KDE Releases Plasma 5 108
KDE Community (3396057) writes "KDE proudly announces the immediate availability of Plasma 5.0, providing a visually updated core desktop experience that is easy to use and familiar to the user. Plasma 5.0 introduces a new major version of KDE's workspace offering. The new Breeze artwork concept introduces cleaner visuals and improved readability. Central work-flows have been streamlined, while well-known overarching interaction patterns are left intact. Plasma 5.0 improves support for high-DPI displays and ships a converged shell, able to switch between user experiences for different target devices. Changes under the hood include the migration to a new, fully hardware-accelerated graphics stack centered around an OpenGL(ES) scenegraph. Plasma is built using Qt 5 and Frameworks 5."
sfcrazy reviewed the new desktop experience. It would appear the semantic desktop search features finally work even if you don't have an 8-core machine with an SSD.
What takes 100% of the CPU in this release? (Score:2, Informative)
Last time i tried it was called nepomuk. Did they rename the process? :)
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I for one, (Score:5, Insightful)
Thank our KDE developers for their hard work. I'm really impressed by KDE and have used it a lot over the years.
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However, I really Really REALLY hope they've found a way for you to install KDE and not have to have akonadi or nepomunk installed on my system. For the longest time, they've been force installed because of dependencies and I don't want them on my machine because I never use them and their daemons just suck up resources. Seems like there was something else like this, maybe amarok, but I
Re:I for one, (Score:5, Insightful)
Love KDE!! (Score:2)
I love KDE, running it on all of my Linux systems, but WHO THE HELL comes up with these names? Nepomunk?? Baloo?? Silly names.. One thing: I see a PPA for Plasma 5 for KUbuntu.. umm.. how about for those of us who gave up Ubuntu and moved to the "mothership", namely Debian?? Would like to try Plasma 5 on my Debian Jessy laptop... but sure don't want to hoze up the current Plasma 4 install....
Re:Love KDE!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Would like to try Plasma 5 on my Debian Jessy laptop... but sure don't want to hoze up the current Plasma 4 install....
BTRFS snapshot. Install. Try out. If you don't like it, copy BTRFS snapshot back to active.
And if you're not using BTRFS ... why not?
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From what I've heard btrfs is the bomb!! I'd love to try it.. but theres only so many hours in the day... Next time I build a machine from scratch I'll give it a try.. Not gonna try to migrate ext4 over (if its even possible).. THAT really would be "working without a net", I'd guess..
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From what I've heard btrfs is the bomb!! I'd love to try it.. but theres only so many hours in the day...
Yeah, took me a while to get around to trying it also. I'm very glad I did. Deduplication and snapshots are awesome features to have.
. Not gonna try to migrate ext4 over (if its even possible).. THAT really would be "working without a net", I'd guess..
Actually you can do an in-place conversion from ext4 to btrfs as long as the volume is unmonted (ie. boot off a CD or USB). It's pretty much instantaneous, and even provides you with a means to roll-back to ext4 if you're unhappy. You may have to update some boot files after though ... can't remember if I had to or not.
Of course any filesystem conversion is inherently risk
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I.e., do you use it on your work machine [if you use Linux at work]?
I work for the government, which unfortunately means no linux on the workstations :(
I use BTRFS at home for my primary computer. On my home server I use a combination of BTRFS and ZFS, primarily because BTRFS doesn't have stable support for RAID5/6 yet (and because I've been using ZFS for 5 years now and it would be difficult to switch without first buying 10 new hard drives).
I also have a few BTRFS USB-sticks which I use for freelance work (and occasionally troubleshooting at work, when nobody is looking)
Re:Love KDE!! (Score:5, Informative)
The names are often from languages other than English, because Linux is developed internationally. Like how Wiki is Hawaiian and Ubuntu is Nguni Bantu.
Nepomuk is a town in the Czech Republic and the name of a Saint. Baloo comes from Rudyard Kipling Anglicizing the Hindi word bhalu.
So shut up with your whining. They're not hurting you.
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Finally looks good (Score:1)
No Wayland yet? (Score:2)
Gimp and firefox are the main programs that tie me to gtk+2/X11 but I'd be prepared to run those inside an a x-wayland container.
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Personally I don't care about Wayland, and I think the KDE developers share my sentiment - it's more important to work across platforms.
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Surely not me... thats one of the first things that get turned off on a new KDE install.. It just sucks up cycles for something I don't use...
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Yes Nepomuk was tempramental but at the same time it was easy to shoot down the process if it got out of hand.
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Seems fair to me.. Other Os copy the iOS look, and Apple copy the features here and there for their releases (whatsapp, android, linux..)
Re:iOS? (Score:5, Insightful)
Geez, it's not Apple UI innovation - not by a long shot. It started with Microsoft first (flat tiles!), then moved to Android. iOS is actually the laggard here (mostly at the behest of a bunch of over bored journalists who see "new and shiny" as "innovative" rather than "if it works, don't fix it').
Apple only caved because (noisy) journalists were calling OS X and iOS "tired" and "dated" because they looked pretty much the same over the years, while Microsoft and Google were "innovating" in UI design by going all flat so it looks "fresh and different".
For the record, I preferred the old look, I like my faux 3D, and while skeumorphism was a bit over the top with stitched leather and green felt, it still felt a bit more casual than today's flat designs that give an air of formality.
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Keep it up! (Score:4)
Fixed what seem like fundamental GUI bugs? (Score:4, Interesting)
Can someone who has tried this tell me whether two particular bugs that were present throughout the life of Plasma 4 have been fixed (OK, you may not think these are bugs, but I sure do: I can't imagine how they were ever allowed to persist, since to me they seem to violate pretty basic requirements of GUI behaviour):
1. If one has a menu present (for example, by pressing the K-Menu button), does an incoming notification still cause the menu to disappear, so you get the delightfully random experience of clicking on whatever happened to be under the item you were about to click on?
2. Can a single misbehaving plasmoid still cause the entire desktop to freeze? (This typically happens to me if the network connectivity is lost: poorly-written plasmoids that need network access can block and cause everything -- not just the plasmoid in question -- to freeze.)
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The OP is complaining about something that most users probably don't see as an issue. I report bugs to Microsoft and VMware, so why shouldn't I report them back to an OSS project (actually, you probably report some issues back to Microsoft as well...the 'check for solution' button works much like ABRT does).
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But then why do I always select Kubuntu on this multi-boot system, because it's even better.
KDE is a real pleasure to use, a major factor is totally unmatched configurability even if the default is already good.
"unpaid QA/alpha tester for buggy crap" (Score:2)
Huh. You've just brilliantly described my experience as a user of high-end seven-figure Enterprise Ready! software. I
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2. Can a single misbehaving plasmoid still cause the entire desktop to freeze? (This typically happens to me if the network connectivity is lost: poorly-written plasmoids that need network access can block and cause everything -- not just the plasmoid in question -- to freeze.)
I believe this is no longer the case. One of the big changes in Plasma 5 was rewriting the process model used for plasmoids. That said, I can't find a source to confirm this, and am too lazy to download and run one of the Project Neon ISOs.
Review of Plasma 5 (Score:3)
There is a somewhat detailed review of Plasma 5 here:
http://www.themukt.com/2014/07... [themukt.com]
The released videos seems very impressive.
I really love KDE. I sometimes work on Mac OSX or MS Windows 7, and I must say KDE beats every other environment I have tried when it comes to flexible workflow and productivity.
Whenever I work on other peoples computers, their personal files are always in a mess with their "Document" and "Download" folders loaded with hundreds of various files. I think this is simply because 1 panel file organizers like "Finder" or "Explorer" are really inefficient and hard to use for organizing and moving files. So I long for a twin panel file manager like Krusader, every time I work on other peoples machines.
The way KDE functions are integrated is also a joy: right click on files for useful things as packing and unpacking, or attaching the files to an email etc. A really smart GUI for mass file renaming (in Krusader by krename) is incredible useful too.
Looking forward to Plasma 5, probably included in Fedora 21.
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I just discovered that my link was already included in the TFS. Oh, well...
Classic Menu Style? (Score:1)
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Another little thing is the keyboard shortcuts don't seem to work but then maybe I should first reboot or log out and in again.
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"Who are the idiots who designed this crap? Why are they using obscure, 'flat' icons, which mean absolutely nothing? Can't their users READ? As soon as I heard the irritating music, I knew it was going to be yet another fail..."
Haven't cared in 5 years, don't care now (Score:1)
Meh, KDE really fucked me over in the 3.5->4 transition, getting rid of a bunch of features that I really liked.
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I'm still using 3.5, in the form of Trinity Desktop.
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We officially rolled out centOS6 earlier this year, and we were hit hard by the transition from KDE3 to KDE4. In the end all we could do was either recommend that users either go to gnome, or switch to Trinity (KDE3 fork). I expect that we'll have similar challenges when transitioning to CentOS7 in 2 years unless KDE4 was fixed in CentOS7, except then we'll have challenges with both KDE4 and Gnome3.
Will it clean up after canceled file copies yet? (Score:1)
If I'm copying a file and click the cancel button, will it remove the file it's writing to (like Mac and Windows), or does it still leave the incomplete destination file?
I apologize for being tolerant (Score:1)
KDE these days is decent, certainly a lot less buggy than on the early 4.0 releases. I just don't have any use for a desktop that heavy. The good thing about linux is that you have lots of choice, so I can run dwm and whine about bloatiness while KDE fans can run their desktop while mocking mine for being cryptic and tough to use.
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Re:Where are the Linux apps ? (Score:5, Insightful)
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No Pro Quality Linux applications? I guess Maya and Matlab are junk then.
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Not sure what kind of distros you used but I spend the last three years installing Matlab on RHEL, CentOS, Debian and Ubuntu without that much trouble.
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Linux is worse than I thought if it takes three years to install a freaking app...
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"All new desktop experience", "Smoother graphics". blah blah blah...
Where are the usable pro quality Linux apps ?
Indeed. It's funny how the Linux desktops spend time screwing around with small features but never talk about what kind of real world tasks you can perform. Now after a decade they finally fixed the search function in KDE. A couple of weeks ago there was news on Slashdot about some DE which touted the ability to change the login screen wallpaper as a highlighted new feature.
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Actually a very good point.
Most likely stems from the fact that 98.5% of Linux users do their "real work" from a terminal window with a bunch of 30 year old tools. That motivates them to redo the GUI every year, because when you get down to it, the GUI really doesn't matter to them.
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what stops you from writing it?
Nothing really. I have been toying with the idea of taking an existing terminal and patching it to do the trick. It's probably still too tasking project for my skill level. Generally I like the idea and would like to contribute either by providing code or making a donation.
(except perhaps the fact that it seems like a dumb idea resulting in linux-KMS-framebuffer-console-like performance)
Oh. I believe there's many ways to make it butter smooth and not consume much CPU or GPU power at all.
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Where are the usable pro quality Linux apps ?
SmartGit: http://www.syntevo.com/smartgi... [syntevo.com]
IntelliJ IDEA: http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/... [jetbrains.com]
Ardour DAW: https://ardour.org/ [ardour.org]