Plasma 5.13 – Amazing Tux, How Sweet Plasma

Two years ago, the Plasma desktop was just another offering in the Linux pool, with a modern but overly complicated interface, bereft of enthusiasm and brimming with problems. Then, suddenly, it changed. Like a primordial being crawling out of a mineral soup, it started morphing into a slick, fast, elegant desktop. And now, it’s become the leading force in the Linux world.

Several months ago, we looked at Plasma 5.12, the LTS release, and I outlined all the different issues and problems surrounding it. The KDE team has its ear(s) to the ground, and there’s been a lot of positive momentum and hard working invested into making Plasma amazing. Sometimes, the mission is set back by regressions in the distro space. If only the emotional rollercoaster wasn’t so swingy. Now, we have another chance to be dazzled – or shocked. Plasma 5.13 is in its last beta stages, and I took an opportunity to check what gives. Not one but TWO tests. After me.

First test: live session

After sampling the savory teaser announcement for Plasma 5.12.90 (essentially 5.13 Beta), I went about getting the necessary live media for testing. I chose the KDE neon Stable dev branch, figuring the User edition might not have what it takes, with the Unstable version being probably too raw for usage and showcasing. It would help highlighting what exactly is included where, so that testers (or users) can more easily narrow down their options.

Look & feel

I fired up the image on my Lenovo G50 laptop, and soon enough, I was logged inside an stylish, pleasing desktop. The familiar DNA is there – Plasma colors, classic desktop layout, a wealth of options and customization hiding just below the surface, never in your face if you don’t want or need it, but there to unleash the full power of Plasma. That alone, however, has never been enough. But recently, there’s much more consistency and determinism in the Plasma UI design.

Desktop

Desktop, WIP

There are also a lot of papercut fixes. For instance, the panel resize now features the actual pixel value when you drag the panel up or down. The number shows for a second before it disappears once you stop the vertical movement, or once you depress the mouse button. Finally, the OCD brigades can rest at night, safe in the knowledge they can be precise about getting the Plasma panel height just right. A rhyme.

Panel height

Height set to the most meaningful number of them all.

The clock widget is also of normal size, the system area icons are positioned like Austro-Hungarian soldiers, waiting for the parade. The system menu comes with a more powerful right-click context functionality. The actual options will change, depending what icon you choose. For instance, with Firefox, you can edit the entry, add to desktop or panel (and this also changes, depending on what type of task manager you use), or launch ordinary or private windows. With Discover, you can also check for system updates, and so on. Very cool.

Menu, Firefox

Menu, Discover

The menu also fully cycles (with the middle-mouse button scroll). If you reach the bottom of the list, it goes back to the top, so you don’t need to do any tedious go back, go up, whatever. This is a refreshing and useful little change.

Network-related stuff

Now, the Wireless connection double prompt is STILL there. I had to provide the passphrase for the access point twice. Not nice. If you copy files to a Samba share, the timestamps will be reset, still, and this is a rather annoying thing, because you lose the temporal granularity of your work. For instance, you can’t sort documents based on the time of their modification anymore. On the bright side, possibly because KDE neon is running an older Ubuntu base, Samba functionality works, unlike the recent crop of 18.04 releases.

Spectacle

As a software tester, one of the first programs I need is a screenshot tool, so I can document my games. Well, Spectacle has improved dramatically in the 5.13 release. It has a separate settings and image save buttons now, yay! It still creates windowed images with a huge alpha border. That’s quite unnecessary, because there’s a reason why people want to take screenshots of just a particular app window. The alpha border is at least symmetric now, with identical left and right margins.

Spectacle also has the option to record your screen – lovely jubbly – but this is just a stub, because you need to install one of the several popular desktop recording software available in Linux. However, the attempt to integrate and combine the two modes is very commendable.

Spectacle, nice

Spectacle, alpha and shadows still there

I can see your heartbeat, coming from the shadows. Seriously, toggle on, toggle off. Plasma Kid.

System settings

Better than before. More streamlined. The categories make sense, the visual hierarchy makes more sense, and there’s an overall workflow redesign, which should make it easier for ordinary people to find what they need. As always, you have the option to change the visual layout – you can use the classic KDE layout from the olden days, the tree view or the icons view, which gives you something similar to the Ubuntu Unity settings menu.

System settings, redesigned

Font management

The fonts are pretty good in Plasma 5.13 – and improving. The default systems settings are reasonable, but now, you have more control over the font system than before.  If you leave the anti-aliasing settings with Vendor Default, you won’t have the option to change the sub-pixel rendering and the hinting. But if you set the dropdown to Enabled, you can make changes.

Fonts

There’s a little typo there – it reads djust All Fonts instead of Adjust All Fonts.

This is sweet on several levels – better sub-pixel rendering control than before PLUS you can actually see how different choices affect the font look. There are notable differences between RGB and BGR and whatnot. Seriously notable differences. The combo of RGB plus slight hinting gives the best results. The effect is immediate and immense. It’s like someone cleaned my eyes with the purest coconut water.

Subpixel settings

Subpixel settings, zoomed

Browser and Media integration

The name of the game: integration. Plasma 5.13 is working hard on making your desktop experience a unified one. Smooth and seamless. Part of this mission is giving you full control over browser actions the same way you get over your media. In essence, the media control widgets becomes a browser control widget, too, and you can pause, resume or cancel downloads or media playback in your browser windows. Both Firefox and Chromium-based browsers are supported. This looks cool, and the teaser images are really neat.

Unfortunately, at the moment, the execution still isn’t perfect – I hope things will click into order with the official release. First, there’s not enough information around HOW you can actually get this working. It just says you need to enable Plasma Browser Integration, but there’s no widget for this, or a package in the system repos.

The process is two-fold – not unlike Gnome extensions, and this is NOT what users want or need. I had to install a browser addon from the Mozilla Firefox online repository first. After I did that, the system complained that it could not connect to the native host – this is the same type of ‘host connector’ error like the chrome-gnome-extension nonsense. But then, the problem is even bigger, because the Stable dev branch of KDE neon does NOT have the necessary package. I had to manually grab it from the Unstable repo and install it. There was a compounded problem with Discover here, so I used dpkg on the command line. Eventually it was all in order, but it’s a high toll for getting the functionality to actually, um, function.

Browser integration error

Now, once I had the package in place and Firefox started without any errors, it was really neat and impressive. The ability to control your browser actions from the system area in a transparent and consistent way, similar to other ‘media’ applications, is a great thing.

Browser integration, download

Browser integration, Youtube video

Playing online media – of all kinds – will show in the system applet like any other music or video.

KDE Connect

We talked about this nifty program in the past. And it’s just gotten better. The integration mission, remember. This utility lets you connect your Android devices to your Plasma desktop and manage them seamlessly, including audio, video, volume, Bluetooth, plus some rather exotic things like notifications, mail, news feeds, and more. You do need to install the app from the Play Store, and both devices need to be on the same network, but once paired, it’s all good. Moreover, you do need to allow KDE Connect to access your phone notifications, though. Hopefully, some day, iOS and Windows Phone apps will be added, too.

KDE Connect, paired

KDE Connect, notification sync failed

By default, the notification sync plugin will fail, but this is only until you give KDE Connect the right permissions on your Android phone.

KDE Connect, permissions

KDE Connect, browse

You can also browse files, so you don’t need Airdroid or similar apps.

KDE Connect, notifications

Dashboard

If you switch your system menu to the dashboard-type menu, you’ll have a full screen overview menu not unlike Unity or Gnome to some extent. In the past, I’ve always felt this was a bit cheap, with icons that are too large, and not enough detail or precision. Plasma 5.13 does a better job of putting things together, although there’s still room for additional visual improvements. You can separately access categories, favorites and search inline for either apps or widgets. Neat.

Dashboard, apps

Dashboard, widgets

Konsole

The KDE terminal emulator has also been facelifted. By default, it shows no tabs, but you can change that in the program settings. Once again, you have the full power of customization, if you fancy it. I believe the default gray-on-black color scheme should be changed to white-on-black or black-on-white for best visual effect. The one thing that confused me is the ZModem option – I found this in the menu and clicked happily. Not sure what it does, and from the error message, I’m not really sure I need it. But the error message itself is unnecessary. Why not have the package in the first place? Or tuck this deeper into the settings, just like tabs, which are far more valuable and useful, and yet, they are not shown by default.

Konsole, no tabs

Tab bar settings

You take my tab, you take my tab control. P.S. Can you guess what font sub-pixel rendering I’ve used here, and can you see the difference?

Konsole, nicer

With tabs and a better color profile.

ZModem error

Second test: installed system

My eight-boot mixed Windows-and-Linux setup on the G50 laptop also includes a KDE neon instance, at the time of this writing and BEFORE the update, running Plasma 5.12.4. I updated the system, and half an hour later, I had the beta framework gracing my desktop. This is still with Xenial (16.04) as the baseline, and the same is true of the live image actually. It’s not using the new 18.04 distro, but that’s something we will probably see in the coming weeks or months.

Things were looking even nicer here than in the live session, as my box has already been pimped to beauty, with extra decorations, a nice wallpaper, and a combo of Breeze workspace theme with the Breeze Dark desktop theme. The media control applet has been redesigned, and it’s more posh than before. Elegant touches everywhere. Me likey.

KDE neon, upgraded

KDE neon, about

System area, nice

Redesigned media controls

Login and lock screens

Both these birds have nicer feathers now. Small changes, smart and meaningful.

Lock screen

Performance

This is a big one. Plasma is fast. Lean and fast. The system was tolling only about 450 MB on idle, and this is at least x2 and often easily x3 less than contemporary Gnome-based systems, and comparable if not better than mission-focused lightweight MATE and Xfce desktops. Instant response, even with compositing turned on, you get smooth transitions and fast multitasking. I only have praise for the efficiency of code and the end product.

Low resource usage

Problems and bugs

Now, Plasma 5.12.90 being beta, there were issues. Of course. These actually look and feel like pure dev problems, so I’m actually not too concerned. I am more worried about actual UI functionality issues, because those require fundamental logical changes. Most of what I encountered in this test was packaging chaos and ongoing work. Indeed, there were no less than two sets of updates available in the span of less than one day, bringing in dozens of updated Qt libraries and such.

The big one – Discover does not work. Like at all. I tried to run the program, and it just wouldn’t start. From the command line, the errors are more meaningful, if just as ugly. I’ve found half a dozen references to this on Arch Linux and KDE forums, a lonely bug report from six months ago, and several suggestions on missing packages, all of which were present and accounted for in KDE neon, to no avail. Discover is no-go. And this also complicated my browser integration package installation. Most likely, by the time you’ve read this article, it will all have been fixed.

plasma-discover 
QQmlApplicationEngine failed to load component
qrc:/qml/DiscoverWindow.qml:162 Cannot assign to non-existent property "showCloseButton"

Errors when loading the GUI
invalid kns backend! "/etc/xdg/ksysguard.knsrc" because: "Config group not found! Check your KNS3 installation."
invalid kns backend! "/etc/xdg/servicemenu.knsrc" because: "Config group not found! Check your KNS3 installation."
Discarding invalid backend "ksysguard.knsrc"
Discarding invalid backend "servicemenu.knsrc"
setting currentApplicationBackend PackageKitBackend(0x1031d00)

Another problem is – there are two programs with the name discover. One, called just that, and I don’t know what it does. The other, plasma-discover, which is what we – or users – need. Worth figuring if there’s a name clash here.

There were also a few other issues that might not be fully fixed in the official 5.13 release. Kate always moves the ‘active’ document tab to the far left, and this is confusing if you rely on spatial memory to place your documents. This really becomes messy if you have dozens of text files open, like I normally do.

The laptop was hot during testing, even though Plasma is a frugal beast, but we will discuss that more when I review KDE neon separately. I’ve also noticed long boot times, both in KDE neon and the recent Kubuntu, so I’m still not sure what this is about, but again, something to discuss and troubleshoot at a later date.

The touchpad was jittery. I had to tweak it before I could use the system with wild abandon. Mouse settings were also tricky. The option to choose single or double click is no longer available. Instead, the functionality is located under Workspace configuration.

This is not intuitive, because those two are separate, and people may actually launch the mouse applet individually, through the menu and not through the system settings tool. Moreover, there’s some visual difference between the complete bundle and standalone utilities. This isn’t a big inconsistency, but it’s worth figuring out if there should be both, or if they should differ in looks.

Mouse settings, under system settings

Mouse settings, under system settings, full view.

Mouse settings, separate

Mouse settings, launched separately through the Plasma menu.

Workspace settings, non-intuitive

This is not the logical location for mouse control. The big hint is in the name: mouse clicks.

The biggest problem with my test was that a certain library related to Kirigami was missing, whatever it may be, and this made half the settings in the settings menu unavailable. There were no workspace or desktop themes, no icon themes, no wallpaper, no option to edit the screen lock settings, and no option to install any new decorative packages. This feels like a pure beta bug, though.

No themes

Kirigami error

Wallpaper bug

The issue shows consistently both in the live session and the installed neon system.

Same issues, live and installed

There’s also a small visual bug with Vault – the new Vault button is positioned too far down and left, if we look at the top of the popup interface. Either it needs to move, or the word Vault needs to move, or the Dolphin file manager icon needs to be re-positioned. Not a biggie though, but the Devil is in the details.

Vault

And I guess that would be all. Now, what’s the number of screenshots I decided to use for this article? 42. Which only makes sense in the grander scheme of things. Right.

Conclusion

Plasma 5.13 is (going to be) a very nice release. It builds on the solid foundation that is the LTS edition, and adds cool, smart touches. The emphasis is on seamless integration of elements, which is what separates professionals from amateurs. It’s all around how the WHOLE desktop behaves, and not individual programs in isolation. And Plasma is making great strides, offering a polished version of an already mature and handsome product, with extra focus on fonts, media and browser connectivity and good performance.

There are some rough patches. Apart from the obvious beta issues, those goes without saying, KDE Connect ought to be a true multi-phone product, the network stack really needs to be spotless, and that means full Microsoft Windows inter-operability, Spectacle should allow for configurable shadows and alpha channel, and I want to see if the decorative backend has been cleaned up, i.e. can you search and install new themes and icons without encountering useless errors and inconsistencies.

But all in all, I’m quite impressed. The changes are big and noticeable, and above all, meaningful. You don’t just get features for the sake of it, you get things that improve the quality and consistency of the desktop, that maximize fun and productivity, and there’s deep thought in orchestrating it all together. It ain’t just a random bunch of options that happen to work. I like seeing patterns in things, and I’m happy when there’s functional harmony. This spring season of distro testing hasn’t been fun, and Plasma 5.13 is balm for my weary wrists, so hurting from all that angry typing. More than worth a spin, and highly recommended. Full steam on, Tuxers.

Cheers.

[sharedaddy]

64 thoughts on “Plasma 5.13 – Amazing Tux, How Sweet Plasma

    • No, I don’t file bug reports. I don’t have time to do that – that job should be done 24/7 by a dedicated team of QA and validation testers, no just with Plasma, but every other distro and desktop environment.
      Dedoimedo

      • I definitely agree with your point of view. QA is the weak point of open source software. And developers mostly just care about their ego. :/
        It’s nice to see KDE shaping up to becoming so polished though.

      • As an open source project KDE is mostly built by volunteers. A good open source citizen should try and do what they can to help. Even if that is simply a short message letting them know they have a bug. It’s a bit disheartening to hear your response as a writer on a website that benefits from their content.

        • Agreed. It’s not only disheartening, but odd… someone who takes such an obvious interest in Open Source software (Plasma) but seemingly unaware or dismissive of a key supporting pillar of Open Source: community feedback. I even thought he was being sarcastic,at first. “24/7 by a dedicated team of QA and validation testers”… who is that for Plasma then, and using whose resources?

          • This article is community feedback, is it not? I am also thrilled to see that the reddit thread is around whether I’m a lunatic or such, because I am not using my precious time writing bug reports. Users are not supposed to be fallback mechanism for missing software tools and frameworks. This is an actual job – QA and validation – and that’s how serious software is created. It has nothing to do with the nature of the software (closed or open). I am not interested in ideology. I am interested in quality and results.
            Dedoimedo

      • But furthering my point. KDE doesn’t belong to a company… They don’t have funds to pay for QA and validation. That can be done by interested users like you though… And you have plenty of experience.

        • There’s a finite amount of time in a given day. I could write an article that will reach many and extol the virtues of Plasma or spend a few boring hours compiling technical data that may get the right response, devolve into an argument, or who knows what. It’s a simple choice. Speaking of experience, I focus on big things and big problems. That’s where my knowledge and skills are best invested.

          It is true that most projects don’t have the funds. Sure, but that does not mean they shouldn’t strive to do that. I have yet to see an official QA process for any which distro or open-source project. It does not exist. No one wants to do the ugly, repetitive testing. Not even the devs themselves. So why should users do that?

          90% of software development is not meant to be fun. That’s the cruel reality.

          Finally, people make best inventions when constrained. If you have limited resources, the idea is to develop automated tools to do the hard work for you. Like in this case, capture bugs. That’s valuable investment as opposed to opportunistic reliance on users to report their issues. This is an opportunity to develop the next, superlative generation of functional behavioral analysis tools that can stop both usage as well as pure software bugs.

          The onus – and the moral yoke – should not be on the user.

          Dedoimedo

          • Yup. Agreed. That’s what’s preventing me from jumping back to Linux, and what still prevents me from replacing Microsoft Office by Libre Office (it has a few UI bugs that drive me nuts and Impress has a horrid UX).

      • You do realize that Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and many other big companies no longer have dedicated QA dept and engineers? And you expect a FOSS project like KDE to have one ?!!

        Your attitude is puzzling and frankly not helpful. You clearly have enough knowledge and experience where you could help the team out with a detailed bug report. But you don’t want to.

        Most software has a ‘send feedback/bug’ option for a reason – because no one can catch all bugs in testing, even if they did have a dedicated team (see above).

          • You do realize that, most people are working on FOSS projects are working for free right? And they don’t have the time to search around bugs in the software because they have a life!

          • Working on something for free is not an excuse for low quality. Can you notice the paradox in your claim. They don’t have time to search because they have a life, and users are what … slaves without lives? If someone creates a product, that product needs to be good. There should be standards and quality. Working on it for free makes no difference. No one is entitled to anything.
            Dedoimedo

          • Double standard. “Having no time” is also just a bad excuse for not writing bug reports. Either write a bug report (which is in your case more of a feature request) or stop complaining.

          • One of the reasons I use openSuSE for my workstation is because the distribution seems like it has received some Q/A. I have noticed that some of the issues raised are absent from openSuSE, which is why I think there is some type of quality control. I may be wrong.

            I agree with you 100%. Any job worth doing, is worth doing right. The developer should want to do their own Q/A while developing. I do the best job possible on any project I am involved with, no matter what that project is. If am installing a toilet, I want that toilet to be installed with an eye for detail and quality. Always. That is how I roll.

            The only job that ever gets attention are the piss-poor jobs. If it is crappy work, people are going to talk about it and the person who is responsible. That is how it is in the real world.

            I remember one version of Kubuntu, I think 17.04 was, at the time, the finest Plasma experience I had ever expeienced. It was close to flawless but the following release was such a mess that I never forgot it. It was such a bad experience that I haven’t tried Kubuntu since.

            It was not the good Kubuntu version, but the bad one that I remember most. It left enough of an impression on me that I abandoned what used to be my favorite distribution. Luckily, KDE was represented well on other distributions, like Neon. Otherwise, I may well have ditched Plasma altogether.

            I was much less experienced with Linux then and mistakenly believed Plasma was at fault for that Kubuntu versions poor showing. Bad work creates all sorts of unforeseen consequences and backlash. In fact, a single bad showing can doom an entire project.

            The Windows phone is a good example. It could have worked out had it been better implemented. The first Windows phones were not well done and it killed it out the gate. I have one of the last phones released by Nokia that I picked up in an auction box lot. It is surprisingly pretty cool. No, it was real cool. It could do some things then that are only now finding their way into newer devices but it never had a chance due to prior efforts and crappy work.

  1. There is some wind on Canonical’s side, after they decided to ship the Gnome version of KDE Connect renamed as “Phone integration” in Cosmic Cuttelfish, of writing an iOS application, and there is an unfinished beta from ~3 years ago, so an iOS application could technically appear. The probem is Apple desn’t allow iOS development on anything but a Mac and this attitude turns the majority of open source developers away and Canonical doesn’t seem inclined to pay for the development.

  2. My biggest complains with KDE:

    1. plasma becomes unresponsive under heavy IO load.
    For example, create a bootable usb drive with gnome-disks and plasma will freeze.

    2. baloo… nuf said!!!

    3. Dolphin’s default and most importantly unconfigurable drag’n’drop behavior,

    4 Kwin doesn’t handle shadows the same way like any other compositor, as a result, any non-qt app doesn’t have shadows

    5. Mouse scrolling is slow in qtquick software such as plasmashell, kde software center and settings app with libinput on xorg

    If these issues are fixed, i’ll definitely give it another try coz I’m sick of gnome slowness!!

    • To 4:
      This is wrong. This only applies to GTK apps with Client-Side-Decorations (CSD). Plasma does not draw shadows, because the GTK app does not inform KWin, if it needs shadows. You can enable shadows (and KWin decorations) by opening the window menu with Alt+F3 (by default) and unchecking “No Border”. But then you have double minimize, maximize and close buttons. This problem has to be fixed on the GTK side, as KWin supports shadows for CSD.

      • So gtk is picky anough to inform all other compositors even the dead compton but not kwin?

        And I’m not only talking about window shadows but every possible one eg menus

          • and I said, “Kwin doesn’t handle shadows the same way like any other compositor”

            So what exactly was wrong?

          • From a logical point of view you just blamed circles to have no corners. This is certainly as correct as pointless.

          • Kwin handles windows decorations different than GTK apps expect it. Well, Kwin is KDEs window manager. The GTK app does not inform KWin, if it needs shadows. Both do what they think is the right way to do it. So who’s fault is it? Who has to change? And don’t tell me about “every other compositor”. This is a technical detail and we we need a good, stable and secure solution. Simply defining their way as “standard” is something as very nasty and contradicts the open source idea.

          • Let me tell who’s fault is…. It’s obviously user fault

            Sorry i’m not gonna participate in this dicc measuring contest

          • Obviously you’re not participating in the discussion at all but just want to spread your personal opinion and likings.

            Have a nice day, but I’m not interested in that fundamentalism.

          • sometimes people like you, make me think that Ballmer was actually right.

            the ego in foss communities is too damn high goramit!!

          • Now you made me really laugh. You want to tell me about my ego?! Wow.

            It’s *you* who think his personal preferences are the basis for technical standards, which have to be implemented by the developers as soon as you complain about something you don’t like.

          • Of course I expressed the things I dislike in KDE. What’s the problem with that? Shouldn’t I?

            I’m just a user and I don’t care about the reason why non-qt apps don’t have shadows in KDE.

        • If you follow the development of compton you will know that compton can handle the shadow of gtk3 apps now because gtk3 broke all compositors’ assumption and someone raised issue on both gtk3 side and compton/kwin sides. And compton had to carefully detect gtk3 windows and put special treatment for them to fix the issue, because gtk3 refuse to do the proper way. The difference between kwin and compton is that compton had to support gtk3 no matter how strange gtk3 was implemented and screwed all the compositors, while kwin dare to say we don’t care cause we have done the right thing.

          https://github.com/chjj/compton/issues/189

          • Compiz also support it, so what’s your point here?

            Gtk is probably the most popular open source widget toolkit, why they just not support it?

            The user doesn’t care if the problem is on gnome or kde’s side.

            They should at least make a temp workaround like other compositors.

            User should never suffer because of some people egoism.

          • There are workarounds for kwin to support shadows for gtk3 applications, months after Gtk3 changed its behavior, they’re just not enabled by default on many distro. KDE even support gtk3 global menus when they are not appearing on Gnome and Gnome wants to abandon appmenu from 3.30.

            Proof: using all white shadow to contrast with dark theme: https://fars.ee/R-yl.png

            > User should never suffer because of some people egoism.

            True. The same logic can be applied on the gtk3/gnome’s side. The WM/Compositor should provide support for whatever toolkit and however they are configured. Kwin support both Client-Side-Decoration and Server-Side-Decoration and will react accordingly when apps tell it to do so. It’s the gnome/gtk3 developpers who insist to only support CSD (while still use SSD for XWayland without acknowledging it and implemented it poorly than Gtk3’s CSD) and want everyone else to change by launching CSD Initiatives, and keeps changing their design to invalidate other people’s hard work. https://wiki.gnome.org/Initiatives/CSD

    • 2. you know you can uninstall it without literally any issues also most distros don’t ship it by default anymore, or you could just disable it under settings
      3. please elaborate, dolphin is like a god compared to any file manager
      4. already answered but like to add that you can kill CSD there is an aur package for it (gtk-mushrooms) and a kwin script as well if you don’t run arch and also another package which i cant remember
      5. this was fixed a long time ago and also there are settings to edit how many lines the wheel scrolls under mouse settings

      • 2. what if I need file indexing?? Dolphin search is shit anyway.

        3. I don’t like to hold ctrl/shift/alt every time I do dnd operations in dolphin, that popup is just another wasted step. Either way, you need to press another one key to do a dnd operation.

        4. I’m a user and I don’t care and know about “mushrooms” and I’m not only talking about window shadows but every other possible one eg menus.

        5. In kubuntu 17.10 was not fixed, the setting you are referring only affects qt apps like dolphin and not qtquick like the one I said, so you probably didn’t understand my complain.

    • 1. The fault is not of plasma, but of the I/O schedule that you use, if you use a Hard Drive, it’s best to use bfq schedule, if you use SATA SSD, best deadline schedule, if NVMe SSD, best none schedule

      • It has nothing to do with the scheduler, I used the default one that kubuntu/neon comes with, the cfq, which is the recommended in a home desktop env and any other wouldn’t make much difference as dedo accurately said and also it’s not user’s fault even if it was the wrong choice.

        Please understand that it’s a known bug of the plasmashell and don’t try to make excuses. thank you.

        • BFQ scheduler is the best for the DE resposiveness under HDD, with that one, I never ever had problem with unresposiveness with any DE or WM under heavy I/O load while cfq I did have problens with unreponsiveness under heavy load with many DE. While cfq is the recommended if you don’t have the bfq option for home use, if available, bfq makes a huge diference in my experience, I even could compile very huge things that end up producing very high I/O load while compiling without having DE showdowns with it.

          Well, I’m not making any excuses, I do use KDE Plasma 5 every day and I never had this problem while using BFQ schedule, but I have to admit that Plasma is unoptimized and could be better and should be better, but it’s not a bug, cause it’s doing what it supposed to do.

          • ok please do this specific thing I mentioned before…
            write an image into a usb (preferably 2.0, that’s what was tested) with gnome-disks and tell me how much responsive plasma was during that period.

            I’m really interested to know that, thnx 🙂

      • krusader is fine but I like better the overall integration of dolphin in kde.

        I just wish there was an option to disable that drag’n’drop popup and behave like any other file manager

  3. UPDATE: Self-proclamed tyrant and future-teller Martin [^1] wrote “spectacle won’t get a checkbox to toggle shadows” [^2] and “literally nobody else cares about this” (which is false, because Dedoimedo, me, and a lot of people see undesired alpha borders in their screenshots, and because Martin [^1] forbid all comments in his page… because he didn’t want other people to speak). Martin [^1] portrays himself…

    [^1]: Sorry, I don’t remember which is his surname today and how he wants people to write it, ¿Graesslin? ¿Floss? ¿Another one this time?
    [^2]: https://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2018/05/shadows-in-window-screenshots/

    • Don’t go down the personal route. Be better than that. Focus on the results. Screenshot tools need to have a configurable shadows toggle. That’s what matters. And that’s the message.
      Dedoimedo

        • Time is money, and people need the time that they lose cutting the unnecessary huge alpha borders that are talked about in this page 🙁

          For a lot of documents I have to do *a lot* of screenshots 🙁

          We can look for “huge alpha border” in this page and see its screenshot.

          • Two unproven assumptions in one sentence: *People* don’t want the *unnecessary huge* borders.

            It’s just: *You* don’t like the borders, as *you* think they are unnecessary huge. I’ve seen KDE reviews with screenshots with the shadows and the borders and to my taste they looked nice.

          • I’m going to behave as you do:

            It’s just: *You* like the borders, as *you* think they are necessary. I’ve seen KDE reviews (this one, for example) with screenshots with the shadows and the borders and to my taste they looked huge.

          • Time is money, and people need the time that they lose cutting the unnecessary huge alpha borders that are talked about in this page 🙁

            For a lot of documents I have to do *a lot* of screenshots 🙁

            We can look for “huge alpha border” in this page and see its screenshot.

    • As Martin Flöser kind of implied in his post, the place to express this type of thing to KDE developers is through an official bug report. Since no one filed one until now, the only conclusion the KDE developers should reasonably have is that no one really cared enough about it to file one. Hence his (perhaps overly passionate) line saying “literally nobody else cares about this”.

      If this is such a passionate issue to you, maybe you should be the one to file a bug report. This is the correct way to show the KDE developers that this is an issue people actually care about. If you can respectfully make your case for this feature in your bug report, it could actually get implemented. It would certainly work better than personal attacks against the developers.

      • Everything that I wrote was true.

        > Hence his (perhaps overly passionate) line saying “literally nobody else cares about this”.

        Is “he was perhaps overly passionate” the politically correct way of saying that someone lied? I’m not used to that language.

        > maybe you should be the one to file a bug report.

        To be told again that it’s not a bug? (https://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2018/05/shadows-in-window-screenshots/)

        > This is the correct way to show the KDE developers that this is an issue people actually care about.

        If Martin forbids all comments in that page, we see what he cares about.

  4. “Most of the time spent wrestling with technologies that don’t quite work yet is just not worth it for end users,? ?however much fun it is for nerds.” –Douglas Adams,? ?The Salmon of Doubt

    “Good ideas are overrated.?..The world is filled with people with good ideas and very short of people who can even rake a leaf.? ?I’m tired of good ideas.”–Andy Rooney
    ********************************************************************************

    The problem with most all software design is that no one wants to–or for that matter, knows how to–rake. “Raking the leaves” is beneath the dignity of anyone associated with software design. This includes management at the topmost levels, which has abdicated its responsibility to demand the “raking”.

    “Originality is no excuse for stupidity.” –Fred Brooks

Leave a Reply