MX Linux Forum

joany wrote:

SilverBear wrote:I've just this afternoon installed KDE 4.8.4 on MX14. So far: GREAT!

I've liked XFCE for years. But I love KDE. There is always room for improvement, of course, but in my mind, KDE is the desktop against which all others, Linux, MS or Apple, have to be measured.

Yes, I was pleasantly surprised about how easy it was to install KDE on top of MX-14. The configuration took some time, and there are a few "gotchas" along the way, but overall it wasn't bad. I like a full-featured OS. My machine is old (circa 2006), but it was designed for Vista so it still has plenty of horsepower to handle KDE, so why not?

I'm still running "The Klingon" as a "family machine" --which I built in 2006. I did upgrade it twice --once "not by choice" when a lightning strike down the road blew out telephone & computer equipment in a 3/4 mile radius (we live in the country, near the top of a big hill in the Allegheny foothills).

Divert to MS-Win for a min: I know Win-Vista and (to some extent) Win7 are resource hogs, so you're in good shape with a Vista-certified machine. Linux OS requirements are just now catching up to that level of HW resource need!

Win 8 actually is more resource-efficient than 7. However, my experiments with 8 (in conjunction with UEFI "BIOS") have led me to a simple judgment: Windows 8 is a spyware Trojan masquerading as an Operating System. I literally had to reformat my HDD as an MS-DOS disk to get rid of Win8 -- just deleting it wasn't enough on a UEFI-formatted HDD.

The point is: I don't know what your hardware specs are, but you might be able to get by fine for a good, long while with MX14, even running KDE.

Unfortunately, upgrading that era's HW can be more expensive than deciding to rebuild your current box from the motherboard up -- or even build a new box. DDR2 RAM (obsolete) has mostly been more expensive than newer DDR3 RAM -unless you find a supplier just trying to get rid of back stock. So if you start to feel like you need beefier HW, let me know, and we can discuss how to get you what you might need without spending more than you have to spend.

In the mean time: a couple months ago I installed MX14 (stock XFCE) on my wife's ASUS 1015PE Netbook, and it runs fine. 1 GB RAM. Now, understand, she just uses it as an "internet machine," not a full computer --but she plays youtube vids &c with careless abandon, and has no problems. She had been on antiX since about 2010, but MX14 has caused no complaints. What's not to like???

It's a good testimonial to what anticapitalista and the rest of our Mepis Community has been able to achieve, IMO!

joany wrote:My machine is old (circa 2006), but it was designed for Vista so it still has plenty of horsepower to handle KDE, so why not?

That must have been a high end machine at the time. Many of those early "Vista Ready" machines were dogs, which is one of the big reasons Vista got such a bad rap early on. Vista wasn't so bad, but it was being installed on inadequate hardware.

While KDE 4 is easy to install, it's out of date and buggy which it has also affected theming in Xfce. I would like to try Plasma 5 but I wouldn't be surprised if it's also buggy.

It is possible to have it and xfce installed at the same time without destroying each other's theming. Check out the KDE-added respin I did in a Live session to see what I mean.

Mauser wrote:While KDE 4 is easy to install, it's out of date and buggy which it has also affected theming in Xfce. I would like to try Plasma 5 but I wouldn't be surprised if it's also buggy.

While I hesitate to respond to a thread that is over three years old basically concerning Mepis 8.5 KDE, I will. I used KDE4 a lot. I did not find it buggy. Plasma 5 has matured and also is not buggy.

Stevo wrote:It is possible to have it and xfce installed at the same time without destroying each other's theming. Check out the KDE-added respin I did in a Live session to see what I mean.

Thanks, but I am afraid to try.