KDE Plasma 6: Was It Worth my Time? 

Are you trying to kill people?

And now I'm drunk, 2 minutes into the video.....

Tomorrow's news: "50k Linux nerds across the world were found dead of alcohol poisoning. Security researchers say to expect major problems across the IT space, and three major waifu body pillow manufacturers have already announced layoffs due to a loss to their core customer base."

do you want me to get liver failure?

@@GSBarlev Don't forget the dropping view numbers on Brodies channel.

I’m basically in the same boat when it comes to fractional scaling (I own a Framework Laptop 13). I don’t *have* to run Steam games at pixel perfect resolution, but I really would prefer them to not be blurry. Meanwhile Windows users don’t even have to *consider* needing to compromise with blurry games…

I never encountered input issues on gnome with electron apps (obviously i use wayland), could you explain what are they about?

Could you elaborate how these problems manifest? I'm using fractional scaling (though only on Wayland apps, Xwayland ones don't use scaling) and fcitx5 for IME input and other non-IME languages from Hyprland. It did take some time to figure out how to setup it up initially, but so did Plasma.

@@Adiee5PrivNon asic input aka Chinese, Korean, Japanese, RTL Arabic, Hebrew, …

It makes me giggle every time. Love it

I dont think its silly personally it makes it look way better

it adds latency to my workflow or general use, so I don't like it. I'm the type of person who speeds up animation but doesn't entirely turn it off.

Only thing I dislike about it is that it disables blur during the animation. The eye candy is worth it though.

All hail the CUBE!

Completely sensible reason if you ask me, it's why a lot of people opt for cinnamon

Its really a shame that KDE isnt the default desktop for more distros, if for no other reason than this. I feel like the majority of people are hesitant to change windows version if its mucks with the ui too much, and trying to push people to something like unity/gnome (or really anything that substantially different) just isnt an approach I think works for most people.

​@@BrodieRobertson Cinnamon feels even more like a mismatch of header bar apps and traditional apps, even more so than KDE apps. And they still are around 2 years away from having proper Wayland support. On my desktop, I need Wayland support given the refresh rate differences on them being unusable on XOrg.

I do still have to use Windows a lot, mostly at work because everything is based on it and I develop mostly in the C# language. But at home I have become a total Linux user almost all the time, mostly Arch btw, but everything is set up dual boot because I know exactly how to do that. So I am also naturally more used to the Desktop Metaphor as they actually call it. For a long time I have been using Xfce, for it's unbelievable stability, simplicity and customizability, but I have really started to appreciate Plasma as it became much better on Wayland, and I really wanted to go for a Wayland desktop, so that made me eventually actually move to Plasma 6 now, and I plan to stay here. :) I keep exploring all kinds of other graphical environments and distributions too, but not as my main environment to work on. However, I can completely see that Plasma is subobtimal for tiling window manager oriented people though. So just go for what suits you. FOSS is about choice.

KDE feels more windows than windows 11

I assumed that the thing that highlights the screen edge, highlights the screen edge, I didn't realize there was a feature called a screen edge

@@BrodieRobertson You can configure edges and corners to do stuff when the mouse hits the edge without clicking. There's a default action to present all the windows when the mouse bumps the top left corner. That option highlights the "hot corner/edge" when the mouse approaches.

@@BrodieRobertson Yeah, I didnt know what the purpose of it was either. So I just thought it was something silly, and just turned it off.

Terrible name for a feature

(Also go to browser tabs if you install the extension.)

what I understand its currently kinda limited and mainly as it's legacy stuff and KDE team hasn't yet done a proper plasma 6 version (other than lazy port), I did read that they are ...someday...going to make a proper rewritten version for Plasma6. also it was really close that KDE was going to scrap the whole Activities thing for Plasma6, because the code was so bad and it never really work properly according to the devs

Yeah another part of KDE Plasma that I absolutely love to use and would like to see developers support and expand a lot more.

​@@AlexanderAhjolinnaI don't see the reason why they don't remove it already and port the most important features of Activities to Overview already. I had the same experience as Brodie in the video and for me it looks like redundancy and CBA to learn it.

If we treat virtual workspaces as y-axis screens, I treat activities as z-axis screens with potential for changing battery status and screen timeouts etc

it should be more clearly communicated because now it is just confusing

Yeah, if the panel is set to auto hide it also highlights the area when the cursor approaches it.

Maybe rename to "hot screen edge"?

@@softwarelivre2389 It can be put with the needed setting. It's just a setting that does nothing by itself so it's in the wrong place.

Oh thats what it bloody is. Its not something I really wanted to do on my workstation, so I never found its true purpose either. Because it wasent a thing I was searching for.

i love the idea that having to use GNOME is like a challenge😭

it may appear random but is your native tongue german? especially the "i don't foresee me" sounds very german to me. it's like you tried to use the verb foresee as a reflexibe "sich" verb. i'm not that good at german tho still struggling with b2 and may even fall back to b1+. just my two cents.

ChatGPT ass poem

That being said, I feel like coming back to hyprland and I hope to try cosmic later this year, or xfce my beloved if its ever happening

The idea dated back to KDE 4, primarily for Netbooks, where the screen was small and you would have completely different layout, including panels and widgets, for "work" and "play". Netbooks didn't work, and Activities never finds its place in a more traditional PC desktop.

KDE connect is also on windows. IIRC not as well featured, but pretty good

@@leaderbot_x400 Wow. The fact that KDE is straight-up making cross-platform stuff now is wild. They really have branched out. It kind of reminds me of when Google first started making desktop apps, for some reason. ...I wonder if it would work as a replacement for Warpinator/Winpinator for getting files between my Linux and Windows PCs.

Oh I was not aware of that, Klassy has some other nice features like fixing the close, minimise and maximise so I'll keep using it anyway

Do you think you can contribute and get it in the settings?

@@prgnify No, I not able to do that. But hopefully someone else who is reading this is able to do it.

I would try Tuxedo OS instead of Kubuntu. It is basically Linux Mint but with KDE Plasma instead of Cinnamon.

@@cameronbosch1213 Sorry, but that's two levels of derivation down from where I'm comfortable. Ubuntu is derived from Debian, but is one of the biggest distros and I've been running that for 10 of the last 12 years. Debian was the other two years.

cosmic epoch is just the name of the repo cause there's a cosmic repo for the gnome soft fork cosmic desktop is the name of the thing you're talking about

@@FlanPoirot Today I learned! I though it was the release codename (I'd seen references to "Epoch 2" scheduled for some time in 2025)

Which distro are you using?

@@korzinko Arch Linux

I tried Hyprland, and didn't like the auto tiling workflow; it just wasn't for me. I guess I just prefer floating window managers. KDE Plasma is probably the best in that regard imo.

Not too sure yet

even better with git and stow

@excidium_ i do have written a bash script which read from a file a list of files or directories which i want to backup, and if i run it with certain flags, i can make copy of them, and then save them with git, and store them on github I tried stow but it was missing features i wanted, and at the end writing my own script means i know 100% how it works, and it doesn't do any weird stuff. Also: it completely avoids any symlink, which is something i reeeeeeally hated.

Multi monitor behavior in Karousel is pretty bad, but I see how it could be great for a single monitor set up. It's really horrible with dual or more, though. All your windows are always together one monitor m, but jumps from monitor to monitor when you move the mouse, unless you exclude them entirely from tiling, then what's the point? I have no systems with a single monitor, so it is just not usable for me. I installed it after a week or two.

Yeah I think scrolling window managers are really probably the future as being somewhat of a middle ground between tiling and maximization. That said, PaperWM for GNOME is a much better implementation than Karousel (imo), though I refuse to use GNOME myself. Niri is probably the best, but it's a whole separate wayland window manager and has its own growing pains relating to that. I've been using Hyprscroller on Hyprland for my own workflow and that's worked best for me. Traditional tiling window management is just kinda problematic with how it splits the window into endlessly smaller pieces such that the pieces quickly become unusably small. I think generally vertical splits don't make sense for most people on a horizontal screen because of how limited vertical space already is. I could also see scrolling window management being a solution to the floating vs tiling paradigm if they just allow windows which need individual floating windows to spawn windows within its own large horizontal tile.

@@MNbenMN ah yeah im just using a laptop with karousel. it's been amazing

Not a dev here: Tiling is a productivity boost for everyone, not just devs or video editors. The tiling itself is not the most important aspect about tilers. It's the fact that by sending windows to specific workspaces that correllate to (typically) someModifierCombination + 0-9 keys on your keyboard transforms the ol "alt tab - hunt a window in a list of 20 windows" from a workflow of: press alt tab, let eyes look at information, brain process information, decide how many times to alt tab, and then let go. into: I know firefox is on workspace 3, because I sent it there. I press someModifier+3, and I'm there. It reduces the friction between your brain and the computer. From there you can set up rules on which workspace windows with a certain windowClass/Title should spawn etc. I will always have have terminals/editors on 1, firefox on 3, games on 4, and discord/teamspeak/signal on 9, spotify on 10. Most of the time, you stop hunting for windows and fighting the desktop environment. You can use that workflow entirely independent of forcing windows to tile. Any windowmanager worth its mettle will let you configure tiling on a per workspace basis, and even entirely turn it off.

I've been using the Git version of Plasma 6 on openSUSE Tumbleweed since the beta days. Currently, the Wayland experience with my Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti is really good now (mainly thanks to 560.31.02 driver release), though not perfect. There are still some (Wayland) features that would be nice to see merged into Plasma 6.2 whenever it's released.

@@AlexanderAhjolinna NVIDIA needs to get VRR working correctly still. AND it be nice if x11 apps like Barrier and all of its off-shoots could work under Wayland which has no function for those kinds of apps (no api). There are also issues with many of the desktop sharing apps. On top of that Wayland still hasn't got a global shortcut system. (this is due to security concerns, thus it should be app specific imo)

The more you dig into it, the more you realise Wayland has still a ways to go.

It is something like that. It also saves some settings which are specific to some activity, e.g. folder shortcuts in file open/save dialogs, power managment settings, which windows are open ... It is very useful to separate different computer usage environmnets better. For example work, home, presentations mode, gaming mode...

I don't want to fullscreen a browser for example, I want to maximise it. Most apps treat these identically but the browser does not

For me this works correctly on Plasma here. I have the panel configured to always be visible, but still when I press F11 in firefox or when I run a game full screen (or at least the one that I tried now, supertux), it does work well and actually takes the full screen, panel is behind it. Oh and this video of course, by pressing F. This is all on Wayland however, I haven't fully checked it on Xorg yet. I know from other desktops that it does not always work so nicely, for example on Xfce I never got this right. So KDE gets very much my appreciation here.

KDE calls window snapping, quick tiling, this is different from the tiling editor

​@@BrodieRobertson Oh .. oh.. I had my tiles setup in a rather default way, and never noticed that. You're right. Why in the world would they call it "Move window to tile" in the settings, when it doesn't even respect the tile layout? grrr I did find a kwin script called "Shortcuts for KDE's built-in tiling feature" by de-ander-dog that looks rather promising. Haven't tried it just yet, but figure I'd check the options before I go re-creating the wheel. just as an aside, in case you're wondering why I don't just use Khrohnkite. I did give it a try, but ran into a lot of margin and decoration inconsistencies. I think due to my zoom being at 200%

From what I understand, the reason there's no per monitor workspaces is because it would require a major refactor and nobody wants to touch that code.

Oh my understanding is that wayland is missing a necessary extension for this to work, but apparently its being worked on

Plasma "tiling" is a step in the right direction, but it falls short of useful for me. It's like it climbs 99% of the way up a mountain and then steps off a cliff. Trying to mix and match floating behaviors and the tiling is a mess, especially with any screen edges active. I'd rather completely disable Plasma native tiling (or override it with a script.) But, there's a lot about KDE Plasma that I like that isn't related to window placement and handling. I just wish I had the time to get involved with the project myself to contribute to Kwin.

they launch the DE from the tty

I've had such a hard time finding a DM that works with my sessions. LightDM doesn't work with COSMIC (or GNOME), ly doesn't work with Pantheon. GDM is so far the only one that works with everything, which is annoying, because it is *not* a good DM in terms of multi-monitor, ease of configuration or just general UX.

The TTY

​@@GSBarlevhave you tried SDDm?

@@cameronbosch1213 I stopped looking once GDM worked. I'm not a fan of KDE's general aesthetic, but TIL that SDDM isn't actually a Qt/KDE project, so I should try it.

> allow editing files as root. It's still that way. wowie. I never find myself launchin a gui fm with elevated privileges nowadays, but back when I tried linux the first time, that was what made me switch away from kde. I was still too scared of getting stuff done on the terminal.

​@GotekSC To be fair, I installed kio-admin from the Arch repos and now it is an option.

yeah kio-admin allows at least for dolphin and kate root privileges

I should have said fullscreen and maximise

I like my floating panel to autohide

Floating panels are just a look cool thing for floating window users (most Plasma users)

use a tiling wm then

The only benefit to floating panels is eyecandy. But it just wastes space and adds complexity to the code, which leads to more bugs.

​@@that_leaflet also helps differentiate from windows