KDE Developers Fixing Initial Bugs From Plasma 6.2

[Daktyl198]

I occasionally test KDE, just to check if they had fixed the usability issues (which then turns out that they haven't, but I nevertheless give it a try).

Can you elaborate on the usability issues? I'd like to file bug reports for them if they're still there.

[skeevy420]

I know most of you dont like manjaro but if you wish to have a quick peek recent kde changes , any arch linux based distro is perfect for it.
from https://github.com/manjaro-plasma/download/releases here you can download daily generated iso images ( multipart zipped )
So you need to download .z01 and .zip then need to combine them then unzip them to reach iso

It's not that I don't like Manjaro as much as I don't like that it sometimes gets out of sync with the AUR. Like pWe00Iri3e7Z9lHOX2Qx said, Manjaro, especially their Stable branch in my experiences, can start to lag a bit. Their development branches aren't that bad regarding AUR sync and getting fresher packages, but, IMHO, if a person is using that then they might as well use Arch or some other Arch-fork since they're losing the stability benefits that Manjaro tries to offer their users.

I used Manjaro on and off for nearly 5 years until I found that CachyOS was a better fit for my needs regarding my Linux desktop. I have fond memories of Manjaro and I'm not trying to speak too ill of them. Manjaro is still my go-to recommendation for new users that don't know what they need out of Linux and distributions.

[Noitatsidem]

Manjaro is still my go-to recommendation for new users that don't know what they need out of Linux and distributions.

recommending an arch based distribution to beginners is certainly a choice.

I wonder why we haven't had the year of the linux desktop yet!

[Daktyl198]

recommending an arch based distribution to beginners is certainly a choice.

I wonder why we haven't had the year of the linux desktop yet!

Ironically, Arch-based distros have been the most stable distros for me on any modern hardware. They have the most up to date drivers, and users can install applications from the AUR instead of having to go and learn how to install applications manually. Flatpaks are helping with this, but not every application is available as a flatpak.

Additionally, Arch packages have minimal patches compared to upstream, which means Arch itself rarely introduces any new bugs or weird interactions. I would never recommend Arch itself, but derivative distros are great.

[skeevy420]

recommending an arch based distribution to beginners is certainly a choice.

I wonder why we haven't had the year of the linux desktop yet!

Like Daktyl198 said, Arch and Arch based distributions have minimal patching from a software's upstream, up-to-date drivers which are important for Intel and AMD GPU users, and they have support for Flats, Snaps, and AppImages as well as the AUR makes installing software from source easier for they Layman.

Manjaro takes all of what Arch offers and tries to make the updates a lot less painless and not need as much user interactions. That comes at the expense of not being as bleeding-edge as Arch.

The year of the Linux desktop won't be on Ubuntu, Debian, System76, Mint, or any other Debian-based distribution. Sorry not sorry, but Debian strives to catch up to outdated software. System76 needs to fork Debian.

It also won't be with RHEL or SLES. They also strive to catch up to outdated software.

The year of the Linux desktop will happen once Valve releases SteamOS 3 for general consumer and PC usage. Valve uses Arch, BTW.

[jonnyheggheim]

I occasionally test KDE, just to check if they had fixed the usability issues (which then turns out that they haven't, but I nevertheless give it a try).

What's the best way to boot a USB key with KDE 6.2 and test it?

Ubuntu 24.10 had been just released with the old KDE Plasma, so that doesn't help.

KDE Plasma 6.2 is available in the Fedora 40 repo. https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/upda...024-1c174653ee

[pkese]

May I ask what are those usability issues?
I currently don't use KDE, but I also check it out from time to time, so that's why I'm curious.

My biggest issues were 1) not being able to customize the dock (it always took too much space or showed too little information) and 2) not having a nice way of moving windows between desktops. Last time I tested was KDE 5 though.

Anyways, I indeed went to install OpenSuse Tumbleweed (today's snapshot) and I must say I'm pleasantly surprised with KDE 6:
things appear to work as expected, I was even able to configure the dock (panel) to my liking in a few clicks (on Ubuntu I need to install the "Dash to Panel" extension just to be able to get the panel providing usability matching what had on Windows XP world 20 years ago).

A cool thing on Gnome though is the nice integration of [windows] key. On Gnome you can reduce pretty much all interactions with the windows environment to just this one key: switch windows, switch desktops, move windows between desktops, start typing to find and start a new app.
On KDE you need to learn multiple key shortcuts for that: [windows] will only open the system menu, whereas for selecting apps there's [windows]+[w]. However keyboard search in that mode only searches between open windows, not available apps. This part is not as nice as what Gnome or Windows have to offer.

Also taking screenshots (pressing [PrtScr] key) in Gnome seems more nicely integrated, but I could live with what KDE offers.

I'd appreciate if there was an easy way to scale all the fonts to a bigger size all at once on a 4k display (i.e. just resizing the fonts, rather than scaling the whole screen), however I think Gnome doesn't have any similar option either (I had to go through the font list and resize them one by one).

Then in the end of this testing I found that if I move the mouse to a top left corner, a highlight appears. So I clicked that highlight and afterwards my mouse stopped working: i could move the cursor around, but clicking wouldn't register any clicks. So that was as far as I went.

To conclude: I'm impressed by the progress.
I really wish they made the [windows] key offer same as functionality as what Gnome does - that's probably *the* one thing that's making me prefer to stay with Gnome.

Oh, another problem that I found is:
- if I configure the panel to show a separate icon for each window
- and I open 5 Firefox windows (and I see 5 Firefox buttons in the panel)
- and then in one Firefox window I play a YouTube video,
- then all Firefox icons get a speaker icon although only one of them is playing the audio
- so I don't know to which window I need to switch in order to stop the video.
This functionality works fine in Gnome (only the icon of the window actually playing audio gets highlighted),
but didn't work in KDE5 and it still doesn't work with KDE6.

[Noitatsidem]

Like Daktyl198 said, Arch and Arch based distributions have minimal patching from a software's upstream, up-to-date drivers which are important for Intel and AMD GPU users, and they have support for Flats, Snaps, and AppImages as well as the AUR makes installing software from source easier for they Layman.

Manjaro takes all of what Arch offers and tries to make the updates a lot less painless and not need as much user interactions. That comes at the expense of not being as bleeding-edge as Arch.

The year of the Linux desktop won't be on Ubuntu, Debian, System76, Mint, or any other Debian-based distribution. Sorry not sorry, but Debian strives to catch up to outdated software. System76 needs to fork Debian.

It also won't be with RHEL or SLES. They also strive to catch up to outdated software.

The year of the Linux desktop will happen once Valve releases SteamOS 3 for general consumer and PC usage. Valve uses Arch, BTW.

1 casual uninformed update on an arch-based system and you have a broken system and a user primed to go back to Windows. SteamOS avoids this issue by being immutable. You flash a system image and boom you're done, no user intervention required. I understand manjaro has an immutable version now, but I find it unlikely that this is what the user was recommending.

Just ask the Arch guys themselves who their distribution is suitable for, it's not newbies.

[opticblu]

recommending an arch based distribution to beginners is certainly a choice.

I wonder why we haven't had the year of the linux desktop yet!

Because general purpose computers (laptops/desktops) aren’t that commonly used outside of work, so it never really happened

Meanwhile, there are nearly 4 BILLION Android users out there. Roughly half of the planet uses Linux— just not in the way “lol muh year of the Linux desktop” people really consider.

Linux won about a decade ago. Microsoft has a Linux distribution. So does Google. Linux kernel based devices have decimated Windows by the numbers. Windows mobile is dead, Windows Server has its niche, MacOS Server is gone, Solaris is on life support, Netflix and a few others run FreeBSD, literally everything else is Linux.

By a 4x factor, Linux (though not GNU userland Linux) has won. Decisively.

[user1]

Also taking screenshots (pressing [PrtScr] key) in Gnome seems more nicely integrated, but I could live with what KDE offers.

I also prefer the screenshot tool to be integrated into the ui instead of being a standalone app, as it is currently on Gnome. But one thing I absolutely hate about Gnome's implementation is that it doesn't let me name the screenshots and let me choose where to save them.