KDE's Plasma Active Running Nicely On The Nexus 7

[phoronix]

Phoronix: KDE's Plasma Active Running Nicely On The Nexus 7

If you're curious about loading up the KDE Plasma Active desktop on your Google Nexus 7, here's the state of KDE in the mobile space...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTMwMzc

[jmcharron]

Too bad plasma and that stupid cashew blow chunks... What the hell happened to KDE...

[DarkCloud]

Yeh I mean as if Plasma wasn't useless enough on desktop

Too bad plasma and that stupid cashew blow chunks... What the hell happened to KDE...

Myself wasn't so impressed with it, but then I never liked Plasma on a desktop. I mean can someone please tell me what bennefit it brings ? Aren't we really passed junk apps being on the dekstop. Recall when people first started to write web pages, and sites would use flashing text as bling. Boy were they annoying, and thats what Plasma reminds me of. Of course with all the hundreds of special effects settings, 90% of which are equivlant to a large fart sound being played, tells you that Plasma and KDE are focused on users under 12 who still think fart sounds emiting from a computer is Kool. Plasma has been a solution looking for a problem for a looong time. No where in the demo did I see any text input happening, and the user looked like he was trying to select screen items very very carefully - with the device laying flat and him/her touching the screen like it was white hot or he/she had severe arthritis.

[pingufunkybeat]

Myself wasn't so impressed with it, but then I never liked Plasma on a desktop. I mean can someone please tell me what bennefit it brings ? Aren't we really passed junk apps being on the dekstop. Recall when people first started to write web pages, and sites would use flashing text as bling. Boy were they annoying, and thats what Plasma reminds me of. Of course with all the hundreds of special effects settings, 90% of which are equivlant to a large fart sound being played, tells you that Plasma and KDE are focused on users under 12 who still think fart sounds emiting from a computer is Kool. Plasma has been a solution looking for a problem for a looong time. No where in the demo did I see any text input happening, and the user looked like he was trying to select screen items very very carefully - with the device laying flat and him/her touching the screen like it was white hot or he/she had severe arthritis.

Guys, plasma is just a framework for writing desktop elements.

There are many plasmoids which are pure bling, but you don't need to use them. With KDE 3, you had a desktop and a panel. If you want that, you can still have it. Put a panel on the edge of the screen and that's it. You don't even have to know that the panel is a part of "plasma".

You still have the choice.

[purehg]

Myself wasn't so impressed with it, but then I never liked Plasma on a desktop. I mean can someone please tell me what bennefit it brings ? Aren't we really passed junk apps being on the dekstop. Recall when people first started to write web pages, and sites would use flashing text as bling. Boy were they annoying, and thats what Plasma reminds me of. Of course with all the hundreds of special effects settings, 90% of which are equivlant to a large fart sound being played, tells you that Plasma and KDE are focused on users under 12 who still think fart sounds emiting from a computer is Kool. Plasma has been a solution looking for a problem for a looong time. No where in the demo did I see any text input happening, and the user looked like he was trying to select screen items very very carefully - with the device laying flat and him/her touching the screen like it was white hot or he/she had severe arthritis.

Fart sound has its value at the correct time. You might be looking for something sophisticated solution, but to make this market going what you really need is exactly something that is appealing to 12 years olds. People who are enthusiastic about things. People who are doing things just for the sake of it. It is cool. You probably don't even understand what cool means. All those people in business cares are functionality and usefulness and benefit. They think that's what drives demand. They are not wrong but they are really narrow minded.

[purehg]

Myself wasn't so impressed with it, but then I never liked Plasma on a desktop. I mean can someone please tell me what bennefit it brings ? Aren't we really passed junk apps being on the dekstop. Recall when people first started to write web pages, and sites would use flashing text as bling. Boy were they annoying, and thats what Plasma reminds me of. Of course with all the hundreds of special effects settings, 90% of which are equivlant to a large fart sound being played, tells you that Plasma and KDE are focused on users under 12 who still think fart sounds emiting from a computer is Kool. Plasma has been a solution looking for a problem for a looong time. No where in the demo did I see any text input happening, and the user looked like he was trying to select screen items very very carefully - with the device laying flat and him/her touching the screen like it was white hot or he/she had severe arthritis.

And isn't that terminal running glmark2-es demonstrates text input?

[zanny]

The active version has nothing to do with Cashews.

My greatest gripe with it is the same reason I don't like Oxygen. Oxygen is flat, beige, and shiny, and it looks busy while also looking gaudy to me. I go with Ember, a flat black theme, mainly because I like dark themes, but I also don't like the busyness.

I hope Plasma Active has themes support. Hell, if it can theme support the desktop themes, that would be amazing. I like a lot of features of it, and seeing it run well is really great. When I get a new tablet I might stick it on my current Nexus 7 just to see how well it works in practice.

[varikonniemi]

That UX is even laggier than my 3 year old phone running android 4.2

[intellivision]

That UX is even laggier than my 3 year old phone running android 4.2

Really? Because my HTC Magic literally does not run Android 4.2, and Plasma Active actually looked pretty speedy.

I think that people miss the point of how Plasma is supposed to work and what the KDE team are striving for with having a unified environment for desktops, netbooks (or laptops with 1366x768 screens) and tablets.

[Del_]

Myself wasn't so impressed with it, but then I never liked Plasma on a desktop. I mean can someone please tell me what bennefit it brings ? Aren't we really passed junk apps being on the dekstop.

Nexus 7 is a tablet not a desktop. So , I guess the right question is do we need widgets on tablets. Not sure really since I haven't seen the light when it comes to tablets yet. My phone has a decent screen (the GS2), so I generally prefer a laptop when I need more. In any case, on my phone I *really* enjoy and need widgets, it is a real mystery to me how anybody can go with Iphone. All my desktops (except when work forces me on Windows) run KDE these days, and I have to admit that I really don't use the widgets much, at least not outside the taskbar. There is one important exception, and that is the folder view, it really is a must if you want to have any control over shortcuts. That said, the KDE desktop comes with a whole bunch of built in plasmoids that covers most of what you need, it is just that I typically don't want to litter my desktop with it. Interestingly, Windows 8 Metro is all about littering the desktop with widgets. If I am representative, it will fail badly.

the user looked like he was trying to select screen items very very carefully

Yes I noticed that. Seems there is a need for polish when it comes to optimal size of icons and other objects in plasma. Should not be very hard to adapt it to Nexus 7 though, QML is tailored for making that easy. I ported a Qt application over to Android to test out Necessitas. I quickly realised that desktop apps cannot simply be recompiled. For touch screens you need tailored gui's, the gui needs to be recoded from scratch with a tool kit meant for touch screens.