[alphapapa]

Well, I'm glad to hear someone like you (a DE developer) say these things. GNOME went off the rails years ago, and KDE seems to be headed that way with KDE 5 (or is it Plasma 5? or Frameworks 5? or...? Just KDE 5!).

I'll be keeping an eye on LXQt. In the meantime, KDE 4 still serves me pretty well. Dolphin is a fantastic file manager for when you need a GUI, and KWin is a great window manager. And KHotkeys makes configuring global shortcuts so easy. And Plasma 4 lets you make decent panels. So I'm glad KDE 4 is in Jessie, so I can keep using it for several more years.

At the same time, I'm really enjoying using TDE on some of my systems. I loved KDE 3.5, and TDE picks up right where KDE 3.5 left off. It's fast, stable, sleek, light on resources, and looks great. It does everything I could want a desktop to do.

In a way, it gives the lie to KDE 4 and 5. I'm sure Qt 4 and 5 have some advantages over Qt 3, yet look at how well Qt 3 is still working in TDE! And I don't have to wait years for KDE to get around to feature parity again, only to have them jump to KPlasmaFrameworksDE6 the year after that and start reinventing the wheel again.

The XDG thing is another good point you made. If it weren't for XDG, we probably wouldn't have the decently usable desktops we have now; or at least they would be much less compatible, causing a lot of pain. So to some extent I think we need XDG, or something like it. If every DE project has to coordinate and standardize separately, users will suffer. Maybe a new XDG-NG could be formed by LXQt, Cinnamon, MATE, and TDE, the DEs that seem to be the most sane, focused on stability and usefulness.

Anyway, I'm not exactly one of your users yet, but thanks for your work nonetheless, and thanks for caring about the future of desktop Linux. I'm with you in spirit if not currently in software.

One suggestion: you said in another comment that you spent most of your time on developer outreach. Well, what do I know--but consider the old cliche, "If you build it, they will come." Nothing attracts developers like good software. When software meets users needs, and those users are developers with the skills to itch-scratch, they will naturally want to help when they can.

So just keep working on the software, making the best, most useful software you can, for yourself first and others second. As it improves, more people will use it, and more people will join the project. Don't worry about numbers--it will happen on its own when you do good work.

[scrollaway]

> Maybe a new XDG-NG could be formed by LXQt, Cinnamon, MATE, and TDE, the DEs that seem to be the most sane, focused on stability and usefulness.

The point of XDG isn't about a particular user experience, it's about cross-desktop compatibility. If you lose the two biggest desktops, then it's doomed to uselessness. Like a W3C that Mozilla and Google don't listen to.

The first step of standardization is to get the people with the most pull to care. The problem is nobody cares anymore.

[alphapapa]

> The point of XDG isn't about a particular user experience, it's about cross-desktop compatibility. If you lose the two biggest desktops, then it's doomed to uselessness. Like a W3C that Mozilla and Google don't listen to.

I don't think it would be useless. If GNOME and KDE don't care anymore, then move on without them. Lead the way with the people who do care. Eventually your work will surpass theirs, and they will either join you, follow you, or fall into obscurity.

> The first step of standardization is to get the people with the most pull to care. The problem is nobody cares anymore.

I think the first step of standardization is to standardize. ;) If the DE projects I mentioned got together and defined useful standards and started using them, if they started solving real problems that they and other DEs experience, then the big two would naturally be attracted to the new standards and solutions.

But even if GNOME and KDE never came around, you still have four or five DEs (with the potential for more) that have useful interoperability. I think that would be valuable.

Possible elephant in the room: Red Hat/Fedora. My impression is that XDG is dominated by GNOME which is dominated by Red Hat. They have shown in many ways how little they care about users, standards, and stability. Time to leave them in the dust. Blaze a new trail for desktop Linux without them! ;)