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KDE Plasma Active 3 Improves Performance, Brings New Apps
jrepin writes "KDE has released the 3rd stable version of Plasma Active, KDE's device-independent user experience. The Plasma Active user interface is touch-friendly and works well across a range of devices. Its Activities function gives users a natural way to organize and access their applications, files and information. Plasma Active Three noticeably improves the user experience with its enhanced and expanded set of apps, improved performance and a new virtual keyboard."
Do they even have xfce for a tablet? Plasma active is KDE's "touch screen" interface, which they say is for "everything" but is clearly targeted at tablets, since all their graphics show it being used on one.
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
I like KDE myself but I can see why some people think it's too top heavy.
I'd actually like to play with this but I'm not sure I have a compatible one... that I'm willing to experiment on to that extent, anyway.
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
The standard desktop KDE has done nothing in the touchscreen area...
Plasma active is another environment designed for touchscreen devices, while Plasma desktop sticks to the old desktop paradigm...
Nothing to rant about
Looks like we need another fork. It's ridiculous how much everyone seems to be into the whole tablet hype. Fuck, as much as I hate Apple, at least iOS and OSX are kept separate.
DNA -- National Dyslexic Association
... you aren't being forced to use the netbook/tablet desktop in KDE as you are in Gnome 3. KDE still has a functional desktop environment.
I am frustrated by their stability issues more than their desktop functionality. KDE is very flexible in that respect.
Lightweight/full featured is a different concern. Since the average PC user now measures their RAM in gigabytes this isn't a concern for some people. But if you want your DE to have a smaller memory footprint then KDE is the worst choice.
So don't install Plasma. Install Mate. Or stock KDE. Or Gnome. Or any of the other million window managers and/or user interface sets out there.
at least iOS and OSX are kept separate.
Just like KDE's two separate products.
at least iOS and OSX are kept separate.
Just as KDE Plasma and KDE Plasma Active are kept separate.
I agree the naming should be clearer, but Slashdot posters should also RTFS.
Ah, totally didn't realize that. Haven't really looked at KDE in a few years all that much. That's good, at least.
DNA -- National Dyslexic Association
I think you are confusing the O/S with the desktop software. The kernel isn't "designed for touchy crap", it's the desktop. If you don't like touchy crap, use one of the bare-bones windowing solutions, like xfce.
Yeah but it still carries the shit that comes with all that semantic desktop/akonadi/nepomuk stuff that competes with the Windows registry for sheer programmer incompetence. That stuff seems to chew up half the CPU cycles used on any computer I put it on. I don't even know how it expects to work well on an ARM tablet.
Can I use it with my Planar touchscreen monitor and netbook though? Would be one way to bridge this huge divide between touch type devices and the PC world.
What would Richard Feynman do, if he were here right now? He'd do some math and he'd follow through!
That's why we call it Plasma Desktop and Plasma Active. There's even a Plasma Netbook and a perennially (but hopefully not eternally) in-alpha Plasma Media Center. They all share the same core (allowing us to work on all these different targets with limited human resources) but have purposefully different user interaction concepts. We like to think of it as having your cake and eating it too.
Looks like we need commenters that actually take the time to read *and* understand the announcement. In easy words:
1) There are two UIs, one for the desktop, it's optimized for mouse and keyboard input, and for hardware that's typically found on a desktop or laptop computer.
2) Then, there's Plasma Active, which is optimized for touch UIs, but can in principle be easily changed to also accommodate other hardware (especially input).
3) While these two share a lot of code, they are differently designed (ranging from input of single UI elements to overall use cases).
I hope this way it's more clear to you.
Bad choice of names, man. Look how many Slashdotters are confused. You have no hope with the general computer-using public.
They're inching ever closer together. Witness OSX's braindead implementation of fullscreen apps, which don't allow you to do things as ingrained into the Mac way of working as dragging and dropping files from the Finder into apps. They did this to get their desktop OS closer to their tablet one, and it makes very little sense.
Looks like we need another fork. It's ridiculous how much everyone seems to be into the whole tablet hype. Fuck, as much as I hate Apple, at least iOS and OSX are kept separate.
Why another fork? The KDE developers already have a desktop version and a touch screen version of Plasma. They are named Plasma Desktop and Plasma Active. There is no need to fork, unlike Gnome and Unity, KDE did not force a new paradigm on their users. The user can decide which interface they want based on the device (Desktop, netbook and now Active). You can even run the various interfaces on devices they were not designed for if you want (but I'm not sure why you would want to do that). Whether Plasma Desktop, Plasma Netbook or Plasma Active, all are running the same KDE below the surface.
So, no forks needed.
Are they going to finish converting/redesigning Quanta?
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Now 'merely' slow instead of 'really' slow, so it's an improvement.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Quanta hasn't been updated in five years.
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
All these new features into KDE and the developers still won't (can't?) fix a 4+ year old bug that is about basic functionality -- that of honoring the -geometry command line option.
Please vote for this bug to be fixed!
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=165355
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lol, who starts apps from command line?
And who sets directly the geometry of the app before launching it?
If you think that the initial geometry of your most used apps is wrong, then ask just that, to improve the defaults.
If it's only for a handful of apps then make specific window rules for them.
This is a corner case at best.
Take a look at https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=147094 for the use cases.
In case you can't be bothered -- my use case is having a shell script that opens up several windows (konsole and other tools) as my dev environment in a standard way. The konsoles are put into the appropriate directories, commands executed in certain windows (cscope, etc..). The konsole windows are not all of the same size. And mixing in the other tools precludes using the built in (but very restrictive) Konsole profile capabilities.
This functionality worked great in KDE3 (and all the X WMs I used for many years before that).
So corner case? No. Missing functionality? Yes.
I guess if all you do is browse the web and write emails that this wouldn't be a very important feature.
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he does, apparently. as do others... take your arrogance and shove it up your ass..
"Look how many Slashdotters are confused." you must be new here, thats the normal stance.......
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
I really cannot understand why there is not more interest in this. This is HUGE: It's the first and only fully free working environment for tablets. And it presents a new way of working with tablets (activities) that seems to be more suited to our brains than other paradigms. And it's beautiful to boot.
All these new features into KDE and the developers still won't (can't?) fix a 4+ year old bug that is about basic functionality -- that of honoring the -geometry command line option.
That is basic functionality for you? WTF? This is advanced functionality only a tiny niche audience cares about and of that niche audience most would use KWin rules for the same feature.
Maybe it is considered advanced for KDE4. Many apps such as Konsole in KDE4 all purport to support this advanced option in their help - so it could be argued that it is a bug in KDE4 and not a new feature.
As for it being basic - I've been using it in X for 20+ years. I guess I'd consider it more primitive than advanced. KDE3 had great support for it.
I've looked at KWin Rules before. From the provided examples and trying it I didn't see an obvious way to handle my use scenario - perhaps you can suggest the appropriate technique or point me at an example that works similar to below:
- Specify a specific profile -- call it "ProjectA"
- Provide an ICON or some other method for starting ProjectA
- When started the following happens
-- 6 konsole windows are opened
--- each with separate geometry for placement and size
--- each with different titles
--- each has a specified home directory to start in
--- one starts cscope
--- 2 start VIM
--- 1 starts an ssh to a target machine
--- 1 is tailing a log file
-- 1 firefox window is opened
--- specific geometry for placement and size
-- 1 custom app is opened
--- specific geometry for placement and size
Creating "ProjectB" should be an easy copy of "ProjectA" and allow for quick editing of window placement, rules, etc.
It should be trivial to copy these rule sets to another machine.
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forgive me for asking but couldn't you use the session management tools to manually restore a session with your needed terminals on startup.
what are you smoking as I'd like some of it myself. KDE did change the damn UI and forced it on us when they switched from 3 to 4. One feature I use and depend on is the multiple desktop mode as I tend to configure each desktop for a specific purpose. Then they dropped all of that in favor of the god damn M$ way of a single desktop and crammed it down our throats.
Personally, I'm glad someone decided to keep working on fixing the bugs and various problems in 3 (Trinity Project) as it allows me to continue using the10+ multiple desktops that I've configured to support my various workflows. KDE 4 is so bad, I may as well run Win7 and forget about open source.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
You can blame KDE4 for akonadi, for nepomuk.. but for have an unique desktop? Aye you kidding? In KDE4 you could have for every Virtual Desktop a different configuration (with different wallpapers, plasmoids, etc...). Only the panel remains. More on that, you could have different Activities with differents virtual desktops too. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67ZFrrM9Zro
Then they dropped all of that in favor of the god damn M$ way of a single desktop and crammed it down our throats.
Since when have you been smoking high quality double-concentrate reinforced crack?. Even the worst bug-infested 4.0.1 KDE version allowed you multiple desktops. They would just crash multiple times but they were there.
Actually KDE now allows you two different levels of multiplicity: desktops and activity. Where multiple desktops pretty much works as always, activities let you configure different sets of desktop applets (plasmoids), application started by default and more stuff. I personally do not use it, as I find it confusing, but you cannot complain it does not exist.
this post contain no useful information, no need to mod it down
Once upon a time there was an idea to target both phones and tablets - what happened to that? It seems like they're only concentrating on tablets now.
-someone who was really looking forward to running KDE on his phone
Most human behaviour can be explained in terms of identity.
Thanks for proving my point: It's a feature for a tiny niche audience.
You do seem indicative of a lot of the KDE users I've met. The general feeling is that KDE shouldn't be used by developers.
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You do seem indicative of a lot of the KDE users I've met. The general feeling is that KDE shouldn't be used by developers.
As if that single option was a requirement by all developers and not a niche...
KDE software is developed by developers and seems like they can live just fine without the option, just like ALL Windows, OSX, etc. developers can since forever.