KDE Plasma 5.22(kde.org)
kde.org
KDE Plasma 5.22
https://kde.org/announcements/plasma/5/5.22.0/
19 comments
I am so grateful for KDE. We in the free software world are lucky to have such a powerful, complete, thoughtfully designed desktop. The consistency of the interface, and the reliability of "there's a switch for that", reminds me of Windows 95 of all things. And for all that, it's clean and lightweight. For the proverbial user demographic of "expert in a hurry", nothing else even comes close.
Possibly very controversial rant ahead.
I used to love KDE 1 and 2, since KDE 3 they've adopted this really bland interface I can't push myself to like. It's like there's only three available colours: light grey, light desaturated blue, and white. The whole desktop is a desaturated grey-bluish interface with grey icons that doesn't have any personality, feels cool, bland and insipid. And when it's not grey, it's icons without any cohesion with the rest of the system using all colours of the spectrum, giving them a Fisher-Price look. It feels as inviting as if it were the user interface for a medical device, smelling of bleach and trying its hardest not to have any personality whatsoever.
One can dislike GNOME how much they want but at least there is a soul to the design, like there was a soul to the original Windows 95 design. At least it used colours with more than 10% saturation.
I really wish KDE would stop adding features and knobs and more settings panels and just adopted an OPINIONATED design guideline. Choose a brand colour, explore the palette a little bit that's not grey and blue grey and white grey.
I used to love KDE 1 and 2, since KDE 3 they've adopted this really bland interface I can't push myself to like. It's like there's only three available colours: light grey, light desaturated blue, and white. The whole desktop is a desaturated grey-bluish interface with grey icons that doesn't have any personality, feels cool, bland and insipid. And when it's not grey, it's icons without any cohesion with the rest of the system using all colours of the spectrum, giving them a Fisher-Price look. It feels as inviting as if it were the user interface for a medical device, smelling of bleach and trying its hardest not to have any personality whatsoever.
One can dislike GNOME how much they want but at least there is a soul to the design, like there was a soul to the original Windows 95 design. At least it used colours with more than 10% saturation.
I really wish KDE would stop adding features and knobs and more settings panels and just adopted an OPINIONATED design guideline. Choose a brand colour, explore the palette a little bit that's not grey and blue grey and white grey.
All the "soul" in the world doesn't make up for it being toy software verging on unusability because the devs were so OPINIONATED that you don't need that feature.
No doubt. I love it so much. I turn off all the desktop effects but translucency and then it is just instantly responsive and beautiful.
I can't even imagine using anything else at this point.
I can't even imagine using anything else at this point.
I disable desktop composition on startup. I pay with loss of transparency in my terminal, but that buys the snappiness and responsiveness of LXQt or the Windows DE, which I always assumed was something KDE couldn't have since fate is only so kind!
Which builds on top of Qt framework and related tooling.
Almost by accident, I started using KDE for the first time in years about 9 month ago and as someone who dumped KDE for XFCE back in the KDE4 days I have to say I'm really surprised and impressed with the current KDE. If like me you haven't tested KDE a few years I can highly recommend giving a modern KDE based distro a spin.
I'm not sure how leadership or institutional knowledge in the KDE developer community has changed, but since KDE4, KDE developers have gotten very good at non-destructive refinement. The transition from KDE4 to Plasma 5 was much, much smoother than the previous leap. Since then, it feels like efficiency and stability have steadily improved along with feature-completeness.
I guess Qt 6 is out now, and so Qt 5 will soon be unsupported if it isn't already. I wonder how the balance of rewriting and breaking API changes will work out for the Plasma 5 to Plasma 6 transition! Here's hoping the KDE devs figure out how take advantage of the opportunity for helpful/necessary API changes without having to cut or reimplement too many features. What users have got at present is really, really nice
I guess Qt 6 is out now, and so Qt 5 will soon be unsupported if it isn't already. I wonder how the balance of rewriting and breaking API changes will work out for the Plasma 5 to Plasma 6 transition! Here's hoping the KDE devs figure out how take advantage of the opportunity for helpful/necessary API changes without having to cut or reimplement too many features. What users have got at present is really, really nice
The current plans for a port to Qt6 and KF6 are for the moment focused on porting away from deprecated APIs and we are trying to resist the urge to do any bigger changes. Hopefully this will make the transition easy. An overview of all the small tickets is available here: https://phabricator.kde.org/tag/kf6/
Over the years, y'all have gotten good at this as a developer community, and this adds to my confidence. :)
I'm sure the constraint is frustrating in some ways, but you've built a desktop experience worth conserving as you advance it!
I'm sure the constraint is frustrating in some ways, but you've built a desktop experience worth conserving as you advance it!
The most important new feature in 5.22, to me at least: I can finally uncheck "Unhide when window wants attention" so that my task bars don't cover my programs any more whenever someone sends me a message on [chat program].
It's a tiny thing but it drives me nuts (and luckily for me it has also been driving someone working on KDE nuts so they fixed it!)
At the same time, the fact that this is my biggest complaint regarding KDE Neon should be a clear indication that I'm quite a happy user in general :)
It's a tiny thing but it drives me nuts (and luckily for me it has also been driving someone working on KDE nuts so they fixed it!)
At the same time, the fact that this is my biggest complaint regarding KDE Neon should be a clear indication that I'm quite a happy user in general :)
This DE is just incredible, I think we wouldn't have any advances in other - even comercial - desktop environments if it wasn't for the feeling
"oh, our not-KDE desktop environment can't do AT ALL what KDE does uneventfully, we need to catch up with these guys"
"oh, our not-KDE desktop environment can't do AT ALL what KDE does uneventfully, we need to catch up with these guys"
I'm not so sure that developers of other desktop environments are highly attentive to Plasma's features and look.
But I do agree that it tends to see key features implemented well ahead of its biggest competitors. It also has really good built-ins, and imo something that doesn't get emphasized enough when discussing its configurability is how _usable_ its configuration interfaces are. Plasma has a much better story for configuring global keyboard shortcuts than macOS does, for example. I generally find the KDE conventions for organizing configuration options impressively orderly and discoverable, especially given how much functionality they expose.
But I do agree that it tends to see key features implemented well ahead of its biggest competitors. It also has really good built-ins, and imo something that doesn't get emphasized enough when discussing its configurability is how _usable_ its configuration interfaces are. Plasma has a much better story for configuring global keyboard shortcuts than macOS does, for example. I generally find the KDE conventions for organizing configuration options impressively orderly and discoverable, especially given how much functionality they expose.
I have a Thinkpad X220 that used to be a hackintosh that I use for ECU tuning.
I was using Ubuntu Budgie and the Bluetooth did not work well. It would pair but not connect, or show connected but it wasn’t. Tried KDE and it suddenly started working (still in Ubuntu).
So last night I installed Mankato KDE and I gotta say, Plasma feels much more serious. Less of a toy and more empowering to the user.
The default looks don’t really match my style, but everything I touch works and the UI is VERY informative (wifi signal numbers in each SSID in the list for example). Very pleased with it. And above it all, Bluetooth works great.
I was using Ubuntu Budgie and the Bluetooth did not work well. It would pair but not connect, or show connected but it wasn’t. Tried KDE and it suddenly started working (still in Ubuntu).
So last night I installed Mankato KDE and I gotta say, Plasma feels much more serious. Less of a toy and more empowering to the user.
The default looks don’t really match my style, but everything I touch works and the UI is VERY informative (wifi signal numbers in each SSID in the list for example). Very pleased with it. And above it all, Bluetooth works great.
Anyone else looking for proper tiling window support in KDE?
Monitors are getting bigger and have higher resolution, but the default still seems for a single monitor laptop experience.
Workarounds like Kronkite and others don't do the trick.
I've wanted this for so long now, I'm strongly considering building this out myself as there's no traction behind this from the core devs.
The latest additions are _nice_ but aren't really what I'm looking for.
Monitors are getting bigger and have higher resolution, but the default still seems for a single monitor laptop experience.
Workarounds like Kronkite and others don't do the trick.
I've wanted this for so long now, I'm strongly considering building this out myself as there's no traction behind this from the core devs.
The latest additions are _nice_ but aren't really what I'm looking for.
I'm using Arch Linux (which is a rolling releases distribution) and just did an upgrade. Then visited this post and was pleased to try out the new features I did not know about "in real" on my desktop.
The Linux OSS desktop is really very sweet. Thanks to all this work, nice people of KDE!
The Linux OSS desktop is really very sweet. Thanks to all this work, nice people of KDE!