Test Drive : KDE Plasma 5 on the EEEPC

I like KDE from a theoretical point of view: I especially appreciate its philosophy about flexibility and configuration capabilities. On the other hand, on the practical side, I never felt comfortable using it even if I tried more than once. By the way after reading the recent news about new KDE “Plasma” version 5 I decided it was worth giving it a look.

I so downloaded the “Neon 5 Project” live disk image, based on Kubuntu, available on KDE site and put it on my USB disk using Ubuntu start-up disk creator tool.

First impressions

I tested the newly prepared USB disk both on my desktop computer and on my netbook. KDE worked fine, of course, on the Veriton desktop but I was surprised to find I worked decently even on my old EEEPC.

At boot the EEEPC show an error about a Kwin unexpectedly closing, whatever causes it KDE starts and it seem to work normally.

the desktop is organized in a very traditional way with a functional “start” menu on the lower left:

Choosing the desktop ...

Since I bought the new desktop computer I planned testing some desktops, among the many available for Linux, to experience with the different interaction ways they offer and to choose the one I felt more comfortable. My previous hardware poor performances limited me on using only light-weight desktops (I used XFCE). XFCE is a honest and robust desktop indeed, but I felt someway limited provided programs like, for example, Thunar.

Unity

I'm not a Unity fan but I have to admit that it's a great desktop for beginners. My wife started using Unity (2D) on the old computer and she found it easier to use than XFCE. I so decided to install Ubuntu from the beginning on the new computer in order to make her preferred interface available in the shortest time.