KDE Plasma 5 Officially Released

[Luke_Wolf]

Oh, so this isn't only about despising visual design, but also about not understanding the meaning of "official release". If your software isn't "completely usable", you release a beta. Software Development 101.

With KDE SC 4.0-4.2 it was supposed to be a developer targeted release with "Here there be dragons" labels all over it.

[Cyber Killer]

Oh, so this isn't only about despising visual design, but also about not understanding the meaning of "official release". If your software isn't "completely usable", you release a beta. Software Development 101.

But 4.0 was completely usable, it just didn't have new versions and all features of everything that 3.5 had. I used 4.0 and was quite happy with it.

[Aleve Sicofante]

If we judge from history (KDE 4.0), official release != completely usable.

Oh, so this isn't only about despising visual design, but also about not understanding the meaning of "official release". If your software isn't "completely usable", you release a beta. Software Development 101.

[BreezeDM]

Yes, because if there's one thing that KDE really really sucks at, is themability. Everything is so hardcoded and unchangeable!

My sarcasm buffer overflowed from that statement.

I like the new theme, I cant wait until Kubuntu 14.10.

[Luke_Wolf]

Krunner is far more powerful than you probably have taken the time to explore as it's far far more than just a launcher you don't need to for instance remember the specific name of an application you can type in say "web browser" and it will return you a list of all the web browsers you've got installed. If you want to do quick calculations you put an equals sign in front and then do your calculations, and you can even use commas to have multiple calculations in parallel, there's a recent documents plugin, where you can just type in the name of whatever you had open, which also supports bookmarks and such. Most importantly it's quick (no excessively long transitions which I can't stand about windows 8), and non-intrusive. Milou is set to make things better from what I can see in Plasma 5 by giving that list more structure, so if I type in say "wolf" I can see all my pictures, emails, etc about wolves in a categorical fashion.

looks like in milou the syntax is [...,...] for multiple numbers, also I forgot to mention if you learn the KDE web shortcuts it'll open a new tab in the default web browser of the subject, so ex: "wp: wolves" will give me the wikipedia entry on wolves, "google:wolves" will return google web search results "images:wolves" will return google image results for wolves, etc.. and your various kio slaves also work through krunner so I can do for example smb:127.0.0.1/whatever, or I can type in /home or other locations in the filesystem to have it open up a filebrowser there. It'd be nice if it was better documented but it's far from just a launcher.

[Luke_Wolf]

I just compiled plasma-desktop from the AUR and KWallet works fine the same as ever. I haven't noticed any bugs with anything either.

ok, so it must be an opensuse packaging bug then or my fault. thanks.

[Luke_Wolf]

Krunner is useful sure, but the list of files looks much harder on the eyes than the wall. I am using krunner if i need to access konsole, system settings, change menu, some comands. If all i need is to access some program i don't remember a name for or it is some favourite/often_used programs i can make a far bigger list of those and find&click the icon much faster and more convinient than i'd do in 'kick off'.
The history of opened files is also much better to place in there. Again wall is easier to look at.
Seriously dragging mouse pointer is so hard these days? Its extremely fast operation in real life further more parsing list type menu with the eyes maybe much harder than wall of icons.

Krunner is far more powerful than you probably have taken the time to explore as it's far far more than just a launcher you don't need to for instance remember the specific name of an application you can type in say "web browser" and it will return you a list of all the web browsers you've got installed. If you want to do quick calculations you put an equals sign in front and then do your calculations, and you can even use commas to have multiple calculations in parallel, there's a recent documents plugin, where you can just type in the name of whatever you had open, which also supports bookmarks and such. Most importantly it's quick (no excessively long transitions which I can't stand about windows 8), and non-intrusive. Milou is set to make things better from what I can see in Plasma 5 by giving that list more structure, so if I type in say "wolf" I can see all my pictures, emails, etc about wolves in a categorical fashion.

[mmstick]

Does the KWallet integration with KDE 4 apps work with Plasma 5 (seems broken here) or will it only work with KF5 apps?

I just compiled plasma-desktop from the AUR and KWallet works fine the same as ever. I haven't noticed any bugs with anything either.

[sunweb]

@ Daktyl198

Well i did said that most of people wouldn't like it not all of them so the point still stands.
300 differences, where? Maybe small ones, ok but the big changes? The only noticiable is start screen.
I actually said how this thing is named in KDE - Homerun and its aweful. The better one is in Rosa distributive, you may want to download live cd to see what i am talking about.

@ Luke_Wolf

The wall of icons + filebrowser + history of files roled up to be more informational and ess disturbing than a list of those things. If you don't like it ok, there are good old menus in KDE for you but sadly for some reason there are no menu like i want.
Krunner is useful sure, but the list of files looks much harder on the eyes than the wall. I am using krunner if i need to access konsole, system settings, change menu, some comands. If all i need is to access some program i don't remember a name for or it is some favourite/often_used programs i can make a far bigger list of those and find&click the icon much faster and more convinient than i'd do in 'kick off'.
The history of opened files is also much better to place in there. Again wall is easier to look at.
Seriously dragging mouse pointer is so hard these days? Its extremely fast operation in real life further more parsing list type menu with the eyes maybe much harder than wall of icons.

[Luke_Wolf]

So except for ugly theme that 99% of people will change right away there is not much improvement really. Unless its less buggy(i still have occassional bugs some notifications go wrong but nothing serious) and eats less resources.

Why don't you make a good(nowadays homerun shit level, too slow, absolutely not customizable - that goes against KDE philosophy to begin with) plasma addon that would imitate either GNOME 3 style menu or the one that Rosa did? Rosa as a distro was too crashy for me and noone seems to port their menu anywhere else. Why can't you just create an official addon like that? Thats the biggest complain i have with KDE, so customizable yet have outdated menu types.

Just how exactly is the concept of a start menu outdated? The wall of icons on a desktop concept is just as old (arguably older) despite unity, windows 8 and Gnome Shell digging it up recently and revamping it for desktop usage, and the problem with them is unlike a krunner + startmenu (my preference is lancelot) combo you create a hard context switch. This combined with a much larger area you're having to move the cursor around makes it a significantly worse workflow for utilizing a mouse. Further for keyboard control I fail to see any advantage over krunner, meanwhile krunner only takes up a small fraction of the screen and not more than it really needs. The only way you're really winning with a wall of icons is as a touch interface which is why they've been used on touch screen devices for well, as long as they've been a thing. Now can the start menu be improved? yes, but just because something is trendy doesn't mean it's better than what was previously the mainstay or even a good thing.