Many components, including Dolphin file manager and System Settings control panel, have been modernised and no longer include menu bars, just hamburger menus – but some accessories, such as text editors, still have the traditional layout.

So, is it just the stupid menu button only, or can you still disable it and use something useful?

You can fairly much make it look and feel like anything you want. Which users think is a feature and detractors think is a bug.

However to describe the current KDE as venerable is to fail to acknowledge that the code base has been refactored several times over the years to include new techniques and technologies.

And as for the menu I think there are three choices if it matters to you.

I think the endless configurations available in KDE is what put me off the last time I made a serious attempt to use it. It just seemed to keep getting in my way when I wanted to do stuff.

I can absolutely understand why people like it though. One of the many joys of Linux are the choices we get to make.

Yep/ Windows used to be like that. It's been said that people playing around with customising Win95/98 settings cost business a fortune in lost time :-) Nowadays, the biggest gripe with Windows is that there is so little you can customise to suit your own personal tastes and workflow. Full circle.

"It just seemed to keep getting in my way when I wanted to do stuff."

That's the converse of my experience. I can customise it to work and look as consistently as possible from one generation to the next. It does what's needed when its needed and mostly keeps out of the way otherwise.

There's one thing I wish they'd reinstate from version 3; the ability to set the panel unhide trigger to be a corner rather than the entire edge. Rationale: a typical maximised application is likely to have stuff at the bottom of the window that needs access even if it's only the scroll bar down button and taking the mouse down to that bounces the screen bottom panel back up to cover that critical bit of the screen for a couple of seconds. Limiting the unhide to the bottom left worked well.

Exactly the thought I had.

I appreciate that there are different schools of thought regarding menus and hamburgers and ribbons and all the other way of interacting with a system, but damnit I like menus. One per window, please, none of this global menu stuff thank you.

s/modernised/made worse/

When will UI people get it into their heads that were not all using a mobile phone? Stop. Hiding. Menus.

"hamburger menus"

When, and more importantly WHY did this become the "preferred" name for what is clearly a stylised icon showing a representation of a list of or menu? It's the menu button, not a frigging hamburger.

Now, git off ma lawn!!

Would love to see it now providing mount points on the filesystem for impromptu-connected remote server shares, giving access to the files on them to old and non-KIO-aware applications.

..... but it does seem to have been improved by showing panels and desktops as well as applications.

It should be possible (its does not sound like a feature they will drop) to reduce the panel width if its vertical, as you can in older versions(including earlier 5.x ones).

I suspect someone not used to KDE has not realised just how tweakable it is.

KDE has had exposé like features for years...

Came here to post exactly that. Ok, so the version illustrated in the article has a few more bells and whistles and I look forward to seeing it appear in my copy of Tumbleweed, but pushing the mouse top-left has done the tiled-live-windows thing for quite some time now. It's all there in System Settings --> Desktop Effects / Screen Edges.

And I hate menu-less windows too* but all the important ones have config options to re-enable menus, toolbars etc.

M.

*Well, frankly I'd prefer the menu-less window approach of RiscOS, where a middle-click pops up the application menu (that is, the same options Windows would give you just under the window's title bar, and MacOS would give you at the top of the screen) but menu-in-window is the next best thing.

I also came here to say the same thing. It's not so much new features as a fresh lick of paint or, as I would say, a bit of tarting up. Unless, of course, the author was in a hurry to be "first" and has left out all the actual changes and new features :-)

At least you can still move it off to one side even if it makes your clock massive. MS forcing everyone to keep it in the bottom.

I resent resemble that.

I kinda like some of the ideas. Feel like adding even more stuff to the "Exposé" style thing dilutes it actually. Having had to deal with OL(V)WM and CDE in the past and various other shitshows of so-called Desktop Environments they still fall flat. Obviously not the target audience for such things as FVWM would probably still be fine for my needs. Guess it comes down to choice which is nice. Remember - set your virtual desktops in a 3x3 grid, bind a function key and cursor keys to move between them, make sure the background is different on each VD. Or don't.

I've tried distros with various desktops and frankly I can't tell the difference between them. Are all these these various desktops just paint & on the Linux walls or is there really any difference. Personally, I just the desktop to work, plain & simple, no gimics or pretty pictures that serve no real purpose. You know, nothing like windows desktop.