Learning More About KDE's Plasma Next Desktop

[Baconmon]

Yippy!! I can't wait!!

I am so excited about KDE 5.. I've been using KDE for ever, since KDE 3, and it is the only thing I will ever use because gnome doesn't have any options and QT is better than GTK stuff, and XFCE is too light-weight for my super computer..

People saying stupid things about it in this thread are just trolls trying to nitpick.. Like for instance, as if some one is going to decide not to use an entire desktop environment just because the font kerning isn't just how they like it.....like wtf, that must be the pickiest person in the world.. Does gnome meet your every need 100% exactly how you like it?..
It is like driving a crappy old vehicle with no features (gnome) and then some one asks you "Hey, do you want this new 2014 toyota RAV4 fully electric vehicle made of gold?" and you say "No...I don't like the pattern that the treads on the tires have, I'll just stick with my crappy old ancient gas vehicle instead".. Like who would actually do that in real life unless you are a giant troll?..

[GreatEmerald]

Yeap, I've also never seen anything wrong with the default theme. Actually, I like Oxygen more than the default openSUSE theme (I just find the latter not consistent enough and I can't find my icons when they're simplified like that). I usually tweak the default theme a bit (use transparency on the window decorations etc), but nothing much because it's already good enough.

If they make more improvements to it, that's fine too.

[GreatEmerald]

By the way, there's another noteworthy thing in development, called Sprinter:

http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2014/02/sprinter-development-luminosity-episode.html

It's an (incremental) upgrade for the KRunner.

[a user]

Guess what? If you don't the default theme in KDE you can completely change it, and it's easy they even provide a downloader that will install them for you. As well no matter what it looks like, somebody is going to complain about it, because everyone has different tastes, and I for one do not understand what issue you and others have with the default theme.

it is a shit ton of work to make it even slightly acceptable. every time i tried kde i gave up after an hour. at least since kde4 they made kde finally stable. i really wonder how kde could even survive the past years of bad coding and design.

[zanny]

I love how design aficionados come in here saying "omg there are so many buttons, its almost like it is feature complete and you won't find yourself saying 'dang, I wish I could do X but too bad this is gedit where the gnome devs would prefer it to just be a white blank spot to type in and thats it'".

I like my buttons. They let me do things. I can get work done with buttons. I don't get shit done with curvy edges and minimalism. My kate has 3 dozen plugins and all 3 sides of it are covered in kparts and it is glorious because I can actually use it as a text editor, especially in vim mode. Oh good glory it has more than 5 settings in its option menu though, that makes it impossible to use.

Some things obviously need fixing, like the dialogs in kalarm to create new alarms, those just have a terrible workflow. But saying "there are buttons, that is bad" requires no thought about how much functionality is appropriate to the task.

Does your media player need a gazillion buttons? No, and Dragon Player really doesn't have that problem - it is fairly minimalistic. But a video editor? Kdenlive is button tastic and it is great. It means you can do things with the software. Even kwrite vs kate show the dichotomy between the KDE version of notepad and wordpad, albeit both of them are magnitudes more useful than either of the Windows programs.

[Marc Driftmeyer]

I love how design aficionados come in here saying "omg there are so many buttons, its almost like it is feature complete and you won't find yourself saying 'dang, I wish I could do X but too bad this is gedit where the gnome devs would prefer it to just be a white blank spot to type in and thats it'".

I like my buttons. They let me do things. I can get work done with buttons. I don't get shit done with curvy edges and minimalism. My kate has 3 dozen plugins and all 3 sides of it are covered in kparts and it is glorious because I can actually use it as a text editor, especially in vim mode. Oh good glory it has more than 5 settings in its option menu though, that makes it impossible to use.

Some things obviously need fixing, like the dialogs in kalarm to create new alarms, those just have a terrible workflow. But saying "there are buttons, that is bad" requires no thought about how much functionality is appropriate to the task.

Does your media player need a gazillion buttons? No, and Dragon Player really doesn't have that problem - it is fairly minimalistic. But a video editor? Kdenlive is button tastic and it is great. It means you can do things with the software. Even kwrite vs kate show the dichotomy between the KDE version of notepad and wordpad, albeit both of them are magnitudes more useful than either of the Windows programs.

If you can't see the irony with buttons and VIM then you're not grasping the ugly UI design motto that is KDE: everything can be made a button/menu item or not.

It's still an asinine design. Working around guys like Keith Ohlfs of NeXT and more it is quite clear that KDE reminds me of so many things about C++ I hate and how much I enjoy ObjC. Completely different views which extend to the UI.

[GreatEmerald]

Does your media player need a gazillion buttons? No, and Dragon Player really doesn't have that problem - it is fairly minimalistic. But a video editor? Kdenlive is button tastic and it is great. It means you can do things with the software.

Kdenlive has not enough buttons! I never use it until I add Render and Gain buttons to the top toolbar. It's just so much more convenient to have them than to browse through menus

[daedaluz]

I hope KDE Plasma Next succeeds. The entire KDE4 series is a horribe failure in aestethics, usability and stability. Just look at how many enterprise-grade distros are using it: zero. But, seeing how this is being done mainly by the same folks as KDE4 and people like Martin throwing tantrums on suggestions of mere visual change, I think chances of winning in lottery are higher than KDE Plasma Next actually becoming something great.

[GreatEmerald]

Just look at how many enterprise-grade distros are using it: zero.

On the contrary, all of them use it. SUSE uses it by default, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and CentOS have it as a supported option. And KDE has been adopted for use in several European governments, at the very least.

[ua=42]

It's not only the ugly theme, it's the interface itself wich is bad designed and looks clutered. You can see in those screenshots that there're too many buttons. The artwork has also quite bad taste.

If you don't like buttons. I would recommend gnome.