KDE Plasma 5.5 Has Matured Past the Point of Plasma 4 (phoronix.com)
An anonymous reader writes: KDE's Plasma 5 desktop received a lot of early heat for being unstable, missing functionality compared to the older Plasma 4, and other changes that irritated Linux desktop users. Fortunately, with the recent release of Plasma 5.5, they have hit a stage where there's fairly wide agreement that Plasma 5 has now matured past the point of Plasma 4. Ken Vermette looked meticulously at the KDE stack for 2016, including how it's working on Wayland, the setup, widgets, various new features, and more.
They've added 1.5 to the version, of course it has matured.
I remember over the years companies taking v1.1 and renaming it v 8.1 or something equally stupid ... because clearly lying about the major version number means the product has matured.
Version numbers are cheap, and in the hands of marketing they can say anything you want them to. ;-)
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
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The best I was able to do was to get a window to be centered on the screen when I opened it.
Let's hope KDE3 parity is just around the corner, then.
No
Red Leader Standing By!
Firstly, Kudos to the plasma team for getting this far. I'm sure the KDE users are happy.
My only comment related to this (not just Plasma/KDE but more generally, many software rewriting endeavours lately), is that I wonder how far along we could've been if we started with the original base and incrementally improved and/or evolved things instead of always going for the 'quantum leap'; throwing things out and starting from scratch. Google is of late the worst offender in this regard (but certainly not the only one), throwing out perfectly functioning programs that users are happy with, for little reason other than "it's time for something new". Interestingly the amount of time that it takes something to become old and unwanted is getting consistently shorter and shorter. You can barely learn a new technology before it's out of favour.
We've reached the point of software becoming fashion. And I guess I'm showing my age by longing for a time when building a good software system meant slowly and incrementally improving on a solid base, making improvements and enhancements in a predictable and timely fashion. Software was supposed to be predictable and stable. No more.. I find myself agreeing with the engineers (a dubious position to be in). Software is no longer about engineering.
Speaking as a developer in the sunset of my career, when I retire (and people like me), I shudder to think of what the people remaining in the industry will do to established systems when there is nobody to keep them in check. Perhaps by this point I won't care anymore.
All desktops are the same, except you need to be running the one your app is linked to. I ran XFCE for a while, but so many things required KDE stuff to work that I had to install KDE.
"widgets" and such are meaningless eye candy. I don't need to see CPU temperature in a little transparent hovering icon. I need a means to launch a GUI app or two, and a terminal with a decent font. No other fail.
have they fixed the problem with Virtualbox 3d driver? I have to use software rendering in order to see anything, with 3d enabled then the background is drawn on top of any windows, and so I can't see or do anything useful. Hoping I'll be able to turn that back on again...
Has is matured past the point of KDE 3.5?
Still can't (won't?) do this. And as for Activities, "We don't need no stinking Activities."
Anand Rangarajan anand@cise.ufl.edu
so still not as complete as3.5 then?
And not nearly as polished as 4.10 was, either. Here is a list of just the first few problems that I started to list, before the problems started really piling up:
* Maximized windows do not have thier scrollbars flush against the screen edge. Thus, Fitt's law cannot be used to quickly put the mouse cursor on the scrollbar.
* Vertical panel does not auto-hide with second monitor attached.
* No System Monitor widget. Apparently being worked on.
* Volume Up cannot be set. Volume Down and mute work fine.
* Krunner no longer accepts Bash commands. I have a bash command that I run periodically, this would work in Krunner in KDE 4 but does not work in KDE 5.
* The panel app freezes often. I can intermittently freeze the panel by clicking on More Settings in the panel configuration toolbar.
* Lots of crashes, most of which are not reproducible. I've had the Plasma Panel crash, System Settings, and other applications.
* Keyboard Layout indicator missing.
* Keyboard State widget disappears from the system tray, no resolution in the KDE forums.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
I must be the most egregious bloatware in the Linux universe. What I would give for a light modest (but capable) C++ widget set built only on OpenGLES. Linux UI development is so horribly confused.
wmaker does. Saves your whole session if you like.
Would a window menu item to the effect of "save window as default" do what you want?
Also: If the manager remembers the previous default and switches the menu item to something like "restore previous window defaults" or "undo save window as default" when the window is at the default location, accidentally hitting the menu item when something else was intended would also be easy.
(Same comments about being fine with me if you use it and this posting becoming prior art.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Judging from the users input and my own experience Plasma 5.5.3 still works and feels like an early beta other than a final product which has seen several minor releases.
I don't know what happened to the KDE project but surely something was lost during the transition from KDE 3.5.x to KDE 4.x/5.x.
Let's not forget some of the killer apps that are part of the ecology, two that come to mind are konsole and krita, both best in class by a mile. Who can complain about a painting program that many artists are starting to prefer over Photoshop, but free? I'm also impressed with Kdenlive. I never edited a video before and in about 10 minutes I produced my first cross fades. There's a whole lot more, including, let's not forget, almost the entire browser world, except for Mozilla and IE.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
* Maximized windows do not have thier scrollbars flush against the screen edge. Thus, Fitt's law cannot be used to quickly put the mouse cursor on the scrollbar.
> try setting the window border size to 0. Most people I know don't care about Fitt's law, though.
* Vertical panel does not auto-hide with second monitor attached.
> "Panel Settings -> More Settings -> Auto Hide". Not too bad, is it? Oh, it crashes before you can see that.. doesn't crash in my distro.
* No System Monitor widget. Apparently being worked on.
> "Panel Settings -> Add Widgets -> System Load Viewer".. or did you want something else?
* Volume Up cannot be set. Volume Down and mute work fine.
> I haven't had any problems increasing the volume..
* Krunner no longer accepts Bash commands. I have a bash command that I run periodically, this would work in Krunner in KDE 4 but does not work in KDE 5.
> See if your distribution disabled the "Command Line" krunner. My distribution didn't, so I've never run into this.
* The panel app freezes often. I can intermittently freeze the panel by clicking on More Settings in the panel configuration toolbar.
> I've had one or two panel crashes, but it doesn't happen very often at all. The "More Settings" works fine for me.
* Lots of crashes, most of which are not reproducible. I've had the Plasma Panel crash, System Settings, and other applications.
> Again, I haven't run into many crashes..
* Keyboard Layout indicator missing.
> huh.. so it is. I'm sure a widget will be coming soon.
* Keyboard State widget disappears from the system tray, no resolution in the KDE forums.
> Looks like it only shows up when a state is enabled.. weird, but hardly qualifying as a "Problem with the desktop"
Sure you can be picky about the Plasma 5.5 not being Plasma 4. Notice how the OP freely admits to using fuzzy logic here..
"where there's fairly wide agreement that Plasma 5 has now matured past the point of Plasma 4". You many not be among the people in wide agreement with this statement, but the "evidence" you've posted doesn't seem bad enough to be characterized as "problems".
Sounds like you might need to switch distributions. Try OpenSUSE LEAP. No real problems with KDE over here :^)
KDE 4 was solid. Why rip all that out and start over? Why not build on it?
The guy knows how to get those page views - this "review" is spread across nine (9!) pages... Sad state of affairs :/
I'm running 5 and I tried these:
1) Appears to not be a problem in 5, I jam my mouse to the right of my screen with a maximised window and can scroll.
2) Works for me on three monitors.
3) There is a system load viewer - not sure if that's the same thing.
4) As a hotkey? Works for me.
5) This works for me, it has a 'command line' option that runs the given text.
6) Hasn't happened to me, I've been running for quite a few months now.
7) I had one crash so far, as I say, a few months of runtime. The crash may not have been plasma's fault though, as other things died and it happened working with something experimental.
8) There is one of these enabled in the keyboard options, works for me, I swap between dvorak and qwerty with it.
9) Don't know that widget, couldn't test.
You call this polished and mature? Never mind all the features that got tossed out and have to be rewritten. I use KDE all day every day and I love it, but this release is worse than Windows 10. My screen goes out of sync every time I leave the computer idle and plasma crashes several times an hour. By the way, wiping out all the activities and menu settings with the new platform was brilliant. That just made my day.
I do not block ads. I do block third party scripts.
Is Plasma 5.5 still has resource intensive as Plasma 4.x? I found the latter really slow, and ultimately uninstalled KDE from my system.
Not that it matters any more to me, since I've settled down w/ Lumina.
I guess now they only need to ditch (as in permanently remove and prohibit the main coder to commit to any KDE repository again) Akonadi and fix the useless mess that Kmail has become (can't delete messages from imap Courier server, instant crash when trying to compose message with non-english dictionary, etc...) and Kontact in general, and I might consider updating from 3.5.
I mean, I try to actually do work with my computer.
Once Poettering releases kerneld, he can start working on winmanagerd and denvironmentd for all the new systemd/kerneld distros.
The future was 1.2 or so. They had that awesome "wood" theme. And the default desktop and window decorations didn't make my eyes bleed. Since v3 or so, it just got wrekt.
I've switched back and forth to just about every *NIX Desktop Environment since I started using Linux in 1999, loved KDE 3.x, loathed KDE 4.x until it became stable and used KDE 5.x on and off. The good thing about KDE is that the windowing and 3D effects subsystem is modular.
I'm pretty much settled on using XFCE but I'm using KWIN KDE compositing/3D effects with XFCE for a nice compromise between a 'classic' desktop that's rock solid but with the nice themes, windowing effects and features that KWIN (KDE's compositor) brings to the table.
Have a squat over at the hobo house.
I'll add a couple more things I miss (lost going from Kubuntu 14.10 to 15.10):
Have they fixed the stupid bullshit dumbass bug where konsole will not transmit control-space or control-shift-@ to console mode emacs? It's been there for FUCKING YEARS now. As far as I know, konsole can't transmit these keystrokes to ANY program. I have tried over a dozen other console apps, and NONE of the others have any trouble at all with these keystrokes, in the same session.
If it makes any difference, I'm using Arch x86_64. I have tried everything. No hint where those keystrokes are getting sucked up, but none of the goddam fixes found in google searches or other places work. I finally gave up, caved in, and added a mapping of control-alt-m for set-mark, but that doesn't make it right.
Hi, I'm a regular KDE4 user.
Sometime ago I installed Sparkylinux (not the last) on an external HD and booted one notebook of mine with it.
Though I initially intended to use Xfce, I decided to give Plasma 5 a try, out of curiosity.
It is (IMHO) already more usable than Xfce (mainly because applications like Dolphin vis-à-vis Thunar).
Since I'm used to KDE4, I noticed:
- some configs changed places like "performance"/compositing leaving Desktop Effects and being transferred to Monitor configuration.
- some themes are nicer, both wrt colors and icons.
- I have a two-monitor setting with one of them being the notebook screen and the other a pivoting one in portrait position. The rotated one cannot receive a normal 16:9 background to be scaled and cropped: part of the monitor remains unpainted, like if Plasma 5 thought it's not rotated. Since both monitors are configured to be side-by-side, the rotated monitor background pic spreads a little into the notebook. KDE4 doesn't do that (AFAIK).
- The panel even if configured to a custom length (vertically at the extreme left) also ends up where the background ends (like if Plasma 5 thought the monitor was horizontal). Also, at least one time I had to logout/login because the panel had disappeared (possibly by mishandling on my part, like my finger escaping while dragging it... it was nowhere to be found... on login it had moved to the other side).
- It's an abomination to have to reconfigure KDE everytime I get to a new installation... ideally, I'd download a desktop profile from the cloud and have my preferences setup instantly).
- there's a new preference about optionally turning the touchpad off when a mouse is found. I thought it was nifty.
- don't know about Window positioning, but I know FF does that on KDE4 i.e. it remembers the last geometry it was setup with. Maybe LO, too, but I'm not sure (yep, tested it now on KDE4 and it also retains the last geometry). Dolphin retains window size but not coordinates (it always starts with the last size on the upper corner... and new Dolphin windows are put next to the previously open).
- I recently learned KDE4 is no longer maintained. Even if Plasma 5 is very usable, I wonder if it is wise to make KDE4 suddenly unsupported. Maybe this is not true or I've misread it. Can anyone confirm that?
All in all Plasma 5 seems stable and very usable, though I remember Qt5 requiring post-Pentium 4 processors and therefore refusing modern processors without Intel instructions. If so, that is regrettable.
I've used Plasma 5 on very important tasks (work with Libreoffice/Dolphin/Firefox). I acknowledge it is very usable, though claiming it on par with KDE4 seems a tad optimistic to me.
And Sparkylinux is very beautiful with Xfce, too.
FTA:
That's bad. I wonder why Linux has a problem with graphic driver stability. Could the recently-slashdotted "problems with linux on the desktop" article help?
Hmm, I was wondering why our four-display Linux viz workstation gets about 6 hours of use between kernel panics. But good jerb stiggin it to nVidia, I'm sure any day now they'll See The Light, flip the bird to all their NDAs and trade secrets, and open-source their drivers. I'm fairly sure if *nix+nvidia didn't have huge share of GPU-accelerated HPC (and they didn't have a unified driver) they'd have flipped Linux the bird over this long ago. See also: Flash tried & promptly disabled Linux hardware video acceleration due to torrent of problems.
Forming a common theme with several other major problems that list covered, open-source API instability is a - probably THE - problem facing FOSS development. Architecting stuff right so you don't have to add/drop functions with every minor number is hard. New code is sexy. Therefore FOSS projects - for which there is generally no boss who is tasked with and accountable for herding the cats - generally fail at it. Hard. I have no answers, only the observation.
Meanwhile, 1990s Win32 programs and games still run. How many of the applications that shipped with Red Hat 5 (no not RHEL 5, RH 5 - from 1997) do you think will still start?
Who thought the lackluster performance of KDE5 were needed? KDE4 was fine, no easy way to opt out. Why can't I do a simple roll-back out of the fucking one year mess of KDE5 with massive missing features.
KDE4 was finally OK, suspend session and everything. Now these idiots thinks they need to "improve" it without asking?
Half-baKed dumbshit "improvements", cute fucking pastel care-bear colors, who gives a fuck?
Better leadership at KDE is needed, get the fucking nerds out of the executive room.
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1) Appears to not be a problem in 5, I jam my mouse to the right of my screen with a maximised window and can scroll.
Good to know, thanks.
2) Works for me on three monitors.
I was terse, this issue is when the vertical panel is "between" two monitors. Discussion on the KDE forums:
https://forum.kde.org/viewtopi...
3) There is a system load viewer - not sure if that's the same thing.
Only shows CPU load, not network or memory use. There are a few third-party widgets, but none are nearly as functional or useful as the KDE 4 widget or it's KDE 3.5 heritage.
4) As a hotkey? Works for me.
I cannot seem to set Win-] as Volume Up. I have Win-[ as volume down, Win-{as mute and Win-} as pause. Us VIM users take our keyboard shortcuts seriously!
5) This works for me, it has a 'command line' option that runs the given text.
Thank you, somehow I missed that one!
6) Hasn't happened to me, I've been running for quite a few months now. 7) I had one crash so far, as I say, a few months of runtime. The crash may not have been plasma's fault though, as other things died and it happened working with something experimental.
The crashes seem to be only for some people, not for others. Like most desktop software, those who happen to run hardware similar to that of the devs get a rock-solid experience. All others: airbags and seatbelts.
8) There is one of these enabled in the keyboard options, works for me, I swap between dvorak and qwerty with it.
Mine disappeared and stubbornly won't come back. Here is the KDE forums thread:
https://forum.kde.org/viewtopi...
9) Don't know that widget, couldn't test.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Window border size to 0 just makes resizing floating windows annoying, not a very good solution either
Which distribution are you using? KDE on Fedora Linux has been a disaster for me for Fedora 21, 22, and 23. When I use Fedora Linux, I end up with GNOME or Xfce for my desktop. I think that's just a result of the particular focus of the Fedora developers on GNOME, and not inherent to KDE or Plasma.
So instead, if you haven't done it already I respectfully suggest trying one of the desktops that has Plasma as its default desktop: OpenSUSE, PCLinuxOS, KaOS, or maybe Arch.
Thanks, I probably will take a look at OpenSUSE. I'm on Kubuntu, a distro that I've been happy with for almost a decade.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
I clicked on this to make a comment questioning if KDE 5 has managed to catch up with KDE 3.5, but I was beaten to the punch.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Yeah, but at that point he'll have to call it GNU/kerneld instead of GNU/Linux, or he'll piss off his holyness St. IGNUcius (RMS).
But debian still has 4.x so its not problem. Next release will have a mature 5.x. Current 5.x has not even a migration path from 4.x
I can not tell you the many times Plasma has crashed on me. Plasma seems to crash when I need it the most. I'm ready to move on to Gnome or something else. I just hope I don't run in anymore shit app like this anymore.
shiny is taking precedence over useful
No surprise there. That's exactly why we're given cumbersome tablet interfaces to use on desktop computers.