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KDE Releases Plasma 5
KDE Community (3396057) writes "KDE proudly announces the immediate availability of Plasma 5.0, providing a visually updated core desktop experience that is easy to use and familiar to the user. Plasma 5.0 introduces a new major version of KDE's workspace offering. The new Breeze artwork concept introduces cleaner visuals and improved readability. Central work-flows have been streamlined, while well-known overarching interaction patterns are left intact. Plasma 5.0 improves support for high-DPI displays and ships a converged shell, able to switch between user experiences for different target devices. Changes under the hood include the migration to a new, fully hardware-accelerated graphics stack centered around an OpenGL(ES) scenegraph. Plasma is built using Qt 5 and Frameworks 5."
sfcrazy reviewed the new desktop experience. It would appear the semantic desktop search features finally work even if you don't have an 8-core machine with an SSD.
Last time i tried it was called nepomuk. Did they rename the process? :)
Thank our KDE developers for their hard work. I'm really impressed by KDE and have used it a lot over the years.
I thought a "pro" meant anyone who gets paid for his work. I was paid for my work on Thwaite and RHDE: Furniture Fight , two NES homebrew games that I developed using GIMP, Python, ca65, and other pro quality development tools for GNU/Linux.
I love KDE, running it on all of my Linux systems, but WHO THE HELL comes up with these names? Nepomunk?? Baloo?? Silly names.. One thing: I see a PPA for Plasma 5 for KUbuntu.. umm.. how about for those of us who gave up Ubuntu and moved to the "mothership", namely Debian?? Would like to try Plasma 5 on my Debian Jessy laptop... but sure don't want to hoze up the current Plasma 4 install....
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
As vain as it may be, I like my computer's interface to look nice. Plasma 4 was so ugly, with strangely clashing styles for the panels and the windows. This new bit of design makes it much more appealing to look at. I'm more of an AwesomeWM guy but I might give this a try on my laptop, just to see.
From a embedded systems designer: FPGA development - Lattice Diamond runs on Linux - free to download, not open source KiCAD Schematic capture & PCB layout - free to download, open source VariCad Mech designer - licenced software MPLabX PIC microprocessor IDE - free to download Qt for cross platform apps Windows/Linux/Android/iOS With Libre office & other tools it's quite possible to run an engineering business from a Linux platform, which I do.
Time for bed, said Zebedee - boing
Gimp and firefox are the main programs that tie me to gtk+2/X11 but I'd be prepared to run those inside an a x-wayland container.
No Pro Quality Linux applications? I guess Maya and Matlab are junk then.
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
Looks awesome guys. Keep up the great work!
"All new desktop experience", "Smoother graphics". blah blah blah...
Where are the usable pro quality Linux apps ?
Indeed. It's funny how the Linux desktops spend time screwing around with small features but never talk about what kind of real world tasks you can perform. Now after a decade they finally fixed the search function in KDE. A couple of weeks ago there was news on Slashdot about some DE which touted the ability to change the login screen wallpaper as a highlighted new feature.
Seems fair to me.. Other Os copy the iOS look, and Apple copy the features here and there for their releases (whatsapp, android, linux..)
Actually a very good point.
Most likely stems from the fact that 98.5% of Linux users do their "real work" from a terminal window with a bunch of 30 year old tools. That motivates them to redo the GUI every year, because when you get down to it, the GUI really doesn't matter to them.
Can someone who has tried this tell me whether two particular bugs that were present throughout the life of Plasma 4 have been fixed (OK, you may not think these are bugs, but I sure do: I can't imagine how they were ever allowed to persist, since to me they seem to violate pretty basic requirements of GUI behaviour):
1. If one has a menu present (for example, by pressing the K-Menu button), does an incoming notification still cause the menu to disappear, so you get the delightfully random experience of clicking on whatever happened to be under the item you were about to click on?
2. Can a single misbehaving plasmoid still cause the entire desktop to freeze? (This typically happens to me if the network connectivity is lost: poorly-written plasmoids that need network access can block and cause everything -- not just the plasmoid in question -- to freeze.)
Geez, it's not Apple UI innovation - not by a long shot. It started with Microsoft first (flat tiles!), then moved to Android. iOS is actually the laggard here (mostly at the behest of a bunch of over bored journalists who see "new and shiny" as "innovative" rather than "if it works, don't fix it').
Apple only caved because (noisy) journalists were calling OS X and iOS "tired" and "dated" because they looked pretty much the same over the years, while Microsoft and Google were "innovating" in UI design by going all flat so it looks "fresh and different".
For the record, I preferred the old look, I like my faux 3D, and while skeumorphism was a bit over the top with stitched leather and green felt, it still felt a bit more casual than today's flat designs that give an air of formality.
There is a somewhat detailed review of Plasma 5 here:
http://www.themukt.com/2014/07...
The released videos seems very impressive.
I really love KDE. I sometimes work on Mac OSX or MS Windows 7, and I must say KDE beats every other environment I have tried when it comes to flexible workflow and productivity.
Whenever I work on other peoples computers, their personal files are always in a mess with their "Document" and "Download" folders loaded with hundreds of various files. I think this is simply because 1 panel file organizers like "Finder" or "Explorer" are really inefficient and hard to use for organizing and moving files. So I long for a twin panel file manager like Krusader, every time I work on other peoples machines.
The way KDE functions are integrated is also a joy: right click on files for useful things as packing and unpacking, or attaching the files to an email etc. A really smart GUI for mass file renaming (in Krusader by krename) is incredible useful too.
Looking forward to Plasma 5, probably included in Fedora 21.
Just installed and tried it. I don't see the "Switch to Classic Menu Style" option on the Application Launcher. I probably won't use it just for that.
Surely not me... thats one of the first things that get turned off on a new KDE install.. It just sucks up cycles for something I don't use...
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
Not sure what kind of distros you used but I spend the last three years installing Matlab on RHEL, CentOS, Debian and Ubuntu without that much trouble.
Don't blame journalists. It was Apple's own anal retentive obsessive compulsive lifestyle douchetards who were freaking out over how skeuomorphism was so 2000's and getting their panties in a bunch over a numeral one being centered or not that made Apple cave in and join the flat UI look. You know the ones, they have heart palpitations and clutch their pearls when they see someone use Comic Sans.
I want a terminal emulator that smoothly scrolls in the new text that appears. Some of the old real terminals had this feature, but I never have never seen it in a software terminal.
If I'm copying a file and click the cancel button, will it remove the file it's writing to (like Mac and Windows), or does it still leave the incomplete destination file?
who are the idiots who post crap like this?
"Who are the idiots who designed this crap? Why are they using obscure, 'flat' icons, which mean absolutely nothing? Can't their users READ? As soon as I heard the irritating music, I knew it was going to be yet another fail..."
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
more fool you then
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
well, you should have stayed on 3.5 until 4 was feature complete for you.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
I think, that current OS X (Yosemite) style has some problems. IMHO, to make panel and dock transparent is a good idea, but application style looks a little bit ugly. I think, they lost their good old elegance. In KDE5 both panel, widgets and windows are in the same flat style and looks good. Now I changed my mind and I think, that KDE5 looks better than KDE4 and, even, better than OS X.
Linux is worse than I thought if it takes three years to install a freaking app...
Yes Nepomuk was tempramental but at the same time it was easy to shoot down the process if it got out of hand.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
I'm still using 3.5, in the form of Trinity Desktop.
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
what stops you from writing it? (except perhaps the fact that it seems like a dumb idea resulting in linux-KMS-framebuffer-console-like performance)
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
We officially rolled out centOS6 earlier this year, and we were hit hard by the transition from KDE3 to KDE4. In the end all we could do was either recommend that users either go to gnome, or switch to Trinity (KDE3 fork). I expect that we'll have similar challenges when transitioning to CentOS7 in 2 years unless KDE4 was fixed in CentOS7, except then we'll have challenges with both KDE4 and Gnome3.
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
I'd have to say "just as good". Let me explain why: In my work, I try to minimize dependencies on third-party points of failure. This means I'm more likely to choose tools that are available on multiple platforms in the first place. GIMP provides substantially the same experience on Linux and Windows. So do Python and ca65, except that Python for Windows has to work around certain Win32 API gaps.
what stops you from writing it?
Nothing really. I have been toying with the idea of taking an existing terminal and patching it to do the trick. It's probably still too tasking project for my skill level. Generally I like the idea and would like to contribute either by providing code or making a donation.
(except perhaps the fact that it seems like a dumb idea resulting in linux-KMS-framebuffer-console-like performance)
Oh. I believe there's many ways to make it butter smooth and not consume much CPU or GPU power at all.
KDE these days is decent, certainly a lot less buggy than on the early 4.0 releases. I just don't have any use for a desktop that heavy. The good thing about linux is that you have lots of choice, so I can run dwm and whine about bloatiness while KDE fans can run their desktop while mocking mine for being cryptic and tough to use.
Huh. You've just brilliantly described my experience as a user of high-end seven-figure Enterprise Ready! software. I can imagine the vendor's management team in conference: "QA? Testing? That's what the user base is for."
Sigh.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Where are the usable pro quality Linux apps ?
SmartGit: http://www.syntevo.com/smartgi...
IntelliJ IDEA: http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/...
Ardour DAW: https://ardour.org/
Even the Weather Channel has copied this Office 2013 style.