Why KDE Plasma Makes Sense For Linux Gaming

sfcrazy writes "Martin Gräßlin, a lead KDE developer, addresses some queries around a topic bugging Gnome and Unity users — the fallback mode. In this post he says that 'having the non-composited mode around allows us to do things like turning compositing off when running games or heavy OpenGL based applications such as Blender. So if you want to get some of the now finally available games for Linux, KDE Plasma should be your primary choice to enjoy the game. I have also heard of users switching to KDE Plasma because we still provide non OpenGL based setups.'"

My experience switching to KDE4.8 from Gnome3

[luckymae]

I just want to say that KDE4 is awesome. When I switched to openSUSE 11.2 last month, my first impression is: I love Amarok, the Dolphin file manager is 100 x better than Mac's Finder and Gnome Nautilus and Windows Explorer altogether. The default setup is pretty annoying though, I had to turn off quite a few eye candies. At least it's configurable, unlike in Gnome. I didn't regret one bit converting from Ubuntu (12.04) to SuSE (11.2) with KDE. It's stable, rock solid. In Ubuntu, my other PC's Radeon often locks up, but not the case with opensuse. Very stable. Moreover, now Ubuntu is an adware.

Or, you know...

[akiwiguy]

There are other DEs/WMs out there. XFCE, LXDE if you want a somewhat complete DE, WindowLab [nickgravgaard.com] if you want something minimal but like your mouse, i3 [i3wm.org] if you like tiling (or xmonad if you swing that way).

KDE's sure to use more memory than some of the other competition, and if you're like me and only have 2GB of RAM in your primary machine, that's important.

Re:Alternative: XFCE

[gagol]

Last windows I actually used was vista on a laptop. With composition activated I lost 25% battery life, deactivated I got a UI so ugly its not even funny jocking about it. I went to linux and will never looked back.

KDE still not required....

[julian67]

Xfce allows the user to switch off compositing in the settings GUI or, more usefully for scripts and launchers, with a command:

Compositing off: "xfconf-query -c xfwm4 -p /general/use_compositing -t bool -s false"
Compositing on: "xfconf-query -c xfwm4 -p /general/use_compositing -t bool -s true"

A KDE dev pretending that Gnome 3 or Unity are the only other options makes him seem slightly desperate way.

Re:SVG icons

[bmo]

>Last time I looked they were transparently rendered and cached as bitmaps anyway.

When was this, in the 3x days?

Open dolphin. Grab the slider. Watch as the icons in Dolphin magically resize as you move the slider back and forth at to completely arbitrary sizes that aren't limited to powers of 2.

Go back to 4chan /g/.

--
BMO

Re:KDE still not required....

[Anonymous Coward]

1. He pretends nothing of the sort.
2. KDE requires no such modification.
3. A complete gentleman, Graesslin devotes an entire closing paragraph to not criticizing other projects for their choices.

Ride your strawman outta here.