As KDE Turns 30, Contributors and Commits are Going Strong (ipsquad.net)
- Reference: 0185725400
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/09/21/0647232/as-kde-turns-30-contributors-and-commits-are-going-strong
- Source link: https://ervin.ipsquad.net/blog/2026/09/19/kde-at-30-what-are-the-colored-blobs-telling-us/
> It peaks around 180 on average (and sometimes reaches towards around 200 people) then shrinks again hitting bottom around 110 persons on average in 2017... Since then, we had two major events happening. First, 2018 is the year where we had the first set of KDE Goals being picked by the community, one being "Streamlined onboarding of new contributors". Second, we had the transition to GitLab which was fully delivered early in the second quarter of 2020...
>
> Now it seems like the team size is around 140 people on average, so closer to the all time high of 2010 but we didn't fully close the gap yet. Interestingly though, the commit count is much closer to the one we had in 2010, with a bit less people. We even had an all time high commit count in 2023 which surpassed any other week since the creation of the project. And to make things even brighter, the trends at the end of the plot point upwards. Looks like 2026 will be a very good year. Hopefully the growth will stay stable this time and then the community will be the biggest it's ever been...
>
> [For the KDE Plasma desktop] We find the 2010 dip but it's much less dramatic than in all the other plots. It stabilized much quicker and managed to stay with an almost identical team size. We also find the increase leading up to 2020. And clearly it's one of the projects which benefitted the most of the GitLab transition. It's average team size almost doubled during the transition! Earlier I asked where the increase we could see on KDE as a whole but not on applications was coming from? Well, this is probably it. Like the rest of KDE, 2026 will be a very good year for Plasma as well. I wonder... will it double in size again next year compared to 2020?
"I'm rather happy that KDE as a whole seems very healthy..." the post concludes. "It looks like in almost 30 years KDE built a great community and many awesome products..."
"Kudos to all the people involved for the past 30 years! Even if you're not involved any more you helped contribute something beautiful and precious to the world. We're the living proof that large commons can be created and made sustainable thanks to passionate people."
[1] https://ervin.ipsquad.net/blog/2026/09/19/kde-at-30-what-are-the-colored-blobs-telling-us/
Maybe some day soon... (Score:1)
We will realise that the number of commits is a meaningless metric.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe when you read the article and understand what he's actually measuring.
Problem with providing software for profit: (Score:2)
Posting this again :
There is a serious problem when a profit-making company provides software :
Deliberately giving limits to a present version allows a profit-making company to charge more for a new version, even if the new version provides few important benefits.
Kubuntu (Score:5, Informative)
What a shame Kubuntu is no longer a (the) prime release.
Re: (Score:2)
I've used openSUSE up to now but the current "Leap" release simply does not work for me, upgrading from the previous level goes through but the new system is unusable, even a fresh install suffers from similar problems. This is on Ryzen 3xxx hardware.
What *is* the "prime" KDE release nowadays?
Re: (Score:2)
Oh? Is that why mesa drivers don't "just work"? Interesting.
I'm happy for them! (Score:3)
Good for KDE for turning 30! Makes me feel old. I started dabbling with Linux in 99 or 00' and back then I liked KDE as it felt like a bridge of sorts from Windows. Slackware had packages for KDE so I tried that distro. Back then I had all the time in the world to dig through config files and what not. Slackware was great for this as pretty much everything was configured via one file or another. You really learn a lot about how the OS works, down to the kernel level, when you were install Slackware at that time.
Other distros such as Mandrake tried pushing everything through GUI tools and as often as not they wouldn't work and you would be stuck going to config files. I found them harder to get things running smoothly versus Slackware where you were in the trenches but nothing was hidden or obfuscated. I don't recall why I didn't care for Debian back in the day. Probably the much slower release cycle and I was more interested in the latest and greatest.
Unreal Tournment 2004 running natively on Linux is part of what encouraged me to try something that wasn't Microsoft. I also loved that Linux came with all the networking tools and server software that sure as heck didn't come with Desktop Windows. Not that you would want to run ISS anyway. Shudders.
These days, I run XFCE and love the simplicity of it. I should probably migrate away from Xubuntu but as a desktop it seems to just work.
Ubuntu+KDE seems like a great setup for incoming Windows Users looking to escape Microsoft.
Never cared for gnome either. XFCE over all!
So is anything good? (Score:2)
Everybody seems to be complaining ... although that's nothing new. Some people hate Gnome, others hate KDE.
So I ask you (everybody): Is anything good? Cuz we ain't gonna have the Year of the Linux Desktop without a UI. Do we all switch to Enlightenment?
Re: So is anything good? (Score:2)
KDE is pretty good. There's nothing really worth complaining about in the design and most of the major long running bugs have been stomped. If I did have a design complaint it would be related to the settings app, but even it is pretty ok.
Re: (Score:2)
Honestly, I find KDE, MATE, Cinnamon, and XFCE all good. And I tend to use a mix of them on different machines, and sometimes just change my desktop for the fun of it. If I had to pick a favorite, it would probably still be KDE/Plasma, since it is the most complete and configurable of them all. But it is also a bit more heavy and complex as the tradeoff.
However, I am not a fan of "modern" Gnome and when Gnome 3 came out, I refused to ever look at anything Gnome again.
Re: (Score:2)
Like the letter G?
Revisiting (Score:3)
KDE never really clicked with me. I was using Linux as a desktop in 1999 and was around for GNOME 1.0's release, and at the time it was great. But 27 years later, I don't recognize what GNOME has become. I find I'm just using Cinnamon and not liking it very much. Thanks for the reminder to revisit KDE, maybe it's worth another look.
Re: (Score:1)
I use KDE because I can't stand Gnome's stupid foot icon for the terminal. I know it's stupid but you try telling my neurotic brain.
Re: Revisiting (Score:5, Insightful)
GNOME 2 was definitely better than the KDE of its day.
GNOME 3 OTOH...
Re: (Score:2)
I've used it pretty exclusively since the 1.x days, though I did make a bit of a detour to Gnome 2.x for awhile.
It mostly excels at being a decently well-integrated desktop environment with all the bits working together in a fairly consistent way with similar interfaces and setups. If you're coming from Windows where (at least until recentlyish) it also does a decent job of having a lot of integrated, consistent tooling it can ease the transition plus it mostly just works fine.
Linux has gotten better over t
Re: (Score:2)
yes, gnome went crap, and took the toolkit with it however mate or xfce is much better than even cinnamon.
Only problem I have is really being able to see if I like mate or xfce, but am leaning more to xfce maybe.
I just wish I could change colors and things like I could a decade ago.(in all OS's) and even worse, why is there no longer active vs non active distinctions in title bars?!?!
So every time KDE got great (Score:2)
The project leads got bored and they would screw it until it started to kind of suck...
Juk was probably the best example of that. It was quite possibly the best MP3 player software in existence. I remember back in the day using it to tag and organize hundreds and hundreds of... Completely legally obtained mp3s and doing it quickly and easily. It was fast, feature Rich and had a great ui. Apple even cribbed some features from it for iTunes it was so good.
If I remember correctly the developers of KDE