KDE Developers Fixing Initial Bugs From Plasma 6.2

[Citan]

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.

Cannot help on everything but on the two following, maybe...
1/ "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."
Not sure I understand what you mean as "available apps", is it a) "windows throughout all desktops and screens", b) "all apps opened included those without windows" c) "all apps installed whether currently opened or not" ?
a) You can reach something maybe acceptable for you by configuring the "window presenter" instead (ALT+TAB), for which you can define the "search scope" (as narrow as current activity/screen/desktop, as large as "all opened windows wherever they are".
b) Not sure how, because not sure of if that can happen... I guess it would be same approach as for a) but with the largest scope.
c) The simplest way is probably to use KRunner, either with its default shortcut (several exist, simplest is ALT+space) or by defining a custom keyboard shortcut (System Configuration -> Workspace -> Shortcuts).

"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."
I'm curious on how this works in practice because it implies that Gnome "guesses" what exact behaviour you want 100% based on context?

2/ "Also taking screenshots (pressing [PrtScr] key) in Gnome seems more nicely integrated, but I could live with what KDE offers."
Not sure whether this is really a "KDE desktop" problem or a "laptop fn keys configuration" problem...
Because I happen to have witnessed the same "problem" on my laptop, once the "laptop features" were the "default one" so I had to use FN to "deactivate" them and fallback on the default key behaviour. On another system (same hardware) it was as "expected" I needed to use FN key to enable laptop control features.
Quick search returned many people saying it's a BIOS parameter to change.

[s9209122222]

It's the worst update that I've seen since Plasma5, it claims to fix many bugs, however, it creates more bugs.

[mrg666]

It's the worst update that I've seen since Plasma5, it claims to fix many bugs, however, it creates more bugs.

I don't WTF you are talking about. It works great here. I don't see bugs.

[lewhoo]

Switched to Plasma 6.1 (now 6.2) on Fedora 40 recently after many years on Gnome. With Gnome there was always this problem of installing a hundred extensions to enable the functionality of Gnome 2, and after it really misbehaved on Wayland and Optimus laptop for me, I decided to go with KDE. I'll stay, although it does not seem like a simple upgrade. I was instantly hit by several bugs (things disappearing from the "apps" widget, random windows closing after waking up from sleep, installing a Japanese IME is a nightmare and so far only sort-of-works, Zoom shares both of my screens simultaneously, etc.) and, as I felt looking over the shoulders of some friends, the GUI seems quite dated in many places. However, that's a matter of personal preference. However, what really seems annoying is the lack of polish given to the standard widgets. Here I miss some of the Gnome extensions. Configuring system monitors is not straightforward and it seems that none can display text over a graph. I know, I can write my own, but I prefer to complain

So it was true that KDE is buggy as people claimed (I named just a few bugs that I've encountered), and panel widgets are of significantly lower quality than Gnome extensions, but overall the experience seems better. I started filing bugs, but for now for more serious things.

[torsionbar28]

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).

Funny, I recently switched *to* KDE because of the usability issues in the other major DE. I must say, the KDE workflow is superior, I should have switched years ago.

[Havin_it]

updated kde on my system to see how the update is, immediately set my monitor to 100% brightness... I'm not the only one either, know at least 1 other person...

For me it's defaulting to 33% (I had it set to 15%) and I can't see a way to reset it. Moderately annoying. That's on my laptop panel.

[Havin_it]

It's doesn't appear to be available on Gentoo yet. I'm still on KDE Plasma 6.1.5

You need to keyword ~amd64 (or whatever ~arch) and live a little, I merged 6.2 at the weekend ... along with 8 million irrelevant point-releases of minor libraries

[Quackdoc]

For me it's defaulting to 33% (I had it set to 15%) and I can't see a way to reset it. Moderately annoying. That's on my laptop panel.

it's one of those things that's more annoying then it should be, but it first happened to me late at night. Mine is my desktop monitor

[Havin_it]

it's one of those things that's more annoying then it should be, but it first happened to me late at night. Mine is my desktop monitor

I can't even remember where I set the persistent 15% level to begin with, it was so long ago. There are brightness settings in Power Management config (according to whether on AC or battery), but they seem to be ignored anyway.

Anyway a big chunk of what Nate discusses on the blog is brightness-related so I guess they are tearing the guts out of it atm. Maybe 6.2.1 will restore sanity in this area.

[usta]

2) not having a nice way of moving windows between desktops. Last time I tested was KDE 5 though.

There are a couple of ways :
1- Ugly way : press ALT + F3 from upcoming menu Desktops then Select which one you want to move ( This is same with right mouse click on titlebar )
2- Much easier way : Just press Ctrl + Alt + Shit + LeftOrRightArrow this will move the current application- window to next-previous desktop