KDE Plasma 5.25 Preparing More Bug Fixes, Continued Wayland Fixes

[Steffo]

On the other hand, 5.24 is an LTS version which is supposed to be more stable.

LTS is not stable by definition. It only means "Long Term Support". And in the long run you get a more stable version, but not necessarily after a fresh major release.

[Firnefex]

I don't know the exact reason, but Tumbleweed users should always update via "zypper dup" and not with Packagekit (Discover/Softwareupdater in status bar), which is a bit of a downside for new users which only want to use GUI. Zypper is faster though and can be set to automatically update on a daily base of course...

Tumbleweed is my daily driver atm (last time was a year ago), and the only bug I had inside of Plasma was a short transparency/flicker glitch with some windows after the huge update of >2.500 packages (GCC12 compiler upgrade).
Quite unlike back then, where the system was sometimes rather unstable when doing non-standard things. KDE has vastly improved and keeps getting better, they are also not too proud to take up other good ideas and implement them themselves or adapt them for Plasma.

[user1]

Do you always argue based on invented numbers? According to https://www.openhub.net/p/kde/analys...guages_summary KDE consists of some 26 million lines of which 19 million are code.

Correct. Thank you for making my argument for me.

From reading comments here I get the impression that Tumbleweed users are on average much more satisfied with KDE and especially its stability.

Ok, it does seem higher than I've last heard, so I take my words back. However, since this is the whole KDE project, those 19 million lines probably also include software like Krita, which isn't preinstalled on distros. I think it's probably less if you only count Plasma desktop and its utilities.
But what's ironic is that the last time I tried KDE and then decided that I'm done with it was actually on Tumbleweed in mid February this year. It had Plasma 5.24.0. Shortly after a clean install it started to have the most bizarre bugs I've ever experienced on KDE like the crash I mentioned when turning the monitor off and on, or showing a tiny X cursor over the titlebar. I have to say I was really surprised myself because I've used Tumbleweed a few times before and always had great experience with it. However, the most time I spent on Plasma was actually with Kubuntu and I would say I had the most stable Plasma experience with it (but not really crash free) probably because it almost always ships with the latest point release of a certain major version (like 5.22.5).
Idk, maybe Plasma is just more buggy if you start using a new major version early like 5.24.0, without waiting for point releases. On the other hand, 5.24 is an LTS version which is supposed to be more stable, so even if I tried it right after release, it's surprising that it had the issues I experienced.

[niner]

Well, the Linux kernel is 25-30 million lines of code, which is several times more than both KDE and Xfce combined.

Do you always argue based on invented numbers? According to https://www.openhub.net/p/kde/analys...guages_summary KDE consists of some 26 million lines of which 19 million are code.

Also, remember that if we're talking about the Linux kernel, different people run it on different hardware and architectures, hence the bug reports may be specific to certain mainline drivers or architectures. You can say "oh, but the same can be said about KDE - different people may not be using all of it's features or customization possibilities".

Correct. Thank you for making my argument for me.

You know, several days ago I made some comments here on Phoronix about why I ditched KDE after many years of using it. When you have issues like Plasma desktop crashing simply because of switching your monitor off and then on, or Plasma shell crashes when you open the panel customization menu and just moving the cursor in a certain way, I get the impression that the whole KDE codebase needs some serious code refactoring. And that's not all, many other KDE desktop utilities have also crashed on me at some point.

From reading comments here I get the impression that Tumbleweed users are on average much more satisfied with KDE and especially its stability.

[Danny3]

Or it could be because KDE devs are more active, KDE users are more willing to report bugs, KDE has a Wayland session while Xfce doesn't, etc. I.e.: all sorts of reasons.

Of course we are more willing to report bugs when we see that the KDE developers really care about us, each one of us and always try to bring us the features and bug fixes that we need / want.

They don't say no to features because they don't use them, if somebody uses them, that's a good reason!

they don't say they don't fix bugs because it's not a bug for them.

And they don't remove features because they are are too hard to fix.

KDE developers are really amazing and are going to great lengths to make us happy and we are really grateful for that and makes us want to contribute back with something!

[Vistaus]

Well, the Linux kernel is 25-30 million lines of code, which is several times more than both KDE and Xfce combined. Also, remember that if we're talking about the Linux kernel, different people run it on different hardware and architectures, hence the bug reports may be specific to certain mainline drivers or architectures. You can say "oh, but the same can be said about KDE - different people may not be using all of it's features or customization possibilities". You know, several days ago I made some comments here on Phoronix about why I ditched KDE after many years of using it. When you have issues like Plasma desktop crashing simply because of switching your monitor off and then on, or Plasma shell crashes when you open the panel customization menu and just moving the cursor in a certain way, I get the impression that the whole KDE codebase needs some serious code refactoring. And that's not all, many other KDE desktop utilities have also crashed on me at some point.

GNOME apps crash on me from time to time too. And last time I tried GNOME, which was late last year, it was unstable, both on Wayland and X11. KDE, however, is hardly ever unstable for me, esp. on Tumbleweed.

[Vistaus]

The number of bugs is significantly larger in KDE compared to XFCE or other smaller desktops. Just look at the rate of bug fixes. This year alone, there are probably more submitted bug fixes for Plasma 5 than ever applied to XFCE during the last 20 years.

Or it could be because KDE devs are more active, KDE users are more willing to report bugs, KDE has a Wayland session while Xfce doesn't, etc. I.e.: all sorts of reasons.

[Nth_man]

How many lines of code does KDE have and how many does Xfce?
Why is it somehow fair to compare raw bug numbers of those but not of KDE and the Linux kernel? Both comparisons are equally stupid.

Yes, KDE codebase is huge (https://invent.kde.org), Xfce has no Wayland version, etc.

[user1]

How many lines of code does KDE have and how many does Xfce?
Why is it somehow fair to compare raw bug numbers of those but not of KDE and the Linux kernel? Both comparisons are equally stupid.

Well, the Linux kernel is 25-30 million lines of code, which is several times more than both KDE and Xfce combined. Also, remember that if we're talking about the Linux kernel, different people run it on different hardware and architectures, hence the bug reports may be specific to certain mainline drivers or architectures. You can say "oh, but the same can be said about KDE - different people may not be using all of it's features or customization possibilities". You know, several days ago I made some comments here on Phoronix about why I ditched KDE after many years of using it. When you have issues like Plasma desktop crashing simply because of switching your monitor off and then on, or Plasma shell crashes when you open the panel customization menu and just moving the cursor in a certain way, I get the impression that the whole KDE codebase needs some serious code refactoring. And that's not all, many other KDE desktop utilities have also crashed on me at some point.

[aufkrawall]

KDE does not follow the approach "fixing features by deleting them", only idiots would applaud to that.