15 ms·

Plasma 5.18

142 points by mistermatt 7y ago

eklavya 7y ago
Just started using KDE neon in a vm on my iMac for office work and it's really really good and productive. Kudos to the KDE team.
jhoechtl 7y ago
No news from the wayland front?
- scrollaway 7y ago
  I use KDE on Wayland. It works pretty well; there's still bugs I hit once in a while (vscode especially sometimes is missing dialog windows and I have to restart it).
  - MayeulC 7y ago
    It works quite well, but it's very crashy. I tried yesterday (5.17.3 IIRC, mind you): plasmashell crashed, then followed by systemsettings5, and konsole. Drkonqui popped up for the bug report, but crashed halfway. Then popped up again with a link for manual bug reporting. Clicked it, it crashed again. Sometimes QML applets crash (there was a bug with the CUPS one recently, if there were duplicated job IDs), and bring down plasmashell with them. But that also happens on X11, which can leave the environment quite empty, and hard to debug for my non-techie family. On Wayland, I miss primary clipboard buffer (selection), which works on sway. Also, default popup placement is wrong. Besides that, not much. I really like KDE plasma, but started using sway for Wayland, and stayed for the tiling. I might think about writing a kwin module to ingest my sway config, and only that... :)
  - jhoechtl 7y ago
    Blurry firefox, blurry thunderbird anybody? Still plasma on wayland related fixes in the pipeline. But getting close...
    - pedrocr 7y ago
      At least for Firefox that probably means it's running with X emulation. But the Firefox Wayland backend works fine, it just needs to be enabled. But sure, Wayland still has quite a few corner cases like that.
      - jhoechtl 7y ago
        I know about GDK_BACKEND=wayland firefox That works on Gnome and sway, not on plasma. Intel GPU. Still open bugs on bugs.kde.org
        pedrocr 7y ago
        I believe the correct variable these days is: MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 firefox This makes firefox a full wayland app. But I only use sway, so maybe there are KDE specific bugs.
- ognarb 7y ago
  For this release, just the usual bug fixes, and small features. But hopefully, for next release pen support: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGx0TlNJlzs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGx0TlNJlzs
  - solarkraft 7y ago
    Oh shit! Have my cries of pain finally been heard? Can you tell me more about this? My last knowledge was that KWin doesn't have pen support because QtWayland doesn't have it and there'd be a GSoC application for adding it.
rjzzleep 7y ago
Maybe something is wrong with me, but it irks me that there are 40 seconds of meaningless video before they show stuff in that video. I ended up skipping the video and skimming through the poorly formatted article. My first impression is that it looks good. Lots of useful features. But I can imagine that if I had sent it to a bunch of other people who have no interest in KDE they would have closed the page again. That said I have a question: It seems that Plasma has tiling WM features. How useful are they? One thing about tiling WM is that typical it's only part of a package. Another part is that people are typically looking at a lightweight hotkey driven workflow and the ability to script where and how windows appear with occasional non tiling things to fit applications that don't work well for tiling systems. The other question I have is that one of the reasons why I go for these "lightweight" setups. Althouh xfce-settings daemons + tiling wm is what I do is also because of power usage. How is KDE in terms of power usage? And yes, I realize that firefox, blink based browser, slack are the biggest power drains.
- emilsedgh 7y ago
  Kwin used to have tiling support builtin. That was removed from core. There are multiple different Kwin script that add the tiling functionality now. Like this [0] and this [1] Regarding being lightweight, KDE is very very light these days. In terms of memory usage it rivals XFCE. Not quite sure about power usage, but since Plasma Mobile is being developed and it shares a lot of code with Desktop, I assume it shouldn't be too bad. [0] https://github.com/lingtjien/Grid-Tiling-Kwin https://github.com/lingtjien/Grid-Tiling-Kwin [1] https://github.com/kwin-scripts/kwin-tiling https://github.com/kwin-scripts/kwin-tiling
- opencl 7y ago
  The only out of the box tiling feature I'm aware of is the Windows-like hotkeys (meta+arrows) for snapping windows to half or a quarter of the screen. There are kwin extensions for more extensive tiling support such as: https://github.com/kwin-scripts/kwin-tiling https://github.com/kwin-scripts/kwin-tiling
- vanderZwan 7y ago
  > But I can imagine that if I had sent it to a bunch of other people who have no interest in KDE they would have closed the page again. The OMGUbuntu site did a decent write-up: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2020/01/kde-plasma-5-18-lts-features https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2020/01/kde-plasma-5-18-lts-feat... Anyway, updating KDE Neon as I'm typing this. Looking forward to new bits of polish :)
haspok 7y ago
How about proper multi-display support (including mixing HiDPI and low-res displays)? Every time I connect my FHD laptop to my UHD monitor the windows on the desktop move around completely randomly. It is better than before, because they used to move outside the visible area, they fixed at least that. But hey, at least there is an Emoji Selector now (???).
- jonny383 7y ago
  Generally speaking, multi-display monitor support is a mess on Linux (especially if you so anything slightly out of the ordinary). KDE honestly seems the best for this, although on the latest version of GNOME has fractional scaling available behind a flag (although also buggy and very slow).
  - ognarb 7y ago
    Hopefully, Wayland will improve the situation a bit.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
      Yep, just need to give it another decade or so I suppose.
      - vetinari 7y ago
        The future is already there, just not evenly distributed ;)
      - cies 7y ago
        My guess: 1 year more for Gnome, 3 more years for KDE. That assumes non-Nvidia hardware. If you have one of those you are on a potentially very different timeline, that I do not dare to predict.
    - jhoechtl 7y ago
      Duke nukem forever!
dreary_dugong 7y ago
Been using KDE for a few years now and I've always been impressed with the experience. I'm really looking forward to this update, for me night mode is critical. (I understand there were third party solutions but I often found them to be buggy or otherwise difficult to use). Here's hoping my distro adds the update to its repositories soon.
- nunodonato 7y ago
  I've been using gnome for more than 15 years, but I have to say I'm feeling quite an urge to try KDE again
UI_at_80x24 7y ago
Every time there is a new KDE announcement/release I give it another try. I don't like it. I miss the KDE 3.5 days. The DE seemed more cohesive then and worked very well. Ever since they went down the plasma route it looks like they focused on making it look pretty. The whitepapers and announcements made it sound like there was hefty backend improvements but each update was buggy for me. I still use KDE apps, I find that a lot of them are perfect; but the DE has been limping along since the 4.0 re-write. Rant: Why the fuck would I ever use a DE "app-store-thing"?! I use my OS's tools for installing/upgrading/uninstalling programs. Stop trying to help, you are making it worse. Side note: I really liked the music in that video.
- ognarb 7y ago
  > Rant: Why the fuck would I ever use a DE "app-store-thing"?! I use my OS's tools for installing/upgrading/uninstalling programs. Stop trying to help, you are making it worse. The DE "app-store-thing" is a front end to packageKit and packageKit is a front end to your package manager.
  - ohithereyou 7y ago
    On some distros there is an additional software store that connects into Snap[0], so they're technically not distro supplied packages. [0] https://snapcraft.io/ https://snapcraft.io/
- ohithereyou 7y ago
  Have you tried Trinity Desktop Environment[0], a continuation of KDE 3.5? [0] https://www.trinitydesktop.org/ https://www.trinitydesktop.org/
  - UI_at_80x24 7y ago
    No I haven't! Thanks for the link.
- slightwinder 7y ago
  Yeah, mee too. With KDE 3.x there where many people which were eager in improving abilities and workflows of KDE. With KDE this somehow changed, the focus switched to other things, many people seems to have left and today there seems to be a different spirit remaining in the project. Even today, a decade later I don't get the impression that KDE ever moved beyond what it once was and promised. Kind of a shame as there are still many people doing good work there.
skriticos2 7y ago
I just recently switched to kubuntu (KDE) back from fedora (Gnome 3). On one hand I do like that the desktop does not try to re-define basic muscle memory things, like changing the shortcut if you try to switch between two windows of the same application. (Seriously Gnome, WTF?). On the other hand it crashed left and right after install (less so now that it settled down a bit) and there are a million QA type problems. I have a 4K 27" screen and everything is tiny by default, so I put scaling to 1.3 and Kate + Terminal are full of lines. The computation of the window update is broken.. I browse the internet and the ticket is open - since two years. Then there is Wayland, which I got used to on Gnome and think is a great achievement - not in KDE though, that is still highly experimental and so back it goes to ancient protocols. Yay! So yes, we are building fancy new stuff on an eroding foundation is the message I am getting from KDE nowadays. Compared to Gnome - which is stable but weird. Thinking back on the Gnome 2 / compiz / beryl days we have gone downhill so much it's not funny.. ps. I know I'm complaining too much and that's unfair to an open source project. And I still perceive Liunx desktops as superior to Windows which has it's own issues (technical and non-technical). Just wondering what all the effort was spent on in the last decade or two. I just don't see it.
- diffeomorphism 7y ago
  Kubuntu has a bad reputation for a reason. The fractional scaling could use some work, agreed. The foundations seem rock solid, but work on new stuff (e.g. wayland, fractional scaling) could be quicker.
  - skriticos2 7y ago
    Kubuntu at least boots. I was trying neon first, which refused to do so on my laptop.
    - tokamak-teapot 7y ago
      Ah I was about to suggest neon as it’s been very stable here. There is still that bug with X11 and scaling, but Wayland worked for me so I stuck with it.
yori 7y ago
I use XFCE. Are there any good reasons to switch to KDE? Honest question.
- bovermyer 7y ago
  I'm making assumptions here about your use case, but probably not. XFCE users are typically closer to the terminal than, say, Gnome or Plasma users. You'd be better served by i3, I imagine.
- niccolove 7y ago
  I think so, but what exactly depends on what you need. Commonly liked features are: - User intuitive widgets that can be easily dragged around in panels with a third party store directly in Plasma itself, containing useful widgets such as calendar events sync and todo lists - Complete customization but also pretty by default and getting better; browse third party colorschemes, plasma themes, global themes, panel layouts (latte), application styles (kvantum), etc etc - Powerful notification system that allows you to reply inline to telegram messages, embed screenshots so you can drag those around [https://postimg.cc/q6qLMXK1 https://postimg.cc/q6qLMXK1], embed files that you can also drag around + interact with, sticky notifications for ongoing operations - still having the ability to go with a do not disturb mode for a custom time and set notification importance in a granular way - Powerful integration with phone (see phone battery, see and send messages, see incoming calls, see/stop/play videos [youtube / vlc] playing on the pc from the phone, see phone notifications, and so on) and integration with browsers (native notifications, native downloads [see notifications above], search and open browser tabs from krunner, etc) - Powerful search (krunner) that can check spelling errors, find browser tabs, convert units, do mathematical operations, search the apps store, run command line programs, open locations, see recent documents, add task to the todo list (zanshin), supports third party runners, etc etc etc - System tray that only shows relevant widgets so you can keep it minimalist but without loosing any possibly useful option (system tray elements for usb drives, night color, display configuration, clipboard, vaults, media playback, printers, kate sessions, etc etc) - Third party stuff like Latte and Kvantum that allows you to customize your desktop in any way imaginable (quick browse for "Plasma" on r/unixporn will confirm this) - Consistent apps that follow the general theme, some of them also convergent, e.g. all maui apps (index [files], vvave [music], buho [notes], pix [images], ...) work exactly the same on desktop and on your Android phone as well, so you don't have to learn to use different applications on each OS - Light and fast. Yeah, I know xfce is very light and fast, but Plasma 5 is very light as well recently. I have a pinebook, the $100 machine, and it's usable both with Plasma and xfce (both uses around 340mib of RAM there). - Kontact suite with Akonadi integration that allows for various apps all integrated with each other (todo from one app will appear in the other), with the generic Kontact app containing all them and being able to show a dashboard with all recent notes, to-dos, events, mails etc. - Support for phones with Plasma mobile and other tech things (e.g.: TVs afaik and the mycroft thing), with Plasma Mobile using the same underlying plasma base component, so it's consistent + compatible - Any application you could need, there are a lot of those all made by the KDE community, and those are all following the KDE human interface guidelines and following the global theme, so that's nice ...I kinda lost track of time, sorry for the essay, I just think that Plasma is great and this is how I can best explain why
shmerl 7y ago
Still waiting for subsurfaces clipping bug fix on Wayland.
bovermyer 7y ago
I may be in the minority here, but I really like the Emoji Selector. I'm in the terminal most of the time, and anything that has quick keyboard shortcuts but adds character makes me happy.
useragent86 7y ago
I don't think this is a good idea: > There are quite a few new things in Plasma 5.18's System Settings. First and foremost is the optional User Feedback settings. These are disabled by default to protect your privacy. > That said, if you do decide to share information about your installation with us, none of the options allows the system to send any kind of personal information. In fact, the Feedback settings slider lets you decide how much you want to share with KDE developers. KDE developers can later use this information to improve Plasma further and better adapt it to your needs.
- jcrben 7y ago
  As someone who wants to share as much information on bugs as possible, it seems great!
- ryukafalz 7y ago
  Why not? So long as it’s disabled by default and users are therefore intentionally turning it on, I think it’s fine.
markosaric 7y ago
Looks like a nice update! I also like the fact that they use a PeerTube embedded video as their official video announcement https://peertube.mastodon.host/videos/watch/cda402b5-2bcb-4c0c-b232-0fa5a4dacaf5?start= https://peertube.mastodon.host/videos/watch/cda402b5-2bcb-4c...
AzzieElbab 7y ago
I am a huge fan of kde and the only feature I really want is better tiling and snapping
elkos 7y ago
I'm a Debian user that uses KDE (most of the timel, in many cases people insist on suggesting that the standard KDE experience in Debian is subpar. I'm am fairly happy with it but is anyone aware of a solution to enhance that experience to something more close to what the KDE community considers ideal?
- diffeomorphism 7y ago
  KDE on debian is fine. The issue is that debian wants long term releases and kde only releases those sometimes and not necessarily at a time that fits debian's schedule. So you often get "kde as it was two years ago". The horror! After all, we all remember how using computers two years ago was pure agony until things radically changed...
- shmerl 7y ago
  I use Debian testing for desktop. The problem is that KDE maintainers in Debian are understaffed, and also some transitions take very long: https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/plasma-desktop https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/plasma-desktop

142 points by mistermatt 7y ago

Just started using KDE neon in a vm on my iMac for office work and it's really really good and productive. Kudos to the KDE team.

jhoechtl 7y ago

No news from the wayland front?

scrollaway 7y ago
I use KDE on Wayland. It works pretty well; there's still bugs I hit once in a while (vscode especially sometimes is missing dialog windows and I have to restart it).
- MayeulC 7y ago
  It works quite well, but it's very crashy. I tried yesterday (5.17.3 IIRC, mind you): plasmashell crashed, then followed by systemsettings5, and konsole. Drkonqui popped up for the bug report, but crashed halfway. Then popped up again with a link for manual bug reporting. Clicked it, it crashed again. Sometimes QML applets crash (there was a bug with the CUPS one recently, if there were duplicated job IDs), and bring down plasmashell with them. But that also happens on X11, which can leave the environment quite empty, and hard to debug for my non-techie family. On Wayland, I miss primary clipboard buffer (selection), which works on sway. Also, default popup placement is wrong. Besides that, not much. I really like KDE plasma, but started using sway for Wayland, and stayed for the tiling. I might think about writing a kwin module to ingest my sway config, and only that... :)
- jhoechtl 7y ago
  Blurry firefox, blurry thunderbird anybody? Still plasma on wayland related fixes in the pipeline. But getting close...
  - pedrocr 7y ago
    At least for Firefox that probably means it's running with X emulation. But the Firefox Wayland backend works fine, it just needs to be enabled. But sure, Wayland still has quite a few corner cases like that.
    - jhoechtl 7y ago
      I know about GDK_BACKEND=wayland firefox That works on Gnome and sway, not on plasma. Intel GPU. Still open bugs on bugs.kde.org
      - pedrocr 7y ago
        I believe the correct variable these days is: MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 firefox This makes firefox a full wayland app. But I only use sway, so maybe there are KDE specific bugs.
ognarb 7y ago
For this release, just the usual bug fixes, and small features. But hopefully, for next release pen support: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGx0TlNJlzs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGx0TlNJlzs
- solarkraft 7y ago
  Oh shit! Have my cries of pain finally been heard? Can you tell me more about this? My last knowledge was that KWin doesn't have pen support because QtWayland doesn't have it and there'd be a GSoC application for adding it.

rjzzleep 7y ago

Maybe something is wrong with me, but it irks me that there are 40 seconds of meaningless video before they show stuff in that video. I ended up skipping the video and skimming through the poorly formatted article. My first impression is that it looks good. Lots of useful features. But I can imagine that if I had sent it to a bunch of other people who have no interest in KDE they would have closed the page again. That said I have a question: It seems that Plasma has tiling WM features. How useful are they? One thing about tiling WM is that typical it's only part of a package. Another part is that people are typically looking at a lightweight hotkey driven workflow and the ability to script where and how windows appear with occasional non tiling things to fit applications that don't work well for tiling systems. The other question I have is that one of the reasons why I go for these "lightweight" setups. Althouh xfce-settings daemons + tiling wm is what I do is also because of power usage. How is KDE in terms of power usage? And yes, I realize that firefox, blink based browser, slack are the biggest power drains.

emilsedgh 7y ago
Kwin used to have tiling support builtin. That was removed from core. There are multiple different Kwin script that add the tiling functionality now. Like this [0] and this [1] Regarding being lightweight, KDE is very very light these days. In terms of memory usage it rivals XFCE. Not quite sure about power usage, but since Plasma Mobile is being developed and it shares a lot of code with Desktop, I assume it shouldn't be too bad. [0] https://github.com/lingtjien/Grid-Tiling-Kwin https://github.com/lingtjien/Grid-Tiling-Kwin [1] https://github.com/kwin-scripts/kwin-tiling https://github.com/kwin-scripts/kwin-tiling
opencl 7y ago
The only out of the box tiling feature I'm aware of is the Windows-like hotkeys (meta+arrows) for snapping windows to half or a quarter of the screen. There are kwin extensions for more extensive tiling support such as: https://github.com/kwin-scripts/kwin-tiling https://github.com/kwin-scripts/kwin-tiling
vanderZwan 7y ago
> But I can imagine that if I had sent it to a bunch of other people who have no interest in KDE they would have closed the page again. The OMGUbuntu site did a decent write-up: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2020/01/kde-plasma-5-18-lts-features https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2020/01/kde-plasma-5-18-lts-feat... Anyway, updating KDE Neon as I'm typing this. Looking forward to new bits of polish :)

haspok 7y ago

How about proper multi-display support (including mixing HiDPI and low-res displays)? Every time I connect my FHD laptop to my UHD monitor the windows on the desktop move around completely randomly. It is better than before, because they used to move outside the visible area, they fixed at least that. But hey, at least there is an Emoji Selector now (???).

jonny383 7y ago
Generally speaking, multi-display monitor support is a mess on Linux (especially if you so anything slightly out of the ordinary). KDE honestly seems the best for this, although on the latest version of GNOME has fractional scaling available behind a flag (although also buggy and very slow).
- ognarb 7y ago
  Hopefully, Wayland will improve the situation a bit.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
    Yep, just need to give it another decade or so I suppose.
    - vetinari 7y ago
      The future is already there, just not evenly distributed ;)
    - cies 7y ago
      My guess: 1 year more for Gnome, 3 more years for KDE. That assumes non-Nvidia hardware. If you have one of those you are on a potentially very different timeline, that I do not dare to predict.
  - jhoechtl 7y ago
    Duke nukem forever!

dreary_dugong 7y ago

Been using KDE for a few years now and I've always been impressed with the experience. I'm really looking forward to this update, for me night mode is critical. (I understand there were third party solutions but I often found them to be buggy or otherwise difficult to use). Here's hoping my distro adds the update to its repositories soon.

nunodonato 7y ago
I've been using gnome for more than 15 years, but I have to say I'm feeling quite an urge to try KDE again

UI_at_80x24 7y ago

Every time there is a new KDE announcement/release I give it another try. I don't like it. I miss the KDE 3.5 days. The DE seemed more cohesive then and worked very well. Ever since they went down the plasma route it looks like they focused on making it look pretty. The whitepapers and announcements made it sound like there was hefty backend improvements but each update was buggy for me. I still use KDE apps, I find that a lot of them are perfect; but the DE has been limping along since the 4.0 re-write. Rant: Why the fuck would I ever use a DE "app-store-thing"?! I use my OS's tools for installing/upgrading/uninstalling programs. Stop trying to help, you are making it worse. Side note: I really liked the music in that video.

ognarb 7y ago
> Rant: Why the fuck would I ever use a DE "app-store-thing"?! I use my OS's tools for installing/upgrading/uninstalling programs. Stop trying to help, you are making it worse. The DE "app-store-thing" is a front end to packageKit and packageKit is a front end to your package manager.
- ohithereyou 7y ago
  On some distros there is an additional software store that connects into Snap[0], so they're technically not distro supplied packages. [0] https://snapcraft.io/ https://snapcraft.io/
ohithereyou 7y ago
Have you tried Trinity Desktop Environment[0], a continuation of KDE 3.5? [0] https://www.trinitydesktop.org/ https://www.trinitydesktop.org/
- UI_at_80x24 7y ago
  No I haven't! Thanks for the link.
slightwinder 7y ago
Yeah, mee too. With KDE 3.x there where many people which were eager in improving abilities and workflows of KDE. With KDE this somehow changed, the focus switched to other things, many people seems to have left and today there seems to be a different spirit remaining in the project. Even today, a decade later I don't get the impression that KDE ever moved beyond what it once was and promised. Kind of a shame as there are still many people doing good work there.

skriticos2 7y ago

I just recently switched to kubuntu (KDE) back from fedora (Gnome 3). On one hand I do like that the desktop does not try to re-define basic muscle memory things, like changing the shortcut if you try to switch between two windows of the same application. (Seriously Gnome, WTF?). On the other hand it crashed left and right after install (less so now that it settled down a bit) and there are a million QA type problems. I have a 4K 27" screen and everything is tiny by default, so I put scaling to 1.3 and Kate + Terminal are full of lines. The computation of the window update is broken.. I browse the internet and the ticket is open - since two years. Then there is Wayland, which I got used to on Gnome and think is a great achievement - not in KDE though, that is still highly experimental and so back it goes to ancient protocols. Yay! So yes, we are building fancy new stuff on an eroding foundation is the message I am getting from KDE nowadays. Compared to Gnome - which is stable but weird. Thinking back on the Gnome 2 / compiz / beryl days we have gone downhill so much it's not funny.. ps. I know I'm complaining too much and that's unfair to an open source project. And I still perceive Liunx desktops as superior to Windows which has it's own issues (technical and non-technical). Just wondering what all the effort was spent on in the last decade or two. I just don't see it.

diffeomorphism 7y ago
Kubuntu has a bad reputation for a reason. The fractional scaling could use some work, agreed. The foundations seem rock solid, but work on new stuff (e.g. wayland, fractional scaling) could be quicker.
- skriticos2 7y ago
  Kubuntu at least boots. I was trying neon first, which refused to do so on my laptop.
  - tokamak-teapot 7y ago
    Ah I was about to suggest neon as it’s been very stable here. There is still that bug with X11 and scaling, but Wayland worked for me so I stuck with it.

yori 7y ago

I use XFCE. Are there any good reasons to switch to KDE? Honest question.

bovermyer 7y ago
I'm making assumptions here about your use case, but probably not. XFCE users are typically closer to the terminal than, say, Gnome or Plasma users. You'd be better served by i3, I imagine.
niccolove 7y ago
I think so, but what exactly depends on what you need. Commonly liked features are: - User intuitive widgets that can be easily dragged around in panels with a third party store directly in Plasma itself, containing useful widgets such as calendar events sync and todo lists - Complete customization but also pretty by default and getting better; browse third party colorschemes, plasma themes, global themes, panel layouts (latte), application styles (kvantum), etc etc - Powerful notification system that allows you to reply inline to telegram messages, embed screenshots so you can drag those around [https://postimg.cc/q6qLMXK1 https://postimg.cc/q6qLMXK1], embed files that you can also drag around + interact with, sticky notifications for ongoing operations - still having the ability to go with a do not disturb mode for a custom time and set notification importance in a granular way - Powerful integration with phone (see phone battery, see and send messages, see incoming calls, see/stop/play videos [youtube / vlc] playing on the pc from the phone, see phone notifications, and so on) and integration with browsers (native notifications, native downloads [see notifications above], search and open browser tabs from krunner, etc) - Powerful search (krunner) that can check spelling errors, find browser tabs, convert units, do mathematical operations, search the apps store, run command line programs, open locations, see recent documents, add task to the todo list (zanshin), supports third party runners, etc etc etc - System tray that only shows relevant widgets so you can keep it minimalist but without loosing any possibly useful option (system tray elements for usb drives, night color, display configuration, clipboard, vaults, media playback, printers, kate sessions, etc etc) - Third party stuff like Latte and Kvantum that allows you to customize your desktop in any way imaginable (quick browse for "Plasma" on r/unixporn will confirm this) - Consistent apps that follow the general theme, some of them also convergent, e.g. all maui apps (index [files], vvave [music], buho [notes], pix [images], ...) work exactly the same on desktop and on your Android phone as well, so you don't have to learn to use different applications on each OS - Light and fast. Yeah, I know xfce is very light and fast, but Plasma 5 is very light as well recently. I have a pinebook, the $100 machine, and it's usable both with Plasma and xfce (both uses around 340mib of RAM there). - Kontact suite with Akonadi integration that allows for various apps all integrated with each other (todo from one app will appear in the other), with the generic Kontact app containing all them and being able to show a dashboard with all recent notes, to-dos, events, mails etc. - Support for phones with Plasma mobile and other tech things (e.g.: TVs afaik and the mycroft thing), with Plasma Mobile using the same underlying plasma base component, so it's consistent + compatible - Any application you could need, there are a lot of those all made by the KDE community, and those are all following the KDE human interface guidelines and following the global theme, so that's nice ...I kinda lost track of time, sorry for the essay, I just think that Plasma is great and this is how I can best explain why

shmerl 7y ago

Still waiting for subsurfaces clipping bug fix on Wayland.

bovermyer 7y ago

I may be in the minority here, but I really like the Emoji Selector. I'm in the terminal most of the time, and anything that has quick keyboard shortcuts but adds character makes me happy.

useragent86 7y ago

I don't think this is a good idea: > There are quite a few new things in Plasma 5.18's System Settings. First and foremost is the optional User Feedback settings. These are disabled by default to protect your privacy. > That said, if you do decide to share information about your installation with us, none of the options allows the system to send any kind of personal information. In fact, the Feedback settings slider lets you decide how much you want to share with KDE developers. KDE developers can later use this information to improve Plasma further and better adapt it to your needs.

jcrben 7y ago
As someone who wants to share as much information on bugs as possible, it seems great!
ryukafalz 7y ago
Why not? So long as it’s disabled by default and users are therefore intentionally turning it on, I think it’s fine.

markosaric 7y ago

Looks like a nice update! I also like the fact that they use a PeerTube embedded video as their official video announcement https://peertube.mastodon.host/videos/watch/cda402b5-2bcb-4c0c-b232-0fa5a4dacaf5?start= https://peertube.mastodon.host/videos/watch/cda402b5-2bcb-4c...

AzzieElbab 7y ago

I am a huge fan of kde and the only feature I really want is better tiling and snapping

elkos 7y ago

I'm a Debian user that uses KDE (most of the timel, in many cases people insist on suggesting that the standard KDE experience in Debian is subpar. I'm am fairly happy with it but is anyone aware of a solution to enhance that experience to something more close to what the KDE community considers ideal?

diffeomorphism 7y ago
KDE on debian is fine. The issue is that debian wants long term releases and kde only releases those sometimes and not necessarily at a time that fits debian's schedule. So you often get "kde as it was two years ago". The horror! After all, we all remember how using computers two years ago was pure agony until things radically changed...
shmerl 7y ago
I use Debian testing for desktop. The problem is that KDE maintainers in Debian are understaffed, and also some transitions take very long: https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/plasma-desktop https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/plasma-desktop