KDE Plasma 5.3 Beta Brings Lot of Improvements

jones_supa writes: The KDE project today announced the release of KDE Plasma 5.3 beta. It brings better power management, improved Bluetooth support, improved widgets, Wayland support, new media center, and nearly 350 bugfixes. The power management improvements include settings that can be independently configured per activity, there is a new energy usage monitor available in KInfoCenter, and a battery applet identifies applications that hog power. Bluetooth applet brings added support for blocking and unblocking devices. New touchpad module has been added as well. The combined window manager and compositor KWin is now able to start a nested XWayland server, which acts as a bridge between the old X11 and the new Wayland world.

Comments

Plasma Media Center

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. The KDE Plasma Media Center screenshot looks like Windows Metro dropped some acid and shat on the monitor.

Why. Why must every UI now have flat, jarring colors?

Re:Plasma Media Center

[ProzacPatient]

I feel your pain; I hate this shift toward flat soulless UIs.

Personally I think KDE 4's Oxygen was beautiful but it isn't flat enough by today's standards apparently. As for Windows I feel Windows Vista was the pinnacle of Window's appearance because personally I found it very pleasing to look at and very easy on the eyes unlike Modern UI with its flat clash of colors.

Re:Plasma Media Center

[Anonymous Coward]

The Aero desktop is not very resource-intensive. The performance problems Vista had were related to high memory usage and disk activity.

Re:Plasma Media Center

[AC-x]

If it's good enough for Picard, it should be good enough for you! :)

Re:Plasma Media Center

[x_t0ken_407]

Agreed, still in love with and using KDE4 Oxygen atm, heh.

Re:Plasma Media Center

[RavenLrD20k]

They can draw rounded corners on their UI elements ;) Maybe that'll be in KDE Plasma 6.

Unfortunately, it appears that CBS Studios owns the patent* on rounded corners in the UI.

* yes I know it's actually a copyright; but that doesn't quite make the joke, does it?

Re:Plasma Media Center

[allo]

Sorry, but this is bullshit.
A recent windows or even osx features buttons, which are for example grey with black text on a lightgrey dialog, or colorful window decoration buttons, but without even a tiny 3D effect distinguishing them from the titlebar.

Even win95 had a gui, where a button were a button and not a rectangular area with a slightly different color.

Re:Plasma Media Center

[Daniel Hoffmann]

Honestly I like them, not because I think they are pretty and more because they are easier to implement and copy, as a dev it makes my life easier. Personally I like gradients and dark colors better, but I care so little about these things that I don't even change the wallpaper on my computers.

Re:Plasma Media Center

[Ol Olsoc]

a flat UI that isn't trying to display a ridiculous number of intensive effects is going to provide a better experience.

I miss CGA graphics too.

Oh yeah?

[gstoddart]

there is a new energy usage monitor available in KInfoCenter, and a battery applet identifies applications that hog power

And how much power does that consume? :-P

Ouhhh, that hurts!

[udippel]

... and I am a KDE-person. Wow, holy sh**. I fled from Gnome to KDE some years ago, happy so far, and now it seems I have to look again; for a place to escape. A place that I can configure freely, and one that does not look like a Metro-Spin-Off. Yep, the screenshot on the ostatic-blog mentioned in the summary looks exactly - no, not the same, but like a similar mental breakdown of the people behind the design.
On KDE 'Activities' were fine, though abandonware before ever fully developed https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug..... For ages, I have been sitting on my personal configuration of the 'plasma-netbook'. With a 1920x1200 24" monitor. Meaning, *a lot* of reconfiguration. I tried Plasma 5, and - gone it was! Okay, I could stay on Plasma 4 for some more time, though the writing seems to be on the wall. Why do some people tend to think that the market leader is the market leader for their cr** desktop designs? I can promise you one thing, 'Year of Linux on the desktop' or not - none of my Windows users has ever told me how beautiful the desktop was. On the contrary, they usually preferred mine aesthetically, and theirs for the simplicity of functions.
 

Re:Ouhhh, that hurts!

[bondsbw]

Aesthetically, I much prefer Windows 8 over 7, and Plasma 5 over 4.

Years ago, I remember similar outcries when XP introduced its bloated UI, and then Vista (and 7) made borders thicker and made things transparent. I'm sure there are some people who really truly have issues with reduced clutter in their UI, but for most people I have a feeling they just don't like things that aren't exactly what they are used to.

If only there were ways to mod the user interface...

Re:Ouhhh, that hurts!

[Parker Lewis]

Try Canonical Unity. I never liked Gnome, while I was OK with GTK programs. Then with Unity, I'm pretty fine. It has good defaults. I was a KDE user since version 2, loved 3, but I faced annoying bugs, even with the latest 4 releases (like systray icons leaking memory, every KDE upgrade disabling Oxygen theme, icon-only taskbar freeze issues, etc). Then, after Ubuntu started this own shell, I gave a chance in 12.04, which was fine, and a way improved in 14.04. I.e., while some people left Ubuntu due change to Unity, I started to use it for this reason.

Re:Ouhhh, that hurts!

[stoolpigeon]

" I tried Plasma 5, and - gone it was! "

What was gone?

Re:Ouhhh, that hurts!

[drkstr1]

System Settings -> Workspace Apperence (or any other option in that category) -> Get New Decorations. Problem solved. Or are you just the kind of person who like to cry over spilt milk?

Re:Ouhhh, that hurts!

[udippel]

But that's not what I'm interested in.
Like the other, rather idiot suggestion to change the background decoration. We are not in W95 last millennium.
I have set up a panelless desktop that I use at home and at work. It is based on the netbook-plasma 'Search and Launch' activity. I couldn't care less about background image, what I want is my panelless all edge-event based desktop. What's the point then of telling me about the beauties of XFCE, Unity, or what not.
To me panels are cluttered, overloaded one-dimensional items (at least, usually they are in a single line with items popping up in the orthogonal direction). Whereas I like a clean desktop with a 2-dimensional arrangement of launchers, groups and whatnot. Popping up for me is - no, not a hidden panel - a 2-dimensional display of reduced applications. Yep, a tad like OSX, and still no panel.

Should anyone be able to point out a desktop that allows this, I'd be happy to know. Or even better: KDE just keeping what it has, and migrate it to Plasma 5 which has clear technical advantages.

Re:Ouhhh, that hurts!

[Hognoxious]

When support for XP ended I tried various flavours of Kali linux plus most of the "spice rack". KDE wouldn't let me change anything, for some unknown reason, and most of the others were pretty restrictive in one way or another. I did keep brief notes, but I can't find them right now.

In the end I went with mate; it works by default pretty much like gnome 2, which I was used to from CentOS 5 & 6.

Re:Ouhhh, that hurts!

[Hognoxious]

Back in the days of Redhat 7, wasn't KDE good and gnome crap? I'll have to dust off that old machine that I use as a footrest and see what's on it.

Another major project hijacked by lunatics

[fnj]

KDE has officially gone to hell. Nice knowin' ya, see ya later. I say this as a former aficionado. IMO KDE3 was the pinnacle; KDE4 was barely acceptable; KDE5 is junk. Lumina looks like the only DE with hope for the future. For now I'm pretty happy with Mate because it is identical to Gnome2.

Re:Another major project hijacked by lunatics

[Anonymous Coward]

Gnome 2 is not developed anymore. If you liked Gnome 2 then you should really check out Gnome 3, which builds on a lot of technology from Gnome 2 but is much more modern and heavily improved.

Re:Another major project hijacked by lunatics

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol, no.

Re:Another major project hijacked by lunatics

[HatofPig]

KDE5 isn't even out yet. We are at a transition place since they broke the project up into it's constituent parts. But KDE Plasma 5, the desktop, is great. I'm using it right now, posting from a seven year old piece of shit Dell office computer and it's snappy, responsive, and well laid out. Way better than KDE 4, I don't know how you could think otherwise. Just switch to the classic KDE menu + dynamic search box, get a new theme from KHotNewStuff, and enjoy.

I like the default settings, but judging KDE on it's defaults, like what seems to be happening a lot, is pointless. KDE is like Foobar2000, power-users like enjoy that there is some assembly required.

Slashdotters have Baby Duck Syndrome

[Merk42]

Given the comments here and the article about Google Maps, both should be filed under the everything-new-is-bad dept.

Calm down about the screenshot in TFA

[dlenmn]

It seems that a number of commenters are blowing their fuses about the screenshot in TFA. The screenshot is of the media center _not_ the desktop. I agree that the media center looks ugly, but IMHO, the actual desktop (i.e. KDE Plasma) looks nice. Look at screenshots of KDE Plasma 5.3 before passing judgement. (No, I won't link to them; use google.)

Re:Calm down about the screenshot in TFA

[JackieBrown]

Agreed. It looks very similar to previous versions. Nice thing with KDE is you can usually customize it to however you want it to look

https://www.kde.org/announceme...

Re:Calm down about the screenshot in TFA

[x_t0ken_407]

Agreed. It'll be interesting to try it out once it's stable enough. Totally not wanting a redo of the nightmare that happened at the beginning of KDE4

Re:Calm down about the screenshot in TFA

[mike449]

Ok, here is one. I didn't even have to google.
https://www.kde.org/announceme...

Re:Calm down about the screenshot in TFA

[vilanye]

Plasma 5 is flat and ugly.

The destroyed the KDE menu. Instead of easy to use tabs, it uses a vertical menu bar where most of the menu is below your screen.

It is an ugly mess.

Re:Calm down about the screenshot in TFA

[HatofPig]

"Flat and ugly" only by default! Unlike Windows, or Mac OS, it is highly reconfigurable and themable. If you don't like it, you can change it.

I can't believe the fussing in this thread about aesthetics, KDE Plasma 5 is amazingly function, it's the best yet. Yeah, I dislike the new menu too. But with a right-click you can switch to the greatest-ever rendition of the classic KDE Menu which now finally features a dynamic search box. Not only that, it includes the option to collapse all sub-menu hierarchies to a single sub-menu beyond the main one. No more pointless "Science" or "Mathematics" sub-menus in the "Education" menu, which probably only has 5 things in it anyway.

KDE Plasma 5 is so much better than 4. In the later 5.x series I think we will finally reach quality-parity with KDE 3.5.

Re:Calm down about the screenshot in TFA

[Hognoxious]

But with a right-click you can switch to the greatest-ever rendition of the classic KDE Menu

Joe Sixpack & Granny Cookiebaker aren't going to do that.

Re:Calm down about the screenshot in TFA

[vilanye]

The KDE menu is horrible!

The "old" KDE 4 menu had dynamic search also.

The "you can change it" excuse is lame.

Ugly by default is not good policy.

I used to love it but...

[denisbergeron]

It is so slow. To much everything everywhere too complex.
Well Mate/Cinnamon/XFCE suit my taste better.

Screen shot

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone freaking out over one low res screen shot?

One of the (eventual) great things about KDE 4 and even more with KDE 5 is all the interfaces are built with QML... which is easily modifiable. If the release looks like crap, many people will jump in with new themes, and port old themes if they don't already exist. The look and feel of KDE is extremely flexible. What has mattered with KDE isn't the look, but the functionality (and customizability). This was the problem with early KDE 4 releases... not the look... the functionality sucks. I don't know how KDE 5 is going to work functionally... maybe it will suck too...

But no one is criticizing functionality here... just the look of one random little screen shot?

Seriously, slashdot?

Re:Screen shot

[Anonymous Coward]

If all it took was a couple of mouse clicks to repaint it any way you like, and the cost was zero, I'd say pretty damn popular.

Re:Screen shot

[Merk42]

Go ahead and find a default of anything that 100% of users will like. Chances are people have different opinions, often diametrically opposed from one another. No matter what you do, there will be a non-zero percent of people unhappy. These people will then be a vocal minority, because it's in human nature to be vocal about something negative than something positive, and it will seem like the default doesn't work for anyone at all.

Re:Screen shot

[RavenLrD20k]

Making an interface look JUST the way one wants is often a heck of a lot more investment than "a couple of mouse clicks." I've spent hours configuring a desktop environment before. Tweaking everything from colors to window behaviors to terminal transparencies (not only for looking good, but good compositing can really help with maximising screen real-estate by allowing informational/reference pages to reside behind a well positioned terminal) to button positioning to general aesthetic fixes to allow myself to adjust to a better mood just by viewing the desktop (I usually set my wallpapers to my favorite picture of my wife, so at a click of the button - there she is). While the financial cost for doing this is generally zero, there's certainly an opportunity cost involved in configuring ones workspace to be appealing in such a manner that it doesn't make one's eyes bleed out of the sockets to have to look at the thing...like metro-stylized graphics do for me.

I had no complaints for the look of any User Interface I've had to use for most operating systems, even Unity...until tiles became a thing. It's not that it's different. I can handle different, and have....It's that metro is visually harsh and feels like razorblades having to look at it. I don't even like looking at websites that use tile-like themes (though my super likes putting those into pages he develops for the Company).

I don't know...I tend to like being able to arrange my workflow in 3 dimensional levels on my screen, allowing active panes to take the front, with informational items filling the screens behind. Transparencies facilitate this even more, along with slight blurring to give more a feeling of depth...which I can use as prioritization organization on a filled screen. The clearer an object, the closer it is, which means the higher priority in the flow it'll have. Having Metro, where everything is forced flat, or forced to look flat...It breaks the way I flow.

Correct Link

[allo]

https://www.kde.org/announceme...

Here we go again

[overshoot]

KDE 4 broke a lot of the functions I used on 3 (like, for instance, email. KMail was great, now I'm stuck with the inferior but functional Thunderbird). And they never did fix them. Still broken and worse with every revision.

So I'm dreading the day when the only supported KDE will be the still-not-fully-functional version 5. What have they broken now, never to fix?

Re:Here we go again

[rdnetto]

KDE 4 broke a lot of the functions I used on 3 (like, for instance, email. KMail was great, now I'm stuck with the inferior but functional Thunderbird). And they never did fix them. Still broken and worse with every revision.

So I'm dreading the day when the only supported KDE will be the still-not-fully-functional version 5. What have they broken now, never to fix?

Speaking as someone who only started using KDE after 4 had stabilized, what did they break in Kmail?