28 ms·

The KDE desktop gets an overhaul with Plasma 6

817 points by jrepinc 3y ago

wiz21c 3y ago
FTA: > Users who are comfortable with Plasma 5 are unlikely to feel discomfited with Plasma 6 I say yeah !
jokethrowaway 3y ago
I've always been impressed by the maturity of the KDE project. Sure, there were ups and downs (KDE4?) but it's not easy to keep this upward trajectory and kept improving things in a OSS project. Nowadays KDE is definitely my favourite desktop experience, including Windows and macOS (which I feel are getting worse and worse every year).
hobo_mark 3y ago
I accidentally got this, and now it defaults to Wayland which completely broke my workflow. That is because, in Wayland, there is no API to list what windows are on your desktop! [1] Managed to get back to X11, for some reason the logoff button does not work anymore but at least my monitoring scripts do. [1] https://github.com/Kalmat/PyWinCtl/blob/master/README.md#linux-notice https://github.com/Kalmat/PyWinCtl/blob/master/README.md#lin...
- adlpz 3y ago
  Your comment reminds me so vividly of the time when I had time and I could invest tens of hours deep in that sort of nonsense. No thank you.
  - mistercheph 3y ago
    Oh Gerald, do wheel me back into my pleasure dome please, I've had quite enough of this silliness.
  - sergiotapia 3y ago
    For real dude... "my logout button doesn't work"? Crazy! I used to love tinkering with linux in college, started with Ubuntu 7.04(?) Feisty Fawn. Today I use Linux Mint 22(?) - what distro do you use that's hands off?
    - adlpz 3y ago
      MacOS
    - sodality2 3y ago
      I'm in college and still prioritize stability (at least in day-to-day use). Which doesn't always work out, because yesterday my laptop wouldn't boot...
    - okanat 3y ago
      Windows 11 with WSL
      - sergiotapia 3y ago
        My brother uses this as well. It didn't work out well for me but it may have just been too soon, I tried to use WSL when it came out. Must be much better and seamless now.
        okanat 3y ago
        The first WSL was a Linux system call emulator using Windows NT kernel's multi identity features. While it is an impressive feat of engineering showing off NT's strengths, many of the syscalls were missing. The programs had to operate on Windows file system which likes bulk operations and try and fail kind of a pattern. So it was slow. WSL2 is fantastic. It is a lightweight Hyper V VM so programs run at native speed. You can do nested virtualization with W11. The file system is ext4 on a virtual HD file so, progams optimised for Linux don't suffer. It even comes with its own Wayland compositor running on top of a high performance GL <-> DX translation layer. It comes with systemd support so one can run regular systemd services like nix daemon.
    - 3y ago
- yoavm 3y ago
  Many Wayland compositors provide an API to list the windows. I don't know about Plasma 6, but in Wayland it's up to the compositor to provide such API as far as I know.
  - Filligree 3y ago
    So you need a separate implementation for each compositor? Count me out.
    - bitwize 3y ago
      Most compositors use a common framework like wlroots. Those that don't, like kwin, provide their own API support which their own tools consume.
      - ColonelPhantom 3y ago
        Yep. The only compositors of any significance that do not use wlroots are Gnome/Mutter and KWin. I guess Weston is also an independent compositor, but I don't think anyone actually uses that.
        creatonez 3y ago
        Weston is mostly used for car entertainment systems, as a replacement for Windows CE. It, along with the more modern wlroots-based alternative Cage, have become the de-facto Wayland window manager for when you don't actually want to display framed windows, and just want to fork the codebase and display some fullscreen GLES-based graphics in a kiosk instead. These IoT use cases were part of the original motivation for Wayland in the first place.
        bitwize 3y ago
        I'm on proprietary NVIDIA, so haven't actually quite joined the Glorious Wayland Master Race yet. I use Weston on X11 to host Waydroid for my Android game development. Works rather well. I hope Weston development doesn't end up moribund because a few folks like me actually use it.
- Longhanks 3y ago
  How did you "accidentally" manage to get this? It isn't even in Arch stable yet? The only distro shipping it right now seems to be KDE neon, whose entire premise is shipping KDE stuff as soon as possible...
  - hobo_mark 3y ago
    Yes.
    - oynqr 3y ago
      Did you also garbage collect the old generation by accident?
  - ParetoOptimal 3y ago
    NixOS unstable has it too I think. It was merged yesterday at least.
  - zilti 3y ago
    And openSUSE Argon/Krypton
- csmattryder 3y ago
  I used to be a user of Wayland but since Firefox defaulted to it and I found that Picture-in-Picture doesn't work, I've since dropped back to X. DuckDucking it, I couldn't find a solution, but I hope someone can tell me there is. Outside of things like this (and finding the right screen recording program) I didn't really notice a difference.
  - NekkoDroid 3y ago
    To my knowledge there currently isn't a solution, but it is being worked on/discussed: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/merge_requests/132 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/m...
    - rcxdude 3y ago
      That is the state of a lot of things in Wayland. They seem to remain that way for a long time, alas.
  - paranoidxprod 3y ago
    What compositor? I use Hyprland and Firefox/Chromium Picture in Picture, and as far as I can tell, works as expected. I just hit the PiP button and it pops the video out into a new tiled window that I can toggle floating if I want. Just tried on a windows machine and, as far as I could tell, it was the same.
  - tombh 3y ago
    Maybe I'm missing something, but Picture-in-Picture has worked for years in Wayland Firefox for me. You do have to enable it in `about:preferences`, there's a toggle called: "Enable picture-in-picture video controls"
    - ben-schaaf 3y ago
      Are you sure it wasn't running under XWayland? Firefox has had wayland support turned off by default until just recently.
- tombh 3y ago
  There's an experimental tool `wlrctl`: https://git.sr.ht/~brocellous/wlrctl https://git.sr.ht/~brocellous/wlrctl It's not well documented, but you can do this to get a list of your windows: `wlrctl toplevel list` And this to get the currently focussed window(s): `wlrctl toplevel list state:focused`
  - roenxi 3y ago
    It says a lot about the difficulty of writing great software that it has taken around 15 years to get a list windows out of Wayland. But it looks like wlroots was a tipping point where the ecosystem started to function in a healthy manner.
mathiasgredal 3y ago
Looks like great changes overall. Sadly they haven’t added columns to Dolphin, which is my only complaint from switching to KDE from macOS.
- saltymug76 3y ago
  Looks like they added an option for split view in dolphin if that's what you mean.
  - jdright 3y ago
    not sure what he means by columns either. but split view on dolphin exists for many years already.
    - alpaca128 3y ago
      Probably the three-column view where you see the parent folder, current directory and selected folder's contents side by side.
      - andrekandre 3y ago
        it goes more than 3 columns, its more like drill-down view and very handy... its something i miss from macos too https://www.lifewire.com/use-finder-views-on-mac-2260734 https://www.lifewire.com/use-finder-views-on-mac-2260734
  - veidr 3y ago
    A full-featured columns view, like that of macOS (but also implemented by various file browsers over the years), has an arbitrary number of resizable columns. Perhaps optionally with a preview pane at the end where the last column would otherwise be. You can get the gist of it from this Super User discussion: https://superuser.com/questions/1141631/make-windows-10-file-explorer-look-like-mac-osx-finders-column-view https://superuser.com/questions/1141631/make-windows-10-file...
haunter 3y ago
Personally I feel that KDE is what GNOME wanted to be but can’t. Not just the DE itself but the KDE applications too, just look at Krita for example compared to GIMP. Somehow KDE could accomplish much more and feels more mature and robust too. I loved GNOME2 back then but feels like something went wrong with GNOME3 regarding the whole project and how users reacted to the different UI. I’d say the classic Windows NT era UI (95, 98, 2000, Xp) was peak design so I’m glad KDE stick to that more or less and made it even better and modern.
- 6581 3y ago
  > just look at Krita for example compared to GIMP They're not really comparable. GIMP is for picture editing, Krita is for painting.
  - vonjuice 3y ago
    Regardless of that, not being able to select multiple layers at once (in GIMP) is downright inexcusable.
    - HKH2 3y ago
      It's still the only open source image program I know that will not only let me print, but also show where the image will be on the page, and let me move it and scale it up/down. Seems like overkill, but I keep it installed for that reason.
      - sho_hn 3y ago
        As a KDE developer, I think Gimp is pretty great and has made massive progress in the upcoming 3.0 release (also on things only Krita could do so far, like reasonable colorspace-independence, also UI-wise). Obviously we're very proud of the Krita team. I use both regularly for different tasks, and that they have slightly different objectives and mission statements has been great for open source content authoring.
  - dagw 3y ago
pooper 3y ago
> Now, KDE upstream has relented on using a single-click to open files and defaults to double-click instead. Distributions like Fedora, Kubuntu, and Manjaro had been changing the upstream default anyway, so KDE developer Nate Graham suggested disabling the feature. ""Distros are closer to users and clearly the feedback they've been getting is that double-click is a better default...Let's admit it and switch to double-click by default ourselves"". This is great news. The biggest challenge for Wayland for me was I want to be able to record my screen on obs as easily as I can on x11. I don't think this has been a problem lately. There is iirc an icon up top on gnome at least which I don't want in my video but I guess I'm not supposed to be recording my whole display? I currently don't use my fedora machine much (just ssh into it when I need to) and wsl2 is good enough.
- karmakurtisaani 3y ago
  I prefer personally the single click approach. But this being KDE you can configure it in your on liking, so no harm done.
- anneessens 3y ago
  If you haven't tried single click to open before, I would highly recommend it. I used to hate it as well, but going through folders and files is so much faster now that I'm used to it. And if you think about it, a single click to open something is much more consistent UI wise.
  - jlpcsl 3y ago
    Same here. This is one change that they made that really does not make any sense to me. Also with smartphones being so used these days and they all have this single click mode of doing things, well it would also make more sense to me to keep single click for opening in KDE Plasma.
    - anneessens 3y ago
      Well, I can understand why KDE made it default since it's the behaviour everybody else expects now. But it's weird that it became standard in the first place.
Daunk 3y ago
Perhaps one day I'll use Plasma, or one of their KDE apps, without having a serious crash or other issues after 5 minutes.
- vorticalbox 3y ago
  I really want to use fedora silver blue, but KDE just greets me with a black screen and a cursor and nothing try has fixed it. i'm currently on pop!_os waiting for their new desktop :)
  - haunter 3y ago
    Are you sure that’s KDE? Because Silverblue is using GNOME. Kinoite is the KDE version.
    - vorticalbox 3y ago
      yes it follows me across distros, if use fedora workstation, kubuntu or just install it it happens.
      - justinclift 3y ago
        What's the graphics card (or integrated gpu) you're using? It kind of sounds like something might be going wrong there, and stopping things from showing up onscreen correctly.
        vorticalbox 3y ago
        I have NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Mobile in my laptop. currently running gnome/Wayland which is functioning correctly. it's a real shame because i love KDE :(
        justinclift 3y ago
        k. Nothing weird hardware wise with that then. Is it using the Nvidia proprietary drivers, or the OSS nouveau ones? If you're using the proprietary ones, which version? Sorry for the 20 questions, am just trying to figure out where it might be going wrong. :)
marginalia_nu 3y ago
> Breeze is Plasma's default theme and it has been updated for Plasma 6, but it's a subtle change — sort of like repainting a room and changing the color from "flat white" to "eggshell white". It has some changes to spacing that make it feel a little less crowded, and it has >>fewer lines separating UI elements<<. Please for the love of god don't remove the lines and other distinguishing features between UI elements. This makes the UI so much harder to parse. This trend where everything is flat and visually indistinguishable except for inperceptible differences in shade of grey can't go away soon enough. It's ruined a decade of user interfaces already. Yeah they look pretty, but they're awful to use.
- creatonez 3y ago
  They are mostly just trying to remove areas where there are multiple layers of separator lines, like boxes inside of boxes.
- alxlaz 3y ago
  I wish they'd at least made it thinner. Some of those screenshots on the release page [1] (Kate, Kdenlive) look awful, the actually useful content (code, clip problem list) is squeezed into a corner by UI elements that are mostly empty. That thing is ridiculous, the editor window is nearly as tall as a 1080p but it can barely display 20 lines, and the Clip Problems window is clipped at an 8-item view. I'm not even going to go into the relevance of touch-enabled devices for a Linux desktop but this is awful even by general standards. The clip problems list is laid down vertically, so pointer movement is primarily on the vertical direction. Even if you don't go through the list, you'll usually go over the window vertically just to get to OK/Abort or one of the buttons in the uperr-right section. Whatever ID gains (in the sense of Fitts' law) one hopes to gain by making the widgets fatter are more than offset by the increase in travel distance due to widget stacking. You get targets that are harder to hit and extra scrolling. This is a good trade-off on a 6" touch screen, where you're gonna do a lot of scrolling anyway so you get to work on the one factor you can control (pointer resolution), especially as pointer motion isn't constrained to a single plane (thumbs move on the vertical axis, too -- in fact even easier, due to anatomical constraints). I'm gonna go on a limb and say that I suspect the vast majority Plasma users are running laptops and desktops with screens slightly bigger than that and either a trackpad or a mouse. 1: https://kde.org/announcements/megarelease/6/ https://kde.org/announcements/megarelease/6/
gigatexal 3y ago
Any word if we can get it on Fedora 39 yet?
- aquatica 3y ago
  We won't. We'll get it with Fedora 40.
  - piaste 3y ago
    You can also upgrade to Rawhide if you don't want to wait a couple of months.
    - voxadam 3y ago
      Fedora 40 Beta is currently on target to be released March 12[0] and will include KDE Plasma 6 so if anyone is looking to avoid running Rawhide it's only a two week wait for a beta release. It's also possible to install from the most recent build of the pre-beta 40 branch[1] [0] https://fedorapeople.org/groups/schedule/f-40/f-40-key-tasks.html https://fedorapeople.org/groups/schedule/f-40/f-40-key-tasks... [1] https://kojipkgs.fedoraproject.org/compose/branched/latest-Fedora-40/compose/Spins/x86_64/iso/Fedora-KDE-Live-x86_64-40-20240229.n.0.iso https://kojipkgs.fedoraproject.org/compose/branched/latest-F...
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
smallerfish 3y ago
Good job KDE team - nice to see steady progress. I encourage anybody using KDE to occasionally file tickets at bugs.kde.org; Nate is a powerhouse and seems to review all inbound tickets, and anything critical will reliably get worked on within a reasonable period of time. They're also very open to ideas and feedback (that fit into their general UX guidelines.) I would love to see more distros switch to an opinionated KDE (and also to KDE by default). It's so malleable, and yet most distros just dump the basic default setup on users.
- thriftwy 3y ago
  KDE should probably invest in better defaults if these need tweaking. People don't usually dig in the settings menu unless something is bothering them. If there are great opt-in features they're going to stay off.
  - Phlogi 3y ago
    just what they did with V6.
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    Most people I know that use KDE use it because it's so customisable. It's not the same crowd as Gnome. I don't think this is an impediment at all.
    - thriftwy 3y ago
      I'm using KDE for 20 years already because it has great miscellaneous apps (though it's less important in 2024), slick integration between components and nice all-encompassing settings app. I do tweak a few things when I boot up a fresh install, but generally, I don't feel the need to do a deep customization, and am not aware of any missed opportunities.
      - binkHN 3y ago
        > I'm using KDE ... because it has great miscellaneous apps... KWrite and Dolphin are insane!
ahoka 3y ago
Switching to copying whatever Windows 11 does instead of Windows 10 I guess?
- andreime 3y ago
  this comment is ... just wrong; why are you so edgy?
  - ahoka 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - andreime 3y ago
      do you know kde 5 was launched one full year before windows 10 ?
      - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
        while I agree with the overall premise of your comment, that's not what the other poster said _at all_.
        wetpaws 3y ago
        [dead]
- ColonelPhantom 3y ago
  More the opposite; switching to being copied by Windows 12. Seriously. KDE: let's make our panel floating by default to distinguish ourselves visually from Windows! later Microsoft rumored to introduce floating panel in Windows 12.
  - timeon 3y ago
    Windows was copying KDE already with Vista/7.
RedShift1 3y ago
Users who prefer the old behavior can toggle it back on in the "Mouse Actions" settings under "Desktop Folder Settings", so it's not going away entirely. This is really important to me, the fact that it's configurable. The trend in other desktop environments has been to just take away features to lead everybody down "the golden path", but everybody has different preferences. I prefer a set of sensible defaults and a maze of settings to adjust every little thing, than just a blanket "here's how it works, deal with it".
- mirpa 3y ago
  If you have specific workflow where the golden path is suboptimal, sure. But I would not think that average user has any preferences and for many users Gnome is very reasonable.
  - 0thgen 3y ago
    Id second this. I used to lose a lot of productivity via desktop tweaking, and have now converted to sticking with gnome defaults (as people have said, gnome really does "stay out of your way"). hypercustomization is cool, and I like that KDE gives hobbyist something to experiment with. I think in the long term though, KDE and gnome need to solidify. Something gnome-like for the base user, and then a layer of customization on top of it for the KDE hobbyists (with successful experiments integrated into the gnome-layer). I'm all for diversity of desktop environments, but there needs to be a common core (especially since linux is driven by open source development)
- godshatter 3y ago
  I'm a bit worried that it's now off by default, because this is one behavior I really like about KDE. Just leave the background visible somewhere and you can switch virtual desktops with ease. I know you can just click on the graphical virtual desktop display in the toolbar, but once I became used to it then it became muscle memory and now it's harder to do without it. The reason not making it a default worries me is that sometimes that makes it a nice candidate for "something we can remove that will only affect a minority of users". And it will be a minority of users, because most users won't even know it's an option.
lytedev 3y ago
Been tinkering with Plasma on my Framework 13 with NixOS and I upgraded to Plasma 6 last night. So far things seem pretty great! The combined overview (four-finger swipe up) is one of the main things I felt was missing from Gnome and macOS and is really nice! I wish it was a three-finger swipe, but it's KDE, so you know there's probably an option somewhere. I'm also excited about being able to consume HDR content on my workstation where I have a much nicer monitor, so will have to report back on that. I really dislike the new default lock screen wallpaper. Not entirely sure why. Plasma 6 fixes the panel configuration mess, which was pretty buggy. It works flawlessly now while being more intuitive. The new Breeze theme fixes a lot of the spacing inconsistencies that irked me here and there. It looks much better now. Fingerprint unlock had some weird bugs as well, which all seem to be ironed out. Very clean and consistent now. Even the new default sound theme is _super_ nice. I'm a huge fan of the new sound effects across the desktop environment. Seriously, they're so good. New screen recording stuff just works (Super+R) and the PipeWire setup plays perfectly with OBS. Can record individual windows and it all seems to work as expected. Still not entirely sure this will replace Sway for the serious workstation multitasking sessions and the advantages that a tiling window manager brings, but it's really a joy on my laptop. I know a lot of people (rightfully) have their gripes with Wayland, but this feels pretty feature complete to me. The last missing piece I'm personally feeling is remote desktop access, but I admittedly have not done anything there yet. Since screen capture is working perfectly and KDE Connect to control machines remotely from my phone works, I'm guessing the pipes are all in place and I simply need to set things up. If you're feeling curious, give it a shot! I think it's a fantastic starting point.
- majoe 3y ago
  How good is wayland support on Nixos currently? Did you have to make a lot of tweaks to your nix configuration? Last time I tried it a few months ago, albeit with plasma5, it kind of worked, but I had to do many tweaks in my configuration and couldn't figure out settings for coherent scaling for hidpi.
  - kaba0 3y ago
    I can only talk about Gnome wayland with NixOS, but they generally don’t do anything too wild with the configs, and since they have quite bleeding edge packages, it usually works quite well, once it packaged.
karmakurtisaani 3y ago
KDE seems to be the only DE that actually follows the rule "if it's not broken, don't fix it". Gotta love the consistency over the some 15 years I've used it.
- dagw 3y ago
  KDE seems to be the only DE that actually follows the rule "if it's not broken, don't fix it". Everybody who remembers the KDE 3->4 transition will probably violently disagree with that. Hopefully that was an educational moment for the dev team and they've actually internalised that lesson. edit: just realised that 3->4 transition was more than 15 years ago, which makes me feel very old...
  - sho_hn 3y ago
    You could say that. We learned a lot from 4.0! For me one of the biggest accomplishments of our community is that people really do stick around. It's very multi-generational. Therefore the memory is there and the lessons do get learned.
    - topspin 3y ago
      I want to thank you and detail some of the reasons you deserve thanks. Thank you for the conservative evolution of the KDE DE. In my mind the best praise of any major DE release is that there is no reason to fear it, and you've done that. Again. Thank you for protecting KDE from iconoclast mentalities. This is a difficult thing to do and only hard nosed managerial discipline can achieve this, especially for an open source DE. Thank you for accommodating compositor-less operation. Thank you for Konsole. Yakuake is also great and I'm making use of it as well. However, what I appreciate most is that the latter has not disrupting the former. I can have work-a-day Konsole and Yakuake can be used where it works well at the same time. Thank you! Thank you for not adopting the minimalist, "golden path" mentality. Options have great value to me and I can't tell you how much I appreciate that KDE, almost uniquely among both commercial and open source mainstream DEs, doesn't take them away: KDE is the only conventional DE that doesn't demonstrate contempt for my preferences. The single-click/double-click activation choice is a excellent example of the thinking that makes KDE awesome. It goes without saying that changing that default must have been a tough decision. Yet you made the pragmatic, correct choice. Thank you for that. The vestigial voices still beating KDE over the head for the 3->4 issues, despite over a decade of clear evidence that the lessons have long since been learned, are diminishing. They're being replaced by full throated, well deserved praise. I humbly ask that you hear one concern of mine: X11 is crucial and will remain so for a long time yet. I have absolutely no problem with Wayland and imagine myself adopting it, some day, perhaps even accidentally. In the meantime, please do not neglect the X11 experience. I have yet to see any evidence that you have, but it is a worry for me. Thank you - From a loyal and deeply appreciative KDE user.
sgu999 3y ago
I've learned to appreciate that if I showed this version to a 20 years younger me who had just gotten into Linux with Fedora, they'd probably find the UI extremely familiar. Meanwhile I have to relearn how to use my iPhone and Macbook every year now...
- necroforest 3y ago
  If you need to relearn your iPhone/Mac interfaces every year, you might want to get screened for Alzheimers.
  - sgu999 3y ago
    And you might want to avoid reading comments too literally :)
dvh 3y ago
I left big DEs because of the constant overhauls (and because of their slowness). The WM of my choice (jwm) hasn't changed in decade and still being actively maintained and developed.
- everybodyknows 3y ago
  How do you install jwm?
  - dvh 3y ago
    sudo apt-get install jwm (Then logout and choose jwm when typing password)
HunOL 3y ago
> The nice thing about KDE is that so much is configurable, but finding configuration settings is still a challenge in Plasma 6. For example, the aforementioned setting to scroll virtual desktops is found in the Desktop Folder Settings application, but not in the System Settings application under the Virtual Desktop settings. My current Linux installation on desktop is from 2016 and everything was configured years ago. Recently I had to install Linux in Virtualbox and decided to go with KDE. I was overwhelmed with settings not in a good way. Maybe when I was younger I was more enthusiastic and liked it, but now I want reasonable defaults and consistent UI/UX experience.
- abainbridge 3y ago
  Yep. I want to have the same config as everyone else to maximise the chance that I'm using the well tested path of the software.
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
  If you want consistency of configuration over years go with FVWM. I'm kidding (and kinda not), it's a valid complaint.
- tux1968 3y ago
  It would be really nice if configuration was scriptable, so that you could have one configuration script, and run it on every new install. Would remove the need to hunt and peck.
  - HKH2 3y ago
    NixOS?
  - topaz0 3y ago
    What makes you think it isn't? There seem to be old-fashioned config files for anything that you could do in the settings app or whatever.
  - mkl 3y ago
    You don't even need a script - just use the same home folder or copy over the ~/.config/* files. KDE's configuration is all text files.
sotix 3y ago
KDE has reinvigorated my love for the desktop after years on Mac. I use it on my PC, laptop, and steam deck! I’m a big fan of their apps including Konsole, Kate, and KDEConnect. It’s an all around impressive project and surpasses MacOS and Windows in my opinion, which is remarkable. Really grateful to everyone that works on it.
- rgun 3y ago
  The other day one of my colleagues was trying to sell me the Apple ecosystem by giving a specific example. He has airpod connected to his mac. As soon as he gets a call, they switch to his iPhone. He was quite surprised when I told him that the same thing happens with my Asus laptop running Kubuntu, Motorola phone and Oneplus ear buds.
- phatfish 3y ago
  With default settings KDE is very familiar for people coming from Windows (well Windows 10 at least), and runs well for me without any serious errors. The biggest issue for Linux desktop use seems to be outside of the control of KDE/Gnome/Other DE now, which is rock solid support for all the flavours of consumer hardware out there. MacOS has a fixed hardware target obviously, Microsoft has all the hardware manufactures testing their drivers. The Linux ecosystem simply can't provide the same level of quality. I'm still waiting for hibernate to work on my laptop (using Fedora so I'm getting new kernel versions).
  - binkHN 3y ago
    I completely agree with this. As someone who recently switched to Linux from too many years of Windows, the lack of hardware support is frustrating. As I've delved into this world for a few months now, I can clearly see the cases where Windows gets a hardware feature or related through a driver update, but this doesn't happen in Linux for a while because it needs to be integrated into the kernel.
sotix 3y ago
Does anyone have advice on contributing code to the project? I’d love to give back, but it’s a bit daunting, and I’m not the most familiar with c++. Would love to find a smaller place to start.
- PcChip 3y ago
  You can also become a quarterly/yearly PayPal contributor
- jrepinc 3y ago
  There is this list of 15-minute bugs that should be easy to tackle https://bugs.kde.org/buglist.cgi?bug_severity=critical&bug_severity=grave&bug_severity=major&bug_severity=crash&bug_severity=normal&bug_severity=minor&bug_severity=task&bug_status=UNCONFIRMED&bug_status=CONFIRMED&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&known_name=VHI-priority%20Plasma%20bugs&list_id=2605943&priority=HI&product=Bluedevil&product=Breeze&product=Discover&product=drkonqi&product=frameworks-plasma&product=kactivitymanagerd&product=kde-gtk-config&product=kdeplasma-addons&product=khelpcenter&product=kinfocenter&product=klipper&product=kmenuedit&product=krunner&product=KScreen&product=kscreenlocker&product=ksmserver&product=ksysguard&product=KSystemLog&product=kwayland-integration&product=kwin&product=Plasma%20SDK&product=Plasma%20Vault&product=Plasma%20Workspace%20Wallpapers&product=plasma-disks&product=plasma-integration&product=plasma-nm&product=plasma-pa&product=plasma-simplemenu&product=plasma-systemmonitor&product=plasmashell&product=policykit-kde-agent-1&product=Powerdevil&product=print-manager&product=printer-applet&product=pulseaudio-qt&product=systemsettings&product=xdg-desktop-portal-kde&query_based_on=VHI-priority%20Plasma%20bugs&query_format=advanced https://bugs.kde.org/buglist.cgi?bug_severity=critical&bug_s... Also strarting on smaller KDE applications is usually a great way to start, For example the Plasma widgets/applets or KDE games or educational applications. You can join the New Contributors char room on Matrix to get help with starting out https://matrix.to/#/#new-contributors:kde.org https://matrix.to/#/#new-contributors:kde.org
ismailmaj 3y ago
I was excited to try HDR on Plasma 6 but it currently only works with AMD GPUs, not Nvidia.
seancolsen 3y ago
I'm loving Plasma 6 so far. Wayland support is much better! I had been using a keyboard shortcut to switch to the previously-used desktop. When KDE removed it [1], I filed a bug [2]. Hours later, a KDE dev created a new KWin script [3] to replace this functionality, fixing my workflow. THANKS! KDE is awesome! [1]: https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kwin/-/merge_requests/3871 https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kwin/-/merge_requests/3871 [2]: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=481985 https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=481985 [3]: https://invent.kde.org/vladz/switch-to-previous-desktop https://invent.kde.org/vladz/switch-to-previous-desktop
- MBCook 3y ago
  Can you explain what’s so much better about Wayland support?
  - sho_hn 3y ago
    There's a large amount of robustness improvements, particularly around multi-monitor and docking scenarios with dynamic and fractional DPI. We've also introduced technology to allow client apps to stay running should the compositor crash and restart. We've replaced some originally homebrew Wayland protocol extensions with newer extensions maintained by the wider Wayland community. For example, our own panels now use the layer-shell protocol. This improves interoperability, e.g. enabling third-party panels. We've added initial support for HDR and color management, in particular for games with HDR rendering (we've been learning a lot about the gaming community and their needs from the Steam Deck). More complete porting of many little quality-of-life workspace and toolkit features and refinements when running in Wayland. Performance work. Screen sharing got a revamp, now supporting RDP and the latest portal dialogs when invoked by apps and so on. Various other compositor-y bits, e.g. support for the Presentation Time frame scheduling extension, which helps video players and game engines. Some of these got done in Plasma and KDE software itself, some in Qt 6, where we've been a major contributor to the QtWayland module. Some required contributions to the Wayland protocol stack itself, e.g. the modern focus handover protocol.
    - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
I have to be honest, anytime I see a major version update I start to have nightmares of the KDE3/4 update. With that negativity aside, I use i3 nowadays but KDE is still always my other desktop. I've been using it since the KDE1 days and have always strongly preferred it over gnome :) Even in i3, Konsole is my console of choice.
- skeletal88 3y ago
  This 3 to 4 was 15 years ago, time to forget about it already. The developers have learned from it.
  - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
    I moved to i3 as a result of that transition, I think I'll continue remembering.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
sylware 3y ago
If KDE was not c++ (with its underlaying toolkit), I would give it a try.
- fullstop 3y ago
  Why does this matter?
  - sylware 3y ago
    I am a dev, I understand why c++ and similar are definitive nonos.
    - efficax 3y ago
      good luck avoiding c++ software on the desktop. FWIW, c++ has many more features than plain c for improving safety and reliability (for example shared_ptr) if that's your concern.
      - sylware 3y ago
        Why do you think many devs out there are talking about the ensh*tification of open source software. Breaking news: c++ and similar are part of that.
    - fullstop 3y ago
      I would suggest that nearly every person on this website is a developer. Both C and C++ let you shoot yourself in the foot quite easily, but at least C++ has RAII. If you're referring to Rust, it's just not there yet for anything serious: https://areweguiyet.com/ https://areweguiyet.com/
      - k8svet 3y ago
        Tell that to those of us dogfodding COSMIC right now. ;)
        3y ago
BadHumans 3y ago
I hope this increases stability. KDE takes the startup approach of move fast and break things. For all of their progress in functionality, I have so many annoying bugs that I deal with on a daily basis.
- whalesalad 3y ago
  Curious to hear them. It’s been a bug free experience for me, even on Wayland.
  - BadHumans 3y ago
    Well allow me to list them off. I'm using Plasma 5.27 - If my monitor dims due to inactivity then I start using my computer again, the monitor stays dim and does not come back up to the brightness I had it unless I turn off my monitor and turn it back on. I resolved this by just turning off dimming. - If KDE goes to lockscreen due to inactivity but I start interacting with my computer during the transition, my monitor just stays black and doesn't return to desktop or go to lockscreen. - My bluetooth headphones disconnect whenever KDE goes to lockscreen. -I use multiple languages and sometimes my languages will switch randomly despite not hitting the language hotkey and often I will mash my language hotkey and the language still won't change. Those are just what I remember off the top of my head but I'm maintaining a list somewhere in a notebook.
    - whalesalad 3y ago
      Oh jeez that does sound brutal. I do not experience those issues on my Deb 12 desktop. The lockscreen/dimming/etc stuff specifically works well for me. It’s very responsive to return from lock, if I catch it in the transition I can abort. Wondering if it’s the underlying platform you are on, or a third party plugin or module that could be doing this.
      - BadHumans 3y ago
        It's entirely possible Fedora sucks and is at fault while KDE itself is not responsible for the problems.
HankB99 3y ago
KDE user here. I'm on Debian so I'm still on 5.27 and will be for a while. That's OK. I like Plasma 5.27 and my only disappointment is that I won't file bug reports if I run into any issues. I don't expect they would be addresses and I prefer that the devs focus on moving 6 along. By the time 6 is on Debian (trixi, hopefully) lots of kinks should be worked out. And speaking of kinks, I'm disappointed in the number of posters on Mastodon who are angrily claiming that they will never use KDE again because of issues they run into on the first day of a major release. What did they expect? And I will repeat: Many thanks to the devs, testers, documenters and all others who make this happen. Well done!
AlienRobot 3y ago
>do away with the default of using the scroll wheel on the desktop to switch virtual desktops I've seen so many apps implement this. It's so odd. If I can bring my cursor to the widget I can probably click on the right item instead of scrolling. The only case I imagine this would be useful would be for accessibility. >Wayland as default I have plasma installed here and one weird thing I noticed is that if I use the wayland version sometimes text isn't rendered on windows or entire panels flash black rectangles, while if I use the X11 version my mouse speed becomes slower. I wonder if the update addresses these issues. Anyway after trying out several DEs I ended up using Xfce because my mouse feels faster in it.
- godshatter 3y ago
  > I've seen so many apps implement this. It's so odd. If I can bring my cursor to the widget I can probably click on the right item instead of scrolling. The only case I imagine this would be useful would be for accessibility. For me personally, it lets me think of desktops in terms of what is left or right of them, rather than what actual number it is, i.e my Steam desktop is to the right of my browser desktop and to the left of my remote session. If I need to go to the email desktop from where I'm at, it's two scrolls away. I usually leave a little bit of the desktop visible on each virtual desktop to facilitate this. So, not an accessibility thing for me but an actual preference. People are different. I know, it shocked me too.
  - AlienRobot 3y ago
    I see. In every program that supported this I've triggered it by accident so often I had to disable it.
    - godshatter 3y ago
      Even now I occasionally use the scroll wheel and not realize my mouse is out of my window and have the same moment of surprise so I can relate.
e12e 3y ago
Interesting: > Qt has switched to CMake, away from the qmake build system Found some more information: https://www.qt.io/blog/qt-and-cmake-the-past-the-present-and-the-future https://www.qt.io/blog/qt-and-cmake-the-past-the-present-and... (2021)
shmerl 3y ago
Nice, hopefully Wine Wayland works better with it than with Kwin from Plasma 5.
int0x21 3y ago
I went KDE after Gnome went to version 3 and never looked back
moooo99 3y ago
I’ve been using Gnome almost exclusively for the past two years, although I also spent significant amounts of time in a tiling WM (Sway). I like the overall experience of gnome. The apps feel nice, the DE feels snappy etc. But the tiling features of KDE make me curious. I like sway, but I recently completely messed up my configuration and it’s a an absolute pain to get back working even halfway decent, so I may as well give a integrated DE a try
- PufPufPuf 3y ago
  Also consider pop-shell which is a fork of GNOME with tiling built-in. However, I'm not sure about its future since PopOS is switching to COSMIC DE in the next release.
  - moooo99 3y ago
    I actually did try the Pop Shell extension with my Fedora installation, but found it to be more cumbersome than helpful. Admittedly, this may very well be due to the fact that I didn't quite have the time to configure it to match my tiling WM mappings i've been used to at this point
uticus 3y ago
Meh, I want a window manager, not a full desktop environment. I want key-combo switching between apps and allowing the apps to be moved and sized. And that's it. No need for special 'start/run' features, for DE-bundled apps, for DE-based widget bars, for DE-based notifications, etc. Get everything out of the way for focusing on the apps and allowing interaction between them only as needed. The problem imo is that Wayland is too hard to write your own WM for. People wrote X11 WMs in weekends when they got fed up with the status quo. How many do the same for Wayland?
- creatonez 3y ago
  KDE is modular, a significant amount of that can be removed cleanly. It's not quite as modular as LXDE or Xfce mainly because the binaries for Plasma and KWin-Wayland are handling a bit more than expected, but does it really matter on modern hardware that Plasma has a tiny bit of panel-related code loaded into RAM when your panels are disabled? (I'd probably say this is the worst non-modularity, and it's still avoidable if you're willing to swap out plasma for something else) > How many do the same for Wayland? A lot, because wlroots provides a decent base to handle all the things you don't want to be handling manually. The ecosystem of simple tiling WMs made with wlroots is quite vibrant.
  - uticus 3y ago
    I stand corrected re my comment about making a compositor. At first, I was going to point out that wlroots itself says it abstracts the job of a compositor: 'about 60,000 lines of code you were going to write anyway.' [0] Would seem to prove the point that too many LOC are needed just to get something running. But really wlroots is from the same group that maintains Wayland [1], so maybe it's like a low-level/high-level access duality common in other software projects. [0] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wlroots/wlroots https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wlroots/wlroots [1] https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/ https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/
irthomasthomas 3y ago
So much of my workflow depends on X11. I hope we can keep it going. I don't think I could do this on Wayland: using my gpt4-vision toolkit to read my blocked domains list from kagi and xdotool entering the list into Azure Custom Search Api. https://twitter.com/xundecidability/status/1763219017160867840 https://twitter.com/xundecidability/status/17632190171608678...
- moxvallix 3y ago
  X11 is still supported. It’s just no longer the default.
  - jsrcout 3y ago
    Sadly the past several years have conditioned a lot of us to equate "no longer the default" with "about to be permanently removed".
ak_111 3y ago
Still wondering if I can use emacs bindings on KDE, I recall a few years ago that wasn't possible without some tricky workarounds.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Kozmik1 3y ago
Does Slack actually open on Plasma 6?
smm11 3y ago
I've never been able to get the hang of KDE, but this release is quite impressive. This and SystemD is really one step closer to something like OS X.
jrepinc 3y ago
FYI: an interesting video on How KDE Plasma 6 Was Made https://tube.kockatoo.org/w/e6e8f177-22f1-432a-9c7f-ab76b17a5b54 https://tube.kockatoo.org/w/e6e8f177-22f1-432a-9c7f-ab76b17a...
sarasasa28 3y ago
oh man, I remember when I cared about this. I am so happy to be a normie with a Macbook now
flexagoon 3y ago
KDE is pretty cool but I just don't get why they're still using their Breeze theme. GNOME got so much more beautiful with the new Adwaita theme. It's time for KDE to redesign their default theme as well, Breeze looks absolutely terrible and outdated, especially the icons, it all feels super cheap and like it was all drawn by some random guy, not a huge project with a UI team. KDE can look amazing with a custom theme, why don't they just pick one and make it official?
- smoldesu 3y ago
  Really? The default GNOME Adwaita theme has been pretty blech in my opinion for a number of years. The update just kinda flattened out the visual identity and kept the same "sickness" looking colors. I quite like the GTK toolkit but I'll never be able to tolerate the default Dark colorscheme. If we're strictly talking about colors, I find Breeze to be more pleasing in Light and Dark mode.
  - flexagoon 3y ago
    If your main problem with Adwaita are the colors, you can easily customize them, and there are even great GUI tools for this[1] My issue with Breeze aren't the default colors, but rather the theme itself [1]: https://github.com/GradienceTeam/Gradience https://github.com/GradienceTeam/Gradience
- ognarb 3y ago
  There is effort to multiple concurrent efforts to update the breeze style: Mine is here which is still quite WIP https://carlschwan.eu/2023/12/19/announcing-brise-theme/ https://carlschwan.eu/2023/12/19/announcing-brise-theme/ And there is another one for icons https://anditosan.wordpress.com/2023/12/30/breeze-icons-update/ https://anditosan.wordpress.com/2023/12/30/breeze-icons-upda...
sdwvit 3y ago
KDE plasma is the main reason I could switch completely from windows / macos for work and hobbies. Very mature DE that can challenge commercial solutions.
geenat 3y ago
Long live the cube.
haolez 3y ago
KDE sits in a weird place in my case. If I want something to just get out of the way, I use GNOME. If I want to scratch my geek itch and have a super custom and fancy hacker desktop, I resort to things like i3. KDE doesn't appeal to me as of today. Just my personal anecdote.
- bitmasher9 3y ago
  I use KDE because it’s stable, has every feature I want, and uses existing metaphors I am familiar with. In my circle of Linux users, a lot of the people that choose KDE do so because they don’t find the desktop layer interesting to hack on, and just want a tool for interacting with Linux.
jedbrown 3y ago
What is the state of tiling in Plasma 6 and how does it compare to Pop Shell (https://github.com/pop-os/shell https://github.com/pop-os/shell) for GNOME?
cocoa19 3y ago
KDE team has done a fantastic job in the looks department. Every time I look at the latest release it looks better and better. I every now and then use KDE and it keeps looking less and less as a "desktop environment for developers" (read: ugly), and more like a desktop environment that everybody loves. These latest screenshots look fantastic.
teekert 3y ago
I love how Gnome and KDE Plasma diverged. I change desktops every now and then, now I'm feeling like Gnome is just enough desktop and I'm loving it. But I have to say, this news item has me longing for Plasma's configurability again (and wobbly windows). I just love that there is so much choice on Linux!
zerr 3y ago
Linux desktop UI environments always felt laggy compared to Windows. Is it the same nowadays?
01HNNWZ0MV43FF 3y ago
"An aging Thinkpad with 16 GB of RAM" Wow, a 5-year-old laptop. Things were so primitive in 2018. Here in my the mighty year of 2024, my computer has....... 16 GB of RAM.
throwaway8481 3y ago
Okay, I am of course excited that KDE is making such fantastic strides forward. How-the-ever, GNOME is ahead of them because of the progress on high dynamic range color, non-fullscreen/partial scanouts, variable refresh rates, and the hidden work in GNOME extensions enabling things like PaperWM. Both KDE and GNOME are accelerating at a fantastic pace, but 1 of these projects are prioritizing the less visible (and hugely important) stuff. That is GNOME. I apologize for capitalizing Gnome, but that's what's comfortable. Once both DEs support these things, we can then recognize we're so far behind the curve with "spatial computing". As VR-enabled desktop environments become a thing, we need to view DEs like physics/sandbox simulators. A lot of the design specs that Apple puts out essentially mirror what you would expect in an environment with actual physics interactions. How light bounces between layered interface components. It's going to be hugely resource-intensive but someday we'll look back on 2D GUIs and DEs like something that pales in comparison to the amazing interfaces of a 3D environment where we can attach virtual surfaces to walls and ceilings and have them follow after us as we move around the office/house with our headsets. (Someday: https://github.com/SimulaVR/Simula/issues/174 https://github.com/SimulaVR/Simula/issues/174) PS: I'm loving how both KDE and GNOME are pushing a lot of DE behaviors into JS extensions. On a separate front, everything we interact with is like this close to being entirely within a web browser. Nobody likes what I've said, but I'm prophesying now: DEs will need to go "spatial", and all of /this/ will be in a web browser by 2027.
- pyrophane 3y ago
  My personal UI preferences aside, one place where KDE is ahead of Gnome right now that matters a great deal to me is support for fractional scaling, especially supporting different scaling factors one different displays (laptop vs monitor). KDE seems to have this working pretty well, whereas Gnome does not and it isn't clear when they will get there.
- smoldesu 3y ago
  > GNOME is ahead of them because of the progress on high dynamic range color, non-fullscreen/partial scanouts, variable refresh rates, and the hidden work in GNOME extensions enabling things like PaperWM. Wait... all of this is a lot to take in. HDR progress has gone great on Red Hat's side, but KDE has been working on it just as long (with arguably further progress). VRR has existed on KDE for a while as "Adaptive Sync" and the work that goes into updating GNOME extensions exists mostly because the GNOME developers refuse to make a stable API for it. GNOME and Red Hat obviously do great work for the community, but these seem like weird examples. To the contrary, with GNOME's fractured extensibility and now-missing system tray, a lot of Windows and MacOS users will probably feel confused booting up GNOME 40. I say all this from a GNOME system myself =P > Once both DEs support these things, we can then recognize we're so far behind the curve with "spatial computing" Holy whiplash, Batman! I disagree so hard my head is spinning. For one, "the curve" of Spatial Computing is so-far relegated to cheap Android SDKs and $3,500 iPad-killers. Nobody is shipping Johnny-Mnemonic style hardware today, and probably won't be for another decade. Focusing on developing that technology is not only a waste of time, but entirely tangential to the work that goes into making the modern desktop usable. GNOME and KDE's efforts shouldn't be dedicated to a hypothetical userbase that might never exist. ...and on the flip side, a lot of work has gone into "spatializing" Open Source software. OpenXR is the de-facto standard for VR experiences, and is well-supported on Linux clients. With Wayland, the desktop's rendering model is now finally up to a position where someone could feasibly write a foveated window renderer. There are people doing it right now, despite the lack of demand: https://simulavr.com/ https://simulavr.com/
Aerbil313 3y ago
I was surprised when someone told me that KDE is the biggest open source project in existence after Linux kernel. But indeed it looks like it. They are trying to reinvent the entire desktop computing stack in-house. This is what Apple does but without the corporate. I hope they succeed so I can have my fully free and thus user-centric desktop on par with proprietary offerings.
everybodyknows 3y ago
> Plasma 6 is likely to be a little bit rough around the edges for a while, and users might want to review known issues before deciding to upgrade. https://bugs.kde.org/buglist.cgi?bug_severity=critical&bug_severity=grave&bug_severity=major&bug_status=UNCONFIRMED&bug_status=CONFIRMED&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&classification=Applications&classification=Plasma&keywords=qt6%2C%20&keywords_type=allwords&list_id=2462812&query_format=advanced https://bugs.kde.org/buglist.cgi?bug_severity=critical&bug_s... This one caught my eye: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=480122 https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=480122 SUMMARY If the screen is turn off and then the pc goes to sleep (only possible if the lid is closed because trying to use a shortcut to sleep cause pc screen to turn on), on lid open the screen is black and the pc is unusable (require a reboot).
Aerbil313 3y ago
I'd be very excited if KDE can be the first usable Linux on mobile (usable = with my $banking_app, $messenger_app, etc.). If anyone were to pull it off it'd be KDE.
- zilti 3y ago
  Good news, there is Plasma Mobile.
  - Aerbil313 3y ago
    I think you misread my comment. I am aware of Plasma Mobile, but I don't see my bank's app and WhatsApp on it.
minzi 3y ago
I am always so conflicted about adopting new desktop environments. Every time I feel like I dump 10-20 hours into it and still end up using my mac more often. This looks so tempting, but I feel fairly confident the outcome will be the same for me. Maybe the only way to achieve this is to get rid of my macbook.
akho 3y ago
Good to see better Wayland support in a popular environment. Judging by the screenshots, the UI remains a mess though. It's really surprising how people can be selectively blind about these things.
nazzacodes 3y ago
Is it just me that's a bit disappointed with the rate of change of desktop linux? Particularly the UI side of things? I feel like desktop linux is way behind Mac and even Windows in so many ways. Would love to see modern stripped back kde/gnome alternative: less kitchen sink applications, minimalist power user friendly design sense, 1st class tiling window management, keyboard friendly workflow etc.
- massysett 3y ago
  Have you tried a tiling window manager like i3?
mixmastamyk 3y ago
> Now, KDE upstream has relented on using a single-click to open files and defaults to double-click instead. Ok... > Another change to scrolling behavior in this release is that clicking on a scrollbar moves the window to the location clicked, rather than one "page" at a time. ... in order to be a better option for users with RSIs. This is already done with the middle mouse button. Will people please stop fucking with scroll bars? Ironic that one paragraph extols the virtues of forty year-old defaults, then the next recommends breaking something that already works.
- eviks 3y ago
  But it doesn't already work, middle mouse button is the worst, I almost never use it, and I use middle mouse buttons like tilt left/right. though why isn't two buttons enough, one for page nav, another for move to point, wonder whether this is configurable globally in KDE
  - mixmastamyk 3y ago
    Mine works perfectly. I use it 100+ times a day, including now to reply you in another tab. If yours doesn't, you might like to buy a new mouse. In any case it isn't a reason to change the default.
meonmyphone2 3y ago
I'm not a Kde user (always used gnome/unity/i3) but enjoyed their release content. I remember finding Kde bloated in the past but I've been getting more curious about it, wishing to try it someday. Hopefully they will have a good tiling window system by then, because I'm too used to i3wm.
smetj 3y ago
Of course its personal but KDE is to me what a general purpose WM should be. Amazing work KDE team congratulations on this achievement.
account42 3y ago
Why would anyone want an overhaul of their desktop? I want my desktop to continue working exactly how it has been working.
- yonatan8070 3y ago
  I'd say that this isn't an "overhaul", they didn't redesign everything just to make it different, they refined and optimized pretty much every part of the DE to make it more power efficient (QT6, KRunner), more visually pleasing and consistent (Breeze theme), more featureful (HDR support), and of course more stable (countless bug fixes)

817 points by jrepinc 3y ago

FTA: > Users who are comfortable with Plasma 5 are unlikely to feel discomfited with Plasma 6 I say yeah !

I've always been impressed by the maturity of the KDE project. Sure, there were ups and downs (KDE4?) but it's not easy to keep this upward trajectory and kept improving things in a OSS project. Nowadays KDE is definitely my favourite desktop experience, including Windows and macOS (which I feel are getting worse and worse every year).

hobo_mark 3y ago

I accidentally got this, and now it defaults to Wayland which completely broke my workflow. That is because, in Wayland, there is no API to list what windows are on your desktop! [1] Managed to get back to X11, for some reason the logoff button does not work anymore but at least my monitoring scripts do. [1] https://github.com/Kalmat/PyWinCtl/blob/master/README.md#linux-notice https://github.com/Kalmat/PyWinCtl/blob/master/README.md#lin...

adlpz 3y ago
Your comment reminds me so vividly of the time when I had time and I could invest tens of hours deep in that sort of nonsense. No thank you.
- mistercheph 3y ago
  Oh Gerald, do wheel me back into my pleasure dome please, I've had quite enough of this silliness.
- sergiotapia 3y ago
  For real dude... "my logout button doesn't work"? Crazy! I used to love tinkering with linux in college, started with Ubuntu 7.04(?) Feisty Fawn. Today I use Linux Mint 22(?) - what distro do you use that's hands off?
  - adlpz 3y ago
    MacOS
  - sodality2 3y ago
    I'm in college and still prioritize stability (at least in day-to-day use). Which doesn't always work out, because yesterday my laptop wouldn't boot...
  - okanat 3y ago
    Windows 11 with WSL
    - sergiotapia 3y ago
      My brother uses this as well. It didn't work out well for me but it may have just been too soon, I tried to use WSL when it came out. Must be much better and seamless now.
      - okanat 3y ago
        The first WSL was a Linux system call emulator using Windows NT kernel's multi identity features. While it is an impressive feat of engineering showing off NT's strengths, many of the syscalls were missing. The programs had to operate on Windows file system which likes bulk operations and try and fail kind of a pattern. So it was slow. WSL2 is fantastic. It is a lightweight Hyper V VM so programs run at native speed. You can do nested virtualization with W11. The file system is ext4 on a virtual HD file so, progams optimised for Linux don't suffer. It even comes with its own Wayland compositor running on top of a high performance GL <-> DX translation layer. It comes with systemd support so one can run regular systemd services like nix daemon.
  - 3y ago
yoavm 3y ago
Many Wayland compositors provide an API to list the windows. I don't know about Plasma 6, but in Wayland it's up to the compositor to provide such API as far as I know.
- Filligree 3y ago
  So you need a separate implementation for each compositor? Count me out.
  - bitwize 3y ago
    Most compositors use a common framework like wlroots. Those that don't, like kwin, provide their own API support which their own tools consume.
    - ColonelPhantom 3y ago
      Yep. The only compositors of any significance that do not use wlroots are Gnome/Mutter and KWin. I guess Weston is also an independent compositor, but I don't think anyone actually uses that.
      - creatonez 3y ago
        Weston is mostly used for car entertainment systems, as a replacement for Windows CE. It, along with the more modern wlroots-based alternative Cage, have become the de-facto Wayland window manager for when you don't actually want to display framed windows, and just want to fork the codebase and display some fullscreen GLES-based graphics in a kiosk instead. These IoT use cases were part of the original motivation for Wayland in the first place.
        bitwize 3y ago
        I'm on proprietary NVIDIA, so haven't actually quite joined the Glorious Wayland Master Race yet. I use Weston on X11 to host Waydroid for my Android game development. Works rather well. I hope Weston development doesn't end up moribund because a few folks like me actually use it.
Longhanks 3y ago
How did you "accidentally" manage to get this? It isn't even in Arch stable yet? The only distro shipping it right now seems to be KDE neon, whose entire premise is shipping KDE stuff as soon as possible...
- hobo_mark 3y ago
  Yes.
  - oynqr 3y ago
    Did you also garbage collect the old generation by accident?
- ParetoOptimal 3y ago
  NixOS unstable has it too I think. It was merged yesterday at least.
- zilti 3y ago
  And openSUSE Argon/Krypton
csmattryder 3y ago
I used to be a user of Wayland but since Firefox defaulted to it and I found that Picture-in-Picture doesn't work, I've since dropped back to X. DuckDucking it, I couldn't find a solution, but I hope someone can tell me there is. Outside of things like this (and finding the right screen recording program) I didn't really notice a difference.
- NekkoDroid 3y ago
  To my knowledge there currently isn't a solution, but it is being worked on/discussed: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/merge_requests/132 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/m...
  - rcxdude 3y ago
    That is the state of a lot of things in Wayland. They seem to remain that way for a long time, alas.
- paranoidxprod 3y ago
  What compositor? I use Hyprland and Firefox/Chromium Picture in Picture, and as far as I can tell, works as expected. I just hit the PiP button and it pops the video out into a new tiled window that I can toggle floating if I want. Just tried on a windows machine and, as far as I could tell, it was the same.
- tombh 3y ago
  Maybe I'm missing something, but Picture-in-Picture has worked for years in Wayland Firefox for me. You do have to enable it in `about:preferences`, there's a toggle called: "Enable picture-in-picture video controls"
  - ben-schaaf 3y ago
    Are you sure it wasn't running under XWayland? Firefox has had wayland support turned off by default until just recently.
tombh 3y ago
There's an experimental tool `wlrctl`: https://git.sr.ht/~brocellous/wlrctl https://git.sr.ht/~brocellous/wlrctl It's not well documented, but you can do this to get a list of your windows: `wlrctl toplevel list` And this to get the currently focussed window(s): `wlrctl toplevel list state:focused`
- roenxi 3y ago
  It says a lot about the difficulty of writing great software that it has taken around 15 years to get a list windows out of Wayland. But it looks like wlroots was a tipping point where the ecosystem started to function in a healthy manner.

mathiasgredal 3y ago

Looks like great changes overall. Sadly they haven’t added columns to Dolphin, which is my only complaint from switching to KDE from macOS.

saltymug76 3y ago
Looks like they added an option for split view in dolphin if that's what you mean.
- jdright 3y ago
  not sure what he means by columns either. but split view on dolphin exists for many years already.
  - alpaca128 3y ago
    Probably the three-column view where you see the parent folder, current directory and selected folder's contents side by side.
    - andrekandre 3y ago
      it goes more than 3 columns, its more like drill-down view and very handy... its something i miss from macos too https://www.lifewire.com/use-finder-views-on-mac-2260734 https://www.lifewire.com/use-finder-views-on-mac-2260734
- veidr 3y ago
  A full-featured columns view, like that of macOS (but also implemented by various file browsers over the years), has an arbitrary number of resizable columns. Perhaps optionally with a preview pane at the end where the last column would otherwise be. You can get the gist of it from this Super User discussion: https://superuser.com/questions/1141631/make-windows-10-file-explorer-look-like-mac-osx-finders-column-view https://superuser.com/questions/1141631/make-windows-10-file...

haunter 3y ago

Personally I feel that KDE is what GNOME wanted to be but can’t. Not just the DE itself but the KDE applications too, just look at Krita for example compared to GIMP. Somehow KDE could accomplish much more and feels more mature and robust too. I loved GNOME2 back then but feels like something went wrong with GNOME3 regarding the whole project and how users reacted to the different UI. I’d say the classic Windows NT era UI (95, 98, 2000, Xp) was peak design so I’m glad KDE stick to that more or less and made it even better and modern.

6581 3y ago
> just look at Krita for example compared to GIMP They're not really comparable. GIMP is for picture editing, Krita is for painting.
- vonjuice 3y ago
  Regardless of that, not being able to select multiple layers at once (in GIMP) is downright inexcusable.
  - HKH2 3y ago
    It's still the only open source image program I know that will not only let me print, but also show where the image will be on the page, and let me move it and scale it up/down. Seems like overkill, but I keep it installed for that reason.
    - sho_hn 3y ago
      As a KDE developer, I think Gimp is pretty great and has made massive progress in the upcoming 3.0 release (also on things only Krita could do so far, like reasonable colorspace-independence, also UI-wise). Obviously we're very proud of the Krita team. I use both regularly for different tasks, and that they have slightly different objectives and mission statements has been great for open source content authoring.
- dagw 3y ago

pooper 3y ago

> Now, KDE upstream has relented on using a single-click to open files and defaults to double-click instead. Distributions like Fedora, Kubuntu, and Manjaro had been changing the upstream default anyway, so KDE developer Nate Graham suggested disabling the feature. ""Distros are closer to users and clearly the feedback they've been getting is that double-click is a better default...Let's admit it and switch to double-click by default ourselves"". This is great news. The biggest challenge for Wayland for me was I want to be able to record my screen on obs as easily as I can on x11. I don't think this has been a problem lately. There is iirc an icon up top on gnome at least which I don't want in my video but I guess I'm not supposed to be recording my whole display? I currently don't use my fedora machine much (just ssh into it when I need to) and wsl2 is good enough.

karmakurtisaani 3y ago
I prefer personally the single click approach. But this being KDE you can configure it in your on liking, so no harm done.
anneessens 3y ago
If you haven't tried single click to open before, I would highly recommend it. I used to hate it as well, but going through folders and files is so much faster now that I'm used to it. And if you think about it, a single click to open something is much more consistent UI wise.
- jlpcsl 3y ago
  Same here. This is one change that they made that really does not make any sense to me. Also with smartphones being so used these days and they all have this single click mode of doing things, well it would also make more sense to me to keep single click for opening in KDE Plasma.
  - anneessens 3y ago
    Well, I can understand why KDE made it default since it's the behaviour everybody else expects now. But it's weird that it became standard in the first place.

Daunk 3y ago

Perhaps one day I'll use Plasma, or one of their KDE apps, without having a serious crash or other issues after 5 minutes.

vorticalbox 3y ago
I really want to use fedora silver blue, but KDE just greets me with a black screen and a cursor and nothing try has fixed it. i'm currently on pop!_os waiting for their new desktop :)
- haunter 3y ago
  Are you sure that’s KDE? Because Silverblue is using GNOME. Kinoite is the KDE version.
  - vorticalbox 3y ago
    yes it follows me across distros, if use fedora workstation, kubuntu or just install it it happens.
    - justinclift 3y ago
      What's the graphics card (or integrated gpu) you're using? It kind of sounds like something might be going wrong there, and stopping things from showing up onscreen correctly.
      - vorticalbox 3y ago
        I have NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Mobile in my laptop. currently running gnome/Wayland which is functioning correctly. it's a real shame because i love KDE :(
        justinclift 3y ago
        k. Nothing weird hardware wise with that then. Is it using the Nvidia proprietary drivers, or the OSS nouveau ones? If you're using the proprietary ones, which version? Sorry for the 20 questions, am just trying to figure out where it might be going wrong. :)

marginalia_nu 3y ago

> Breeze is Plasma's default theme and it has been updated for Plasma 6, but it's a subtle change — sort of like repainting a room and changing the color from "flat white" to "eggshell white". It has some changes to spacing that make it feel a little less crowded, and it has >>fewer lines separating UI elements<<. Please for the love of god don't remove the lines and other distinguishing features between UI elements. This makes the UI so much harder to parse. This trend where everything is flat and visually indistinguishable except for inperceptible differences in shade of grey can't go away soon enough. It's ruined a decade of user interfaces already. Yeah they look pretty, but they're awful to use.

creatonez 3y ago
They are mostly just trying to remove areas where there are multiple layers of separator lines, like boxes inside of boxes.
alxlaz 3y ago
I wish they'd at least made it thinner. Some of those screenshots on the release page [1] (Kate, Kdenlive) look awful, the actually useful content (code, clip problem list) is squeezed into a corner by UI elements that are mostly empty. That thing is ridiculous, the editor window is nearly as tall as a 1080p but it can barely display 20 lines, and the Clip Problems window is clipped at an 8-item view. I'm not even going to go into the relevance of touch-enabled devices for a Linux desktop but this is awful even by general standards. The clip problems list is laid down vertically, so pointer movement is primarily on the vertical direction. Even if you don't go through the list, you'll usually go over the window vertically just to get to OK/Abort or one of the buttons in the uperr-right section. Whatever ID gains (in the sense of Fitts' law) one hopes to gain by making the widgets fatter are more than offset by the increase in travel distance due to widget stacking. You get targets that are harder to hit and extra scrolling. This is a good trade-off on a 6" touch screen, where you're gonna do a lot of scrolling anyway so you get to work on the one factor you can control (pointer resolution), especially as pointer motion isn't constrained to a single plane (thumbs move on the vertical axis, too -- in fact even easier, due to anatomical constraints). I'm gonna go on a limb and say that I suspect the vast majority Plasma users are running laptops and desktops with screens slightly bigger than that and either a trackpad or a mouse. 1: https://kde.org/announcements/megarelease/6/ https://kde.org/announcements/megarelease/6/

gigatexal 3y ago

Any word if we can get it on Fedora 39 yet?

aquatica 3y ago
We won't. We'll get it with Fedora 40.
- piaste 3y ago
  You can also upgrade to Rawhide if you don't want to wait a couple of months.
  - voxadam 3y ago
    Fedora 40 Beta is currently on target to be released March 12[0] and will include KDE Plasma 6 so if anyone is looking to avoid running Rawhide it's only a two week wait for a beta release. It's also possible to install from the most recent build of the pre-beta 40 branch[1] [0] https://fedorapeople.org/groups/schedule/f-40/f-40-key-tasks.html https://fedorapeople.org/groups/schedule/f-40/f-40-key-tasks... [1] https://kojipkgs.fedoraproject.org/compose/branched/latest-Fedora-40/compose/Spins/x86_64/iso/Fedora-KDE-Live-x86_64-40-20240229.n.0.iso https://kojipkgs.fedoraproject.org/compose/branched/latest-F...

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

smallerfish 3y ago

Good job KDE team - nice to see steady progress. I encourage anybody using KDE to occasionally file tickets at bugs.kde.org; Nate is a powerhouse and seems to review all inbound tickets, and anything critical will reliably get worked on within a reasonable period of time. They're also very open to ideas and feedback (that fit into their general UX guidelines.) I would love to see more distros switch to an opinionated KDE (and also to KDE by default). It's so malleable, and yet most distros just dump the basic default setup on users.

thriftwy 3y ago
KDE should probably invest in better defaults if these need tweaking. People don't usually dig in the settings menu unless something is bothering them. If there are great opt-in features they're going to stay off.
- Phlogi 3y ago
  just what they did with V6.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  Most people I know that use KDE use it because it's so customisable. It's not the same crowd as Gnome. I don't think this is an impediment at all.
  - thriftwy 3y ago
    I'm using KDE for 20 years already because it has great miscellaneous apps (though it's less important in 2024), slick integration between components and nice all-encompassing settings app. I do tweak a few things when I boot up a fresh install, but generally, I don't feel the need to do a deep customization, and am not aware of any missed opportunities.
    - binkHN 3y ago
      > I'm using KDE ... because it has great miscellaneous apps... KWrite and Dolphin are insane!

ahoka 3y ago

Switching to copying whatever Windows 11 does instead of Windows 10 I guess?

andreime 3y ago
this comment is ... just wrong; why are you so edgy?
- ahoka 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - andreime 3y ago
    do you know kde 5 was launched one full year before windows 10 ?
    - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
      while I agree with the overall premise of your comment, that's not what the other poster said _at all_.
      - wetpaws 3y ago
        [dead]
ColonelPhantom 3y ago
More the opposite; switching to being copied by Windows 12. Seriously. KDE: let's make our panel floating by default to distinguish ourselves visually from Windows! later Microsoft rumored to introduce floating panel in Windows 12.
- timeon 3y ago
  Windows was copying KDE already with Vista/7.

RedShift1 3y ago

Users who prefer the old behavior can toggle it back on in the "Mouse Actions" settings under "Desktop Folder Settings", so it's not going away entirely. This is really important to me, the fact that it's configurable. The trend in other desktop environments has been to just take away features to lead everybody down "the golden path", but everybody has different preferences. I prefer a set of sensible defaults and a maze of settings to adjust every little thing, than just a blanket "here's how it works, deal with it".

mirpa 3y ago
If you have specific workflow where the golden path is suboptimal, sure. But I would not think that average user has any preferences and for many users Gnome is very reasonable.
- 0thgen 3y ago
  Id second this. I used to lose a lot of productivity via desktop tweaking, and have now converted to sticking with gnome defaults (as people have said, gnome really does "stay out of your way"). hypercustomization is cool, and I like that KDE gives hobbyist something to experiment with. I think in the long term though, KDE and gnome need to solidify. Something gnome-like for the base user, and then a layer of customization on top of it for the KDE hobbyists (with successful experiments integrated into the gnome-layer). I'm all for diversity of desktop environments, but there needs to be a common core (especially since linux is driven by open source development)
godshatter 3y ago
I'm a bit worried that it's now off by default, because this is one behavior I really like about KDE. Just leave the background visible somewhere and you can switch virtual desktops with ease. I know you can just click on the graphical virtual desktop display in the toolbar, but once I became used to it then it became muscle memory and now it's harder to do without it. The reason not making it a default worries me is that sometimes that makes it a nice candidate for "something we can remove that will only affect a minority of users". And it will be a minority of users, because most users won't even know it's an option.

lytedev 3y ago

Been tinkering with Plasma on my Framework 13 with NixOS and I upgraded to Plasma 6 last night. So far things seem pretty great! The combined overview (four-finger swipe up) is one of the main things I felt was missing from Gnome and macOS and is really nice! I wish it was a three-finger swipe, but it's KDE, so you know there's probably an option somewhere. I'm also excited about being able to consume HDR content on my workstation where I have a much nicer monitor, so will have to report back on that. I really dislike the new default lock screen wallpaper. Not entirely sure why. Plasma 6 fixes the panel configuration mess, which was pretty buggy. It works flawlessly now while being more intuitive. The new Breeze theme fixes a lot of the spacing inconsistencies that irked me here and there. It looks much better now. Fingerprint unlock had some weird bugs as well, which all seem to be ironed out. Very clean and consistent now. Even the new default sound theme is _super_ nice. I'm a huge fan of the new sound effects across the desktop environment. Seriously, they're so good. New screen recording stuff just works (Super+R) and the PipeWire setup plays perfectly with OBS. Can record individual windows and it all seems to work as expected. Still not entirely sure this will replace Sway for the serious workstation multitasking sessions and the advantages that a tiling window manager brings, but it's really a joy on my laptop. I know a lot of people (rightfully) have their gripes with Wayland, but this feels pretty feature complete to me. The last missing piece I'm personally feeling is remote desktop access, but I admittedly have not done anything there yet. Since screen capture is working perfectly and KDE Connect to control machines remotely from my phone works, I'm guessing the pipes are all in place and I simply need to set things up. If you're feeling curious, give it a shot! I think it's a fantastic starting point.

majoe 3y ago
How good is wayland support on Nixos currently? Did you have to make a lot of tweaks to your nix configuration? Last time I tried it a few months ago, albeit with plasma5, it kind of worked, but I had to do many tweaks in my configuration and couldn't figure out settings for coherent scaling for hidpi.
- kaba0 3y ago
  I can only talk about Gnome wayland with NixOS, but they generally don’t do anything too wild with the configs, and since they have quite bleeding edge packages, it usually works quite well, once it packaged.

karmakurtisaani 3y ago

KDE seems to be the only DE that actually follows the rule "if it's not broken, don't fix it". Gotta love the consistency over the some 15 years I've used it.

dagw 3y ago
KDE seems to be the only DE that actually follows the rule "if it's not broken, don't fix it". Everybody who remembers the KDE 3->4 transition will probably violently disagree with that. Hopefully that was an educational moment for the dev team and they've actually internalised that lesson. edit: just realised that 3->4 transition was more than 15 years ago, which makes me feel very old...
- sho_hn 3y ago
  You could say that. We learned a lot from 4.0! For me one of the biggest accomplishments of our community is that people really do stick around. It's very multi-generational. Therefore the memory is there and the lessons do get learned.
  - topspin 3y ago
    I want to thank you and detail some of the reasons you deserve thanks. Thank you for the conservative evolution of the KDE DE. In my mind the best praise of any major DE release is that there is no reason to fear it, and you've done that. Again. Thank you for protecting KDE from iconoclast mentalities. This is a difficult thing to do and only hard nosed managerial discipline can achieve this, especially for an open source DE. Thank you for accommodating compositor-less operation. Thank you for Konsole. Yakuake is also great and I'm making use of it as well. However, what I appreciate most is that the latter has not disrupting the former. I can have work-a-day Konsole and Yakuake can be used where it works well at the same time. Thank you! Thank you for not adopting the minimalist, "golden path" mentality. Options have great value to me and I can't tell you how much I appreciate that KDE, almost uniquely among both commercial and open source mainstream DEs, doesn't take them away: KDE is the only conventional DE that doesn't demonstrate contempt for my preferences. The single-click/double-click activation choice is a excellent example of the thinking that makes KDE awesome. It goes without saying that changing that default must have been a tough decision. Yet you made the pragmatic, correct choice. Thank you for that. The vestigial voices still beating KDE over the head for the 3->4 issues, despite over a decade of clear evidence that the lessons have long since been learned, are diminishing. They're being replaced by full throated, well deserved praise. I humbly ask that you hear one concern of mine: X11 is crucial and will remain so for a long time yet. I have absolutely no problem with Wayland and imagine myself adopting it, some day, perhaps even accidentally. In the meantime, please do not neglect the X11 experience. I have yet to see any evidence that you have, but it is a worry for me. Thank you - From a loyal and deeply appreciative KDE user.

sgu999 3y ago

I've learned to appreciate that if I showed this version to a 20 years younger me who had just gotten into Linux with Fedora, they'd probably find the UI extremely familiar. Meanwhile I have to relearn how to use my iPhone and Macbook every year now...

necroforest 3y ago
If you need to relearn your iPhone/Mac interfaces every year, you might want to get screened for Alzheimers.
- sgu999 3y ago
  And you might want to avoid reading comments too literally :)

dvh 3y ago

I left big DEs because of the constant overhauls (and because of their slowness). The WM of my choice (jwm) hasn't changed in decade and still being actively maintained and developed.

everybodyknows 3y ago
How do you install jwm?
- dvh 3y ago
  sudo apt-get install jwm (Then logout and choose jwm when typing password)

HunOL 3y ago

> The nice thing about KDE is that so much is configurable, but finding configuration settings is still a challenge in Plasma 6. For example, the aforementioned setting to scroll virtual desktops is found in the Desktop Folder Settings application, but not in the System Settings application under the Virtual Desktop settings. My current Linux installation on desktop is from 2016 and everything was configured years ago. Recently I had to install Linux in Virtualbox and decided to go with KDE. I was overwhelmed with settings not in a good way. Maybe when I was younger I was more enthusiastic and liked it, but now I want reasonable defaults and consistent UI/UX experience.

abainbridge 3y ago
Yep. I want to have the same config as everyone else to maximise the chance that I'm using the well tested path of the software.
PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
If you want consistency of configuration over years go with FVWM. I'm kidding (and kinda not), it's a valid complaint.
tux1968 3y ago
It would be really nice if configuration was scriptable, so that you could have one configuration script, and run it on every new install. Would remove the need to hunt and peck.
- HKH2 3y ago
  NixOS?
- topaz0 3y ago
  What makes you think it isn't? There seem to be old-fashioned config files for anything that you could do in the settings app or whatever.
- mkl 3y ago
  You don't even need a script - just use the same home folder or copy over the ~/.config/* files. KDE's configuration is all text files.

sotix 3y ago

KDE has reinvigorated my love for the desktop after years on Mac. I use it on my PC, laptop, and steam deck! I’m a big fan of their apps including Konsole, Kate, and KDEConnect. It’s an all around impressive project and surpasses MacOS and Windows in my opinion, which is remarkable. Really grateful to everyone that works on it.

rgun 3y ago
The other day one of my colleagues was trying to sell me the Apple ecosystem by giving a specific example. He has airpod connected to his mac. As soon as he gets a call, they switch to his iPhone. He was quite surprised when I told him that the same thing happens with my Asus laptop running Kubuntu, Motorola phone and Oneplus ear buds.
phatfish 3y ago
With default settings KDE is very familiar for people coming from Windows (well Windows 10 at least), and runs well for me without any serious errors. The biggest issue for Linux desktop use seems to be outside of the control of KDE/Gnome/Other DE now, which is rock solid support for all the flavours of consumer hardware out there. MacOS has a fixed hardware target obviously, Microsoft has all the hardware manufactures testing their drivers. The Linux ecosystem simply can't provide the same level of quality. I'm still waiting for hibernate to work on my laptop (using Fedora so I'm getting new kernel versions).
- binkHN 3y ago
  I completely agree with this. As someone who recently switched to Linux from too many years of Windows, the lack of hardware support is frustrating. As I've delved into this world for a few months now, I can clearly see the cases where Windows gets a hardware feature or related through a driver update, but this doesn't happen in Linux for a while because it needs to be integrated into the kernel.

sotix 3y ago

Does anyone have advice on contributing code to the project? I’d love to give back, but it’s a bit daunting, and I’m not the most familiar with c++. Would love to find a smaller place to start.

PcChip 3y ago
You can also become a quarterly/yearly PayPal contributor
jrepinc 3y ago
There is this list of 15-minute bugs that should be easy to tackle https://bugs.kde.org/buglist.cgi?bug_severity=critical&bug_severity=grave&bug_severity=major&bug_severity=crash&bug_severity=normal&bug_severity=minor&bug_severity=task&bug_status=UNCONFIRMED&bug_status=CONFIRMED&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&known_name=VHI-priority%20Plasma%20bugs&list_id=2605943&priority=HI&product=Bluedevil&product=Breeze&product=Discover&product=drkonqi&product=frameworks-plasma&product=kactivitymanagerd&product=kde-gtk-config&product=kdeplasma-addons&product=khelpcenter&product=kinfocenter&product=klipper&product=kmenuedit&product=krunner&product=KScreen&product=kscreenlocker&product=ksmserver&product=ksysguard&product=KSystemLog&product=kwayland-integration&product=kwin&product=Plasma%20SDK&product=Plasma%20Vault&product=Plasma%20Workspace%20Wallpapers&product=plasma-disks&product=plasma-integration&product=plasma-nm&product=plasma-pa&product=plasma-simplemenu&product=plasma-systemmonitor&product=plasmashell&product=policykit-kde-agent-1&product=Powerdevil&product=print-manager&product=printer-applet&product=pulseaudio-qt&product=systemsettings&product=xdg-desktop-portal-kde&query_based_on=VHI-priority%20Plasma%20bugs&query_format=advanced https://bugs.kde.org/buglist.cgi?bug_severity=critical&bug_s... Also strarting on smaller KDE applications is usually a great way to start, For example the Plasma widgets/applets or KDE games or educational applications. You can join the New Contributors char room on Matrix to get help with starting out https://matrix.to/#/#new-contributors:kde.org https://matrix.to/#/#new-contributors:kde.org

ismailmaj 3y ago

I was excited to try HDR on Plasma 6 but it currently only works with AMD GPUs, not Nvidia.

seancolsen 3y ago

I'm loving Plasma 6 so far. Wayland support is much better! I had been using a keyboard shortcut to switch to the previously-used desktop. When KDE removed it [1], I filed a bug [2]. Hours later, a KDE dev created a new KWin script [3] to replace this functionality, fixing my workflow. THANKS! KDE is awesome! [1]: https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kwin/-/merge_requests/3871 https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kwin/-/merge_requests/3871 [2]: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=481985 https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=481985 [3]: https://invent.kde.org/vladz/switch-to-previous-desktop https://invent.kde.org/vladz/switch-to-previous-desktop

MBCook 3y ago
Can you explain what’s so much better about Wayland support?
- sho_hn 3y ago
  There's a large amount of robustness improvements, particularly around multi-monitor and docking scenarios with dynamic and fractional DPI. We've also introduced technology to allow client apps to stay running should the compositor crash and restart. We've replaced some originally homebrew Wayland protocol extensions with newer extensions maintained by the wider Wayland community. For example, our own panels now use the layer-shell protocol. This improves interoperability, e.g. enabling third-party panels. We've added initial support for HDR and color management, in particular for games with HDR rendering (we've been learning a lot about the gaming community and their needs from the Steam Deck). More complete porting of many little quality-of-life workspace and toolkit features and refinements when running in Wayland. Performance work. Screen sharing got a revamp, now supporting RDP and the latest portal dialogs when invoked by apps and so on. Various other compositor-y bits, e.g. support for the Presentation Time frame scheduling extension, which helps video players and game engines. Some of these got done in Plasma and KDE software itself, some in Qt 6, where we've been a major contributor to the QtWayland module. Some required contributions to the Wayland protocol stack itself, e.g. the modern focus handover protocol.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago

PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago

I have to be honest, anytime I see a major version update I start to have nightmares of the KDE3/4 update. With that negativity aside, I use i3 nowadays but KDE is still always my other desktop. I've been using it since the KDE1 days and have always strongly preferred it over gnome :) Even in i3, Konsole is my console of choice.

skeletal88 3y ago
This 3 to 4 was 15 years ago, time to forget about it already. The developers have learned from it.
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
  I moved to i3 as a result of that transition, I think I'll continue remembering.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

sylware 3y ago

If KDE was not c++ (with its underlaying toolkit), I would give it a try.

fullstop 3y ago
Why does this matter?
- sylware 3y ago
  I am a dev, I understand why c++ and similar are definitive nonos.
  - efficax 3y ago
    good luck avoiding c++ software on the desktop. FWIW, c++ has many more features than plain c for improving safety and reliability (for example shared_ptr) if that's your concern.
    - sylware 3y ago
      Why do you think many devs out there are talking about the ensh*tification of open source software. Breaking news: c++ and similar are part of that.
  - fullstop 3y ago
    I would suggest that nearly every person on this website is a developer. Both C and C++ let you shoot yourself in the foot quite easily, but at least C++ has RAII. If you're referring to Rust, it's just not there yet for anything serious: https://areweguiyet.com/ https://areweguiyet.com/
    - k8svet 3y ago
      Tell that to those of us dogfodding COSMIC right now. ;)
      - 3y ago

BadHumans 3y ago

I hope this increases stability. KDE takes the startup approach of move fast and break things. For all of their progress in functionality, I have so many annoying bugs that I deal with on a daily basis.

whalesalad 3y ago
Curious to hear them. It’s been a bug free experience for me, even on Wayland.
- BadHumans 3y ago
  Well allow me to list them off. I'm using Plasma 5.27 - If my monitor dims due to inactivity then I start using my computer again, the monitor stays dim and does not come back up to the brightness I had it unless I turn off my monitor and turn it back on. I resolved this by just turning off dimming. - If KDE goes to lockscreen due to inactivity but I start interacting with my computer during the transition, my monitor just stays black and doesn't return to desktop or go to lockscreen. - My bluetooth headphones disconnect whenever KDE goes to lockscreen. -I use multiple languages and sometimes my languages will switch randomly despite not hitting the language hotkey and often I will mash my language hotkey and the language still won't change. Those are just what I remember off the top of my head but I'm maintaining a list somewhere in a notebook.
  - whalesalad 3y ago
    Oh jeez that does sound brutal. I do not experience those issues on my Deb 12 desktop. The lockscreen/dimming/etc stuff specifically works well for me. It’s very responsive to return from lock, if I catch it in the transition I can abort. Wondering if it’s the underlying platform you are on, or a third party plugin or module that could be doing this.
    - BadHumans 3y ago
      It's entirely possible Fedora sucks and is at fault while KDE itself is not responsible for the problems.

HankB99 3y ago

KDE user here. I'm on Debian so I'm still on 5.27 and will be for a while. That's OK. I like Plasma 5.27 and my only disappointment is that I won't file bug reports if I run into any issues. I don't expect they would be addresses and I prefer that the devs focus on moving 6 along. By the time 6 is on Debian (trixi, hopefully) lots of kinks should be worked out. And speaking of kinks, I'm disappointed in the number of posters on Mastodon who are angrily claiming that they will never use KDE again because of issues they run into on the first day of a major release. What did they expect? And I will repeat: Many thanks to the devs, testers, documenters and all others who make this happen. Well done!

AlienRobot 3y ago

>do away with the default of using the scroll wheel on the desktop to switch virtual desktops I've seen so many apps implement this. It's so odd. If I can bring my cursor to the widget I can probably click on the right item instead of scrolling. The only case I imagine this would be useful would be for accessibility. >Wayland as default I have plasma installed here and one weird thing I noticed is that if I use the wayland version sometimes text isn't rendered on windows or entire panels flash black rectangles, while if I use the X11 version my mouse speed becomes slower. I wonder if the update addresses these issues. Anyway after trying out several DEs I ended up using Xfce because my mouse feels faster in it.

godshatter 3y ago
> I've seen so many apps implement this. It's so odd. If I can bring my cursor to the widget I can probably click on the right item instead of scrolling. The only case I imagine this would be useful would be for accessibility. For me personally, it lets me think of desktops in terms of what is left or right of them, rather than what actual number it is, i.e my Steam desktop is to the right of my browser desktop and to the left of my remote session. If I need to go to the email desktop from where I'm at, it's two scrolls away. I usually leave a little bit of the desktop visible on each virtual desktop to facilitate this. So, not an accessibility thing for me but an actual preference. People are different. I know, it shocked me too.
- AlienRobot 3y ago
  I see. In every program that supported this I've triggered it by accident so often I had to disable it.
  - godshatter 3y ago
    Even now I occasionally use the scroll wheel and not realize my mouse is out of my window and have the same moment of surprise so I can relate.

e12e 3y ago

Interesting: > Qt has switched to CMake, away from the qmake build system Found some more information: https://www.qt.io/blog/qt-and-cmake-the-past-the-present-and-the-future https://www.qt.io/blog/qt-and-cmake-the-past-the-present-and... (2021)

shmerl 3y ago

Nice, hopefully Wine Wayland works better with it than with Kwin from Plasma 5.

int0x21 3y ago

I went KDE after Gnome went to version 3 and never looked back

moooo99 3y ago

I’ve been using Gnome almost exclusively for the past two years, although I also spent significant amounts of time in a tiling WM (Sway). I like the overall experience of gnome. The apps feel nice, the DE feels snappy etc. But the tiling features of KDE make me curious. I like sway, but I recently completely messed up my configuration and it’s a an absolute pain to get back working even halfway decent, so I may as well give a integrated DE a try

PufPufPuf 3y ago
Also consider pop-shell which is a fork of GNOME with tiling built-in. However, I'm not sure about its future since PopOS is switching to COSMIC DE in the next release.
- moooo99 3y ago
  I actually did try the Pop Shell extension with my Fedora installation, but found it to be more cumbersome than helpful. Admittedly, this may very well be due to the fact that I didn't quite have the time to configure it to match my tiling WM mappings i've been used to at this point

uticus 3y ago

Meh, I want a window manager, not a full desktop environment. I want key-combo switching between apps and allowing the apps to be moved and sized. And that's it. No need for special 'start/run' features, for DE-bundled apps, for DE-based widget bars, for DE-based notifications, etc. Get everything out of the way for focusing on the apps and allowing interaction between them only as needed. The problem imo is that Wayland is too hard to write your own WM for. People wrote X11 WMs in weekends when they got fed up with the status quo. How many do the same for Wayland?

creatonez 3y ago
KDE is modular, a significant amount of that can be removed cleanly. It's not quite as modular as LXDE or Xfce mainly because the binaries for Plasma and KWin-Wayland are handling a bit more than expected, but does it really matter on modern hardware that Plasma has a tiny bit of panel-related code loaded into RAM when your panels are disabled? (I'd probably say this is the worst non-modularity, and it's still avoidable if you're willing to swap out plasma for something else) > How many do the same for Wayland? A lot, because wlroots provides a decent base to handle all the things you don't want to be handling manually. The ecosystem of simple tiling WMs made with wlroots is quite vibrant.
- uticus 3y ago
  I stand corrected re my comment about making a compositor. At first, I was going to point out that wlroots itself says it abstracts the job of a compositor: 'about 60,000 lines of code you were going to write anyway.' [0] Would seem to prove the point that too many LOC are needed just to get something running. But really wlroots is from the same group that maintains Wayland [1], so maybe it's like a low-level/high-level access duality common in other software projects. [0] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wlroots/wlroots https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wlroots/wlroots [1] https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/ https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/

irthomasthomas 3y ago

So much of my workflow depends on X11. I hope we can keep it going. I don't think I could do this on Wayland: using my gpt4-vision toolkit to read my blocked domains list from kagi and xdotool entering the list into Azure Custom Search Api. https://twitter.com/xundecidability/status/1763219017160867840 https://twitter.com/xundecidability/status/17632190171608678...

moxvallix 3y ago
X11 is still supported. It’s just no longer the default.
- jsrcout 3y ago
  Sadly the past several years have conditioned a lot of us to equate "no longer the default" with "about to be permanently removed".

ak_111 3y ago

Still wondering if I can use emacs bindings on KDE, I recall a few years ago that wasn't possible without some tricky workarounds.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Kozmik1 3y ago

Does Slack actually open on Plasma 6?

smm11 3y ago

I've never been able to get the hang of KDE, but this release is quite impressive. This and SystemD is really one step closer to something like OS X.

jrepinc 3y ago

FYI: an interesting video on How KDE Plasma 6 Was Made https://tube.kockatoo.org/w/e6e8f177-22f1-432a-9c7f-ab76b17a5b54 https://tube.kockatoo.org/w/e6e8f177-22f1-432a-9c7f-ab76b17a...

sarasasa28 3y ago

oh man, I remember when I cared about this. I am so happy to be a normie with a Macbook now

flexagoon 3y ago

KDE is pretty cool but I just don't get why they're still using their Breeze theme. GNOME got so much more beautiful with the new Adwaita theme. It's time for KDE to redesign their default theme as well, Breeze looks absolutely terrible and outdated, especially the icons, it all feels super cheap and like it was all drawn by some random guy, not a huge project with a UI team. KDE can look amazing with a custom theme, why don't they just pick one and make it official?

smoldesu 3y ago
Really? The default GNOME Adwaita theme has been pretty blech in my opinion for a number of years. The update just kinda flattened out the visual identity and kept the same "sickness" looking colors. I quite like the GTK toolkit but I'll never be able to tolerate the default Dark colorscheme. If we're strictly talking about colors, I find Breeze to be more pleasing in Light and Dark mode.
- flexagoon 3y ago
  If your main problem with Adwaita are the colors, you can easily customize them, and there are even great GUI tools for this[1] My issue with Breeze aren't the default colors, but rather the theme itself [1]: https://github.com/GradienceTeam/Gradience https://github.com/GradienceTeam/Gradience
ognarb 3y ago
There is effort to multiple concurrent efforts to update the breeze style: Mine is here which is still quite WIP https://carlschwan.eu/2023/12/19/announcing-brise-theme/ https://carlschwan.eu/2023/12/19/announcing-brise-theme/ And there is another one for icons https://anditosan.wordpress.com/2023/12/30/breeze-icons-update/ https://anditosan.wordpress.com/2023/12/30/breeze-icons-upda...

sdwvit 3y ago

KDE plasma is the main reason I could switch completely from windows / macos for work and hobbies. Very mature DE that can challenge commercial solutions.

geenat 3y ago

Long live the cube.

haolez 3y ago

KDE sits in a weird place in my case. If I want something to just get out of the way, I use GNOME. If I want to scratch my geek itch and have a super custom and fancy hacker desktop, I resort to things like i3. KDE doesn't appeal to me as of today. Just my personal anecdote.

bitmasher9 3y ago
I use KDE because it’s stable, has every feature I want, and uses existing metaphors I am familiar with. In my circle of Linux users, a lot of the people that choose KDE do so because they don’t find the desktop layer interesting to hack on, and just want a tool for interacting with Linux.

jedbrown 3y ago

What is the state of tiling in Plasma 6 and how does it compare to Pop Shell (https://github.com/pop-os/shell https://github.com/pop-os/shell) for GNOME?

cocoa19 3y ago

KDE team has done a fantastic job in the looks department. Every time I look at the latest release it looks better and better. I every now and then use KDE and it keeps looking less and less as a "desktop environment for developers" (read: ugly), and more like a desktop environment that everybody loves. These latest screenshots look fantastic.

teekert 3y ago

I love how Gnome and KDE Plasma diverged. I change desktops every now and then, now I'm feeling like Gnome is just enough desktop and I'm loving it. But I have to say, this news item has me longing for Plasma's configurability again (and wobbly windows). I just love that there is so much choice on Linux!

zerr 3y ago

Linux desktop UI environments always felt laggy compared to Windows. Is it the same nowadays?

01HNNWZ0MV43FF 3y ago

"An aging Thinkpad with 16 GB of RAM" Wow, a 5-year-old laptop. Things were so primitive in 2018. Here in my the mighty year of 2024, my computer has....... 16 GB of RAM.

throwaway8481 3y ago

Okay, I am of course excited that KDE is making such fantastic strides forward. How-the-ever, GNOME is ahead of them because of the progress on high dynamic range color, non-fullscreen/partial scanouts, variable refresh rates, and the hidden work in GNOME extensions enabling things like PaperWM. Both KDE and GNOME are accelerating at a fantastic pace, but 1 of these projects are prioritizing the less visible (and hugely important) stuff. That is GNOME. I apologize for capitalizing Gnome, but that's what's comfortable. Once both DEs support these things, we can then recognize we're so far behind the curve with "spatial computing". As VR-enabled desktop environments become a thing, we need to view DEs like physics/sandbox simulators. A lot of the design specs that Apple puts out essentially mirror what you would expect in an environment with actual physics interactions. How light bounces between layered interface components. It's going to be hugely resource-intensive but someday we'll look back on 2D GUIs and DEs like something that pales in comparison to the amazing interfaces of a 3D environment where we can attach virtual surfaces to walls and ceilings and have them follow after us as we move around the office/house with our headsets. (Someday: https://github.com/SimulaVR/Simula/issues/174 https://github.com/SimulaVR/Simula/issues/174) PS: I'm loving how both KDE and GNOME are pushing a lot of DE behaviors into JS extensions. On a separate front, everything we interact with is like this close to being entirely within a web browser. Nobody likes what I've said, but I'm prophesying now: DEs will need to go "spatial", and all of /this/ will be in a web browser by 2027.

pyrophane 3y ago
My personal UI preferences aside, one place where KDE is ahead of Gnome right now that matters a great deal to me is support for fractional scaling, especially supporting different scaling factors one different displays (laptop vs monitor). KDE seems to have this working pretty well, whereas Gnome does not and it isn't clear when they will get there.
smoldesu 3y ago
> GNOME is ahead of them because of the progress on high dynamic range color, non-fullscreen/partial scanouts, variable refresh rates, and the hidden work in GNOME extensions enabling things like PaperWM. Wait... all of this is a lot to take in. HDR progress has gone great on Red Hat's side, but KDE has been working on it just as long (with arguably further progress). VRR has existed on KDE for a while as "Adaptive Sync" and the work that goes into updating GNOME extensions exists mostly because the GNOME developers refuse to make a stable API for it. GNOME and Red Hat obviously do great work for the community, but these seem like weird examples. To the contrary, with GNOME's fractured extensibility and now-missing system tray, a lot of Windows and MacOS users will probably feel confused booting up GNOME 40. I say all this from a GNOME system myself =P > Once both DEs support these things, we can then recognize we're so far behind the curve with "spatial computing" Holy whiplash, Batman! I disagree so hard my head is spinning. For one, "the curve" of Spatial Computing is so-far relegated to cheap Android SDKs and $3,500 iPad-killers. Nobody is shipping Johnny-Mnemonic style hardware today, and probably won't be for another decade. Focusing on developing that technology is not only a waste of time, but entirely tangential to the work that goes into making the modern desktop usable. GNOME and KDE's efforts shouldn't be dedicated to a hypothetical userbase that might never exist. ...and on the flip side, a lot of work has gone into "spatializing" Open Source software. OpenXR is the de-facto standard for VR experiences, and is well-supported on Linux clients. With Wayland, the desktop's rendering model is now finally up to a position where someone could feasibly write a foveated window renderer. There are people doing it right now, despite the lack of demand: https://simulavr.com/ https://simulavr.com/

Aerbil313 3y ago

I was surprised when someone told me that KDE is the biggest open source project in existence after Linux kernel. But indeed it looks like it. They are trying to reinvent the entire desktop computing stack in-house. This is what Apple does but without the corporate. I hope they succeed so I can have my fully free and thus user-centric desktop on par with proprietary offerings.

everybodyknows 3y ago

> Plasma 6 is likely to be a little bit rough around the edges for a while, and users might want to review known issues before deciding to upgrade. https://bugs.kde.org/buglist.cgi?bug_severity=critical&bug_severity=grave&bug_severity=major&bug_status=UNCONFIRMED&bug_status=CONFIRMED&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&classification=Applications&classification=Plasma&keywords=qt6%2C%20&keywords_type=allwords&list_id=2462812&query_format=advanced https://bugs.kde.org/buglist.cgi?bug_severity=critical&bug_s... This one caught my eye: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=480122 https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=480122 SUMMARY If the screen is turn off and then the pc goes to sleep (only possible if the lid is closed because trying to use a shortcut to sleep cause pc screen to turn on), on lid open the screen is black and the pc is unusable (require a reboot).

Aerbil313 3y ago

I'd be very excited if KDE can be the first usable Linux on mobile (usable = with my $banking_app, $messenger_app, etc.). If anyone were to pull it off it'd be KDE.

zilti 3y ago
Good news, there is Plasma Mobile.
- Aerbil313 3y ago
  I think you misread my comment. I am aware of Plasma Mobile, but I don't see my bank's app and WhatsApp on it.

minzi 3y ago

I am always so conflicted about adopting new desktop environments. Every time I feel like I dump 10-20 hours into it and still end up using my mac more often. This looks so tempting, but I feel fairly confident the outcome will be the same for me. Maybe the only way to achieve this is to get rid of my macbook.

akho 3y ago

Good to see better Wayland support in a popular environment. Judging by the screenshots, the UI remains a mess though. It's really surprising how people can be selectively blind about these things.

nazzacodes 3y ago

Is it just me that's a bit disappointed with the rate of change of desktop linux? Particularly the UI side of things? I feel like desktop linux is way behind Mac and even Windows in so many ways. Would love to see modern stripped back kde/gnome alternative: less kitchen sink applications, minimalist power user friendly design sense, 1st class tiling window management, keyboard friendly workflow etc.

massysett 3y ago
Have you tried a tiling window manager like i3?

mixmastamyk 3y ago

> Now, KDE upstream has relented on using a single-click to open files and defaults to double-click instead. Ok... > Another change to scrolling behavior in this release is that clicking on a scrollbar moves the window to the location clicked, rather than one "page" at a time. ... in order to be a better option for users with RSIs. This is already done with the middle mouse button. Will people please stop fucking with scroll bars? Ironic that one paragraph extols the virtues of forty year-old defaults, then the next recommends breaking something that already works.

eviks 3y ago
But it doesn't already work, middle mouse button is the worst, I almost never use it, and I use middle mouse buttons like tilt left/right. though why isn't two buttons enough, one for page nav, another for move to point, wonder whether this is configurable globally in KDE
- mixmastamyk 3y ago
  Mine works perfectly. I use it 100+ times a day, including now to reply you in another tab. If yours doesn't, you might like to buy a new mouse. In any case it isn't a reason to change the default.

meonmyphone2 3y ago

I'm not a Kde user (always used gnome/unity/i3) but enjoyed their release content. I remember finding Kde bloated in the past but I've been getting more curious about it, wishing to try it someday. Hopefully they will have a good tiling window system by then, because I'm too used to i3wm.

smetj 3y ago

Of course its personal but KDE is to me what a general purpose WM should be. Amazing work KDE team congratulations on this achievement.

account42 3y ago

Why would anyone want an overhaul of their desktop? I want my desktop to continue working exactly how it has been working.

yonatan8070 3y ago
I'd say that this isn't an "overhaul", they didn't redesign everything just to make it different, they refined and optimized pretty much every part of the DE to make it more power efficient (QT6, KRunner), more visually pleasing and consistent (Breeze theme), more featureful (HDR support), and of course more stable (countless bug fixes)