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KDE Plasma 5

arstechnica.com

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Re: KDE Plasma 5

#51

Post by na85 »

agumonkey wrote: post #7

Am I the only one who lost interest in Desktop Environments ? I'm either satisfied with bare minimum (XFCE/ThunarFM...) or barest minimal (wmii/xmonad...). KDE5 is surely a great piece of tech but I fail to see what's new except for a cleaner KDE4 in terms of UX; these days I feel dom/javascript bear more innovation (maybe too much).

In the next few years my wife will be setting up private practice as a physician; I personally don't use DEs but her staff will sure appreciate them, and as her "IT guy" I sure as hell won't be paying for windows licenses.

Re: KDE Plasma 5

#53

Post by yutah »

agumonkey wrote: post #7

Am I the only one who lost interest in Desktop Environments ? I'm either satisfied with bare minimum (XFCE/ThunarFM...) or barest minimal (wmii/xmonad...). KDE5 is surely a great piece of tech but I fail to see what's new except for a cleaner KDE4 in terms of UX; these days I feel dom/javascript bear more innovation (maybe too much).

you are looking for minimalist desktop environments and also wish that KDE do a complete revamp at every version number change?

Re: KDE Plasma 5

#54

Post by xiaomai »

rplnt wrote: post #41
jkbyc wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alt-Tab works perfectly fine for me in Gnome Shell (I was initially annoyed by Alt+` to switch windows within a program group but now I find it useful). I find the app overview also clear and very usable. And it's nice that it's JavaScript-based so I can tweak some minor things easily (hot corner on external monitors). For Unity I'm probably simply not in the target group, I don't like it. I left KDE many years ago b…

> Alt-Tab works perfectly fine for me in Gnome Shell That's what I was trying to say. I'm sure it works for many, but it doesn't work for everyone. That's why people still "care" (if selecting one or another is caring).

The great thing about gnome-shell is you can have it however you want:

https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/15/alternatetab/

Re: KDE Plasma 5

#55

Post by cookiecaper »

ams6110 wrote: post #19
agumonkey wrote: post #7

Am I the only one who lost interest in Desktop Environments ? I'm either satisfied with bare minimum (XFCE/ThunarFM...) or barest minimal (wmii/xmonad...). KDE5 is surely a great piece of tech but I fail to see what's new except for a cleaner KDE4 in terms of UX; these days I feel dom/javascript bear more innovation (maybe too much).

Yes. I use the Awesome window manager[1] which is a tiling window manager, and that's all I need. I start programs using ALT-R then typing the executable name (there is tab completion) and though you can set up menus I never use them. I don't end up using the mouse much and while I don't know if it's actually more efficient it feels more productive to me to keep my hands on the keyboard. [1] http://awesome.naquadah.o…

Me too. I'm still an awesomewm diehard. It seems most of the tiling WM users have moved on to more active projects like XMonad but I'm still clinging to awesome. awesome is currently on shaky ground by nature since it was designed for XCB, the ultra-modern way forward for X11 that wasn't and is now considered a deprecated API.

I tried XMonad once but hit a snag (don't remember what it was) and went back to awesome. Some people have actually laughed at me when they've seen that I'm still using awesome.

Re: KDE Plasma 5

#56

Post by gcr »

andmarios wrote: post #27
mike-cardwell wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gnome, Unity, KDE. I couldn't care less. They all let me launch apps and switch between them quickly and easily. That's all I need from a desktop environment. I don't understand why people feel so passionate about them.

No, they do so much more. For example with KDE activities you can save states of your desktop (which apps are open, their position on screen, their open tabs, files etc) and restore them whenever you want. So you have ready layouts for your usual tasks and you can start/stop or switch between them in seconds. Another small example that exists since KDE 2 maybe: you get a clipboard with history. How one may live witho…

Does KDE do these?

It sounds like the setup you describe is only possible with a huge amount of configuration.

With enough configuration, Emacs could do all those things too.

Re: KDE Plasma 5

#57

Post by pyre »

andmarios wrote: post #27
mike-cardwell wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gnome, Unity, KDE. I couldn't care less. They all let me launch apps and switch between them quickly and easily. That's all I need from a desktop environment. I don't understand why people feel so passionate about them.

No, they do so much more. For example with KDE activities you can save states of your desktop (which apps are open, their position on screen, their open tabs, files etc) and restore them whenever you want. So you have ready layouts for your usual tasks and you can start/stop or switch between them in seconds. Another small example that exists since KDE 2 maybe: you get a clipboard with history. How one may live witho…

> Another small example that exists since KDE 2 maybe: you get a clipboard with history. How one may live without it?

There is a tool called glipper on the GNOME side that does this. I don't know how it fared in the GNOME 3 / Unity conversion though. I do remember that at one point it only needed a systray + GTK, but then they made it dependent on some GNOME stuff so I couldn't use it in a more stripped-down environment (e.g. xmonad + alternate systray).

Re: KDE Plasma 5

#58

Post by smacktoward »

A weird thing about this article is the way it's all "ewww, Unity, that's for tablets, gross."

One of the things I like about Unity on the desktop is how keyboard-oriented it is. Features like the Dash and the HUD are specifically aimed at exposing functionality without requiring you to take your hands off the keyboard in order to push a mouse around. Which is appealing, at least to me. But whatever it is, it definitely is not tablet-oriented.

It's true that Canonical's vision for Unity is that it will eventually scale up and down beyond desktop/laptop displays, but they have absolutely not taken the Windows 8 approach of starting with a touch UI and then jamming it onto machines where it doesn't fit. Instead they've come up with a core set of metaphors (the Dash, scopes, etc.) and then looked for ways to present them appropriately on different platforms, which seems much more sensible.

Re: KDE Plasma 5

#59

Post by moystard »

smacktoward wrote: post #58

A weird thing about this article is the way it's all "ewww, Unity, that's for tablets, gross." One of the things I like about Unity on the desktop is how keyboard-oriented it is. Features like the Dash and the HUD are specifically aimed at exposing functionality without requiring you to take your hands off the keyboard in order to push a mouse around. Which is appealing, at least to me. But whatever it is, it definit…

I could not have said that better: I actually love the keyboard oriented approach of Unity. If you further install Unity Tweak Tool / Ubuntu Tweak, you can also get keyboard shortcuts for tiling and organizing your application windows. I used to be a Gnome Shell user, but Unity has definitely convinced me in its last version and I feel more productive than ever, as I rarely have to touch my mouse when coding.

If only there was a decent launcher on Linux, I could definitely put OSX behind me.

Re: KDE Plasma 5

#60

Post by srean »

As an fvwm user (nothing fancy in my configs) whenever a thread like this kicks up, I scan the comments for other fvwm users. Maybe I will run into one, nope, not one to be found. Fvwm user feels lonely.
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