KDE Plasma 5.27 Beta Released With Tiling & Multi-Monitor Improvements

[kylew77]

Still not very friendly to the non-Linux OSes but thankfully the applications like Kate and Konsole are. OpenBSD might finally get KDE 5 working this year from the last progress report on undeadly or maybe next year. Michael did an article awhile back where the FreeBSD version had to be frozen because of breaker bugs if updating. Unsure if FreeBSD is again able to track the latest version of KDE 5. XFCE4 is still the best cross platform DE, followed oddly by Gnome because despite its systemD dependencies it works on OpenBSD and FreeBSD!!

[Berniyh]

Due to these features:
1. Wayland fractional scaling
2. Better multi-monitor
3. Tiling window manager

Keep in mind that it's still not a 'real' tiling wm. For now, it seems like they've just expanded the tiling capabilities a bit.
I read that there might be more coming in the future, we'll see.

However, the KDE devs said they don't expect a total fix to the multimonitor issues in this version. They said this change is also to make them easier to fix, or something like that. I read about it on Nate's blog

That's not quite correct.

They've basically replaced that whole logic, so all the multi-monitor bugs are assumed to be fixed (and are marked as such).
What he meant is that there could of course be new bugs. After all, this is new code.
However, from what I've seen, it seems to be a more robust approach, so fingers crossed that there won't be as many issues.
I especially like the idea that you can't just define a primary screen (on Wayland not even that was possible some time ago), but you can arrange the priority of all screens, for each screen layout individually.

[SerialCool]

Yesterday I switched to Plasma 5.27Beta under EndeavourOS, so far everything runs well.

What I really like is the operation and interaction between the TV, KDE-Plasma and KDE-Connect.
It's easy and convenient to control KDE-Plasma from the couch via smartphone, especially for multimedia.

To fully utilize the QLED 65 inch TV under Linux / KDE-Plasma, native HDR support is still missing under Linux, since HDR is now supported by many movies and games.

But everything else seems to work under KDE.
The refresh rate of the Samsung QLED TV of 120 Hz is correctly recognized by KDE-Plasma via HDMI 2.1, also the 165Hz of the laptop is correctly recognized by KDE.
Also, KDE-Plasma seems to display the correct scaling on the laptop with a QHD monitor and on the 4K 65-inch TV.

Is it already certain when approximately Linux / KDE Plasma will enable HDR support?
And to what extent does Linux / KDE Plasma support soundbars or 7.1 surround systems with DTS-HD Master Audio or Dolby Atmos? Is it possible to control the audio channels individually via KDE Plasma?

Thanks

[bug77]

Both can do it, it depends on the protocol version. On one of my screens I can even select between DP 1.1 and 1.2 which affects this behavior.
I think it was added as a measure to save energy, but I'm not sure.
In any case, the behavior is the same on windows as well, it's not down to the OS (at least as far as I can tell).
I really hope that the new approach finally fixes the moving around of screens, black desktops etc. Have been annoyed by that way to many years.

I also hope they make progress on the kwin restarting problem on wayland, since that is the main wayland blocker for me. I've (unfortunately) seen kwin crash too often in the past that I could trust on using it as a wm if a crash means that all other applications are gone as well.
(Which is not a kwin-specific problem, but still should be fixed. )

Tbh Windows is way worse (or was, last time I checked). I placed some windows on my DP monitor, shut down, removed the monitor and then started up again. Believe it or not, when I tried to open the same apps again, Windows would happily send them to their last known position, on the now non-existing monitor, and called it a day.

[Berniyh]

Is it already certain when approximately Linux / KDE Plasma will enable HDR support?

That doesn't really depend on KDE, but more on the layers below. My guess is the answer would be "soon™".

And to what extent does Linux / KDE Plasma support soundbars or 7.1 surround systems with DTS-HD Master Audio or Dolby Atmos? Is it possible to control the audio channels individually via KDE Plasma?

Again, this is mostly a sound driver question and it should work. Haven't tested it though since I don't have such a system.
Regarding the last part: it does have a "Balance" button in the settings and at least for stereo you can increase or reduce the volume of the two channels. I suspect you can do the same for more channels (at least I don't know why it wouldn't be possible), so it principle it should work.
It could however be that for DTS-HD or similar you need to use HDMI passthrough for the audio to transport all channels, similarly to S/PDIF passthrough.
In that case Linux can't modify the stream and you can't rebalance on the software side.

[nvaert1986]

Yesterday I switched to Plasma 5.27Beta under EndeavourOS, so far everything runs well.

What I really like is the operation and interaction between the TV, KDE-Plasma and KDE-Connect.
It's easy and convenient to control KDE-Plasma from the couch via smartphone, especially for multimedia.

To fully utilize the QLED 65 inch TV under Linux / KDE-Plasma, native HDR support is still missing under Linux, since HDR is now supported by many movies and games.

But everything else seems to work under KDE.
The refresh rate of the Samsung QLED TV of 120 Hz is correctly recognized by KDE-Plasma via HDMI 2.1, also the 165Hz of the laptop is correctly recognized by KDE.
Also, KDE-Plasma seems to display the correct scaling on the laptop with a QHD monitor and on the 4K 65-inch TV.

Is it already certain when approximately Linux / KDE Plasma will enable HDR support?
And to what extent does Linux / KDE Plasma support soundbars or 7.1 surround systems with DTS-HD Master Audio or Dolby Atmos? Is it possible to control the audio channels individually via KDE Plasma?

Thanks

- Soundbars in Linux via USB work just fine most of the times (using snd-usb-audio), but work fine using optical too
- A 7.1 system works under Linux; using a Creative SoundBlaster X4 just fine under Linux)
- DTS-HD and Dolby TrueHD are working under Linux since PulseAudio 13.0
- There's no Dolby Atmos 7.1 support under Linux, but you can use Easy Effects (formerly known as pulseeffects) to mimic it's effects and get the same result

NOTE: Most soundbars are recognized as 2.0 or 2.1 speaker systems, because soundbars are not actually 7.1. They're usually using Virtual 7.1 surround. This can also be achieved using easyeffects. Pipewire can achieve this too: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipew...rtual-surround

[Vistaus]

Reading other comments, I'm just looking for fixes for a single monitor on DP. I have one 32" 4K monitor using DP (HDMI doesn't seem to have the bandwidth) and somehow after the display has been off for a while a window will end up shifted off the screen so it doesn't show when maximised. It can (usually) be moved back using the Alt+F3 menu. That said, Plasma has definitely improved to the point that issues are rare.

Can't reproduce that on my 24" 2K monitor on DP.

[Vistaus]

Still not very friendly to the non-Linux OSes but thankfully the applications like Kate and Konsole are.

Konsole is really nice (although I prefer Yakuake), but Kate user-friendly? Lol. I love KDE Plasma and most KDE apps, but Kate is probably the second worst KDE app ever (aside from the garbage called Discover). It's bloated, slow and has too many features while its counterpart KWrite has too few features. FeatherPad is my favorite: also Qt, but lighting fast, not bloated and enough features (somewhere in between Kate and KWrite).

[evil_core]

Konsole is really nice (although I prefer Yakuake), but Kate user-friendly? Lol. I love KDE Plasma and most KDE apps, but Kate is probably the second worst KDE app ever (aside from the garbage called Discover). It's bloated, slow and has too many features while its counterpart KWrite has too few features. FeatherPad is my favorite: also Qt, but lighting fast, not bloated and enough features (somewhere in between Kate and KWrite).

Kwrite and Kate uses same architecture, libraries and shares most of the code.
They both launch instantly(under Plasma), unliike Featherpad. I haven't measured memory, I'm using vim mostly under Konsole. It's nice, except stupid shortcuts(like generally plasma) that interfere with many TUI apps.

[kylew77]

Konsole is really nice (although I prefer Yakuake), but Kate user-friendly? Lol. I love KDE Plasma and most KDE apps, but Kate is probably the second worst KDE app ever (aside from the garbage called Discover). It's bloated, slow and has too many features while its counterpart KWrite has too few features. FeatherPad is my favorite: also Qt, but lighting fast, not bloated and enough features (somewhere in between Kate and KWrite).

I meant they were portable between OSes not easy to use. Kate is like an 800 pound gorilla and I love it! But yeah it can be kind of slow.