KDE Plasma 6.0 Beta 1 Released With Frameworks & Gear Updated

[Berniyh]

The way I understood it is that mainly they wanted to provide the capability within their config system to save them into a subfolder of .config, but whether or not that is actually used is the choice of the developer and maybe not all components or apps have opted into that (yet).

And while I think it'd be nice to have .config more organized, I have to agree that it really isn't that big of a deal and more of a "nice to have".

[openminded]

The way I understood it is that mainly they wanted to provide the capability within their config system to save them into a subfolder of .config, but whether or not that is actually used is the choice of the developer and maybe not all components or apps have opted into that (yet).

And while I think it'd be nice to have .config more organized, I have to agree that it really isn't that big of a deal and more of a "nice to have".

When there's some weird behavior of Plasma is observed after the big update (we all know it happens from time to time), in order to search for the culprit it is much easier to just rename some ˜/.config/{kde} directory and re-login effectively making Plasma create a bunch of its configs from scratch under the fresh {kde} folder than to rename configs and folders under ˜/.config one by one or the entire ˜/.config folder nuking other apps' configuration along the way.
Also such kde-specific config directory could serve for backup and migration purposes.

[bug77]

That is not a problem but just your legitimate desire but not a problem.
I've been using Plasma for 5 years and honestly, I don't care where the config files are located, if you have a problem just ask.
Nate is right, this annoyance is only for slightly technical users, the "normal" user doesn't know where the desktop configuration files are located even in Windows, they just don't care.
But I understand that for some it would be better to have them in a single folder.

It's a usability issue, at the very least. Sometimes a piece of software acts up and when that happens, it would be a huge help if you could just dive into .config, delete an app's (or whatever) folder in order to be 100% sure you're starting from stock config. It's useful even for developers, because it would let people submit a bit more accurate bug fixes. But, as Nate has told us, they will fight users tooth and nail before implementing those changes. Nothing we can do about that.

In other news, I tried to upgrade Arch from KDE unstable, but I get a conflict trying to upgrade/replace oxygen. Anyone else saw that? is there a workaround? Or should I just wait fr updated packages in the repo?

[skeevy420]

ngraham I finally got Plasma 6 installed from kdesrc-build workspace earlier today and it's working great. HDR even works with MPV. Games and HDR is a bit more hit and miss, but that was to be expected. It'll be a great day when distributions start shipping Plasma 6.

The best way I can describe it would be to call it a tastefully refined Plasma 5.

[ngraham]

That's exactly what we're aiming for! So I'm glad it's working out.

[smitty3268]

It's a usability issue, at the very least.

The thing is, if a messy config folder is a deal breaker for someone then I have a really hard time believing they won't immediately find another deal breaker as soon as it gets fixed. And another 20 past that once that gets fixed. There's lots of little paper cuts like that all over the place, and many of them are more visible than a config folder.

So while I hope it gets cleaned up eventually, I completely understand the devs decision to focus on other things they deem more important first.

[bug77]

The thing is, if a messy config folder is a deal breaker for someone then I have a really hard time believing they won't immediately find another deal breaker as soon as it gets fixed. And another 20 past that once that gets fixed. There's lots of little paper cuts like that all over the place, and many of them are more visible than a config folder.

So while I hope it gets cleaned up eventually, I completely understand the devs decision to focus on other things they deem more important first.

Sooo... let's not fix anything, ever?
If the code base is not a total mess, this would a trivial change. With the benefits listed above. But since devs said they're not interested, I'm really not sure why we're still having this conversation.

On another note, I managed to get it installed on Arch (pacman -Syu oxygen instead of the usual pacman -Syu, for those interested). It started up fine, but it messed something wrt dpi or something like that. Mouse cursor seems laggy, the two sensors I had on the desktop changed positions and sizes). I was welcome with a "Welcome Center" window having a link named "Find out what's new". The link sent me to the KDE announcements page which hosts a generic description of Plasma and Frameworks instead. Everything else seems to have started up nicely, but it's too late for any kind of testing now, it will have to wait.

Edit: Mouse lag is gone. It was probably cause by me not rebooting, but logging out instead after the update.

[fallingcats]

ngraham I finally got Plasma 6 installed from kdesrc-build workspace earlier today and it's working great. HDR even works with MPV. Games and HDR is a bit more hit and miss, but that was to be expected. It'll be a great day when distributions start shipping Plasma 6.

The best way I can describe it would be to call it a tastefully refined Plasma 5.

May I ask what arcane knowledge you've obtained to make that work with mpv?
I'm running Arch with amdgpu, kde-unstable enabled and mpv-full-git. I assume you've used

kscreen-doctor output.1.wcg.enable output.1.hdr.enable output.1.sdr-brightness.500

to generally enable hdr. What else is required?

[fallingcats]

Sooo... let's not fix anything, ever?
If the code base is not a total mess, this would a trivial change. With the benefits listed above. But since devs said they're not interested, I'm really not sure why we're still having this conversation.

Is it really that hard to understand that while organizing .config is something nice to have, it's not more important than the other goals for 6.0 like fixing up wayland? You also really seem to overestimate the manpower of the project as a whole. If it's that important to you (as has been said countless times) patches are welcome!

[skeevy420]

That's exactly what we're aiming for! So I'm glad it's working out.

For my needs it's almost perfect. Kudos and many thanks.

About the only thing missing are window snapping features akin to Windows PowerToys FancyZones. I could really use the Priority Grid and Columns templates they have, but I'd really REALLY like to use whatever's going on in their custom layout 1 tucked away in the last animation. Now that I'm using a real 34" 21:9 monitor on my desk and not a 55" 16:9 TV sitting across the room, the correlation between excessive window padding and window snap sizes is highlighted even more than it was on a the TV.

That's not exclusively a Plasma issue. Going ultrawide really exacerbates the widescreen padding issue that already affects every desktop environment, every OS, every UI toolkit. KWin being able to partition the desktop into more, smaller, and/or thinner snap zones would help to mitigate that padding issue.

So much still seems like it's on the 4:3 standard.