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KDE Ships Second Beta of Next Generation Plasma Workspace

kde.org

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Re: KDE Ships Second Beta of Next Generation Plasma Workspace

#11
post #5

KDE is slowly losing ground. It used to be my desktop of choice but that was in the knoppix days. Now there is of course Kubuntu but I switched (more or less by accident rather than by design) a while ago and I don't think I'll be switching back. My desktop is practically invisible to me anyway, all I run on a normal workday is firefox, a terminal window and thunderbird. The one piece of software from the KDE distro…

If you love Konsole, give yakuake a try. It is Konsole in quake fashion; you press F12 and a terminal drops down. I can't imagine life without it.

I absolutely love yakuake. One of the reason why I'm still using KDE.

Re: KDE Ships Second Beta of Next Generation Plasma Workspace

#12
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope this trend continues. Mainstream desktop environments sort of lost their roots. I never wanted widgets, I just need to organize my windows!

Is Xfce mainstream yet? It's pretty popular for a non-default desktop - I can't find the cite, but I have a vague memory of something like 16% of Ubuntu being Xubuntu.

It's mainstream in the sense that the Gnome community fragmented so much in recent years (see Mate and Cinnamon "spin offs") that these days Xfce has roughly the same mind share as Gnome -- if the recent poll on Slashdot it any indication. http://slashdot.org/poll/2751/which-desktop-environment-do-y...

Re: KDE Ships Second Beta of Next Generation Plasma Workspace

#13
post #7

I like KDE a lot for its UI/UX. KDE actually has the potential to intuitively replace Windows in many households with shared systems and also in educational institutions. But the only major problem with KDE is that its very heavy and takes a lot of resources. Does the next generation workspace just change the UI/UX or optimize stuff too? The post doesn't talk much about that.

Actually more optimization is taking place than visual refreshes. Porting the stuff to Qt5 (esp. QtQuick2) should speed everything up on non-ancient PCs. Visual refreshes are just easier to explain. ;-)

Re: KDE Ships Second Beta of Next Generation Plasma Workspace

#14
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, they have a new design project: http://wheeldesign.blogspot.fi/ Although in my opinion their work hasn't exactly been a huge improvement so far. It's just a flatter coat of paint with the same issues that already plague KDE: inconsistent padding and spacing, terrible organization (think system settings) and so on.

You link to a blog and yet you apparently don't read it. KDE System Settings is being redisigned as well. Just scroll down a bit: http://wheeldesign.blogspot.fi/2014/05/system-settings-and-n... The redesign is not in this beta and, depending how long it takes, maybe won't make it into the first final release either. Partially it's even by design. It's not intended that Plasma 5 diverges too much from the current rele…

Nice: http://wheeldesign.blogspot.fi/2014/05/system-settings-and-n...

That said, at the top level the breadcrumbs on the left aren't needed.

Re: KDE Ships Second Beta of Next Generation Plasma Workspace

#15
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, they have a new design project: http://wheeldesign.blogspot.fi/ Although in my opinion their work hasn't exactly been a huge improvement so far. It's just a flatter coat of paint with the same issues that already plague KDE: inconsistent padding and spacing, terrible organization (think system settings) and so on.

You link to a blog and yet you apparently don't read it. KDE System Settings is being redisigned as well. Just scroll down a bit: http://wheeldesign.blogspot.fi/2014/05/system-settings-and-n... The redesign is not in this beta and, depending how long it takes, maybe won't make it into the first final release either. Partially it's even by design. It's not intended that Plasma 5 diverges too much from the current rele…

I have to say, this[1] looks downright impressive. Congrats everyone!

Edit: To add a bit more to the conversation, does the change from Canonical to Blue Systems[2] changed much to the development of Kubuntu/KDE?

[1] https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-asFPvnoidnw/U4cXbGCcv2I/AAAAAAAAM...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Systems

Re: KDE Ships Second Beta of Next Generation Plasma Workspace

#16
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, they have a new design project: http://wheeldesign.blogspot.fi/ Although in my opinion their work hasn't exactly been a huge improvement so far. It's just a flatter coat of paint with the same issues that already plague KDE: inconsistent padding and spacing, terrible organization (think system settings) and so on.

You link to a blog and yet you apparently don't read it. KDE System Settings is being redisigned as well. Just scroll down a bit: http://wheeldesign.blogspot.fi/2014/05/system-settings-and-n... The redesign is not in this beta and, depending how long it takes, maybe won't make it into the first final release either. Partially it's even by design. It's not intended that Plasma 5 diverges too much from the current rele…

Yes, I read it and I know the settings are being redesigned. The system settings is just one example and perhaps the most egregious. It's also the one that is still a constant annoyance after years of using KDE when trying to find something.

Re: KDE Ships Second Beta of Next Generation Plasma Workspace

#17
post #5

KDE is slowly losing ground. It used to be my desktop of choice but that was in the knoppix days. Now there is of course Kubuntu but I switched (more or less by accident rather than by design) a while ago and I don't think I'll be switching back. My desktop is practically invisible to me anyway, all I run on a normal workday is firefox, a terminal window and thunderbird. The one piece of software from the KDE distro…

I liked Konqueror as a web browser. Nice touches such as stopping image animations ...

Re: KDE Ships Second Beta of Next Generation Plasma Workspace

#18
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you love Konsole, give yakuake a try. It is Konsole in quake fashion; you press F12 and a terminal drops down. I can't imagine life without it.

I absolutely love yakuake. One of the reason why I'm still using KDE.

There's Guake for GNOME (and Unity): https://github.com/Guake/guake/

Re: KDE Ships Second Beta of Next Generation Plasma Workspace

#19
Kickstart me some decent icons already, geez. I think it's the number one complain every single time somebody opens a KDE thread.

Anyway, I don't use KDE but I think it does a lot of good things and I wish them luck. Using XFCE right now and couldn't be happier.

Also: they could take a very clean approach, like really minimal design and leverage their customization options (that they are famous for) to a few themes and let the community do the rest. Like "sane defaults" that don't scare newbies. I know it's not easy.

Re: KDE Ships Second Beta of Next Generation Plasma Workspace

#20
post #7

I like KDE a lot for its UI/UX. KDE actually has the potential to intuitively replace Windows in many households with shared systems and also in educational institutions. But the only major problem with KDE is that its very heavy and takes a lot of resources. Does the next generation workspace just change the UI/UX or optimize stuff too? The post doesn't talk much about that.

Actually more optimization is taking place than visual refreshes. Porting the stuff to Qt5 (esp. QtQuick2) should speed everything up on non-ancient PCs. Visual refreshes are just easier to explain. ;-)

Its not speed I'm bothered about. KDE is more or less very smooth at that. Its the resources it takes! The CPU is always nearly being utilized on a small-medium scale, and nearly 700mb is taken away at boot-time and gathers upto 2gb upon usage. That's too high, at least I think so.

Would KDE actually require so much for all the features it gives or can that actually come down?

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