KDE Pushes More Plasma Wayland Improvements, Plug-in System For The Konsole

[lumks]

What I would be more interesting: when will KDEapps/Qtapps be fixed on non-Plasma-wayland? Currently it's a huge mess, that you need to enforce wayland at all, have sometimes no decoration and sometimes 2, have sometimes not border to resize the window at all, or 1px, scaling facor is also all strange if not set directly for the app and so on.
I have to admit that for a Multi-Platform Framework it's in pretty bad shape.

[deck]

Sorry? Workstation oriented? KDE?

Of the software developers I know who run on Linux primarily, we all use Gnome or a crazy thing like i3 or Sway. We focus on doing work on our workstations.

KDE is just kind of ... fluff.

To each their own, I guess? For me as a web developer using IDEs, KDE is far ahead of any other DE environment that I have tried. It has rational window / virtual desktop management, and a first class terminal in konsole. Gnome, conversely, feels 'fluffy' to me, trying to introduce things I don't need nor want.

[Nocifer]

Sorry? Workstation oriented? KDE?

Of the software developers I know who run on Linux primarily, we all use Gnome or a crazy thing like i3 or Sway. We focus on doing work on our workstations.

KDE is just kind of ... fluff.

Workstation != development machine for the power user
Workstation == office machine for the Average Joe

I'm a developer, and I've used both Gnome and KDE (and other stuff but that's irrelevant here). Both have served me well when doing development work because my workflow mainly consists of opening the exact same set of programs each time and switching between them via keyboard shortcuts that I know by heart. But the moment I switch to an office workflow (spreadsheets, browsers, file/folder manipulation, media production like audio or graphics, etc) it immediately becomes apparent that Gnome is just a pain in the a$$ (just like a Mac, even though Mac users will try to tell you differently) while KDE with its tried and tested toolbar paradigm is as powerfully useful as Gnome 2 was back in the day (and as Windows still is).

And KDE is even better because it's customizable, so one can also do away with the toolbar and adapt it to a more Gnome-like workflow if they so desire.

[dragon321]

KDE has some of the best set of workstation oriented applications (aka not a huge ass toolbars and lacking the most basic features). The DE itself can look and feel any way you want so unless you mean polished tiling it makes no sense. And doesn't RHEL and CO still use or ship GNOME classic?

Header bar applications are not bigger than titlebar + toolbar + menubar combo they are replacing so you probably won't save many pixels with traditional applications. Especially due to fact that many applications used in workstation are more likely to use traditional layout. What "most basic features" are missing?

No. Don't know what "CO" mean but RHEL is using default GNOME session from version 8. Same goes for many RHEL based distributions.

[darkbasic]

Hm again Wayland fixes.. when will it be usable?

I finally switched to Wayland with 5.22.2 and it's getting usable even with HiDPI, hard to believe I know.

[Citan]

First of all...
Thanks Michael for the continuous coverage of Linux news, and KDE in particular.
And MANY THANKS to ngraham and everyone in KDE team for that great continuous work.

Sorry? Workstation oriented? KDE?

Of the software developers I know who run on Linux primarily, we all use Gnome or a crazy thing like i3 or Sway. We focus on doing work on our workstations.

KDE is just kind of ... fluff.

This primarily demonstrates you really never tried it.
As AHOY said, when you're a poweruser that is at home with just a screen displaying terminals, then every GUI is fluff.

When you do want to do *serious* development work and you are not an expert with vi/emacs/bash commands that do plain magic with pipes and logic...
KDE is by far the best environment, and has been since the last 15 years...

First, they always have provided the best "classic" file explorer: Konqueror -> Dolphin, I've had my gripes with the latter for months, but it finally became feature-complete enough (except for "session rememberance" still missing). Breadcrumb, quick navigation in arborescence, multi-tabs, tab-splitting, unobnoxious right click on details view (heyo stupid Thunar) etc... And the plugin system for services straight from Konqueror is wonderful. Even though as AHOY pointed out there are some challenges attached with this approach, in my early years of using Linux it saved me many headaches.

For all your heavy lifting of file management, you also have had Krusader which is a marvel of integration with other KDE-provided utilities like folder/file comparison, renaming, synchronization, mass copy with attributes preservation, etc...
Nowadays I tend to use it rarely, because I'm confortable enough mixing find exec with mv/copy orders, or greps/seds/whatever for most cases... When I started if was a lifesaver, and I still fallback on it when unsure of what to do.

As a developer, at least if you pretend being a good one, you have also to document your software, and if you're also Scrum Master, prepare lots of support including lots of screen captures. Ksnapshot was 10 years ahead of everyone in competition, Shutter included. Now most screen capture tools offer all the basic options, but Spectacle (successor of Ksnapshot) still provides the most easiness of use for industrial-grade work.

You also have all the "customize your desktop to fit your way of working" aspect: when you want to manage window stack to get access to underlying information, some prefer transparency, others "rolling up", yet others "pointing over", yet others "pinning at half-size"... KDE has always allowed you to do this, as well as getting instant visualization of heavily nested folders with Folderviews, memorizing size and position of windows on screen(s), setting how new window of an app should always open, etc...
And Activities, as still unintuitive and somewhat incomplete (in my view) as may be, is still a nice alternative to classic "virtual desktop based" app management.

And as far as I know, KDE is the one environment providing the most extensive array of associated office/media manipulation applications, even though it's probable few people use them by habit of using more famous apps (or because KDE themselves broke their reputation on an app, hey my sad and regretted Kmail?)

Put it simply, every quarter hour invested *once* to understand KDE desktop / apps or customize it generates a return of several minutes spared... *Per day*.
Again, except if you're skilled enough with command line to do with it whatever you could do with a graphical app. In which case, then my had down to you.

[Citan]

All of your concerns apply to the user extensibility model in general, not just konsole. Those are examples of it not necessarily being a perfect model, but not being the end of the world either. And I doubt any projects factor these user addons into their test matrix.

(S)He does have a point though.

I/we have not too much trouble with the inherent flaws of that system, even as pregnant as in the case of KDE related plugins (which is indeed a mess), because...
a) We don't forget it's all open source, so a good part of it volunteer work, so we ought to be tolerant.
b) Most of us are familiar enough with Linux in general to dare trying installing things, because we know if it really doesn't work we'll know how to clean things up (well, except the case of breaking apt state hard, but that's not KDE level).
c) We are used to be looking for things, paying attention to description, "appropriating" ourselves a tool.

End-users? The "I've always known only Windows which taught me that every software breaks bad and any change can potentially crash my system hard" users?
Those would be legitimately lost and in disarray the first time they encounter a message like "couldn't install this plugin" or "link is actually to the web page" that you can experience more often than you'd like when trying to install a plugin of any kind in KDE (Dolphin service, extra wallpaper plugin, decorations, etc)...
For many regular users around me, this would be enough of a dealbreaker: "what's that thing, I just clicked on a button like system suggested, and it 'crashes'?".

I know this is a very large issue to address, and that KDE core team (or even all active members together) don't have time to tackle this for now... But I think it should really be the next big mission once every important technical challenge currently ongoing has been addressed.

[fhek789]

Header bar applications are not bigger than titlebar + toolbar + menubar combo they are replacing so you probably won't save many pixels with traditional applications. Especially due to fact that many applications used in workstation are more likely to use traditional layout. What "most basic features" are missing?

No. Don't know what "CO" mean but RHEL is using default GNOME session from version 8. Same goes for many RHEL based distributions.

You can also hide the toolbar and menubar which end up using less pixels, regardless of that, a titlebar + menubar + toolbar are far more usable for complex applications and if an application doesn't need the power of a menubar/toolbar is often hidden by default on Plasma.

[dragon321]

You can also hide the toolbar and menubar which end up using less pixels, regardless of that, a titlebar + menubar + toolbar are far more usable for complex applications and if an application doesn't need the power of a menubar/toolbar is often hidden by default on Plasma.

I can hide them but when I need them I need to show it again. Titlebar also is not very usable (for application itself) and it would be more preferable to hide it when application is maximized (something what Unity on Ubuntu did). Also with current resolutions why anybody would care about those few pixels? I'm not saying that header bar is better than titlebar + toolbar + menubar but that it's not taking more space (at least not that much).