[andmarios]

Kate was one of the main reasons I switched to Linux in 2004/2005.

I had a lab in MySQL, and back then, the only option to develop in Windows was MySQL Workbench, which was as heavy as it got. Running an SQL statement was painfully slow, and iteration cycles were huge.

In Linux, you would write your SQL in Kate, and run MySQL's cli in the embedded terminal. Once ready, you would click the button “pipe to terminal". Instant run. What took many minutes in Windows took less than 2 seconds in Linux. How can you not love this?

Another reason was Amarok, an (the) mp3 player. Do you like how Spotify and other providers create automatically infinite playlists, radios, etc based on your tastes? Yes, KDE had this since 2002 I think? It was first copied by iTunes, then by Spotify, and now is considered a standard function. :)

[jwrallie]

Also k3b was an amazing software for burning CDs back then, its interface easily rivaled contemporary proprietary software.

KDE 3.5 was one of the peaks (if not the peak) of graphical interfaces on GNU/Linux.

Experiencing KDE at the time I was used to the Windows XP interface felt amazing, and soon after Vista promises of innovation on interface were nothing compared to what could be done in Compiz (More on the Gnome 2 side).

[xvedejas]

KDE is still great! I continue to see improvements and KDE6 has some killer features like KDE Connect. (we still don't talk about KDE4 though)

[127]

Konqueror and KHTML was also the basis for Google Chrome IIRC.

[vundercind]

I had a love-hate relationship with k3b because years ago it was the only cd burner program that was both somewhat stable and otherwise not terrible on Linux, but also it was the only KDE program I just had to have on my XFCE Gentoo system, which meant compiling allllll of kde libs and qt and losing a bunch of disk space to them.

[BeetleB]

Ah, k3b. Good memories. Seems the project is alive and well!

[jchmbrln]

Yes! When I started using Kate on Linux ca. 2005, I was coming from Notepad on Windows and couldn’t believe how nice it was. I believe it was my first experience of syntax highlighting.

And Amarok! I haven’t thought of that in a while. Losing Amarok was my single biggest regret when I became a Max user. I’ve not used anything since that came close.

[doubled112]

What about Clementine or Strawberry? Clementine was a fork of Amarok 1.4, and Strawberry a fork of Clementine.

I recently discovered Strawberry would play music off of my Subsonic server (Navidrome really) and was thrilled to have something for music that didn't feel like a web app.

[jraph]

> I was coming from Notepad on Windows

Ouch. You didn't use Notepad++?

[bluGill]

Amarok is preparing for another release. I wonder if it will come to mac.

[reactordev]

You forget, on windows, we had WAMP with phpmysql so we could run queries in our browser. Not being able to do them within an IDE until around 2001 with Dreamweaver and Microsoft InterDev…

Kate is cool but it wasn’t the first to have this.

[andmarios]

Haha, indeed! I was pretty frustrated with configuring WAMP, though. Once I started spending more time on Linux and noticed that Linux was using the slash instead of the backslash for directories and all other OS differences, suddenly, the WAMP configuration made a lot of sense and became one more reason to switch permanently to Linux.

[JohnFen]

Interesting. I think it was a couple of years earlier than that(?) when I tried using Kate, but it was so buggy and crashy as to be unusable.

Since I tried it pretty close to its initial release, I'm certain those problems were resolved. However, I developed work habits that didn't include it and so I still don't use it to this day.

[andmarios]

A few years later, I also switched to Emacs on the terminal. I just find the terminal a better place to work. But I still do use Kate for some tasks.

[henvic]

Oh, I loved Amarok back in the days! Nowadays the only end-user player I know that has some of its abilities is Apple's Music.

[pests]

> It was first copied by iTunes, then by Spotify, and now is considered a standard function.

You're forgetting Pandora somewhere in that timeline, probably between iTunes and Spotify.

That was my first introduction into the concept at least.

[cullmann]

Nice that Kate did help you to make the switch. The SQL plugin is unfortunately not that well maintained any more, help with that is welcome.

[thaumasiotes]

> Another reason was Amarok, an (the) mp3 player.

It's dead now.

[andmarios]

And I've long since switched to a streaming service. But I am still on a Linux desktop —and KDE. :)

[tvshtr]

It got revived suddenly, there's going to be a new release soon.