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.

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.
 

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

[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: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.