KDE Plasma 5 Becomes the Default Desktop of OpenSUSE Tumbleweed

sfcrazy writes: Jos Poortliet, former openSUSE community manager, wrote in a blog post, "At the time of writing this, the openQA servers were busily running tests and, by the time we publish this article, they should be done. What was being tested? A massive amount of changes, bringing not only the latest Plasma 5.3 and Applications 15.04.1 to Tumbleweed, but also marking the switch to Plasma 5 as the default desktop!" The switch to P5 will also have a massive impact in Plasma 5 development because now there will be more users finding bugs and filing reports to make it even better.

Comments

Re:Why is it news?

[Windwraith]

Because it lacks a lot of things, has some visual bugs and lots of crashes. Some functions are present at the interface level but won't work, specially stuff related to hotkeys.
Needs 2-3 more iterations to be public.

Let's hope that Plasma 4 is kept as an alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE Plasma 5 is not yet near to be production ready, notwithstanding the 5.3 version. Just to mention a few issues:

for instance:

- kwin compositing is not usable on older nvidia hardware with the nvidia proprietary driver 304.x, even if the driver supports opengl 2.1
- session save/restore is totally broken (at logout the running applications are saved, but then at the next login they are restored to the wrong desktops/activities and in the wrong places/sizes)
- there is no support for screensavers
- there is no support for guest sessions
- plasma can crash when attaching an external monitor or projection screen
- there is a huge number of missing widgets/plasmoids wrt to plasma 4 (scientific calculator, sensors monitoring, to mention a couple)
- some widgets are present but broken (cpu load widget misrenders on systems with more than 1 cpu and is not practically dockable to a panel as it takes a huge amount of horizontal space)
- some widgets make the plasma desktop crash when you try to remove the widget, so that once added the widgets require the manual editing of a configuration file to be removed

All these are aspects well visible even before having more users finding bugs and filing reports.

Making something that is not production ready the default is actually *hurting* the product, not helping it, because it creates frustration in its users, makes them bitter about the evident regression wrt what they were used to. If users are given no way to stick to Plasma 4 until Plasma 5 fills their needs they may even jump into other desktops to fix their ability to do everyday work (from what I hear, cinnamon seems a favorite of Plasma 4 orphans). This can have a very negative impact on KDE usage numbers and make the desktop irrelevant, no matter its many qualities and intense work on development.

Let's hope that Opensuse will at least leave Plasma 4 installable as an alternative to Plasma 5. Kubuntu did not (version 15.04 Vivid is Plasma 5 only). Kubuntu says they provide the alternative via Kubuntu 14.04 Trusty LTS, but this is not really an option: if you are already on version 14.10 Utopic, you can only update to 15.04 Vivid, there is no downgrade path, and you cannot stick to 15.04 either as it shall go EOL in a couple of months. Furthermore, those who are currently on Utopic, probably did the Trusty -> Utopic upgrade because they needed something that is in Utopic and was not in Trusty, so even a re-install to Trusty is not an option to them.

Re:Let's hope that Plasma 4 is kept as an alternat

[Windwraith]

I found myself in that situation, needed something from Vivid and found myself in a desktop that was upside down. After the bad rep KDE4 got for being pushed too early, it's surprising they did this.
Ended up using Unity for the time being. Not extremely happy. While it works okay there are little annoyances here and there, but at least it works better than Plasma 5. And before someone points it out, yes, I did reset my configs several times, so it's not a configuration issue. This is with plasma 5.3 from backports ppa, 5.2 was even worse.

- Plasma 4 had the best systray in all the linux ecosystem, allowing KDE native, "new" Unity-style indicators, and old tray icons. Now neither of those work in Plasma 5, leaving empty space or not showing at all. Even Unity has ways to show old tray icons such as Pidgin. When asking about it, was instructed to install stuff like stalonetray...are we in FVWM now?
- You can't invoke Klipper actions on current clipboard either. Options exist, hotkey config exist, but it doesn't work, it's like half-converted to plasmoid.
- No more Unity launcher integration, and Icon-Only Task Manager has lost all options. Click on window group function is even slower to use than Unity's.
- No pastebin, network monitor plasmoids. They are supposedly ported but git activity stopped months ago. In fact git activity for several KDE apps and plasmoids has died entirely. Not hoping to ever see them again.
- No window tabbing. Nowhere to be found despite options to set hotkeys existing.
- The window titlebar decorations are massive and cannot be configured. Even Unity allows this now. Huge waste of space.
- Breeze style refuses to work. If you enjoyed a consistent desktop using the Oxygen theme in KDE4, forget about it now.
- Icons from all GTK apps are missing.
- Frequent crashes if trying to configure any hotkeys. Hotkey system completely broken, very difficult to make it remember anything.
- No attempt to read options from KDE4, it just pits you versus the default desktop no matter what you had.
- Several apps such as Krusader aren't ported (and probably will never be), brings both KDE4 and "KDE frameworks 5" services when started.
- Konsole won't allow showing "konsole" in the title. Which means you cannot reliably use tools to select the window with a hotkey. The option is present in Konsole, but will do nothing.
- Window settings don't get saved if you set them from a window. Changes need to be done in System Settings for them to be actually remembered.
- Klipper cannot be used in another desktop any longer since it's a half-baked plasmoid now. I'd say it's in pupa stage.
- Clock plasmoid can't even allow 24 hour time now. AM/PM or nothing.
- Several options that do absolutely nothing, don't get saved or are obvious remains of KDE4. It's unclear if they will ever work again or just are going to get removed instead.
- Dumps all of its config files in $HOME/.config instead of something like $HOME/.config/kde or so. Not a big deal but now the folder looks messy.
- Gwenview is now massively slow when opening a image in a folder with many images. The previous version could handle it and start working instantly, now you require a few seconds before it starts acknowledging your controls.
- Option to make toolbar icons smaller has vanished.
- New "classic" app menu is much slower and less direct than the old "classic" menu.
- khotnewstuff can decide to stop working for no reason and can produce random crashes. No rhyme or reason or reliable ways to reproduce.

So, yeah, no one would like to use this for everyday work outside of the defaults. Should have remained in the oven for two more releases at the very least. Being unable to roll back while things get better is quite infuriating and has completely disturbed my workflow. But can't go back to 14.10 because 15.04 fixes a vital bug in my system. No good alternatives.

Re:Let's hope that Plasma 4 is kept as an alternat

[Teun]

Indeed there are still many problems with Plasma 5.3.
I am typing from it right now, it works for most tasks, but so many configurations that KDE is known for and are dear to my use are either missing (QuickLaunch) or seriously buggy (various hot keys).
The problems with core applications like Dolphin and Gwenview are for an official release inexcusable.
The problems with previously working nVidia versions are another regression I was not waiting for, on Plasma4 I could run the latest, now I needed to revert to version 304.

Yes we need to get on with QT5, it offers necessary tools to prepare for future developments.
I understand development is faster and easier when you have more testers but to turn all users in to involuntary testers damages the name and fame of the product.
But I don't recognise what some posters here claim, KDE (or Kubuntu) developers don't listen to or follow up on bug reports, my experience is quite different.