KDE Plasma 5.20 Beta Released With Better Wayland Support

[Sonadow]

I've asked KDE developers to implement the features I wanted. They said "Plasmoids are meant for the desktop". Sorry, I don't need crap on my desktop. I want to see information in consise compact way at all times. This is what I've shown you and this is what you cannot replicate in any shape or form yet "plasma is fine".
.

They have zero obligation to do so. No software developer and software project, proprietary or FOSS, has any obligation to do anything for people who choose to do things differently.

If you want it so much, contribute the code needed for it or fork the project and make your own odifications. That's what FOSS is all about.

[mdedetrich]

I have been using KDE with Manjaro (currently 5.19) and have had none of the issues people have talked about (or they are talking about garbage comparisons with Plasma 4). Also on my system the entire DE is taking up ~200 to 250 megs of ram which is actually less than XFCE/gnome (this has already been the case for 9 months, see https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comment...ter_than_xfce/).

Maybe the issue is that some distributions suck when it comes to KDE because they don't take it seriously?

[archkde]

Just plasmashell, and it restarts itself.

Even if you think it is "not nearly as bad", it is still a major flaw that should not exist.
This is not supposed to be a mess, come on.




SDDM in a window bug:
- You log out
- KWin crashes while logging out and somehow it survives (rather than being killed by SDDM restarting)
- KWin restarts itself and the magic cookie is ignored
- KWin takes over the X session (which runs SDDM) and turns SDDM in a window

I'll post a video of the issues later

Of course plasmashell crashing is a bug (or maybe multiple bugs) that should be fixed, and I am certain that the KDE devs would agree here. But at least for me, the panel going away and restarting is not nearly as bad as the whole session crashing, taking away any open windows and unsaved work with it.

Your description of the SDDM-in-a-window bug seems some combination of a legitimate bug in kwin (please report this, kwin crashes should never happen and are treated with priority) and some misconfiguration. No process (not kwin either) should survive the termination of the user session (and I'm not sure why kwin would restart, I've neven had kwin restart after one of its rare crashes). You also can't just ignore the magic cookie on a properly configured system, the X server wouldn't even let you connect if you don't have the magic cookie.

[tildearrow]

Of course plasmashell crashing is a bug (or maybe multiple bugs) that should be fixed, and I am certain that the KDE devs would agree here. But at least for me, the panel going away and restarting is not nearly as bad as the whole session crashing, taking away any open windows and unsaved work with it.

Your description of the SDDM-in-a-window bug seems some combination of a legitimate bug in kwin (please report this, kwin crashes should never happen and are treated with priority) and some misconfiguration. No process (not kwin either) should survive the termination of the user session (and I'm not sure why kwin would restart, I've neven had kwin restart after one of its rare crashes). You also can't just ignore the magic cookie on a properly configured system, the X server wouldn't even let you connect if you don't have the magic cookie.

In fact, just this midnight I logged out and got the bug, but in a worse version (plasmashell surviving the logout and reappearing as a kind of zombie):

1. Log out
2. Return to SDDM
3. Wait 30 seconds or so
4. The screen suddenly clears out
5. This appears:



When this happens, plasmashell does not work at all, with almost every option, click or mouse button causing something to crash (evident in my case because I've set crashing to make a sound).
There is no KWin, so it is running without any sort of window manager/compositor.
Furthermore the Qt theme is set to Fusion (no theme), which only shows how broken it is.

You can't even log out again...

[archkde]

In fact, just this midnight I logged out and got the bug, but in a worse version (plasmashell surviving the logout and reappearing as a kind of zombie):

1. Log out
2. Return to SDDM
3. Wait 30 seconds or so
4. The screen suddenly clears out
5. This appears:



When this happens, plasmashell does not work at all, with almost every option, click or mouse button causing something to crash (evident in my case because I've set crashing to make a sound).
There is no KWin, so it is running without any sort of window manager/compositor.
Furthermore the Qt theme is set to Fusion (no theme), which only shows how broken it is.

You can't even log out again...

This is clearly material for the bug tracker, logout is obviously supposed to work properly.

[skeevy420]

Amazing. And people who peddle KDE still have the nerve to criticize GNOME.

It works both ways. Yesterday I thought 3 to 40 was dumb as hell while liking the work they're doing to make plugins more stable.

Compared to GNOME, KDE works better for me out of the box without needing 3rd party plugins. That said, I'm not happy with some of their default settings, how there are two different terminal emulators because of drop down, and the annoyingly inconsistent KDE Control Panel.

I wish drop down was a Plasmashell feature and not a feature of a specific terminal emulator. You assign a program to a Function key or key combo and a borderless window drops down or slides in from the side or pops up from the taskbar when you do the shortcut.

We all criticize both because all we want is a good, stable desktop environment that doesn't break upon update. If all every thread had was an echo chamber of people praising everything and each other, why would anyone bother making any changes or adding new features to anything?

FWIW, I use KDE Plasma now because it's the closest thing to GNOME 2 from back when I started using Linux. And don't bring up Mate....as usable and pretty as it is, I gets a hardcore sad seeing GNOME 2 in GTK3

[skeevy420]

In fact, just this midnight I logged out and got the bug, but in a worse version (plasmashell surviving the logout and reappearing as a kind of zombie):

1. Log out
2. Return to SDDM
3. Wait 30 seconds or so
4. The screen suddenly clears out
5. This appears:

When this happens, plasmashell does not work at all, with almost every option, click or mouse button causing something to crash (evident in my case because I've set crashing to make a sound).
There is no KWin, so it is running without any sort of window manager/compositor.
Furthermore the Qt theme is set to Fusion (no theme), which only shows how broken it is.

You can't even log out again...

It looks like the Crown is asking the Guitar Pick to play Smoke on the Water.

I've had that happen to me before. Like once or twice ever and I wasn't even sure the cause because it seemed to happen after a big update so I always assumed I needed to do a reboot to refresh everything. Luckily I keep Yakuake running and it almost always survived the crash for a "systemctl reboot".

[horizonbrave]

I don't use KDE and didn't read the article but I'm looking forward version 60, the rest doesn't matter

[angrypie]

We all criticize both because all we want is a good, stable desktop environment that doesn't break upon update. If all every thread had was an echo chamber of people praising everything and each other, why would anyone bother making any changes or adding new features to anything?

This forum is full of people stuck in 1995, so criticism is harsher towards user interfaces that don't look or behave like Windows 95.

KDE vs. GNOME is essentially churning out lots of untested customization options vs. few and better tested settings. KDE isn't manned for what they're trying to achieve, and the "community" that praises it so much seems unwillingly to test and report bugs, so things will stay the way they are despite the sterile "criticism" directed towards either one.

[stikonas]

I keep seeing these 'better Wayland support' posts with regards to KDE. Are we close to or now have useable Wayland support?

My use-case/requirements are pretty simple. I don't use much of the stuff that people moan about when they say Wayland isn't ready yet (remoting, screen recording etc.). I just want a stable desktop with the standard apps (browser and stuff like that), I play games, mostly on Steam. And I have an AMD card running open drivers. Is it worthwhile me trying KDE yet?

I'm currently running Gnome, but I want to see what else is out there, and I haven't got time at the minute to learn/configure Sway.

Yes, we are close. I have been using Plasma Wayland since 5.12 and now it's much more usable. At the time of 5.12 it was still quite rough and I was hitting a few annoying bugs. Since then each version has fixed at least one issue for me. (Some issues had easy workarounds, e.g. Yakuake terminal was overlapping with plasma pannel, I reduced it's height from 100% to 94%, but this is now fixed in Yakuake 20.08).

I think for your use case you'll be fine.