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KDE Plasma 5.15 Released (kde.org)

Posted by BeauHD on from the new-and-improved dept.

jrepin writes: Today, KDE launched Plasma 5.15, the first stable release of the popular desktop environment in 2019. For this release the Plasma team has focused on hunting down and removing all the paper cuts that slow you down. Plasma 5.15 brings a number of changes to the configuration interfaces, including more options for complex network configurations. Many icons have been added or redesigned to make them clearer. Integration with third-party technologies like GTK and Firefox has been improved substantially. Discover, Plasma's software and add-on installer, has received tons of improvements to help you stay up-to-date and find the tools you need to get your tasks done. For a more detailed list of features/changes, you can browse the full Plasma 5.15 changelog.

44 comments

  1. KDE Neon by Maelwryth · · Score: 2

    Got to say I am enjoying it! Thanks KDE.

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    I reserve the write to mangle english.
    1. Re:KDE Neon by arglebargle_xiv · · Score: 2

      For this release the Plasma team has focused on hunting down and removing all the paper cuts that slow you down.

      How about hunting down and removing, with extreme prejudice, the flat-tard UI they copied from Windows 8 because, you know, it worked so well for Microsoft? That's something that's newsworthy, not a bump of the minor version number.

    2. Re: KDE Neon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      At least they seem to be moving in the right direction *slowly*. I'm still better off with a somewhat patched MWM+XDM though. At least as long as X is still there. Unfortunately QT5 itself has a bad case of windowsitis, needless to mention GTK3.

    3. Re: KDE Neon by zwarte+piet · · Score: 3, Funny

      Engineering more crashes in Linux and KDE just to be more equal to Win10 is not gonna happen soon, but you have the source code. Be creative...!

    4. Re: KDE Neon by Order_66 · · Score: 0

      Obviously you've never used linux.

    5. Re: KDE Neon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, if reaper's Linux version had some way of running windows vsts I'd purchase it immediately and switch to Linux permanently. Same for bit way or any other daw

    6. Re:KDE Neon by caseih · · Score: 3, Informative

      To me the default UI theme in Plasma these days looks far more like MacOS than Windows 8/10. Also there are plenty of Plasma themes (which use Qt themes to style the widgets) available to make the desktop look to your liking. Of course many Linux themes for Qt and GTK copy other platforms, but in general Windows clones aren't very popular.

    7. Re: KDE Neon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      :quietly runs Tracktion Waveform (Linux) and a bunch of Windows VSTs:

  2. Better but still glitchy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    KDE has improved drastically from the KDE 4 shitshow, but it still feels unfinished and glitchy.

    Also, while again things have improved, the multi-monitor experience in particular still feels half-baked. It has a fancy new prompt when it detects new monitors.. and it shows up _sometimes_, and works _sometimes_, but then other times it doesn't. Also trying to get a panel on each monitor feels like boxing with your computer. You want it on the left screen, it _insists_ on being on the right. You finally trick it into being on the right, you reboot, and it's back on the left.. or on the top maybe.

    Also SDDM sends Microsoft-y chills down my spine even more so than their application chooser. I mean KDE was always the "Windows clone", but yeesh. This isn't even subtle.

    1. Re:Better but still glitchy by Anrego · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It's not even just plasma. The xfce4 panel is the only thing I've ever found to sanely handle my multi-monitor setup, and even then only just. I currently run it with openbox, and that's been my basic setup for the last several years.
      At the insistence of a few people, I recently gave plasma a try (within the last month), and yeah, while much better than KDE4, it's still not there. I think I'm ready to accept a well integrated desktop environment into my life and wouldn't mind changing my workflow a little if everything mostly just work and I could tweak the little things that I really care about. Despite giving it a few weeks however, I just couldn't warm up to it. No one big thing, just a lot of little things that made the experience feel like it was still an unpolished pre-release.

    2. Re:Better but still glitchy by youngone · · Score: 2

      I feel pretty much the same. I tried several KDE distros and after a few months switched to Ubuntu with their Gnome setup.
      It was kind of death by a thousand cuts. Not awful, just not quite right.

    3. Re: Better but still glitchy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      KDE4 killed my father and I will have my vengeance in this world or the next.
      Never forget that a piece of software was made available prematurely.

    4. Re: Better but still glitchy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The amount of damage KDE4 did to their reputation is unreal. It wasn't so much that it was premature as that it was chock full of bad ideas. It was basically a gigantic misstep in every possible direction. They released something that was completely unusable, and was designed so poorly that it took forever to even reach shitty.

      Plasma pretty much represents a reversal of most of those ideas. It's not so much that the software matured and the bugs were worked out, as that they realized the horrible mistakes they'd made with KDE4 and gutted it. It'll take time, but people are starting to see plasma as a viable option.

    5. Re: Better but still glitchy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Kde4 was still years behind in usability of the last 0.X KDE branches circa 1999/2000. The ceded their leadership position to gnome who for some reason decided to autosodomize with gnome 3 which no one asked for...

    6. Re:Better but still glitchy by umafuckit · · Score: 0

      Despite giving it a few weeks however, I just couldn't warm up to it. No one big thing, just a lot of little things that made the experience feel like it was still an unpolished pre-release.

      So it's still not quite as good as KDE 3, then? The good news is that it seems to be getting there. Probably around 3 or 4 years to go at this rate of progress.

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    7. Re:Better but still glitchy by rl117 · · Score: 2

      Still not up there at the KDE3 level, but definitely better than KDE4. For me, KDE3 was and still is the pinnacle of desktop user interfaces. Functional, fast, usable and looked nice. And had a lot of very nice applications to go with it.

    8. Re:Better but still glitchy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Lol, going from "not quite right" to "godawful", yeah, I can totally see going gnome solved all your problems. ROFL.

    9. Re: Better but still glitchy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Having used KDE from 3.x to the present day, I'm curious as to what metaphors or options in the KDE 4 desktop you find so bad. What did they reversed? Defaults, thats pretty much it. Of course that was 10 years ago.

      From what I can see, the entire desktop in Plasma 5 is more or less the same as KDE4, except default options and more configurability.

      The problem as others have stated was KDE4 was a test bed and not ready at 4.0, and the KDE developers said this repeatedly but OS distros abandoned KD3 and jumped on 4 WAY too quickly.

      Whatever, each to their own. What i find interesting is the amount of hate poured onto projects that people don't use. Don't like it? Great! Stop complaining. Plasma has been a viable option for a long time. As stable as Gnome. Better multi-monitor support. Great OSD.

    10. Re:Better but still glitchy by Gavagai80 · · Score: 1

      KDE 3 was great, but I think Gnome 1 was the best. So many options, it really let the user tweak everything. You could even switch window managers on a whim through the GUI choosing among a half dozen options that all worked great. We'll never get a desktop designed for that kind of flexibility again.

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  3. plagued by semi freezing multple pcs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The distro I use over the last few years which uses this desktop seems plagued for some reason by partial freezes which can last several minutes. This has been similar for two or three different PCs over this period to the point where I am now shifting to gnome. it's a bit of a deal breaker. this really needs to be found whatever it is, as this desktop is potentially a fantastic system because of it's flexibility and configure ability.

    1. Re:plagued by semi freezing multple pcs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Long shot of it being the same problem, but I just finished tracking down something similar. Problem was I wasn't running a notification daemon, and pasystray was trying to send notifications on every volume change, which somehow managed to eventually jam up the entire environment for several minutes at a time (there are many things wrong with all of this..).

    2. Re:plagued by semi freezing multple pcs by rl117 · · Score: 1

      It's not ubuntu is it? I've experienced the same for a few years now. Tried several different graphics cards, to no avail. I suspect it might be the compositor; I hear the GPU fans speed up during the freeze and wonder if it's a GPU lockup and reset after a timeout.

      If I run vmware workstation, it happens every few minutes, and sometimes locks up the machine. I suspect this is a separate locking bug somewhere, but it might interact badly with X due to grabbing the input focus. Filed several tickets with them over the years, but it's never been resolved either.

    3. Re:plagued by semi freezing multple pcs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How do you know it's related to KDE itself? KDE uses a lot of code paths in other software, like Xorg etc, which is otherwise rarely exercised. Just blaming KDE right away because that's where you see the problem is making it way too easy for yourself. I've had quite a few problems since KDE 4 that ultimately turned out to not being KDE at all.

    4. Re: plagued by semi freezing multple pcs by Maelwryth · · Score: 1

      Try changing your c state to 1 in bios. I have had a few problems with that freezing the computer in the past.

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      I reserve the write to mangle english.
  4. kdid kthey kfix kthe kbug kwhere... by apparently · · Score: 1, Funny

    kevery kfucking kapplication's kname kstarts kwith ka kk?

    1. Re: kdid kthey kfix kthe kbug kwhere... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They actually did by picking names that don't make sense whatsoever, unless you associate fish with file management somehow

    2. Re:kdid kthey kfix kthe kbug kwhere... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's very effective branding.

    3. Re:kdid kthey kfix kthe kbug kwhere... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ke klues kin ke 'kin kname: "Plasma"

    4. Re:kdid kthey kfix kthe kbug kwhere... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "K-K-K-Ken, c-c-c-coming to k-k-k-kill me!"

    5. Re:kdid kthey kfix kthe kbug kwhere... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      kevery kfucking kapplication's kname kstarts kwith ka kk?

      Yes, otherwise we would have Klasma and Kneon.

    6. Re: kdid kthey kfix kthe kbug kwhere... by Gavagai80 · · Score: 1

      Dolphins aren't fish.

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    7. Re:kdid kthey kfix kthe kbug kwhere... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      which would be a lot more efficient to google than 'plasma' and 'neon'.

    8. Re: kdid kthey kfix kthe kbug kwhere... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      These squeaky basterds, I knew something was wrong with them

  5. Re:KDE is made out by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Gnome 3 is a slow crashprone we remove functions at every downgrade peace of garbage

  6. Re:kdid kdey kfix kde kbug kwhere... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    (fixed the title for you)

  7. Why is this even a thing in 2019? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Reading this headline I thought "who cares", then I went back and decided to read the KDE change log. Its all things like "Wow we can show bluetooth device battery levels" and "We've made icon text labels legible" ?!? Why is this something that didn't happen 15 or more years ago? Icon text we perfectly legible in Windows 95.

    I guess I'm just disappointed that here we was in 2019 and what was once the best desktop in the Linux world is stuck making silly little improvements that should have been done back in the KDE 1.x days and it seems crazy to me how they are still stuck with the Windows Start Menu on the bottom left clone paradigm.

    I'll say back in 1999 or so I started using KDE 1 and was in awe. We moved to KDE 2 and it was even better. KDE 3 came out and like others have said here it just felt locked down, stable, and in many ways it just worked. I couldn't figure out what anyone used Gnome or others. I left during the KDE 4 issues to explore other things and now looking at KDE 5, it just looks like a dinosaur. Maybe it is approaching KDE3 in usability? I guess I'll never know.