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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.
No
Red Leader Standing By!
... the last time I tried out KDE, I was frustrated that I was not able to configure it to remember any window's size and position upon closing that window, so that it would be the same size/position the next time I opened it.
Really? All versions of kde I have used have been able to do this, with varying degrees of convenience. In KDE 5, right click on the title bar and go to "more actions".
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
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'd agree that some of the community doesn't think about stuff like that, but on the whole, KDE is the least frustrating desktop environment I've ever used. And I've probably used more than most.
I'm not saying it's not without its faults, but KDE actually has plenty of very thoughtful touches, sane defaults and UI polish. OS X is generally pretty good and then there is Windows, 'nuff said.
All just my personal opinion of course. When it comes to things like GUIs, different people will always favour different ways of doing things.
* 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 :^)
I do not block ads. I do block third party scripts.
Once Poettering releases kerneld, he can start working on winmanagerd and denvironmentd for all the new systemd/kerneld distros.
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.