Is KDE 5 Stable? It's Complex

[rvdboom]

I've been using Plasma 5.X and KDE Frameworks 5 using AlienBob's packages on my Slackware64-current system and I'm fine with them. It's quite stable and work as expected for the most parts, and that's what I expect from a desktop.
I just saw a blog on someone implementing a Plasma 5 QuickLaunch plasmoid, and I'm quite happy with this as I used extensively this plasmoid in Plasma 4.
The only thing I do miss is the Activities tied to Virtual Desktop. I understand Martin's arguments in his blog and know that sometimes some features require too many quirks and workarounds to be maintainable and thus kept.
But the alternatives are far less convincing right now. Moving windows around between activities is very awkward and some wine windows, like Office ones, do not understand activities well and thus appear on all. I added the quick activity changer plasmoid to the ones I use, but it's more awkward than just putting the mouse pointer on a side of a screen (provided you configured a mouse gesture/position to start Desktop Grid effect) then select the wanted activity.
But this is pretty much the only complain I have on Plasma 5.4 now, for all the rest, it's very usable to me.

[TheBlackCat]

I think the big thing here is if it's so complicated for KDE, why isn't the same exact talk happening in the GNOME world right now? Is it because of Red Hat's money going into it?

For one thing, unlike the KDE/Qt situation, GNOME is in control of GTK. And the driver issues were affecting GNOME and a bunch of other projects.

[TheBlackCat]

That's part of the problem right there. I get the whole marketing push, but the people who actually use KDE don't particularly care about the intricacies of the software dependencies that you've setup. I'm well aware that "KDE 5" isn't what you call Plasma desktop etc. etc. etc. but consumers REALLY don't care.

This isn't a random user, it is a news site. A news site can and should be held to a higher standard than a random user.

Additionally, the whole passing the buck over to Qt for many bugs might be technically accurate, but so what: It just means you need to work more closely with the Qt people to fix the bugs. *ESPECIALLY* when you went out of your way to relinquish control of chunks of KDE back to Qt for the KDE 5/Plasma5/etc/etc/etc release cycle.

That is what they did. But it doesn't help much when distros aren't updating Qt. Even distros that push Plasma or KDE applications updates often don't push Qt updates.

[TheBlackCat]

TL;DR, it'd be a lot easier if you could just summarize the latest release of this software as simply "KDE5".

There is no "latest release of this software". KDE Frameworks, Plasma, and KDE applications all have different release schedules.

[chuckula]

There is no "latest release of this software". KDE Frameworks, Plasma, and KDE applications all have different release schedules.

But in the post immediately preceding this one you said:

But it doesn't help much when distros aren't updating Qt. Even distros that push Plasma or KDE applications updates often don't push Qt updates.

More packages from different sources in the air that intentionally don't share coordinated release dates sure doesn't make it easier on the distros.

I use Arch Linux anyway so I'm generally pretty close to the leading edge, but I do understand that not every distro is on a high-tempo rolling release cycle.

[rtfazeberdee]

" KDE Frameworks, Plasma, and KDE applications all have different release schedules." therein lies the branding issue, ordinary users couldn't give a stuff about "KDE Frameworks, Plasma, and KDE", they will just use KDE5 because its the next logical name. Internally to the developers it will make sense but not to users. The users question will always be "will that work with KDE5?" KDEx is such a big well known brand, it seems silly to lose it. It a bit like the Royal Mail in the UK rebranding to Consignia just because the new marketing team had to "make a name for themselves", they had to change back once they woke up. Its a bit like the new Opensuse Leap 42.1 name, why not just opensuse 14.x ?

[DIRT]

I almost want to create a conservative fork of kde but I'm not that good at coding. Xfce got it right. Slow and steady with no surprises.

[schmidtbag]

There is no "latest release of this software". KDE Frameworks, Plasma, and KDE applications all have different release schedules.

Understood, but that relates to my earlier statement that these pieces of software are supposed to be (to my understanding) integrated. So, why would KF, plasma, and the apps be updated separately? Generally speaking, huge chunks of KDE get updated simultaneously, so the others should be able to do the same. I don't think it's that much to ask for things like Plasma and Frameworks to update on the same cycle. However, I understand that there is still some considerable dependency on Qt4, which may be complicating some things.

[Awesomeness]

Xfce got it right. Slow and steady with no surprises.

And no Wayland support. Ever.

[Rich Oliver]

KDE is the only desktop I've really used on Linux. So I'm appreciative of what KDE developers do. But I also install Linux for others. Its already a nightmare explaining them that there are different distros that can be used in combination with different desktops. Many users who have been using Linux for years don't even grasp this. This whole Applications, plasma, frameworks split is utter madness.