Switching to KDE
I consider myself a power user. I've been using Linux exclusively on all my machines (except maybe on my Androids, if you do not consider these linuxes) for over ten years. Most of the time, I used i3wm (and some time sway), but I got tired of it about two years ago. I switched to XFCE. I told myself, I'm living inside a terminal anyways, I use mutt for mails, (neo)vim for editing stuff and do not use that many GUI apps anyways. The browser, of course. And telegram-desktop. Recently (about a year ago maybe?), riot-desktop joined the two.
I told myself that XFCE is eye-candy enough for me and performs really nice without getting in my way while working in terminals.
Today, I switched my two main devices to KDE Plasma 5. Well, my notebook was actually switched yesterday. And because it was such a huge leap in “niceness”, I switched my workstation today.
I also switched my email setup to Korganizer with Kmail for mails. I am looking forward to see how that performs for me.
I always considered KDE the desktop for Linux. The one, normal users should use to get a first impression of Linux. The one, that will be there for “Linux on the Desktop” when it gets real. You know what I mean?
I never considered for a power-user setup. Power users use i3wm, awesomeWM, sway, ... but not full-blown desktop environments, do they? Well, on several occasions I met Kai Uwe, a KDE dev from a town not far from the town I grew up in. We've met on Linux-Days and other Community events. I always was amazed how fast KDE was on his machines. I was blown away by the usability. But I never really considered switching.
Until today.
Memory usage is where it should be: My desktop uses 3.6GB right now, with Cantata (MPD client), Riot-Desktop (Electron!), Telegram, Firefox and Kontact open (plus some more terminals and some services running in the background as well).
My Notebook was at about 5GB RAM usage with the same apps open and even some more stuff running in the background.
After that experience and also that performance on my rather old desktop machine, I'm blown away and am willing to invest time into getting to know how to be even faster and more productive than I am currently feeling with KDE.