KDE Kicks Off August With More Desktop Bug Fixes

[xAlt7x]

And compare This week in KDE to This week in Gnome. They never mention bug fixed because there's simply no need for that.

GNOME users definitely need a fix for a HUGE RAM usage with a built-in tiled resizing (reddit thread , bugreport). Can't fanboys be less toxic?

But maybe it's time to stop highlighting these smaller and less important bugfixes because it gives the impression that KDE software is super buggy.

I lguess we need such reports as most people don't monitor changes on a bug tracker. Thank you for doing this! The only sad thing is that those fixes (esp. KDE Framework ones) may never hit LTS distros.

[slalomsk8er]

It's a request, he said "all requests and bug reports I have submitted to Gnome have been fixed".

Sometimes you are going to save a file and you find that you have to create or delete a folder, or rename an existing file or folder, etc. The frequency depends on the kind of work that people do. There are [more advantages](https://www.ubuntubuzz.com/2021/04/c...r-dialogs.html).

In the link they state that the KDE dialogue has no search. True, there is no button but CTRL + F did bring up a search for me...

<edit> should have double checked before posting - it wasn't the KDE dialogue... </edit>

[Morty]

So it was a way to prove, "KDE is alive, look!" And I think we've overcome that impression and nobody thinks KDE is dead anymore. But maybe it's time to stop highlighting these smaller and less important bugfixes because it gives the impression that KDE software is super buggy in a general sense. And that's not really true;

I think you did, and a great job doing so. A really valuable effort informing and creating some deserved hype. KDE needs such efforts, as show by you and Aseigo and Mosfet inn the past. So please keep up the great work, as long as you enjoy it.

Perhaps filter those less important bugfixes little more, some are not really so interresting for most readers anyway. And then you have those really exotic corner cases you se more of when things get really stable, from the comments here some like to pretend they are valid for most users. Perhaps try to identify clearer how rare they are for users.

Then there is the scope of your blog, wich you always identify. KDE is big and Plasma is ony a small part og it. And I think a large part og the exiting stuff happens with the applications. Not saying you should follow everything, it's probably not possible and your time is better spent developing. But perhaps sometimes put spotlight on some applications or set of applications, either by you or some gjest writer. Since you already have the readers.

[skeevy420]

Listen, I know it's cool hating on Gnome, but saying something that's obviously ridiculous is cringe. I'm no fanboy of either desktop, but seeing KDE fanboys sh!tting on Gnome, while simultaneously being blind to the flaws of KDE is really annoying.

In all fairness I was using GNOME, Nobara's Flavor (PopOS shell and some other things), this past week and it was just awful. The entire extension interface would randomly crash when I exited full screen videos by double-clicking the mouse; didn't happen when using the full screen toggle button. That happened with both VLC and Celluloid. If I had had internet for that week I'd have installed KDE (which I'm in the process of doing now).

I've had some wonky bugs on KDE over the years, but I've never had an issue where double-clicking a video would crash things so bad that all my toolbars would go away until Iogging out and back in (due to the extension interface crashing so hard that extensions wouldn't reinitialize until the logging out/in cycle).

In the past month I've tried a few different GNOME implementations and my experiences is that vanilla is limited but stable and usable. As more and more plugins are added the risk of crashes and annoyances increases.

ngraham Pretty much everyone of us here has asked Michael not to highlight the various fixes with every single KDE article. If you type "Plasma" in the Phoronix search bar the results are mainly "Bug Fixes" and "Wayland Improvements" while if you type in GNOME you get a bunch of articles highlighting new stuff. Searching for "KDE is a tad bit better than "Plasma", but not much. When the majority of the KDE & Plasma headlines are about fixes and continued improvements it gives the impression that the software is bad to begin with. When the majority of the GNOME headlines highlight new features and abilities it gives the impression that it both works better and that they're the ones pushing things forward. Neither is really the case for either desktop.

I wouldn't really call what GNOME is doing as pushing things forward as much as it is regression with a nice coat of Turtle Wax. To each their own.

I guess if someone was around for some of the KDE Plasma 5.2 releases they could say it was bad to begin with. Not gonna lie, it kind of was back then...but so were the early GNOME 3 releases before they pulled a Slackware and jumped 35 some-odd versions to rebrand themselves when things worked a bit better . Pretty much all large projects go through that early teething phase and end up like both KDE and GNOME now -- they work great while having to fix minor things all the time due to the ever changing tooling landscape.

I just had a crazy thought that'll cause me to ramble on for a bit.

Y'all should change it from KDE Plasma 5.26.?? to simply KDE 78 for the next release; preferably K 78 if the "DE" can be dropped. Why the change in numbers? Why not. Everyone else has, only they picked bad numbers for usually dumb reasons. 78 has some meaning. 7 is the Western lucky number and 8 is the Eastern number for luck and prosperity. If 78 is done in a stylized manner it'll look like it's saying "Greater Than Infinity". Numerology gives lots of luck while symbology says your the best. If it's greater than infinity it has to be the best .

Also, 78 isn't a version number. It's just a fun number for the name of the project. To me, K 78 has a fun, sciency, Star Trek like sound to it.

Why drop "DE Plasma $VERSION"? Can anyone honestly say that the entire name of "KDE Plasma $VERSION" isn't a bit of a mouthful? As seen by numerous forum posts everywhere desktop environments are discussed, people interchange KDE and Plasma to refer to the ecosystem as a whole. Why not simplify the name to shoehorn the discussion? Both KDE 78 and K 78 are very simple while giving a bit of freedom in choice when discussing it and not adding confusing between the environment as a whole and Plasma the shell. Not only that, the DE part is a bit redundant. It's kind of like every grocery store adding grocery store to their name: The Kroger Grocery Store; The Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market Grocery Store; The Sam's Club Bulk Grocery Store.

My point is that if your branding is on point, you don't have to call yourself what you are in your name. Case in point: I just did a ctrl+f for the word "desktop" on gnome.org and had 0 results. GNOME doesn't have to call themselves that because most everyone knows what they're getting into by the time they start looking into alternative Linux environments.

A rebrand to a simpler name has a more benefits than it does downsides. Honestly, the only downside will be a few negative people on places like here. That's it, really.

A rename generates news and buzz and a simpler name is easier to discuss and spread. Having a bit of fun with numerology and symbology also gives people things to discuss and probably hate and debate on. If they're hating and debating on it for being silly then they're still discussing it and it means that it is actively on their mind. Even the bad news is good news here.

If you haven't had any proposals for future KDE branding, that's my 2 cents.

[Firnefex]

2022:
- Windows users enjoying the latest, most modern and feature-packed operating system to ever exist

Lol, the Windows 10 file manager still has no tabs, searching takes years, at work I constantly have display errors due to buffer overflows, in short it's just pure garbage.
User friendlyness is something they lost many years ago and every new Windows version requires a new computer. Without its monopoly position Windows would already be dead, Linux is much better in almost every aspect.

[AmericanLocomotive]

Good joke. They're nowhere near Linux features and performance. Furthermore, their DE's are nightmares to use.

...and this right here is why desktop Linux still isn't a thing. So many Linux users just live in a different reality.

First of all, Windows and Apple OS performance is within a few % of most Linux distributions (+/- either way), they're all extremely close. Second - usability: KDE, Gnome, whatever are honestly terrible to use. This is mainly going to be a KDE rant, but Gnome is just as guilty. They both completely miss the mark on basic usability stuff.

I remember the first time I fired up SuSE Tumbleweed, I was doing something in Firefox on one monitor, clicked onto the desktop to do something, and then looked back at Firefox but forgot to move my cursor back over it. I scrolled the mouse wheel both monitors go absolutely crazy flickering back and forth between empty desktops and what I was just looking at. Turns out moving the scroll wheel on the desktop changes your virtual desktops. No hotkey, no introductory "hey this is how this works" toast message. Not even a graceful gradual scroll either - 1 click of the wheel = next virtual desktop, click again and it flicks back. What kind of madman would think that's acceptable default behavior?

"trash" behavior: This came up on my Steamdeck, but Tumbleweed is configured the same way by default too. I tried to delete a very large file on my Steamdeck, By default, the right click context menu only has "move to trash". It said "this file is too big for trash" ...and that was it. No other potential solutions offered. After searching for solutions (and tons of new KDE users apparently have run into this problem), I found that you could press "shift+delete" (which you can't do on a steamdeck for obvious reasons) or open up a Dolphin window, navigate to wherever the file is, and then use the menus to manually delete the file. You can also configure KDE to have "Delete" be an option in the context menu. But none of that is intuitive or done by default. You run into that same file too big for the trash on Windows and it simply and gracefully asks if you would like to permanently delete the file instead. One result I found when I originally was troubleshooting this issue suggested dragging the file into a terminal window (to automatically populate the file location) and then rm'ing it. How could anyone even remotely take that as a serious solution?

Someone mentioned tabs? You know what I love about both Tumbleweed and my Steamdeck? When I have a folder open in Dolphin, close the Dolphin window, delete said folder off the desktop (or wherever it was) then open Dolphin file explorer later and have it start screaming at me that it can't restore the tab because the folder is now missing. What an absolutely stunning display of genius UX design.

Linux UX is garbage for "normal" users.

[slalomsk8er]

Linux UX is garbage for "normal" users.

Fair, that some introduction maybe via setup wizard with a tutorial would help.

I don't know which DE would fair best if the user has no experience (I guess MacOS and Gnome) but for me, a IT professional and longe time Linux user, the UX of MacOS and Windows is frustrating with missing features and paper cuts in all the wrong places where I have no "calluses" from my long time Linux UX usage.

[mirmirmir]

This is a worry of mine with the blog. The reason why I started out highlighting bugfixes in the first place a few years ago was because I got the sense that there was a pervasive impression that KDE was played out, that its developers were exhausted, that they just weren't fixing any bugs anymore. And that was wrong! They are constantly fixing bugs and performing maintenance! So it was a way to prove, "KDE is alive, look!" And I think we've overcome that impression and nobody thinks KDE is dead anymore. But maybe it's time to stop highlighting these smaller and less important bugfixes because it gives the impression that KDE software is super buggy in a general sense. And that's not really true; with some exceptions it's mostly the niche features and the non-default options that have obvious bugs. In reality, all open-source software is buggy and its maintainers are constantly doing bugfixing, even the GNOME people, and even if they don't shout it from the rooftops.

It's fun to see Cope Man... Coping lol

[rhavenn]

...and this right here is why desktop Linux still isn't a thing. So many Linux users just live in a different reality.

First of all, Windows and Apple OS performance is within a few % of most Linux distributions (+/- either way), they're all extremely close. Second - usability: KDE, Gnome, whatever are honestly terrible to use. This is mainly going to be a KDE rant, but Gnome is just as guilty. They both completely miss the mark on basic usability stuff.

I remember the first time I fired up SuSE Tumbleweed, I was doing something in Firefox on one monitor, clicked onto the desktop to do something, and then looked back at Firefox but forgot to move my cursor back over it. I scrolled the mouse wheel both monitors go absolutely crazy flickering back and forth between empty desktops and what I was just looking at. Turns out moving the scroll wheel on the desktop changes your virtual desktops. No hotkey, no introductory "hey this is how this works" toast message. Not even a graceful gradual scroll either - 1 click of the wheel = next virtual desktop, click again and it flicks back. What kind of madman would think that's acceptable default behavior?

"trash" behavior: This came up on my Steamdeck, but Tumbleweed is configured the same way by default too. I tried to delete a very large file on my Steamdeck, By default, the right click context menu only has "move to trash". It said "this file is too big for trash" ...and that was it. No other potential solutions offered. After searching for solutions (and tons of new KDE users apparently have run into this problem), I found that you could press "shift+delete" (which you can't do on a steamdeck for obvious reasons) or open up a Dolphin window, navigate to wherever the file is, and then use the menus to manually delete the file. You can also configure KDE to have "Delete" be an option in the context menu. But none of that is intuitive or done by default. You run into that same file too big for the trash on Windows and it simply and gracefully asks if you would like to permanently delete the file instead. One result I found when I originally was troubleshooting this issue suggested dragging the file into a terminal window (to automatically populate the file location) and then rm'ing it. How could anyone even remotely take that as a serious solution?

Someone mentioned tabs? You know what I love about both Tumbleweed and my Steamdeck? When I have a folder open in Dolphin, close the Dolphin window, delete said folder off the desktop (or wherever it was) then open Dolphin file explorer later and have it start screaming at me that it can't restore the tab because the folder is now missing. What an absolutely stunning display of genius UX design.

Linux UX is garbage for "normal" users.

This reads like a Windows user who doesn't like "different" or doesn't understand there are more than one way to work. I can't stand the Windows 10 / 11 UX. No decent / 1st party support for focus follows mouse and no option to disable click to focus. I like having my background terminal be "focused", but not jump to the front. No copy on select option. Scroll wheel virtual desktop scrolling. Yes, please, althought I'm fine with with just function key + #, . Oh wait..Windows doesn't do either of those. cycling through them is about it via that new super-imposed popup (windows key + tab or whatever it is) or clicking with your mouse. Why isn't is just a keyboard shortcut? Windows also certainly doesn't pop up helpful hints / how-to shortcuts or "did you mean to do this?" stuff. You just know all the ins / outs, so it's not "new" to you. I guarantee if you handed a total novice either GNOME / KDE / OS X / Windows UI they'd be equally confused by all 4.

Yes, some of these options can be enabled via 3rd party tools or manual registry hacks, but they're not 1st class citizens and don't work 100%.

[AmericanLocomotive]

There's a big difference between "missing some features that improve certain specific workflow cases" and "bad UX"

Windows Explorer is simple, perhaps a little to simple (and the direction they're going isn't great), but for the most part it holds your hand and is very predictable. You purposely click things, and something expected happens. You push buttons and click randomly on "nothing" and nothing happens. These are expected things by just about any user of any device. On both Windows and OSX, switching between virtual desktops can be done via. keyboard shortcuts. On OSX, it's control+ L/R. On Windows, it's Control+Windows+L/R. On both systems, a 3 or 4 finger swipe on touch-enabled devices will switch between desktops. Those are both very easy to do, but difficult to accidentally do. Having a simple scroll with no modifier keys switch workspace as a default is just lunacy. It's unexpected behavior, and just bad UX. It should not be a default.

Predictable should be default.

If a file is too big for the trash, Windows says "hey, this file is too big for the trash, you can permanently delete it instead, do you want to do this?". KDE on the other hand gives you no alternative solutions, requiring you to either 1) Know the shift+delete key trick, which doesn't work on touch-only devices, 2) Fire up a Dolphin window and navigate to wherever that specific file or folder is, and invoke delete manually through the menu system, 3) Command Line it, 4) Know you have to go into the configuration settings and enable "Delete" on the context menu.

This is something that doesn't happen on OS X OR Windows. I shouldn't ever have to do a web search to do something as basic as removing a file or folder from my desktop. It's bad UX.

Following existing standards and conventions for basic tasks should be a "default".

Harassing the user that a folder they deleted is no longer there, every time they open Dolphin up is just inane. If the folder or path doesn't exist anymore, it shouldn't start screaming at me, it just shouldn't try to open that folder in a tab. I also question having Dolphin open up all of my last used folders as tabs every time you click it as being a "good default". It seems like an odd choice to me, and should be an option - i.e. Firefox having a "restore previous session" button.

Once again, Following existing standards and conventions for basic tasks should be a "default".