclude that Patrick doesn't use Gnome or it's offspring on his machine(s) and it's obvious Eric uses KDE. I would dearly LOVE to hear from Patrick or Eric if KDE is any manner of serious obstacle to Slackware's evolution and development, but I strongly suspect NOT given that KTown already works better than KDE4 did when it finally replaced KDE3 in Slackware.

Still, Slackware is one of the few if not the ONLY distro that defaults to having several WM/DEs and those not included in the Install media are easily added after installation. What the Hell are you complaining about now I.G.O.R? If you are indeed so dissatisfied with Slackware, make your own distro. Maybe you could label it "King Linux".

2 members found this post helpful.

Mate is a nice desktop. However, Willy and Eric provide versions of Mate that are available. It does not make sense to leave out KDE5 in a new version of Slackware. KDE4 is well past its freshness date.

KDE 4.x has been EOL for quite a moment now. Think "moment" as in "years". The only sane way to keep using it is running it on RHEL/CentOS 7, which will be officially maintained until June 30th 2024, along with backported bugfixes and security fixes. Though Red Hat has officially dropped KDE, so you might as well move along.

Been running Plasma/KDE 5 for a couple years now on my workstation and my laptop, and I've already been late to the show.

Rule of thumb: don't use unmaintained software.

Cheers,

Niki

1 members found this post helpful.

I prefer KDE aka Plasma 5. I remember the days when GNOME was dropped from Slackware and the reason it was dropped. At that time I wasn't to thrilled at losing GNOME. Switched to Xfce, then to KDE. I am very happy with Alien Bob's ktown and I am looking forward to it becoming part of Slackware. I have gotten quite used to Plasma 5 and would not like to see it replaced by Mate.

1 members found this post helpful.

No. Gnome 2 was dropped years ago, and we don't need it back. Plus, as others have mentioned, it is too similar to Xfce. It would make more sense to replace Xfce than KDE, if Mate were going to be added.

I would rather like to have a few more "Xfce-oriented" applications, rather than a whole new desktop that is in a way redundant with Xfce.

1 members found this post helpful.

I asked the question some months ago.

1 members found this post helpful.