KDE's Multi-Monitor Support Continues To Be Improved

[phoronix]

Phoronix: KDE's Multi-Monitor Support Continues To Be Improved

While last week brought the Plasma 5.27 release as the last feature update to the Plasma 5 series, KDE developers haven't letup in their development efforts with this week continuing to be quite busy for the developers from bug fixing to new features...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/KDE-Better-Multi-Monitor-2023

[Danny3]

It's incredible how many bugs they fix every week!
But with the tons of features that Plasma has, this is expected.

[aht0]

As long as they fix more bugs than add features..

[NSLW]

It's incredible how many bugs they fix every week!
But with the tons of features that Plasma has, this is expected.

It's less incredible if you count the fixes from actual @kde e-mail addresses. Many of those bugs fixed every week are not only from the KDE full time developers but from occasional contributors like you and me.

[schmidtbag]

It's incredible how many bugs they fix every week!
But with the tons of features that Plasma has, this is expected.

Valve I'm sure also makes a difference here. With bug fixing being a high priority to the devs, it gets easier and easier to fix things as you keep going. It's kind of like building a large Lego set, where at the beginning it might take you as much as 5 minutes to find a single piece. Then half way through the build, you still have a lot of pieces but you start to remember generally where some are likely to be. Toward the end of the build, you just simply don't have much to find anymore so it goes by quicker.
And, it's also likely just a positive feedback loop: devs are [rightfully] getting congratulated for their work, encouraging them to continue working harder. I imagine this is one of the reasons why GIMP has gone limp, because it's basically become a thankless job to maintain, so nobody wants to do it.

So - it's all good really. KDE has noticeably improved for me in the past few years to a point where the only gripe I have with it at this point is the pointer theme seems to change between applications. Not only is that a pretty minor issue, I'm not even 100% sure if that's a KDE problem.

It's less incredible if you count the fixes from actual @kde e-mail addresses. Many of those bugs fixed every week are not only from the KDE full time developers but from occasional contributors like you and me.

Honestly, that's a pretty good thing. What makes open source healthy and desirable is when the community pitches in to make the product better. KDE has a long way to go before it is widely regarded as stable, so all the volunteers helping out is helping speed things along.

[ireri]

It's less incredible if you count the fixes from actual @kde e-mail addresses. Many of those bugs fixed every week are not only from the KDE full time developers but from occasional contributors like you and me.

I find that even more impressive, because that means that people are very involved in the betterment of the software they use. In this sense, KDE may be one of the closest projects to Stallman's dream.

[Danny3]

As long as they fix more bugs than add features..

To me it looks that way!
And it's important to add new features too as the bug fixes for those will be done one day too.
And sometimes those new features can be seen as bug fixes too as somebody was needing that functionality and adding it fixes that need.
Besides the fact that new features helps to get more users, which eventually means more donations and word spreading that will help to have more developers that will fix more bugs.

It's less incredible if you count the fixes from actual @kde e-mail addresses. Many of those bugs fixed every week are not only from the KDE full time developers but from occasional contributors like you and me.

That's really great in my opinion as the project has reached such a level of being enjoyed by so many users and developers that they are also willing to contribute to it.

Valve I'm sure also makes a difference here. With bug fixing being a high priority to the devs, it gets easier and easier to fix things as you keep going. It's kind of like building a large Lego set, where at the beginning it might take you as much as 5 minutes to find a single piece. Then half way through the build, you still have a lot of pieces but you start to remember generally where some are likely to be. Toward the end of the build, you just simply don't have much to find anymore so it goes by quicker.
And, it's also likely just a positive feedback loop: devs are [rightfully] getting congratulated for their work, encouraging them to continue working harder. I imagine this is one of the reasons why GIMP has gone limp, because it's basically become a thankless job to maintain, so nobody wants to do it.

So - it's all good really. KDE has noticeably improved for me in the past few years to a point where the only gripe I have with it at this point is the pointer theme seems to change between applications. Not only is that a pretty minor issue, I'm not even 100% sure if that's a KDE problem.

In my opinion KDE intentionally or unintentionally, by luck, did everything right:

1. They decided to create a desktop environment that comes with a traditional, Windows-like layout by default and be open to suggestions.
2. This attracted a lot of users, either from other desktop environment or from Windows and Mac and allowed them to feel comfortable and stay.
3. Being so open to suggestions, people were encouraged and contributed with feedback of what they don't like, what annoys them and what would be better, or donated some money.
4. They kept and repeated this attitude and more and more people felt happy with this desktop environment.
5. With this attitude and so many features being added because many users requested them, this DE became so good that it got Valve's attention and decision to make it the default on on Steam Deck.

Whatever comes from this is totally deserved by KDE organization as their really positive attitude towards users and developers payed off.
I'm really happy to see that Valve saw this attitude and its great results and decided to get involved too!

Hopefully in the future Valve becomes too an official sponsor for KDE organization, but in a way that doesn't make KDE change its great attitude!

[ssokolow]

So - it's all good really. KDE has noticeably improved for me in the past few years to a point where the only gripe I have with it at this point is the pointer theme seems to change between applications. Not only is that a pretty minor issue, I'm not even 100% sure if that's a KDE problem.

Are you on X11? If so, this workaround will probably work.

[mikus]

I wouldn't say that the multi-monitor has "improved", in fact it's highly broken currently that the primary panel no longer follows the proper primary display, and their new method doesn't handle the whole priority properly. This is annoying as with 4 monitors, it moves my main taskbar to the far 4th display and behaves badly if I move it manually. Plus it's even more confusing now that they still don't show the attached port with the devices in the gui - all my displays are the same, I can't tell them apart!

I have to use the nvidia-settings app or finally just made a small one-liner xrandr script to set my displays since kde can't figure out multi-montior support still after a few decades. I was better off on 5.26...

[bug77]

Ok, this made me recheck one old bug: when the panel/taskbar is on the side and on that side there is also a second monitor, auto-hide wouldn't work properly (it would go in loop of hide and show, unable to make up its mind). Now, if I tell it to auto-hide, it won't hide at all. Not sue if that counts as a fix.
Fwiw I checked this on X, I can't check Wayland right now (in the middle of something, I can't afford to have my open windows go MIA again), but I will at some point.