Window Manager Shill Switches To KDE Plasma 6
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 11 มี.ค. 2024
- I said I would do it so here we are, I've switched to KDE Plasma 6 and I'll be using it for the for forseeable future, but before we get too involved let's do my first impressions, you may have seen my Plasma 6 stream but here are my thoughts well organized
THIS IS NOT A REVIEW
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I don't trust any man who doesn't like The CUBE.
There is no point. It's whimsical.
I love it! Sure it is purely esthetic, but hey, it's still groovy!🤪 I want more cool desktop transitions to choose from, like a funnel vortex sucking in one desktop and then spitting out the next...
@@Bob-of-Zoid There's some window transition effects you can get for Plasma that are all ported over from the "burn my windows" GNOME extension. They got a variety of em too -- Star Trek transporters, the portal from Rick and Morty, the melting effect from the original Doom, and the pixel wipe effect which ripples outward from your cursor's position at the moment of window opening/closing (which I personally use). And that's all off the top of my head -- there's more where that came from!
Maybe when he enables wobbly/burning windows he'll finally see the truth that plasma is superior to any WM
Just ask windows, Mac and gtk if they have such a cool feature. That's why plasma is awesome
@@xzaratulx windows can use wobby windows but it costs $20 🤦♂
Speaking as a longtime Plasma user:
The application dashboard is an alternative launcher that's meant to go on panels, and not the desktop itself. It's basically a macOS homage, if the title didn't give it away.
I don't know anyone who considers the Super+T anything close to "tiling", including myself, someone with little if any experience with tiling WMs. Like you said, it's far closer to being an expanded version of Windows 10 and 11's FancyZones powertoy than an actual alternative to tiling WMs.
Your enthusiam for widgets has resparked a bit of joy in me, knowing how the legacy of widgets lives on in KDE Plasma. The Plasma team could've changed their minds like Windows and macOS did by around, say Plasma 5, but they didn't, and all the kudos to them for that. That said, I don't get why widgets are used for both the desktop and panels -- that's definitely a problem, and extremely likely why you got confused by the aforementioned dashboard.
Around the 15:00 mark you bring up the pop-up panel menu, and that only shows up when you right-click the panel itself and not the desktop. Failing that, there's a cog in the far right of the panel to bring it up manually while in Edit Mode.
Anyways, dunno why I'm bringing all this up other than to provide fuel for the algorithm. I don't even work at KDE, let alone contribute, I just also think the stuff they do is neat lol
This is it guys. We have officially lost Brodie as we knew him. He's a completely different man now.
okay
fr
he was never the same after the brain injury #forevermourning
Why, he didn’t shave or anything :P
@@schizofren_ia rip
Could you please test whether the freezes / stuttering still happen on a clean install with all plasma meta packages? Does it also happen on 5?
Well, i haven't noticed that on my system. But i use the macro keys on my keyboard for these functions. I don't use the hot-corners. But i do have issues with overview. If i arrange my virtual desktops into two rows (2x2) so they are displayed in 4 corners on my screen (Like Linux Mint and Mac do it by default) The list of desktops along the top of overview disappear and i can no longer interact with them. I think i have to also change it from pager mode to automatic in the settings to get this 4 corner view, if you want to try to reproduce it. This has not been an issue on Plasma 5. So far this is my only real complaint because it interrupts my workflow.
I have Plasma Meta and the jump from 5 to 6 was seamless and honestly the performance is better. I suspect that he is grossly overthinking what Plasma Meta on Arch ships with.
Something I noticed is that Plasma 5.27 was buttery smooth even after switching from a GNOME install on Arch, but 6 on a clean install is way laggier, on X11 is a bit better, but it still doesn't feel as smooth as 5.27 (?
Hi Nicco!
I'm not Brodie and I don't have a clean install either, but I do have all Plasma Meta packages and I have the exact same stuttering issue
Now we can render the desktop cube in HDR, glorious!
I'm going to use it with a monochrome desktop wallpaper and a high-contrast black/white theming!
😂
As someone who has very little experience with tiling window managers but plenty of experience with GNOME, KDE, Windows and macOS, this whole video feels like watching an alien trying to figure out how basic things work on Earth
(Sidenote: I have tried tiling window managers and wasn't a fan, but it wasn't the tiling I had a problem with, it was the lack of desktop environment features, so I'm definitely looking forward to trying out tiling in Cosmic)
I'm so excited for COSMIC for similar reasons. I am a tiling wm user (currently Hyprland, previously i3) but I def appreciate some of the features and "wholeness" of something like GNOME. I've used GNOME + Pop Shell in the past and a similar tool for Windows at work called "FancyWM," and I think that the COSMIC team clearly knows what it's doing on both DE and WM fronts.
Gnome Cosmic, the current Pop!_OS environment is pretty awesome. Tiling on the new DE should be essentially the same as they designed it as an add on to Gnome.
i used xfce with awesomewm back in the day. best of both worlfs.
@@hotrodjones74 but it was so janky on gnome, given cosmic is written in rust, it might be quicker
No. Plasma has many issues even gnome doesn't have.
I think my favorite KDE 6 bug so far has been when I launched up the cube for the first time and it started spinning uncontrollably at 1500 rpm
Last complaint, and I will die on this hill: when you drag and drop a window on the border of the side and Plasma tiles it in the left/right half screen, that has always been called tiling and nobody complained, because it's taking a wundow and ... tiling it into a tile. The tiling manager allows you to edit those tiles, create new ones, and tile windows into various tiles. It's called tiling. Its not, however, and was never meant to be, AUTO-tiling or a tiling MANAGER, which are programs that handle the entire tiling for you. But tiling stuff into tiles is still tiling.
It might have been called tiling by KDE developers, but it's a far cry from tiling to anyone on a tiling window manager, I get that full on tiling may not be the goal of Plasma but it does lead to people who were tiling users who come to Plasma hearing about native tiling to be instantly disappointed
@@BrodieRobertson it's not just plasma, most DEs even windows and Mac call that tiling.
Windows also calls the application menu a start menu, but we're on Linux and on Linux tiling is defined by the tiling window managers
@@BrodieRobertson I get the "historic" ? part of "tiling" = tiling manager, but I don't think it should be a be-all end-all argument. Like Nicco said, while it's barebones, so to speak, or lacking, it's still tiling. Calling it like that it's the most descriptive way. I don't think a new term should be invented for this, I think the "in Linux, tiling means X" people should adjust. That's what makes the most sense to me, and what makes sense for the future (where, to a new guy, all these terms should make sense). Eventually we can maybe call this "manual tiling", versus "automatic tiling" and make sure to simply not use just "tiling".
@@inittux I know, he's been on multiple times
In regards to zoom: I recommend you use Push instead of Proportional even if you *don't* find it disorienting. Why? Because I helped write the version in Plasma 6 and it'd make me feel happy. :)
for years, i had a 3 monitor setup. 3-4 years ago, i just switched to a 34 inch ultra wide and swaywm (now hyprland). i never looked back.
less cables,
more room on my desk
less light emissions.
less power consumption.
less heat.
no multi-monitor bugs.
better ergos.
Installing KDE the way you did results in the exact issues you encountered - many packages are not installed so many of the functionalities are missing, it's often hard to determine the cause. I agree that the packaging should be more straightforward and the desktop should tell you what's missing when you try to use a feature, but you should really install the recommended and supported meta package instead. More users should definitely *not* install it this way unless they want to have a terrible experience, I made the same mistake in the past, thinking the "minimal" approach would be better - it's not, always go with the meta package (or alternatively, the plasma group, if you want more individual control), this is recommended even by Arch wiki for a reason. The applications, other than the absolute core ones, are actually a separate package as well so no problem there.
14:42 watching him not click edit mode on the panel itself physically hurts my soul.
Ha ha ha 😂
DE's that are unintuïtve, badly designed and all over the place hurt more.
@@wearegeek you are arguing that right clicking the thing you want to change is not intuitive? On a side note, your aggressive response is just bizarre. Did KDE Plasma steal your girl from you or something?
It's not his fault KDE is unintuitive garbage. 🍼
@@pr0c9 If you think my comment is aggressive, I'm sorry. The fact is: Plasma has a lot of possibilities if you know exactly what you are doing and know it by heart. But it's an inconsistent mess and it certainly isn't intuitive. Seeing someone (who definitely is not inept with using many different kinds of software) struggle with this, kinda proves the point, not?
At 15:00. When you enter edit mode you can change the panel settings when you click on the hamburger menu icon that appears on the panel. Your camera view hid it. This is because you can only customize one panel at a time.
I was screaming at the video
@@niccoloveslinux Nico, I implore you to close your eyes
@@niccoloveslinux is it a skill issue or design issue tho... HMMM
@@niccoloveslinuxIf it makes you feel any better I was showing off plasma 6 features, the new panel setting (including float/defloat) and the new meta + W switcher, to someone considering trying out linux and they were very pleasantly surprised.
Other than some weird dependency hell (probably some combo of me and arch packaging) where I was tracking down lots of missing libraries keeping plasma from starting, Plasma 6 has been mostly great for me. Only real issues I've observed are discover store crashing on search and the XWaylandVideoBridge seeming a bit flakey.
@@niccoloveslinux And also if you right click on a panel and click "enter edit mode" it also open the panel customization UI, so I'm not sure what in the UX went wrong, beside maybe something else occluding the button. I'm not a UX expert though.
Recently I tried out Hyprland, but as a long time KDE user, I couldn't live without the phenomenal KDE bar.
When I went back to KDE I realized how much space window decorations take up and I set a new window rule matching windows titled ".*" (all of them) to remove the decorations & set up panel auto-hide.
With a few window management shortcuts set up, I can confidently say that this is my favorite way to experience plasma.
No distractions, no frills, but the full power & ease of use of a beautiful modern Wayland compositor and DE :)
The standalone desktop component/layer situation is still little more than serviceable on wayland unfortunately
13:48 The application launcher widget is a button to launch it and is primarily designed to go in your panel, like the one on the left of yours.
14:38 The panel settings are, for some reason, technically separate from the desktop edit mode and the icon is under your camera view on the right, or you can enter it by right clicking the panel.
Also, nobody actually actively uses the cube, it's just a cool and fun effect.
Some widgets expect to be put on the desktop, some on the panel, some support both variants and look differently on the panel and on the desktop. And there's no clear indication of which goes where.
I've been using KDE as my main DE ever since I started with Linux and haven't experienced the issues you were having. "Open Containing Folder" might be using dolphin under the hood, and because it's not installed, it crashes the application. I do have Dolphin installed and set to my main file manager, so there's no issue for me
Dolphin rocks!🥰
@Bob-of-Zoid Yeah, Dolphin is probably the best file manager in my opinion. Nemo is alright, but Nautilus (the versions after the one Nemo forked off from) isn't very good. I don't know much about PCManFM.
Does Dolphin 6 finally add the ability to mess with files and folders that are owned by root? I've been told GNOME's stock file manager does, but Dolphin 5 and Nemo both lock you out of this and make you use the terminal, which I actually feel _less_ confident using without breaking something.
@@stevethepocket I think if you install kio-admin on Arch or the equivalent on other distros you can.
@@cameronbosch1213 A lot of people still don't know you can have dual panes, nor much about the services, and that you can add many more. I do all kinds of file operations (conversions, picture sizing and rotation...) without having to open them in apps, and many work on multiple files and whole folders, even folder trees, like Krename which integrates into it to, as well as an even better file search utility. You can get a lot done, and quickly in Dolphin. Oh and dolphins and penguins get along well🤪!
I enjoyed watching OBS fly across the screen every time you entered or exited edit mode
Lovely to see something I pointed out on a stream, in the video :)
Genuinely made me smile lol
For the tilling (yes :P), you can press meta for moving your window by left clicking at the same time anywhere in the window then like you explain, you can use the shift key to snap them where you want.
You can add in the window decoration the button "on all desktops".
Yes the "edit mode" as always been funky, its not really a Plasma 6 bug per say because its like that since forever. Exiting (top right x) and entering again is the way to go most of the time.
For the lack of visible focus on a window, a custom "window decoration" can fix that for you.
Respect to you for giving Plasma 6 a try as a tiling WM user!
Seeing the issues the 6.0.1 release has, I'm glad openSuSE Tumbleweed is still on 5.27.10 until most hurdles have been ironed out.
Calling from memory however, you can actually have proper tiling in Plasma, I just don't remember how to set it up since it was never my cup of tea.
There are extensions.
i actually switched to tumbleweed once 6.0.1 hit the arch repos. i was afraid i'd have to start using flatpaks for some of the apps i "need" and were available on the aur (nothing inherently wrong with flatpaks, i just prefer my programs native), but then i learned about opi and i don't think there is a reason for me to return. i've always preferred the tumleweed take on rolling anyway.
There's a script. But it's like those apps that add window tilling on macOS. Technically works but it's super janky
Polonium script (rip bismith)
I didn’t know Shia Labeouf was a Linux user
As a Kubuntu user, I would like to say thank you for curing my fomo. I can wait for 24.10.
I mean... you can always run KDE Neon inside a VM.
I'm also a happy Kubuntu user, and I definitely can wait till October for Plasma 6.1. I have Neon Dev edition installed on a spare laptop to test Plasma on bare metal. It's actually better than I expected, but still has some rough edges.
The cube is back ❤
And it even works now per monitor .. awesome.
As someone who now uses kde but used a tiling wm for years, a lot of the complaints about the workflow feel very alien to me - perhaps because floating windows never really bothered me or slowed down my workflow. But its good that you mention them so that KDE can start to support other workflows in the future.
5:24 I'm a very keyboard-focused user, and I always use Win+ArrowKey to snap a window to a screen edge and I use it again in a direction along the snapped-to edge to get a window to snap to a screen quarter. Otherwise I mostly just hit Win+PgUp to maximize the windows.
Thanks for the Win+PgUp trick, that's going to be useful.
Same works for me: Meta (+ Shift) + Arrow-Keys just rocks!
Running 6.01 on Neon Distro, having moved from Arch in order to test Plasma in the most sympathetic environment. Yeah there are a few gremlins, man of which Brodie identified, but compared to the early releases of previous systems I would say it has been remarkably stable.
FYI manual tiling works exactly like that. I was used to have stuff not resize when I used StumpWm 15 years ago. I wouldnt use it today, but it is indeed tiling
Manual tiling is what i3 does
@@BrodieRobertson that's i3's way of manual tiling. Manual tiling means tiling manually. Simple as that. Although i3 is good manual tiler, even i3 dev Michael Stapelberg has said 'tiling refers to your windows being arranged like tiles on your screen". I don't know why you are holding onto non-existent definitions
Oh my God! I never knew how to use the tiling feature before, and I've been a life long KDE user. Thank you so very much!!!
The reminder about qt{5,6}_ct is absolutely crucial; do pay attention!!!
I love Plasma 6.
real
The virtual desktop switching for all monitors has been there as long as I remember (since the KDE3 days). Using multiple monitors back then was a rather rare thing to do and everything had to be configured manually to the xorg configuration file which means that you just didn't go and change monitors around if you wanted things to work.
One weird thing with the widgets is that you can arbitrarily rotate them. I never understood why would you want to have a clock widget rotated to 78,3 degrees clockwise but you can do it.
Also nice to to see that you managed to get the cube working!
I wish you could rotate panels. Ever since KDE 4, vertical panels don't get rotated text on the clock or taskbar :(
There's a very rare case where you might want to rotate the display but you can't actually rotate the display/monitor itself, so having the ability to rotate through software helps. Think of a hospital patient forced to stay on a side, with the bed leaned at some angle. Ok, probably it won't use 78.3 degrees, but if you do any rotation, it can't fault to have access to do it in any degree.
As for virtual desktop switching, this is also how windows handles it. It seems to be that individual monitor virtual desktops are the minority. Totally fine however people prefer it, but as far as mass population is concerned this is how virtual desktops work.
For tiling windows to the sides, you can use Super + arrow keys to tile the window to the left, right, bottom and top. And for all the monitors changing virtual desktops, it makes sense for KDE and other floating window managers, its not better or worse, its just different. It also was the thing I missed the most when I tried Hyprland, that eventually made me go back to KDE.
And the problem of windows overlapping each other seems more like a problem related to you not being used to floating window managers, I rarely have windows overlap each other when using not only KDE, but Gnome and Windows aswell, just use virtual desktops, the meta + arrow keys for tiling and you are good to go, it just takes some time to get used to.
hey Brodie! longtime plasma user, occasional tiling enjoyer, I just wanted to mention 2 things that you might wanna try if you plan on using plasma a bit longer. the first one is a Kwin script called Polonium. it's still beta, it's kinda finicky, i stopped using it after it crashed kwin, and i had trouble getting windows that were already open to go into the tiler when i first enabled Polonium, but it does act like a basic tiling window manager and adds a dozen or so settings to the kwin keybinds for you to use.
second, is the quick tile functions. this is just basic plasma stuff, i believe it has the 4 half-screen ones set by default but not the 4 quarter screen ones. i have the quarter screen ones set to meta + h,j,k,l, and it's just keyboard shortcuts that automagically set a window to one of the basic 8 half-screen and quarter screen zones you normally set windows onto by dragging them to an edge. it's a far cry from what you get from a real tiling manager or even from using polonium. thanks for the videos!
I'm aware of polonium and will do a dedicated video on it, I just wanted my first video to be a clean setup
Valid points. Long time KDE & WM user here, Especially those accent colors on active windows would be great. Running it on Arch, for my use cases it is rock solid already. I installed Kate, Dolphin and Konsole and that pulled in a lot (and left a lot out ;-). Tiling implemented (as an option) like in Pop would be great, but I'd personally want it to float. Otherwise I go the Sway/Hypr/dwm way. Keep them coming! Looking forward to your adventures ;-)
2:59 You could try to find out the issue with the settings crashing by running plasma-open-settings from the terminal and seeing what the terminal output says when you click on the open folder button.
one of the nice things about not using these pre-integrated stuff is you can just set the bindings to redirect (or duplicate) std{err,out} to files in your log directory, and then quickly view them with something like `< /var/logs//*.std{err,out{(om[1])`. Of course, a properly pre-integrated thing would have it all go to some specialized logger that is highly aware of the apps...
The best way to tile windows in KDE is with shortcut keys. I use META + the numpad keys for this -- TL is 7, TR is 9, right half is 6, etc.
That makes sense. I use the less sensible... meta + arrow keys for left/right/max/min and meta + ins/hm/pgup/del/end/pgdn for TL/top/TR/BL/bottom/BR respectively. Mostly because I am used to already using the arrow keys in windows for work.
wobbly windows, always! I cannot live without it. my desktop feels so much better when the windows wobble
You should try a KWin script like Polonium. It can add somewhat of an auto-tiling setup using the weird Meta+T feature, and works surprisingly well. It’s a bit messy sometimes but you can add different rules and settings to customise it to your liking. I’ve enjoyed using it with the bismuth window decorations.
Tbh I love KDE and its stuff but maybe I’m too much of a fanboy
I know that Arch's plasma 6 has had issues that other people haven't experienced. I've used KDE neon and installed it on Fedora (rawhide), VMs and on metal, and haven't seen any issues you experienced. Wonder is there's a bug with a dependency with the Arch repos.... 🤷
The plasma group and the plasma-meta package DON'T include the KDE applications, they only include the base desktop + basic things for the desktop. The applications are separate, they're in the kde-applications group.
EDIT: also, if you _actually_ go and read the KDE recommendations for packages that should be installed in a basic Plasma desktop, they include all of the stuff that's in the plasma group and in the plasma-meta package.
there's also kde-system and kde-utlities, sddm...You have to look into each meta group and cherry pick the packages you need to have a functional desktop. Or just accept the kde bloat
@@excidium_ Those are in kde-applications. The plasma package doesn't include them. You can have a functional desktop without ever delving into the kde-applications package. For example, I usually install a minimal desktop composed of just plasma (the full group), dolphin, okular and gwenview.
They do include a bunch of KDE components I'll never use like printing
@@BrodieRobertson Oh, that's normally considered a part of a basic desktop though. If you installed Gnome, I think it wouldn't even be a separate package and you wouldn't have the option to omit it.
By the way, when you install a group package via pacman, it actually asks you what you want to install and what you want to omit :)
@@altermetax I would be omitting everything initially so it wouldn't make a difference
One feature that I'd really like to see in the default install (e.g. without needing a user script) is dynamic workspaces/virtual desktops.
For those who don't know: with dynamic workspaces you only have exactly the amount of workspaces (+1) that you need to show all windows. So when starting the DE without any windows you have only one workspace, if you open a window then a single empty workspace is created and once all windows on a workspace are closed (and you switch away from it) the workspace is deleted. I was just never a fan of having to set a fixed amount of workspaces that a) you never need and they waste space on the pager or b) are not enough and you need to manually add more in the middle of doing work.
That sounds so obvious I'm surprised it isn't the default on everything.
I don't really get why people like dynamic gui-elements like that, tbh. I have configured plasma so I have eight virtual desktops, and I also created window-rules, so that Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice and some other apps always appear on the same virtual desktop. This way, I can build muscle memory without having to go into window-overview to find the window I need. I just click on the correct virtual screen and I'm there and after a short while that's just 2nd nature due to said muscle memory.
So basically one of the few times you can say gnome has it, while kde does not lol
Although i personally really hate it, since i never know where the fuck windows are.
Static workspace are better, since you can then say "on the first i will open the terminal, on the second the browser, blah blah" and you always know where stuff is.
Although to be even more fair, i recently moved to hyprland, and i basically assign windows to certain workspaces
It's almost as if people have different workflows and no issues tracking windows on varying desktops.
Not really sure why having the option without requiring a script that may or may not break during updates seems to be a bad thing.
but do you not switch workspaces using Super+{{1..9},0}, meaning that you anyways have a static amount?? That's what I do, though sometimes I will use Super+Q/E to switch to the previous/next open workspace. Though it does get annoying sometimes, because it definitely happens that I want more workspaces and have to basically just make sub-workspaces by making a container for each group of things in a workspace that I'd like to be its own workspace, and that's quite suboptimal, if you get what I'm saying
As a long time plasma user who switched to Hyrpland somewhat recently I feel a lot of the same ways you do when I go back to plasma.
I do like some things about plasma, but I really would need real tiling options for it to be a good experience. I still like dolphin over the other file managers though.
Yeah, Dolphin really is a great file manager. Since they added kio-admin support (once you install that packages from the repos), you can FINALLY open folders as root when necessary (like when editing a config file). That was my only real complaint with Dolphin, and when I saw it fixed made it great.
SimpleOverviewPager is an alternate to the default Pager. It's a simple number in a square. There's also a radio button style one that just has a couple dots, one of which is filled that corresponds to your current desktop.
The main reason I use The CUBE is that it looks neat, though an added benefit is that the desktop is displayed a bit bigger thus easier to differentiate.
In uni the student next to me asked about it (mission achieved), where I explained it as a Linux thing and demonstrated the sensible way of switching desktops.
Continuing to use The CUBE as it's fun, also fidgeting with it a bit using my drawing tablet (the one requiring X11 to work well).
Which eventually let to another question from behind on what the heck I was doing (double success), making it a great way of spreading the word.
Next to the buggy edit mode, which also switches panel by "exiting edit mode" on the one to switch to, the theming settings have been quite buggy for me.
From themes not applying, applying the wrong thing to the theme store being completely unable to install anything (the qtXct themes are not installed).
Thankfully my old qt5 themes work well enough, just some icon choice issues I don't need fixed now.
It is what it is for now, overall I like the upgrade and will be there for further improvements.
Reading a bit in the comments here, I still love how Plasma has great widgets.
I actually describe it as Windows Vista's ideas executed well and ironically have my systems themed with a Windows Vista-esque look.
Combined with modern dark themes (Fusion mainly) and a MacOS like top menubar and bottom dock layout.
I actively window-snap and immediately maximise or snap most new windows, agreed on plain floating being needlessly clunky otherwise.
12:15 - I have a Ryzen and a 6900XT. These stutters ONLY happens when I have certain custom themes active especially certain window decoration themes. I sometimes use the stock breeze window decorations even if I use custom themes everywhere else because of this mouse stutters after certain animations. This has been happening since KDE 5.2x. If I have the stock breeze window decoration, stutters NEVER happen and everything is perfectly smooth always. I am actually shocked that it happens to you even with the stock theme and AMD GPU. Since Plasma 6 my system has been the smoothest thing ever and I have zero reasons to go back to X11 now.
The video was quite informative, thanks! The main takeaway for me here though was the emphasis on transforming Plasma into a tiling window manager. However, I am left wondering about the benefits of using Plasma over a tiling window manager. Brodie, have you encountered a specific scenario where Plasma proved to be more beneficial compared to your preferred tiling window manager? Your decision to move over to Plasma for the long term piqued my curiosity about your rationale and thought process behind this transition. Thoughts?
You can change the shadow color and intensity in the window decorations settings (only works for some styles, Breeze supports it)
I'm running v6 on arch, but still 5.27 on fedora. The whole KDE universe of programs is very ambitious, so I can cut them some slack. I'm always impressed in how they interconnect, especially if you use Kontact, KDE connect etc. The amount of interconnection between my desktop, laptop, tablet and phone is very impressive, and super useful.
i am looking forward to the cube, specifically for workspace transitions for my kiosk
also i hope brodie's final form is NOT this lunduke 2.0 lol
You CAN change the window header color for the active window. Just click on the little pencil button in the color scheme and change the regular background of the header. That's the one for the active window, and the alternate background is for inactive ones.
I don't like header colour changes, border colour is my preferred method but thanks for that as well
@@BrodieRobertson I don't think border colour is (by default) a configurable thing to denote active/inactive windows but... Go into System Settings -> Colors & Themes -> Colors and edit the colour theme you're using (via the small easy-to-miss pencil icon that only appears when you hover over that color theme), then in the Options tab check 'Apply effects to inactive windows'.
A new tab should appear alongside Options that allows you to grey out inactive windows to your preferred level & colour. Doesn't impact window borders / decorations at all but does at least mean you can tell between active/inactive windows quickly using only your eyes.
I used the option for greying out inactive windows for a while but removed it because it interfered with some of my workflows. I just enabled it again because I realized pop-up windows are not affected, and full screen windows can be un-affected as well in the settings.
Plasma 6 works great on Nobara 39.
plasma 6 got me to switch to hyprland
because the tiling script I used wasn't updated by the time it got to arch, and it was always buggy anyway. (but it basically worked the way you want it to, when it didn't try to place a window that doesn't exist on the screen)
and yeah, a lot of desktop/workspace stuff you complained about, I had fixed with kwin scripts as well in plasma 5. but I agree, I shouldn't have to.
also, I believe there's an alternative for the workspaces widget that stacks them or something
alt+tab will unlock your cursor from the fullscreen window, so you can just move it...
for the focus, that was essentially handled by my theme, sweet would make the close/maximize/minimize buttons not colored if it's not focused.
I'm using Plasma since 5.24, and I'm coming from tiling WM as well. I think your criticism is very fair to the project. Still, I'm having a great experience with this release, though.
Dude thank you for bringing this up. Per monitor virtual desktops YES PLEASE!
Jeez I can't believe I have to fight for this dang.
Thank you brodie you're the hero I didn't deserve, but the one we need. Thank you for bringing attention to this.
I CANNOT use virtual desktops and monitors meaningfully without it. Thank you.
Fair and balanced review! I know it's not the point but for future reference if something is crashing or behaving unexpectedly using journalctl -e in a terminal afterwards should give you at least a clue what's wrong. Not that a user can be expected to do this ofc.
Also, a bit surprised you didn't include your theming issues.
For the record, it's not a review it's just my experience so far
thanks for the cube tip!
For snapping windows fast to various screen quadrants, use meta + arrow keys, left-right & up-down.. and the windows will snap accordingly as you want, half or quarter etc.. No need to drag a window to a border with the mouse to snap it in place.
Floating by default is the way 99% of systems work...
Plasma also has tiling as an option in the additional settings to set zones to tile directly into
I still run plasma 5.27. And I install it package for package also. First I did this on arch and now on Fedora, based on the minimal install. And it took some time to work out what packages I needed to get a fully functional plasma desktop, but now I have a simple script that installs all needed packages for me on a new setup.
To the tiling thing. I tried it once. And then bismuth worked great for me. As you mentioned in another video, there are replacements for bismuth on wayland now. Maybe that is what you need.
Accented titlebars are a delayed KDE Plasma 6.x defaults-addition.
Not accented title bars, accented window borders is what I was talking about
@@BrodieRobertsonI think what you call window borders and what plasma calls window borders might not be the same thing.
Because I assume you're referring to the grey outline that the windows have rn, where as plasma has a window border setting that basically makes the window decoration/title bar wrap around the window, so the accented title bars would be accented window borders then.
Klassy, a breeze fork, does let you customise the outline colour iirc. It's going to release for plasma 6 soon, I hope.
@@AbteilungsleiterinBeiAntifaEV yes I mean the grey outline
10:50 For the pager widget - turn on show current screen and increase the number of rows in the virtual desktops settings. This is quite alright for me as I like to have a panel on all my monitors and have the task switcher and the panel show apps only on that monitor.
I agree with the per monitor virtual desktops (one of the things I like about Gnome over KDE), I ended up setting a shortcut key to show the window on each workspace as a work around as you showed. Given how long the "bug" has been open (more of a feature) I won't hold my breath. Regarding the edit mode of a panel, you have to right click on the panel itself and choose Edit, then you get the popup.
I dislike tiling window managers, but the simplicity is appealing. With that said, Plasma allows you to get quite close to simple.
I'm still using i3wm with KDE, I didn't even need to change my config and it just worked out of the box after upgrading from 5.27 to 6. You can still disable kwin and replace it with a different wm on X11 and I'm super happy about that
19:02, yep that zoom screen thing is a key feature for me. Will actually consider the desktop next time I replace my OS
I am using Plasma 6 on KDE Neon. There are a few bugs I found, but nothing deal breaking. Micro stuttering is present although barely noticeable. Sometimes some apps will just show the Wayland icon instead of their own icon in the taskbar. Sometimes PWA is lost from the taskbar. I didn't try out tiling so can't speak for that.
Other than these I haven't noticed any bugs in my roughly 12 hours of testing.
19:50 - you can change shadow color in window decoration settings.
I must confess I paused the video to go and look at 'The Cube'. I much prefer the grid to the cube and overview. I use a 2x2 virtual desktop layout but I cannot set it to a corner, but I do have it mapped to an extra mouse button (via its shortcut). The minimal desktop indicator widget also allows for multiple rows, well worth using. You can move widgets on the desktop without being in edit mode - you just (left) click and hold until the grab handles appear.
4:17 Meta+Arrow keys, you're welcome. I don't even know what a floating window is anymore, my mind is ingrained to do Meta+Left and Meta+Right to have two side-by-side windows at all times just like if I were in i3wm (or if you wanna go that far, Meta+Left+Up and Meta+Left+Down, then the Right equivalents to have a 2x2 grid, would definitely do that if I had a bigger screen). Also the shortcuts can be re-configured in the very same place you were in 10:09.
10:43 You can set the widget to occupy more horizontal lines using the dialog box that was coincidentally hidden underneath your cam there in the right (where it has just "1 " written, it's actually "1 line" which means all virtual desktops you have will be spread side by side in one line). I usually set mine to 2 lines and it occupies like half the horizontal space of the one on the video.
Disclaimet that I'm still on Plasma 5 and will be for a long time because Debian. But honestly I've seen worse from KDE, like back when Mint still shipped a KDE ISO when we were on KDE 4... \*shudders\* 😬
I don't know if I'll ever understand the hangup with floating windows, but I can sort of relate. I remember when it was the done thing for certain apps (e.g. GIMP) to float every single one of their panels with no way to dock them, and I was like "Who lives like this???"
Sorry to see your having trouble with KDE. I'm a big KDE fan and recommend it to many people over the years. This seems like an Arch Linux problem maybe? Pacman not handling the dependencies properly based on how you chose to install it? Not a KDE problem. (I use Manjaro on my main laptop and Arch on my desktop and on my Minecraft server so I'm not hating on Arch.) I also use KDE as my main desktop on Manjaro. I have the full desktop suite installed and have none of these bugs and issues you show.
And I NEVER call KDE's ability to do the nifty window layout things it does "Tiling." Who the hell does that? Weird. I also use i3 on my Arch desktop and my server runs without a gui. As mainly a single monitor laptop user I love my KDE virtual desktop setup. My virtual desktops were set up by default when installed including the widget though I no longer use it. (Too bulky.) I use hot corners for the desktop switching. When I drop to my bottom right corner all my desktops quickly display on the screen and I click the one I want to switch to. I can see all my desktops and the open windows on each (even if minimized) all quickly display and I can quickly drag windows between desktops. It works well for me. I also set it up so that if I drop to my bottom left corner only the windows on the current desktop quickly display so I can quickly switch between them. (Taskbar top of screen) I also have keyboard shortcuts set up for all of this. My laptop is a Ryzen 5 laptop with RX 570 dedicated graphics. I have NONE of the strange stutters and glitches you are experiencing and everything operates quite smoothly. Perhaps because this was installed as a full system of KDE Manjaro and included the full KDE suite. I first installed it over 5 years ago when I bought the laptop and have just continued to do regular updates with pacman ever since. I have used Linux over 20 years and have used pretty much every popular distro and desktop out there at one time or another. For my experience anyway, Manjaro KDE has been the best user experience I have ever had with a Linux desktop. (I have spent the past 5 years perfecting my desktop setup for my purposes and written many custom scripts and tweaked everything just how I like it so take that for what it is.)
I'm an all-fullscreen type of guy who sometimes wants to do everything with the mouse, so tiling WMs are definitely not my thing, but I definitely would like Plasma to implement real tiling features.
Plasma has a tiling feature, you just have to go into the settings and set it up. Here are the Plasma apps I love: Dolphin is wicked, Kate is great, Krename is a huge time saver, Krunner is the bomb, and there are others that are groovy too!
Once I tried plasma (4 going into 5) I was hooked! Now the only use for Gnome is to kick it across the lawn and let your dog rip it to shreds!😂
You can change the window shadow intensity and color in the Breeze window decoration settings, though that also changes the shadows around other windows to a lesser degree. You can also choose a color scheme theme that makes focused and unfocused titlebar different colors, but it may not be a preset, and I think the advanced color customization menu is complicated and kind of broken? I personally replaced my Breeze with the Klassy fork which gives more customization for these things, e.g. extra border, specify focused/unfocused outline/shadow colors and a lot more
There's also an effect that darkens inactive windows.
heey , I should def try that "tiling" layout thing.
4:30
One thing most tiling wm do, is also to not allow hiding floating windows behind tiled windows, so you never end up having 25 windows open without even noticing, or knowing where the fuck they are
I liked the cube desktop switching animation though 🤷🏻♂
When I have to use a floating window DE, Plasma is definitely my choice over GNOME, but I am way to wed to tiling WM's as a part of my workflow to use it at this point. Muscle memory for my hotkeys is hella hard to overcome, and trying to recreate it in a floating DE feels like a cheap replacement.
Be sure to use shortcuts to snap windows to certain regions of the screen. It's much easier and less error prone than moving a window by mouse.
I have been using dwm as my preferred twm and have been diving into Hyprland lately. If I were to choose any full-fledged DE, KDE would be my take any time. I actually use the Breeze Dark theme in all my window managers. I might have a look at Plasma 6 once I figure out 1. How to minimally install it, and 2. Find a nice tiling window solution for it. Kudos to the KDE/Plasma devs. KDE really should be the reference desktop on Linux.
I have a suspicion that the microstuttering is an Arch issue? This does not appear at all on my Intel-Intel (iGPU-dGPU) and AMD (dGPU) system on NixOS. Maybe try to raise a bug with the Arch maintainers.
I set the desktop effect 'Dim inactive' to make it clearer what window is active, I think it's a de-saturation or something that can be configured. Really helps with the focus issues.
As for your issues with edit mode, I'll agree, it's bad. The add widgets menu staying popped up after leaving edit mode wasn't in plasma 5, that's a new bug from what I can tell. And apparently does the same when resizing a window and clicking the close button on the top of edit mode.
At 2:56 for the settings crashing when clicking "open containing folder" I would assume that dolphin isn't installed because by default it uses that. But you seem to have it installed, so idfk what would do that unless it's a bad config.
For the virtual desktop issues and being on all displays I was hoping it would be per display with how the cube looks when switching.
From what I'm seeing with you using plasma here. It's the same on NVIDIA and AMD, assuming NVIDIA isn't running a driver newer than 535. Newer drivers on NVIDIA present old frames at high motion or framerates and is dumb. Desktop doesn't lock up on NVIDIA for me though, not nearly enough for me to notice it. However on plasma 5 hovering over the task manager with preview and not letting the preview load all the way before closing it it would crash the task manager and go unresponsive.
The radio buttons in desktop effects I also dislike. It's Inconsistent at best, and hard to even tell at worst.
And I'm not a dev, I'm just here for the ride.
I've tried and tried and tried to get into KDE Plasma, but I just can't. Something about it just doesn't feel right to me but I can't put my finger on it, it just isn't my thing (I'm an Xfce user). I always find it interesting to hear other people's experiences and to see how they've configured their desktops. Maybe someday I'll see the appeal.
I'm with you. A lot of hype over nothing, it has to be said. Still the same old KDE ultimately.
Running the release this feels insane, all of my wm work done in settings feels so fast and easy.
ONE OF US, ONE OF US, ONE OF US
Jokes aside, about the virtual desktops, I personally like that all screens change. I think an option for per-desktop would be cool, but the way I use them doing per-desktop would just add extra clicks to my workflow
I like it as an option, no need to take it away from people who like it
Not yet running it on my Surface Pro 7 (still on Plasma 5) but will give it a shot next week. In case it messes up my system, I will do a btrfs snapshot. Seen so many people without issues and a few with a lot.
Brodie just destroyed KDE again! We need to see another "tech over tea" with Nico soon.
I have my monitors vertically stacked, so snapping windows to the left and right has never been a problem. I also only have two monitors, so if I want to have something stay on all monitors between desktops I just set it as pinned to all desktops. I usually always have my screens split into 3 sections, the top monitor full screen, the bottom monitor split to a left and right window. I have them tiled, but to switch between them I use my taskbar on the right to switch to whatever window I want to be active. I barely use virtual desktops anymore because it's easier to just switch a single one of my 3 tiles out rather than change all of them at once.
But do you have decent SMB file share support from KDE file manager all the way to the terminal?
But then again ... that might be just one package install away (but will it be a kde package? 🙃)
No, the best way is mounting SMB shares at boot using systemd. You can do it by adding an entry inside your /etc/fstab
kio-fuse, it may work in some apps and it may not. But you can hit F4 in Dolphin to bring up the terminal and then it will mount it for sure.
On Window Snapping - there are keyboard shortcuts for this, I believe by default Meta+Arrow Key. So Meta+Left will take half screen on the left side, Meta+Up maximizes, etc. This is why I don't find tiling window managers particularly easier to use than floating. Because it's super super easy to fake tiling. FWIW it even works the same way in Windows.
Workspace issues - I came in to Linux via KDE so I'm used to all the monitors being included in a "workspace." It was an adjustment to switch to window managers. I still don't like it, but I can admit it isn't better or worse either way. I do agree there should be an option for it though. Kinda weird that they default to only one virtual desktop though. Didn't used to be like that.
Anyway, I'm still waiting for Tumbleweed to get Plasma 6. Feels like they dragging their feet on it.
A few other people have mentioned those hotkeys but sometimes my hand is on the mouse
On X11 Plasma also has window shading which lets you hide the window body and leave just the titlebar, in many ways I think this is better than tiling since you can still use however much space you want for the "important" app and have a filemanager or whatever shaded until you need it.
You can also raise/lower windows so that they are permanently in the background/foreground. (also works on Wayland)
My workflow was always to have apps I use mainly for a desktop (firefox, IDE, etc.) to be lowered, file manager, in the "normal" layer and left shaded until needed, and settings app, etc. to be raised.
I do love being able to reduce windows to their titlebar. I never liked tiling, tried it a few times and hated it each time. Somehow the size was never what I wanted it to be. I'd much rather resize windows manually, and if you set shortcuts that lets you resize / move windows no matter where you click on a window, that's the far more convenient solution, for me at least.
Why hasn't shading been ported to any Wayland compositor?
On the panel menu showing up - right click on the menu and click edit. The edit from the desktop is somewhat seperate
By the way brodie the virtual monitor thingies on the panel can be configured directly to be more space efficient
the stutters are very much noticeable on my 2200G Ryzen 3 (no gpu). it has been for a while and it also happens when i open the rectangle capture in Spectacle.
edit mode seems to be separate by panels, you have to enter edit mode by double clicking into the target panel to edit stuff. feels like a backwards change, but still understandable.
the squared grid for the virtual desktops in the panel i remember there being a setting in the widget, but if there isn't, know that there are rows in addition to columns in your actual configuration of the virtual desktops.
I just switched to Arcolinux B with Berry desktop. Not just tiles, but tiles I can move and resize with keys! 😉👍
I do wonder how well the previous Plasma worked when you just install Plasma. Like if it did tell you to install various things to make specific things to work.
Then it will be interesting if Plasma will improve tiling with all the inputs you’ve got about it. I would assume it has barely been a focus.
Finally the KDE Video!
KDE does have proper (but limited) tiling built in. It only supports 4 tiles though, and window behavior is manual rather than automated. As someone who mostly works with a single full-screen application at a time, being able to easily split into quadrants is sufficient for me. Super+arrow-key invokes the quick-tiling behavior.
In theory, you could write a plugin to extend this subsystem possibly using the window-rules system to implement full tiling on top of kwin without the MS-clone zones. If I ever have a screen big enough to fit more than 4 applications at a time, I may give it a try.
For the desktop widget thingy you asked if there was an alternative to you could see if either Compact Pager or Desktop Indicator meet your needs
Minimal desktop indicator is basically as close as I'll get without doing my own thing
running fedora 40 KDE beta, ive ran into a few issues so far, but ive not gone crazy on customizing plasma so they have been pretty small. However, the few i did find were quickly worked on by kde staff, and many have been resolved in time for plasma 6.0.2. Overall, very good release imo