I just recently switched to kubuntu (KDE) back from fedora (Gnome 3). On one hand I do like that the desktop does not try to re-define basic muscle memory things, like changing the shortcut if you try to switch between two windows of the same application. (Seriously Gnome, WTF?). On the other hand it crashed left and right after install (less so now that it settled down a bit) and there are a million QA type problems…
Plasma 5.18
41–50 of 81 posts
Re: Plasma 5.18
#42Maybe something is wrong with me, but it irks me that there are 40 seconds of meaningless video before they show stuff in that video. I ended up skipping the video and skimming through the poorly formatted article. My first impression is that it looks good. Lots of useful features. But I can imagine that if I had sent it to a bunch of other people who have no interest in KDE they would have closed the page again. Tha…
I am a dedicated follower of Plasma and to be honest counting features this is a lame relase.
BUT it's also a LTS release. Some will upgrade specifically for that somehow quality statement. You do not want a ton of new features without time for stabilisation in such a release?
Re: Plasma 5.18
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hopefully, Wayland will improve the situation a bit.
Yep, just need to give it another decade or so I suppose.
That assumes non-Nvidia hardware. If you have one of those you are on a potentially very different timeline, that I do not dare to predict.
Re: Plasma 5.18
#44How about proper multi-display support (including mixing HiDPI and low-res displays)? Every time I connect my FHD laptop to my UHD monitor the windows on the desktop move around completely randomly. It is better than before, because they used to move outside the visible area, they fixed at least that. But hey, at least there is an Emoji Selector now (???).
Re: Plasma 5.18
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
I use KDE on Wayland. It works pretty well; there's still bugs I hit once in a while (vscode especially sometimes is missing dialog windows and I have to restart it).
Blurry firefox, blurry thunderbird anybody? Still plasma on wayland related fixes in the pipeline. But getting close...
Re: Plasma 5.18
#46I use XFCE. Are there any good reasons to switch to KDE? Honest question.
- User intuitive widgets that can be easily dragged around in panels with a third party store directly in Plasma itself, containing useful widgets such as calendar events sync and todo lists
- Complete customization but also pretty by default and getting better; browse third party colorschemes, plasma themes, global themes, panel layouts (latte), application styles (kvantum), etc etc
- Powerful notification system that allows you to reply inline to telegram messages, embed screenshots so you can drag those around [https://postimg.cc/q6qLMXK1], embed files that you can also drag around + interact with, sticky notifications for ongoing operations - still having the ability to go with a do not disturb mode for a custom time and set notification importance in a granular way
- Powerful integration with phone (see phone battery, see and send messages, see incoming calls, see/stop/play videos [youtube / vlc] playing on the pc from the phone, see phone notifications, and so on) and integration with browsers (native notifications, native downloads [see notifications above], search and open browser tabs from krunner, etc)
- Powerful search (krunner) that can check spelling errors, find browser tabs, convert units, do mathematical operations, search the apps store, run command line programs, open locations, see recent documents, add task to the todo list (zanshin), supports third party runners, etc etc etc
- System tray that only shows relevant widgets so you can keep it minimalist but without loosing any possibly useful option (system tray elements for usb drives, night color, display configuration, clipboard, vaults, media playback, printers, kate sessions, etc etc)
- Third party stuff like Latte and Kvantum that allows you to customize your desktop in any way imaginable (quick browse for "Plasma" on r/unixporn will confirm this)
- Consistent apps that follow the general theme, some of them also convergent, e.g. all maui apps (index [files], vvave [music], buho [notes], pix [images], ...) work exactly the same on desktop and on your Android phone as well, so you don't have to learn to use different applications on each OS
- Light and fast. Yeah, I know xfce is very light and fast, but Plasma 5 is very light as well recently. I have a pinebook, the $100 machine, and it's usable both with Plasma and xfce (both uses around 340mib of RAM there).
- Kontact suite with Akonadi integration that allows for various apps all integrated with each other (todo from one app will appear in the other), with the generic Kontact app containing all them and being able to show a dashboard with all recent notes, to-dos, events, mails etc.
- Support for phones with Plasma mobile and other tech things (e.g.: TVs afaik and the mycroft thing), with Plasma Mobile using the same underlying plasma base component, so it's consistent + compatible
- Any application you could need, there are a lot of those all made by the KDE community, and those are all following the KDE human interface guidelines and following the global theme, so that's nice
...I kinda lost track of time, sorry for the essay, I just think that Plasma is great and this is how I can best explain why
Re: Plasma 5.18
#47I just recently switched to kubuntu (KDE) back from fedora (Gnome 3). On one hand I do like that the desktop does not try to re-define basic muscle memory things, like changing the shortcut if you try to switch between two windows of the same application. (Seriously Gnome, WTF?). On the other hand it crashed left and right after install (less so now that it settled down a bit) and there are a million QA type problems…
Kubuntu is, and always has been really bad, as a KDE distro. Just use the Fedora KDE spin. I've been using it for the past 10 years or so.
Not for me. I switched to Kubuntu in 18.04 LTS (after many years of OpenSUSE, so I've got a pretty good idea of how a polished KDE distro looks.) No complaints at all. Kubuntu use to be a poor rendition of KDE but it's working great now.
I'm pretty happy with Ubuntu generally; kernel-hwe is outstanding. With 18.04 LTS you still get updated kernels; it was released with 4.15 but with "hardware enablement" updates it's up to 5.3 now.
Re: Plasma 5.18
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Generally speaking, multi-display monitor support is a mess on Linux (especially if you so anything slightly out of the ordinary). KDE honestly seems the best for this, although on the latest version of GNOME has fractional scaling available behind a flag (although also buggy and very slow).
Hopefully, Wayland will improve the situation a bit.
Re: Plasma 5.18
#49I use XFCE. Are there any good reasons to switch to KDE? Honest question.
Re: Plasma 5.18
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Blurry firefox, blurry thunderbird anybody? Still plasma on wayland related fixes in the pipeline. But getting close...
At least for Firefox that probably means it's running with X emulation. But the Firefox Wayland backend works fine, it just needs to be enabled. But sure, Wayland still has quite a few corner cases like that.
GDK_BACKEND=wayland firefox
That works on Gnome and sway, not on plasma. Intel GPU. Still open bugs on bugs.kde.org