10 ms·

KDE Plasma Mobile 21.07

120 points by jlpcsl 5y ago

Darmody 5y ago
Oh God, they should stop using stupid names like KClock.
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago
  Yeah, putting "K" in front of every app/product of yours is dumb, unlike that company who puts "i" in front of everything, that's genius. /s
  - scrollaway 5y ago
    I'm a KDE long time user and contributor, and i agree with the GP's comment. Apple does it more sparingly (now), and fairly consistently: as a product line evolved. The iMac line did it when it was "cool", the iPod was the next one, and the iPhone evolved from the iPod so it made a lot of sense (and thus so did iOS). There's not really anything else Apple names this way. Apple TV, Macbook, Airpods, Safari... Whereas with KDE everything has got to have a K, it's pretty ridiculous. It's also not a particularly "pretty" letter and you end up with names that are either purposeful misspellings, midKapitalized, are plain bad puns, or occasionally and at best, are merely oKay. KDE does not have a great brand. Apple does.
    - rascul 5y ago
      Currently Apple also has iPad, iCloud, iLife, iTunes, iMessage, iMovie, and iWork. Formerly, Apple had iDVD, iPhoto, iTools, iWeb, and iSight. It might also be interesting to note that Apple licenses iOS from Cisco [0]. [0] https://appleinsider.com/articles/10/06/08/cisco_licenses_ios_name_to_apple_screenshot_shows_iwork_on_iphone https://appleinsider.com/articles/10/06/08/cisco_licenses_io...
      - eddieroger 5y ago
        They also have MacBook Pro, Mac mini, Mac Pro, AppleTV (+), AirPods (Pro, Max), HomePod, Pencil, Watch, HomeKit, Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Magic Mouse, Magic Trackpad, Smart Keyboard. Also, Apple no longer has iLife or iTunes, and "iWork" is no longer a bundle, but even if it was, its apps are Pages, Keynote and Numbers. No "i"s there. They use the "i" prefix more sparingly now, as the original post said.
        abrowne 5y ago
        iBooks is now Books too.
      - lucideer 5y ago
        That sounds exactly like it was used sparingly: Apple have a lot more than 12 products. I've never heard of iLife, iTools, iWeb, iWork or iSight so its use in flagship products is even more sensibly sparing. iTunes has been replaced by Apple Music, and possibly iMovie too??? It's also worth noting Apple has been somewhat mocked got their overuse of i. Despite the sparing use. So KDE tacking it onto everything is even less sensible in this context. I think the K naming has probably hampered adoption of KDE products in the long term: I was always resistant to install K* apps when I was using a non-KDE desktop due to compatibility paranoia, something I tended not to even consider when installing gnome/gtk apps for example (which tend mostly not to be prefixed with g or gtk- or similar)
        toyg 5y ago
        > That sounds exactly like it was used sparingly [...] iTunes has been replaced [...] , and possibly iMovie too The i-branding was very, very effective. Apple was one of the very few brands that really managed to "own" the internet in the mind of the average consumer. Which is one of the reasons it was wildly successful. The new branding, in comparison, is meh. They now just leverage "Apple". Nothing else, because they think they are too good. Creating new brands is difficult and risky, so they just don't do it because "we don't need it". It's a sign of decadence, and you can see it in the history of all corporate behemoths. Once Microsoft became huge, everything became "Microsoft This" or "Windows That" - they stopped making bets, and just leveraged their established brands. The rebirth was a fountain of fresh brands: Azure, Surface, Office365. "Apple Music" and "Apple TV" are one of the many symptoms of a culturally-dying corporation. Like Microsoft, they will continue to be fabulously rich for decades, maybe score the occasional win like the move to ARM. But the new booms will come from elsewhere.
    - tttechhh 5y ago
      Can't really grasp why an open-source project would need a great brand in the first place. The one thing that keeps me in the *nix universe is the ability to pick and choose my desired software (and hardware ofc) without being influenced by iMarketing. I really dont care if KDE has a poor brand as long as it does its job well.
      - Darmody 5y ago
        A good product without a good brand is almost useless. Good products have died because they failed to get enough attention. In this case. The more users and interest in KDE/Plasma, the better for the whole environment and the developers.
    - dkdbejwi383 5y ago
      The i originally stood for "internet" when it was a new thing for the home user. The K in KDE stands for nothing in particular.
      - jtvjan 5y ago
        The K stands for kool!
        dkdbejwi383 5y ago
        > The K was originally suggested to stand for "Kool", but it was quickly decided that the K should stand for nothing in particular. According to Wikipedia, however there is no citation.
        jtvjan 5y ago
        Matthias Ettrich, the founder of KDE, called it that in this post: https://groups.google.com/g/de.comp.os.linux.misc/c/SDbiV3Iat_s https://groups.google.com/g/de.comp.os.linux.misc/c/SDbiV3Ia...
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - chriswarbo 5y ago
      > Whereas with KDE everything has got to have a K, it's pretty ridiculous. Not really. The main desktop/interface, i.e. that users spend most time looking at, is called Plasma. The file manager, another high-usage application, is called Dolphin. The theme is Oxygen/Breeze. Claiming 'everything has got to have a K' is about a decade out of date. Sure there are still things like KClock, KRunner, KWin, etc. but they mostly seem to be very old projects, from back when 'everything has got to have a K'. Others, like Konqueror, Kontact, etc. seem like pretty reasonable names.
    - simion314 5y ago
      >everything has got to have a K No longer true. But nobody wants to rename well known apps like Konsole to Terminal , Kate to "Text Editor".
    - troyvit 5y ago
      I don't mind it. If I see something with a surprise K at the front or somewhere in it, I can assume it's a KDE product and I know where to go for support. Maybe it's annoying to everybody else but this branding makes my life simpler.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - rimliu 5y ago
    And which company is that? (I know you mean Apple, but Apple has iPhone and iPad, and that's it.)
    - sseagull 5y ago
      Well, software/service names as well. iMessage, iCloud, iMovie. But I agree it is a little less standard than KDE putting K in front of everything
  - Longhanks 5y ago
    That company has stopped doing that >5 years ago. Since then, launched products are simply called Apple Watch, Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Pencil, AirPods, AirTags... Also, the original comment did not say anything about Apple. Stop trolling.
  - teekert 5y ago
    Klock would be better indeed!
    - eldaisfish 5y ago
      If you follow the trend of KDE's naming scheme, you would expect KLock to be a lock, not a clock.
      - teekert 5y ago
        Like how I expect Kontact to be about ontacts and Konsole to offer me an onsole ;) (Sorry couldn't resist, I know many apps just have a normal name with a K prepended.)
    - zanderz 5y ago
      Or Kronometer!
  - jorvi 5y ago
    Apple doesn't call their apps iCalculator, iCamera, iContacts, iSettings, etc
    - diffeomorphism 5y ago
      Neither does kde. That said, some/any name is vastly preferable to just "camera". If you have a question about the app how are you supposed to google for that? You start searching for "apple camera app" at which point that might as well be its name.
  - dennis_moore 5y ago
    For someone who doesn't use KDE on my main distro it's great. It's a giveaway that I probably shouldn't apt-get that program. (Not that I have anything against KDE software, just the idea of installing it on non-KDE environments)
  - qudat 5y ago
    Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery but being a copy cat does not make you innovative.
    - marcosdumay 5y ago
      Hum... Since the Apple trend is much more recent, the KDE developers should be very flattered. Anyway, the Keverything is a copy of the Xeverything, and both are for practical reasons since they point to the requirements to run the software.
  - jeroenhd 5y ago
    Although the iSomething branding is equally stupid, I think you've also got a case of the Kiki-effect here[1]. The harsh k-sound is a lot less pleasing to use than the soft I-sound that prefixes Apple's products. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouba/kiki_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouba/kiki_effect
- szszrk 5y ago
  Why? And what do you propose? Knames are mostly ok, a user knows right from package list if this app is meant for his environment, or rather not. Same with gApps. The name tells what the app does. Why would I be mad at this?
  - saturn_vk 5y ago
    An "app drawer" is going to look extremely weird, with every entry starting with a "K"
    - xcambar 5y ago
      Well, to be fair, if every entry starts with a "K", it won't make any difference in sorting.
      - fomine3 5y ago
        It breaks alphabetical seek bar like this https://cdn57.androidauthority.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/app-drawer-microsoft-launcher-1.jpg https://cdn57.androidauthority.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/1...
        xcambar 5y ago
        You're right, but on the drawer I'm using (I don't remember the name), when no app starts with a specific letter, this letter does not show up on the vertical seek bar. :shrug:
  - Darmody 5y ago
    I don't propose anything. It's just that it looks crappy to me. It's like they didn't put any thought into it. Yeah, let's put K in front of everything. It's not visually appealing and sometimes it isn't even easily pronounceable. They have some great pieces of software but marketing wise it looks like they don't want to go beyond their Kusers. This is my opinion anyway.
    - 5y ago
- magicalhippo 5y ago
  I found it cheesy back in the day, but I've grown to like unique names compared to generic ones. Makes it so much easier to search for when you got an issue or similar.
- simion314 5y ago
  Yeah, they should use "smart" names like GNOME , I am wondering how those users will google "how do I do X with Files/Browser/Player"
  - gizdan 5y ago
    You Google "how do I do X with gnome player", has worked for me every time.
    - chupasaurus 5y ago
      Maybe, now try that with Files.
  - zingplex 5y ago
    Easy, just use the inscrutable internal name for the application "how do I do X with Nautilus/Epiphany/Totem"
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- j1elo 5y ago
  It does look crappy, IMHO. It feels like a 2000's trend that was cute (pun intended) but nowadays it's been 20 years and now looks out of date. Probably it's just me, though: at that time I was working at a company with a name starting by V. The product name itself also started by V. We used the C++ Qt framework, where every class starts with Q. So the lead devs picked up the trend and all our classes' names also started with V. Basically everything was named as something following the same letter.
  - simion314 5y ago
    >So the lead devs picked up the trend and all our classes' names also started with V. Basically everything was named as something following the same letter. That can be usefull, you know by looking at a class name , if it starts with Q is a native Qt stuff, and if it starts with V is your own custom stuff. As an example if you would see a VDropDown you will know that some of the developer in the company was asked to "improve" the native dropdown , you should check if there are bugs there.
    - j1elo 5y ago
      Yes, I liked at the moment, and still today see the appeal of using a common prefix for the internals of a software project. However I don't think it's a good idea, nor pretty or attractive, that such a technical decision transpires to the public facing side of the project: first and foremost, its name.
  - e3bc54b2 5y ago
    Like how Apple continued the NS* trend for decades?
    - j1elo 5y ago
      Yes, something like that. But I never developed specifically for Apple platforms... what is (or was) the meaning behind "NS"?
      - 5y ago
- vvillena 5y ago
  Kclock is a fantastic internal name for that little application. In the associated articles you can see the user-facing name for kclock is "Clock": https://www.plasma-mobile.org/2021/06/10/plasma-mobile-update-june/ https://www.plasma-mobile.org/2021/06/10/plasma-mobile-updat...
christophilus 5y ago
Anyone using this as a daily driver? What’s the experience like? (I’m hoping to move to a Linux phone when my old iPhone finally bites the dust.)
- mech422 5y ago
  Have you looked at Enlightenment(1)? I believe it used to power Tizen back in the day... 1: https://www.enlightenment.org/ https://www.enlightenment.org/
- jcun4128 5y ago
  I have a Pinephone, briefly tried KDE as I bought the KDE edition. It is a pretty design but what made me change from it is not detecting external display. Also I was not a fan of the "package manager" it was using. Arguable that's the OS (might have been Manjaro). I ended up going with Mobian and Phosh. I even installed ARM VS code on it but it was so slow like 5 second lag per click. Anyway problem right now is the modem doesn't detect my TMobile micro sim card. I don't know why, it worked before. The battery also dies too fast even in airplane mode sitting on my desk. And then of course the lack of apps and the Phosh UI is not that great imo, I don't know why they went with the design of the vertical split when finding apps. Maybe they can't match the gestures and what not that Android/iOS has. Still it's neat, motivation to learn C++/GTK when I have the time. As far as your actual question there are a couple of people on Reddit that are using it as a daily driver. [1] this is a little old though. As for why VS Code my fantasy is the Samsung Dex idea however I'm not going to drop $2K on a flagship cellphone. The Pinephone is not that strong but I was looking to get a Qemu VM running on it that would neat. https://www.reddit.com/r/PINE64official/comments/kxgtlu/pinephone_as_a_daily_driver_a_nonpredetermined/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PINE64official/comments/kxgtlu/pine...
  - TheFreim 5y ago
    I don't have cell service and just basically use my phone as a glorified text editor (reminders, emails, low end browsing), would appear the pine phone would be perfect for me. I miss the ipod touch days, they did everything I needed.
gary17the 5y ago
The "Strategic advantages of Phosh for mobile Linux" article[1] mentions that Plasma Mobile roadmap "in September 2017 showed [Plasma Mobile] as having finished the prototyping phase, but not yet ready for feature phones and basic smartphones". It's 2021, four years later, and the Plasma Mobile roadmap[2] seems to be in pretty much the same place (or perhaps it's just an outdated page?). Does that mean that the Plasma Mobile effort is badly undermanned and will take about 10 years to achieve the >>Plasma Mobile 3.0 "Featured Smartphone"<< milestone? [1] https://amosbbatto.wordpress.com/2020/08/05/advantages-of-phosh/ https://amosbbatto.wordpress.com/2020/08/05/advantages-of-ph... [2] https://www.plasma-mobile.org/roadmap/ https://www.plasma-mobile.org/roadmap/
ekianjo 5y ago
Is there a good email client for KDE Mobile yet?
- ognarb 5y ago
  I made a small proof of concept 2 months ago. For now it's only able to read mails and it will take some times until I'm able to refactor KMail mail composer to also work on mobile. There was a screenshot of that in https://www.plasma-mobile.org/2021/04/27/plasma-mobile-update-march-april/ https://www.plasma-mobile.org/2021/04/27/plasma-mobile-updat...
  - ekianjo 5y ago
    Thanks for your work on this! It's a critical piece of software to have on a mobile device these days, I hope this project gains traction!
AbuAssar 5y ago
Can we install it on a rooted android phone?
- gary17the 5y ago
  Perhaps have a look at postmarketOS[1]. [1] https://postmarketos.org/ https://postmarketos.org/
grishka 5y ago
After all these years, it still looks like they need a good designer.
- mikevm 5y ago
  I really want to like KDE, but something about Plasma still feels off to me. Is it the lifeless grey color? Is it the ugly font? or ugly icons? I can't tell exactly where the problem lies, but at least GNOME looks much more polished. I wish it would reach the polish level of Windows or MacOS.
  - chaos_a 5y ago
    It's a lot of small inconsistencies that add up. Like the wifi icon being the wrong size for the amount of spacing it has around it, and also the fact that it's unclear what it actually does without clicking on it. The spacing in the settings menu in the final screenshot is horrible too, the text gap sizes just change for no reason and the design has two layers of headers that aren't visually distinct enough.
  - gizdan 5y ago
    Lot of small inconsistencies as another said. Look at this screenshot[0]. The padding on the contact name and avatar is completely off. Also look at the dialer[1], long inputs there are not that likely, but it still sucks that the numbers are behind the scroll bar. Don't get me wrong. Last time I used KDE was some 5-6 years ago. These small inconsistencies were a lot more common, and back then for me it meant it's unusuable. I've been following KDE development, from the screenshots I've seen, it has come a long way. There are nowhere near as many inconsistencies as there used to be back then. [0] https://plasma-mobile.org/2021/06/10/plasma-mobile-update-june/phonebook-toolbar.png https://plasma-mobile.org/2021/06/10/plasma-mobile-update-ju... [1] https://www.plasma-mobile.org/2021/06/10/plasma-mobile-update-june/dialer-longnum.png https://www.plasma-mobile.org/2021/06/10/plasma-mobile-updat...
    - jeroenhd 5y ago
      Funny, I'm much more bothered by the buttons floating at the bottom, one or two pixels from the border but not touching. The sharp, rectangular design of KDE also doesn't speak to me, which is kind of strange because I do like it in the old win9x designs. I think maybe it's the combination of sharp edges and soft shadows that annoy me? Most KDE design is actually pretty consistent, but the design language just doesn't sit well with me. I'll stick to Gnome/Phosh if Linux on phones ever becomes popular.
asaddhamani 5y ago
The first thing I’d want to see is screenshots, but I had to scroll halfway through the article to see any. And why does a mobile UI have tiny minimise, maximise, and close icons?
- ognarb 5y ago
  We usually have more screenshots in our blog posts. See https://www.plasma-mobile.org/2021/06/10/plasma-mobile-update-june/ https://www.plasma-mobile.org/2021/06/10/plasma-mobile-updat... and https://www.plasma-mobile.org/2021/04/27/plasma-mobile-update-march-april/ https://www.plasma-mobile.org/2021/04/27/plasma-mobile-updat....
  - solarkraft 5y ago
    This looks like you’re on a great course. There’s still a lot of work to do on the apps, but the shell is visually taking great shape! What was once a massive eye sore now looks pretty damn nice (especially the nav buttons, finally) and ready! This is a nice course. Please keep moving in that direction. Hopefully this also signifies a move to greater care for UI in general, i.e. more considerations regarding UX and fixing UI glitches. Exciting stuff. With KwinFT now using wlroots and this course continuing, Plasma could be a really great DE in a few years.
  - asaddhamani 5y ago
    This looks much better. If I may suggest some improvements: * The UI could be more consistent, some windows (Elisa, AudioTube) have blurred backgrounds, but most don't * The icons look dated because of the 3D shapes I think as it is, this targets an extremely niche audience who might not care for these things. I know this would be much more persuasive for me with a slick UI, being able to run desktop class apps on a mobile sized device would be awesome.
    - ognarb 5y ago
      It's not that we don't care about UI and UX, the problem is that there are less than 10 active developers working principally on this and none of us is working on it full time since most of us is either student or has a full time job. It's the unfortunate fate of most non-corporate backed open source projects.
solarkraft 5y ago
My main point of criticism of KDE, that their UIs look like they’re made by someone half asleep and looking somewhere else, is slowly, but steadily fading away. Big props for that! There’s still a long way to go, but I can absolutely see the effort succeeding. You rock, VDG (assuming they’re behind it)! I also like that the podcasts app is responsive (in the web sense). I was originally excited about Linux on phones because I want to use the same software on my devices whether large or small. If I used this app on my phone, I‘d want to use it on the desktop as well. I strongly believe this is where software is going (only 10 years after the web) and highly welcome it. Interestingly, Linux is extremely competitive with the other ecosystems in this regard due to Apple’s cautious approach and Microsoft appearing to be asleep at the wheel again. The Linux phone may be here earlier than many of us think.
- Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
  UI per se is not my issue with KDE, But the stability of their builtin softwares and that their focus seems to be adding new features than fixing what's already there. e.g. There are several threads on Memory, CPU hogging issues with dolphin(even when not indexing). Plasma shell related issues like icons go missing etc. Obviously inspite of that, KDE is still a great option for those looking for a stable and fully featured Linux desktop environment.
  - solarkraft 5y ago
    That’s my other issue. It’s so full of glitches … I hope this newfound interest in UI design will also have an effect on the sensitivity for bugs. Stability/resource usage wise I didn’t have many issues in the Wayland session at all, though. Seems like they’ve improved that a lot in the past years. I don’t use KDE for multiple reasons anymore, but I like how it usually understands what an advanced user wants to do, which no other DE really seems to. I massively appreciate that and have some hope they’ll get their act together in those areas eventually.
    - Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
      May I ask what are you using now? It's like I'm discovering a new bug every single day and when I look it up it exists for years without fix e.g. Even when dolphin is replaced KDE's kio-mtp intercepts mtp-protocol and stops mtp drives from being mounted by other applications. The fix is to manually change the mtp actions[1], which is known for over 7 years but not actually fixed. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/21sloi/thought_this_might_be_of_interest_to_others_a/ https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/21sloi/thought_this_mi...
pjmlp 5y ago
So the dialer is catching up with what any Nokia Series 30 was capable of doing 20 years ago?!?

120 points by jlpcsl 5y ago

Darmody 5y ago

Oh God, they should stop using stupid names like KClock.

ChuckNorris89 5y ago
Yeah, putting "K" in front of every app/product of yours is dumb, unlike that company who puts "i" in front of everything, that's genius. /s
- scrollaway 5y ago
  I'm a KDE long time user and contributor, and i agree with the GP's comment. Apple does it more sparingly (now), and fairly consistently: as a product line evolved. The iMac line did it when it was "cool", the iPod was the next one, and the iPhone evolved from the iPod so it made a lot of sense (and thus so did iOS). There's not really anything else Apple names this way. Apple TV, Macbook, Airpods, Safari... Whereas with KDE everything has got to have a K, it's pretty ridiculous. It's also not a particularly "pretty" letter and you end up with names that are either purposeful misspellings, midKapitalized, are plain bad puns, or occasionally and at best, are merely oKay. KDE does not have a great brand. Apple does.
  - rascul 5y ago
    Currently Apple also has iPad, iCloud, iLife, iTunes, iMessage, iMovie, and iWork. Formerly, Apple had iDVD, iPhoto, iTools, iWeb, and iSight. It might also be interesting to note that Apple licenses iOS from Cisco [0]. [0] https://appleinsider.com/articles/10/06/08/cisco_licenses_ios_name_to_apple_screenshot_shows_iwork_on_iphone https://appleinsider.com/articles/10/06/08/cisco_licenses_io...
    - eddieroger 5y ago
      They also have MacBook Pro, Mac mini, Mac Pro, AppleTV (+), AirPods (Pro, Max), HomePod, Pencil, Watch, HomeKit, Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Magic Mouse, Magic Trackpad, Smart Keyboard. Also, Apple no longer has iLife or iTunes, and "iWork" is no longer a bundle, but even if it was, its apps are Pages, Keynote and Numbers. No "i"s there. They use the "i" prefix more sparingly now, as the original post said.
      - abrowne 5y ago
        iBooks is now Books too.
    - lucideer 5y ago
      That sounds exactly like it was used sparingly: Apple have a lot more than 12 products. I've never heard of iLife, iTools, iWeb, iWork or iSight so its use in flagship products is even more sensibly sparing. iTunes has been replaced by Apple Music, and possibly iMovie too??? It's also worth noting Apple has been somewhat mocked got their overuse of i. Despite the sparing use. So KDE tacking it onto everything is even less sensible in this context. I think the K naming has probably hampered adoption of KDE products in the long term: I was always resistant to install K* apps when I was using a non-KDE desktop due to compatibility paranoia, something I tended not to even consider when installing gnome/gtk apps for example (which tend mostly not to be prefixed with g or gtk- or similar)
      - toyg 5y ago
        > That sounds exactly like it was used sparingly [...] iTunes has been replaced [...] , and possibly iMovie too The i-branding was very, very effective. Apple was one of the very few brands that really managed to "own" the internet in the mind of the average consumer. Which is one of the reasons it was wildly successful. The new branding, in comparison, is meh. They now just leverage "Apple". Nothing else, because they think they are too good. Creating new brands is difficult and risky, so they just don't do it because "we don't need it". It's a sign of decadence, and you can see it in the history of all corporate behemoths. Once Microsoft became huge, everything became "Microsoft This" or "Windows That" - they stopped making bets, and just leveraged their established brands. The rebirth was a fountain of fresh brands: Azure, Surface, Office365. "Apple Music" and "Apple TV" are one of the many symptoms of a culturally-dying corporation. Like Microsoft, they will continue to be fabulously rich for decades, maybe score the occasional win like the move to ARM. But the new booms will come from elsewhere.
  - tttechhh 5y ago
    Can't really grasp why an open-source project would need a great brand in the first place. The one thing that keeps me in the *nix universe is the ability to pick and choose my desired software (and hardware ofc) without being influenced by iMarketing. I really dont care if KDE has a poor brand as long as it does its job well.
    - Darmody 5y ago
      A good product without a good brand is almost useless. Good products have died because they failed to get enough attention. In this case. The more users and interest in KDE/Plasma, the better for the whole environment and the developers.
  - dkdbejwi383 5y ago
    The i originally stood for "internet" when it was a new thing for the home user. The K in KDE stands for nothing in particular.
    - jtvjan 5y ago
      The K stands for kool!
      - dkdbejwi383 5y ago
        > The K was originally suggested to stand for "Kool", but it was quickly decided that the K should stand for nothing in particular. According to Wikipedia, however there is no citation.
        jtvjan 5y ago
        Matthias Ettrich, the founder of KDE, called it that in this post: https://groups.google.com/g/de.comp.os.linux.misc/c/SDbiV3Iat_s https://groups.google.com/g/de.comp.os.linux.misc/c/SDbiV3Ia...
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - chriswarbo 5y ago
    > Whereas with KDE everything has got to have a K, it's pretty ridiculous. Not really. The main desktop/interface, i.e. that users spend most time looking at, is called Plasma. The file manager, another high-usage application, is called Dolphin. The theme is Oxygen/Breeze. Claiming 'everything has got to have a K' is about a decade out of date. Sure there are still things like KClock, KRunner, KWin, etc. but they mostly seem to be very old projects, from back when 'everything has got to have a K'. Others, like Konqueror, Kontact, etc. seem like pretty reasonable names.
  - simion314 5y ago
    >everything has got to have a K No longer true. But nobody wants to rename well known apps like Konsole to Terminal , Kate to "Text Editor".
  - troyvit 5y ago
    I don't mind it. If I see something with a surprise K at the front or somewhere in it, I can assume it's a KDE product and I know where to go for support. Maybe it's annoying to everybody else but this branding makes my life simpler.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- rimliu 5y ago
  And which company is that? (I know you mean Apple, but Apple has iPhone and iPad, and that's it.)
  - sseagull 5y ago
    Well, software/service names as well. iMessage, iCloud, iMovie. But I agree it is a little less standard than KDE putting K in front of everything
- Longhanks 5y ago
  That company has stopped doing that >5 years ago. Since then, launched products are simply called Apple Watch, Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Pencil, AirPods, AirTags... Also, the original comment did not say anything about Apple. Stop trolling.
- teekert 5y ago
  Klock would be better indeed!
  - eldaisfish 5y ago
    If you follow the trend of KDE's naming scheme, you would expect KLock to be a lock, not a clock.
    - teekert 5y ago
      Like how I expect Kontact to be about ontacts and Konsole to offer me an onsole ;) (Sorry couldn't resist, I know many apps just have a normal name with a K prepended.)
  - zanderz 5y ago
    Or Kronometer!
- jorvi 5y ago
  Apple doesn't call their apps iCalculator, iCamera, iContacts, iSettings, etc
  - diffeomorphism 5y ago
    Neither does kde. That said, some/any name is vastly preferable to just "camera". If you have a question about the app how are you supposed to google for that? You start searching for "apple camera app" at which point that might as well be its name.
- dennis_moore 5y ago
  For someone who doesn't use KDE on my main distro it's great. It's a giveaway that I probably shouldn't apt-get that program. (Not that I have anything against KDE software, just the idea of installing it on non-KDE environments)
- qudat 5y ago
  Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery but being a copy cat does not make you innovative.
  - marcosdumay 5y ago
    Hum... Since the Apple trend is much more recent, the KDE developers should be very flattered. Anyway, the Keverything is a copy of the Xeverything, and both are for practical reasons since they point to the requirements to run the software.
- jeroenhd 5y ago
  Although the iSomething branding is equally stupid, I think you've also got a case of the Kiki-effect here[1]. The harsh k-sound is a lot less pleasing to use than the soft I-sound that prefixes Apple's products. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouba/kiki_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouba/kiki_effect
szszrk 5y ago
Why? And what do you propose? Knames are mostly ok, a user knows right from package list if this app is meant for his environment, or rather not. Same with gApps. The name tells what the app does. Why would I be mad at this?
- saturn_vk 5y ago
  An "app drawer" is going to look extremely weird, with every entry starting with a "K"
  - xcambar 5y ago
    Well, to be fair, if every entry starts with a "K", it won't make any difference in sorting.
    - fomine3 5y ago
      It breaks alphabetical seek bar like this https://cdn57.androidauthority.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/app-drawer-microsoft-launcher-1.jpg https://cdn57.androidauthority.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/1...
      - xcambar 5y ago
        You're right, but on the drawer I'm using (I don't remember the name), when no app starts with a specific letter, this letter does not show up on the vertical seek bar. :shrug:
- Darmody 5y ago
  I don't propose anything. It's just that it looks crappy to me. It's like they didn't put any thought into it. Yeah, let's put K in front of everything. It's not visually appealing and sometimes it isn't even easily pronounceable. They have some great pieces of software but marketing wise it looks like they don't want to go beyond their Kusers. This is my opinion anyway.
  - 5y ago
magicalhippo 5y ago
I found it cheesy back in the day, but I've grown to like unique names compared to generic ones. Makes it so much easier to search for when you got an issue or similar.
simion314 5y ago
Yeah, they should use "smart" names like GNOME , I am wondering how those users will google "how do I do X with Files/Browser/Player"
- gizdan 5y ago
  You Google "how do I do X with gnome player", has worked for me every time.
  - chupasaurus 5y ago
    Maybe, now try that with Files.
- zingplex 5y ago
  Easy, just use the inscrutable internal name for the application "how do I do X with Nautilus/Epiphany/Totem"
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
j1elo 5y ago
It does look crappy, IMHO. It feels like a 2000's trend that was cute (pun intended) but nowadays it's been 20 years and now looks out of date. Probably it's just me, though: at that time I was working at a company with a name starting by V. The product name itself also started by V. We used the C++ Qt framework, where every class starts with Q. So the lead devs picked up the trend and all our classes' names also started with V. Basically everything was named as something following the same letter.
- simion314 5y ago
  >So the lead devs picked up the trend and all our classes' names also started with V. Basically everything was named as something following the same letter. That can be usefull, you know by looking at a class name , if it starts with Q is a native Qt stuff, and if it starts with V is your own custom stuff. As an example if you would see a VDropDown you will know that some of the developer in the company was asked to "improve" the native dropdown , you should check if there are bugs there.
  - j1elo 5y ago
    Yes, I liked at the moment, and still today see the appeal of using a common prefix for the internals of a software project. However I don't think it's a good idea, nor pretty or attractive, that such a technical decision transpires to the public facing side of the project: first and foremost, its name.
- e3bc54b2 5y ago
  Like how Apple continued the NS* trend for decades?
  - j1elo 5y ago
    Yes, something like that. But I never developed specifically for Apple platforms... what is (or was) the meaning behind "NS"?
    - 5y ago
vvillena 5y ago
Kclock is a fantastic internal name for that little application. In the associated articles you can see the user-facing name for kclock is "Clock": https://www.plasma-mobile.org/2021/06/10/plasma-mobile-update-june/ https://www.plasma-mobile.org/2021/06/10/plasma-mobile-updat...

christophilus 5y ago

Anyone using this as a daily driver? What’s the experience like? (I’m hoping to move to a Linux phone when my old iPhone finally bites the dust.)

mech422 5y ago
Have you looked at Enlightenment(1)? I believe it used to power Tizen back in the day... 1: https://www.enlightenment.org/ https://www.enlightenment.org/
jcun4128 5y ago
I have a Pinephone, briefly tried KDE as I bought the KDE edition. It is a pretty design but what made me change from it is not detecting external display. Also I was not a fan of the "package manager" it was using. Arguable that's the OS (might have been Manjaro). I ended up going with Mobian and Phosh. I even installed ARM VS code on it but it was so slow like 5 second lag per click. Anyway problem right now is the modem doesn't detect my TMobile micro sim card. I don't know why, it worked before. The battery also dies too fast even in airplane mode sitting on my desk. And then of course the lack of apps and the Phosh UI is not that great imo, I don't know why they went with the design of the vertical split when finding apps. Maybe they can't match the gestures and what not that Android/iOS has. Still it's neat, motivation to learn C++/GTK when I have the time. As far as your actual question there are a couple of people on Reddit that are using it as a daily driver. [1] this is a little old though. As for why VS Code my fantasy is the Samsung Dex idea however I'm not going to drop $2K on a flagship cellphone. The Pinephone is not that strong but I was looking to get a Qemu VM running on it that would neat. https://www.reddit.com/r/PINE64official/comments/kxgtlu/pinephone_as_a_daily_driver_a_nonpredetermined/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PINE64official/comments/kxgtlu/pine...
- TheFreim 5y ago
  I don't have cell service and just basically use my phone as a glorified text editor (reminders, emails, low end browsing), would appear the pine phone would be perfect for me. I miss the ipod touch days, they did everything I needed.

gary17the 5y ago

The "Strategic advantages of Phosh for mobile Linux" article[1] mentions that Plasma Mobile roadmap "in September 2017 showed [Plasma Mobile] as having finished the prototyping phase, but not yet ready for feature phones and basic smartphones". It's 2021, four years later, and the Plasma Mobile roadmap[2] seems to be in pretty much the same place (or perhaps it's just an outdated page?). Does that mean that the Plasma Mobile effort is badly undermanned and will take about 10 years to achieve the >>Plasma Mobile 3.0 "Featured Smartphone"<< milestone? [1] https://amosbbatto.wordpress.com/2020/08/05/advantages-of-phosh/ https://amosbbatto.wordpress.com/2020/08/05/advantages-of-ph... [2] https://www.plasma-mobile.org/roadmap/ https://www.plasma-mobile.org/roadmap/

ekianjo 5y ago

Is there a good email client for KDE Mobile yet?

ognarb 5y ago
I made a small proof of concept 2 months ago. For now it's only able to read mails and it will take some times until I'm able to refactor KMail mail composer to also work on mobile. There was a screenshot of that in https://www.plasma-mobile.org/2021/04/27/plasma-mobile-update-march-april/ https://www.plasma-mobile.org/2021/04/27/plasma-mobile-updat...
- ekianjo 5y ago
  Thanks for your work on this! It's a critical piece of software to have on a mobile device these days, I hope this project gains traction!

AbuAssar 5y ago

Can we install it on a rooted android phone?

gary17the 5y ago
Perhaps have a look at postmarketOS[1]. [1] https://postmarketos.org/ https://postmarketos.org/

grishka 5y ago

After all these years, it still looks like they need a good designer.

mikevm 5y ago
I really want to like KDE, but something about Plasma still feels off to me. Is it the lifeless grey color? Is it the ugly font? or ugly icons? I can't tell exactly where the problem lies, but at least GNOME looks much more polished. I wish it would reach the polish level of Windows or MacOS.
- chaos_a 5y ago
  It's a lot of small inconsistencies that add up. Like the wifi icon being the wrong size for the amount of spacing it has around it, and also the fact that it's unclear what it actually does without clicking on it. The spacing in the settings menu in the final screenshot is horrible too, the text gap sizes just change for no reason and the design has two layers of headers that aren't visually distinct enough.
- gizdan 5y ago
  Lot of small inconsistencies as another said. Look at this screenshot[0]. The padding on the contact name and avatar is completely off. Also look at the dialer[1], long inputs there are not that likely, but it still sucks that the numbers are behind the scroll bar. Don't get me wrong. Last time I used KDE was some 5-6 years ago. These small inconsistencies were a lot more common, and back then for me it meant it's unusuable. I've been following KDE development, from the screenshots I've seen, it has come a long way. There are nowhere near as many inconsistencies as there used to be back then. [0] https://plasma-mobile.org/2021/06/10/plasma-mobile-update-june/phonebook-toolbar.png https://plasma-mobile.org/2021/06/10/plasma-mobile-update-ju... [1] https://www.plasma-mobile.org/2021/06/10/plasma-mobile-update-june/dialer-longnum.png https://www.plasma-mobile.org/2021/06/10/plasma-mobile-updat...
  - jeroenhd 5y ago
    Funny, I'm much more bothered by the buttons floating at the bottom, one or two pixels from the border but not touching. The sharp, rectangular design of KDE also doesn't speak to me, which is kind of strange because I do like it in the old win9x designs. I think maybe it's the combination of sharp edges and soft shadows that annoy me? Most KDE design is actually pretty consistent, but the design language just doesn't sit well with me. I'll stick to Gnome/Phosh if Linux on phones ever becomes popular.

asaddhamani 5y ago

The first thing I’d want to see is screenshots, but I had to scroll halfway through the article to see any. And why does a mobile UI have tiny minimise, maximise, and close icons?

ognarb 5y ago
We usually have more screenshots in our blog posts. See https://www.plasma-mobile.org/2021/06/10/plasma-mobile-update-june/ https://www.plasma-mobile.org/2021/06/10/plasma-mobile-updat... and https://www.plasma-mobile.org/2021/04/27/plasma-mobile-update-march-april/ https://www.plasma-mobile.org/2021/04/27/plasma-mobile-updat....
- solarkraft 5y ago
  This looks like you’re on a great course. There’s still a lot of work to do on the apps, but the shell is visually taking great shape! What was once a massive eye sore now looks pretty damn nice (especially the nav buttons, finally) and ready! This is a nice course. Please keep moving in that direction. Hopefully this also signifies a move to greater care for UI in general, i.e. more considerations regarding UX and fixing UI glitches. Exciting stuff. With KwinFT now using wlroots and this course continuing, Plasma could be a really great DE in a few years.
- asaddhamani 5y ago
  This looks much better. If I may suggest some improvements: * The UI could be more consistent, some windows (Elisa, AudioTube) have blurred backgrounds, but most don't * The icons look dated because of the 3D shapes I think as it is, this targets an extremely niche audience who might not care for these things. I know this would be much more persuasive for me with a slick UI, being able to run desktop class apps on a mobile sized device would be awesome.
  - ognarb 5y ago
    It's not that we don't care about UI and UX, the problem is that there are less than 10 active developers working principally on this and none of us is working on it full time since most of us is either student or has a full time job. It's the unfortunate fate of most non-corporate backed open source projects.

solarkraft 5y ago

My main point of criticism of KDE, that their UIs look like they’re made by someone half asleep and looking somewhere else, is slowly, but steadily fading away. Big props for that! There’s still a long way to go, but I can absolutely see the effort succeeding. You rock, VDG (assuming they’re behind it)! I also like that the podcasts app is responsive (in the web sense). I was originally excited about Linux on phones because I want to use the same software on my devices whether large or small. If I used this app on my phone, I‘d want to use it on the desktop as well. I strongly believe this is where software is going (only 10 years after the web) and highly welcome it. Interestingly, Linux is extremely competitive with the other ecosystems in this regard due to Apple’s cautious approach and Microsoft appearing to be asleep at the wheel again. The Linux phone may be here earlier than many of us think.

Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
UI per se is not my issue with KDE, But the stability of their builtin softwares and that their focus seems to be adding new features than fixing what's already there. e.g. There are several threads on Memory, CPU hogging issues with dolphin(even when not indexing). Plasma shell related issues like icons go missing etc. Obviously inspite of that, KDE is still a great option for those looking for a stable and fully featured Linux desktop environment.
- solarkraft 5y ago
  That’s my other issue. It’s so full of glitches … I hope this newfound interest in UI design will also have an effect on the sensitivity for bugs. Stability/resource usage wise I didn’t have many issues in the Wayland session at all, though. Seems like they’ve improved that a lot in the past years. I don’t use KDE for multiple reasons anymore, but I like how it usually understands what an advanced user wants to do, which no other DE really seems to. I massively appreciate that and have some hope they’ll get their act together in those areas eventually.
  - Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
    May I ask what are you using now? It's like I'm discovering a new bug every single day and when I look it up it exists for years without fix e.g. Even when dolphin is replaced KDE's kio-mtp intercepts mtp-protocol and stops mtp drives from being mounted by other applications. The fix is to manually change the mtp actions[1], which is known for over 7 years but not actually fixed. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/21sloi/thought_this_might_be_of_interest_to_others_a/ https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/21sloi/thought_this_mi...

pjmlp 5y ago

So the dialer is catching up with what any Nokia Series 30 was capable of doing 20 years ago?!?