KDE Plasma 5.24 Adds An Overview Effect Inspired By GNOME's Activities Overview

[Leinad]

5.15.2 is latest non-commercial version, so they cannot add 5.15.3 into distribution

[Nth_man]

kubuntu 21.10 with the updates ppa is currently on Plasma 5.23.3, which is not too shabby.

Thanks for reporting. Also, anyone can go to https://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=qt5 and look for 5.15.2, 5.15.3 or 5.15.6, caused by bugfixing (which is not so easy, as too many times software bugfixes cause bugs, untranslated strings, etc.).

[Danny3]

kubuntu 21.10 with the updates ppa is currently on Plasma 5.23.3, which is not too shabby.

Yes, the backports PPA brings KDE Plasma to the latest version, but Qt is still not updated as in KDE Neon, so bug fixes and performance optimizations from Qt 5.15.2 -> 5.15.3 are not available.

[timrichardson]

Maybe on KDE Neon.
Kubuntu still refuses to upgrade to 5.15.3 without a clear reason why!

kubuntu 21.10 with the updates ppa is currently on Plasma 5.23.3, which is not too shabby.

[tildearrow]

Lots of people bought SSDs ten (!) years ago because HDDs suck a** not just with KRunner, and here you are in the present time complaining about performance with HDD...

I'm not complaining about HDD performance. I am complaining about how Plasma tortures HDDs just because the developers are on SSDs in where optimizing does not matter anymore.
The problem is that when KRunner loads (e.g. by typing while the desktop is focused), it takes long to load since it needs to load countless libraries, render itself (which means loading the SVG rendering library and do it, let alone load the theme) and then load plugins before it accepts any input other than the first letter.
In order to fix this, the following has to happen:
- KRunner has to be fused with plasmashell (loaded at start-up, not as a separate application)
- The SVG rendering library and the THEME have to be loaded on memory at ALL times (this is most likely why do panels and other things take a bit to load as well)
- Plugins have to be loaded on a *separate* thread so that the user can type while the search system is loading.

Sadly, the problem is not exclusive to KDE. It happens on Windows 10 as well (in where activating the Start Menu may take seconds) but that is due to inefficient unoptimized code (for comparison, look at Windows 8, 7 and earlier in where the Start Menu usually appears instantly), and on GNOME (typing on the search bar may temporarily freeze it).

sudo apt-get install preload

Doesn't do much for SSDs but might still help users of hard disks.

Arch user here.....

I indeed attempted to write a micro-preload system in where libraries, executables and assets that Plasma loads are loaded on disk even before SDDM would appear. It did help a bit, but it would be faster if the libraries could be loaded from a cpio or SquashFS which is cached at boot time (and therefore avoids countless seeks).
Also you got to be kidding me, that thing uses prehistoric SVN and bad code hosting service for its code.........

[bug77]

Lots of people bought SSDs ten (!) years ago because HDDs suck a** not just with KRunner, and here you are in the present time complaining about performance with HDD...

There is a genuine problem with KRunner and it has little to do with SSD or HDD. It's slow to activate and if you're not really slow to type, it will miss your first few letters. Worse even, those letters are fed to the window you had focused before invoking KRunner.
I suspect it has something to do with some index on the disk it uses for searches.

[reba]

That's Windows mentality (solving software problems with hardware).
If KRunner was pre-loaded in memory just like Windows, macOS and GNOME do then it would be more responsive.

sudo apt-get install preload

Doesn't do much for SSDs but might still help users of hard disks.

[aufkrawall]

That's Windows mentality (solving software problems with hardware).

Lots of people bought SSDs ten (!) years ago because HDDs suck a** not just with KRunner, and here you are in the present time complaining about performance with HDD...

[bug77]

In fact GNOME Shell itself is a plugin for the Mutter compositor!

Yeah well, in their world what isn't a plugin? I suppose we should be thankful it's installed by default.

[Jaxad0127]

That's Windows mentality (solving software problems with hardware).
If KRunner was pre-loaded in memory just like Windows, macOS and GNOME do then it would be more responsive.

And that is an option. But most people won't need it.