All Things KDE/Plasma-6 for Slackware Users.
 

Starting a new thread for KDE-6 would seem, to me, to be appropriate. :)
The full story can be found at, https://www.phoronix.com/news/KDE-Plasma-6-Alpha

Ooh man, I remember it as not ago that we were at the same place in regards to KDE5. I was excited about the release, as KDE4 was promising, but KDE5 would be the "perfection" of KDE4. I was not going to jump right into KDE5, but wait some releases for it to be more stable first. In the beginning it lacked many of the features I expected from KDE, so I was quite annoyed with it, but I did expect it to incorporate those features again during some releases. It did, but quite slowly.

I've been using KDE since KDE3 at least, probably before that as well, but I can't quite exactly remember. It's quite a luxury desktop, best on the market IMO.

However, I'm quite disappointed too. With all the balls KDE had in the air, with plasma-active, plasma in general, kde for netbooks and various formats etc, I was really hoping it would be a more modular desktop that scaled well from mobile UI to full multi screen desktop UI. But it never really did that, despite plasma. It kind of turned into 4-5 different development platform, 1 for each format, and the desktop plasma/kde was not at all modular, but rather integrated with everything depending on something else and whatnot. I was kind of hoping for a Plasma desktop that you could scale from being a windows manager to a full desktop environment, to fit in with all the other scaling I was hoping for. But despite that looking like the direction they were initially taking, it didn't pan out, and I was quite disappointed.

I don't have great hopes this will happen for KDE6 either, but on a positive note, it should be the first KDE desktop version fully compatible with Wayland. I guess we could call it the Wayland version. Having read some KDE development forums, it seemed pretty clear that it wasn't possible to split kwin into kwin-wayland and kwin-xorg, so instead they had to just add the wayland stuff to the already existing codebase. I'm already using Wayland, so I'm quite happy to see them go "all in" in regards to Wayland with KDE Plasma 6, but I would be even happier if they did the scalability/modularity thing.
Call me old fashion, but I'm a bit weary about the trends within KDE, in terms of some rather strange ideological directions, and inclusions of software that to many is untasteful and many will delete immediately. I don't really want a desktop that keeps track of everything I do, and set up various internet facing daemon/service like things. It goes hand in hand with modularity, and those things should be more kind of opt in than default configurations, which brings us back to dependencies, and the whole cycle again.

But well, I can delete that stuff, and I don't need to care about what kind of opinion people who make KDE have, so I guess I'll just have to live with the most powerful desktop on the market, that also happens to be rather pretty. Every GUI designer need to learn from KDE, this is professional workflow stuff, and many of those things that KDE do, really ought to be minimum requirements for any modern or decent desktop. Sadly, that's not the case, which makes most other desktops look rather antiquated by comparison. Not just for personal use, but KDE methods of managing windows and behaviours and all these kind of things is perfect for a professional workflow. Instead people have to fight with their desktop and be slowed down by clunky behaviours and desperately outdated window management in things like Windows. ffs, they didn't even manage to properly make multiple virtual desktops yet.

Member Response
 

Hi,

Alienbob has announced; KDE: February 2024 MegaRelease
Please click on the above link to get the full story.
Hope this helps!
:hattip:

I'll guess that Pat will depend on Eric's testing to decide when to merge KDE 6 into Current.

Not that I zealously follow KDE news, but my understanding was KDE 6 was supposed to be a roll over of KDE 5 to Qt 6. Seems now that new features and twists are being added to KDE 6.

I am still rooting for KDE 5.27.x in 15.1. Might not be be a public relations coup releasing 15.1 with 5.27.x, but 15.1 would avoid similarities to what happened with the KDE 3 to 4 transition.

Considering Pat averages about 7 years of support with each release, 15.1 with 5.27.x would allow many users to just sit back and breath for several years without playing the relentless updating game.

Well, I can hope and dream. . . .

Mark

It kind of is a roll over to Qt6 though, take a look at the changes https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Pla...facing_changes
The look and feel is basically the same of kde5, mostly some polish, little changes to default settings and more plasma components ported to QML (which i don't personally like).
Comparing to the kde3->kd4 and kde4->kde5 transitions it's really not that much different

Well, QT6 released already back in 2020, with 6.2 LTS back in 2021, and is now already at version 6.6. It's quite a few years already.

I would say perhaps at that point projects like LXQT should have already jumped over, but they are still using QT5 AFAIK. What I am wondering is how this will be though with Slackware, if Pat will delay including KDE6 like he did with KDE5 - much to the frustration to Alien Bob, and will that be in 15.1 or 16?

Nice! I'll be watching this thread with interest.

A rather dogmatic way of putting it. I'm as happy as a pig in muck that Xfce do it their own way. KDE is ugly, *in my opinion*, and the workflow is not at all smooth. But the biggest problem with KDE is that the desktop becomes an end in itself, constantly distracting you and clamouring for your attention.

Applications, regardless of the widget set, are all that matters. The desktop should be visible only at startup.

I use Krusader, and I consider it a real shame I have to install a metric ton of KDE garbage for this one application alone.

XFCE is the Toyota Corolla of Linux desktops... It's simple, rugged and does the job sufficiently well without weighing 3 tonnes and taking up all the floor space in the garage. It is easy-going & affable.

But it certainly is not without its flaws. There is another thread here currently where people who use XFCE are finding that it leaves stale sockets in /tmp, where they accumulate and can cause problems if there are multiple users on the machine using XFCE. A Google search shows that this has been impacting XFCE users since at least 2005. It also happens under the BSDs.
If XFCE is the Toyota Corolla of desktops, KDE is the S-Class Mercedes... It brings a high level of sophistication and polish to the Linux desktop. The downsides are that it weighs a lot more and takes up more space in the garage.

You might not like all of the bells and whistles. You might consider it to be bloat. But there is no denying the fact that it is a quality product.
You use Krusader?? Surely 'mc' in a terminal window is capable of doing what you want...

Just use kde tiling either Bismuth for X or Polonium for Wayland. This is just possibility, not that I am trying to convince anyone how flexible KDE Plasma is. And it is not slower or more memory hungry than xfce (which I was using on OpenBSD for a long time).

Well, I don't think he will delay that much, But being at the bleeding edge of a new major KDE release is also not comfortable for users. Like I said, last time many basic features were missing, even basic things like mouse settings and windows behaviours.

Well, everyone have different tastes and preferences, and the good thing with GNU/Linux is that nobody is forced to use a single one size fits all desktop environment. If I'm not totally mistaken KDE5 was released around the same time as the very controversial Windows 8 desktop environment. Windows has a one size fits all approach, and that DE looked unusable to me and what I would guess would be a majority of users as well. It looked downright claustrophobic.

Yeah, I agree, like I said earlier about KDE modularity and dependencies, it never really panned out like it initially looked it would. That kind of goes for interoperability of desktop programs and features too.

It's surprisingly lean actually, even as a full desktop with all the bells and whistles on. But you can turn some of those off too, to see just how lean it is.

I think this is a foundation point.

Pat has been in this situation previously with selecting a distro release date despite some notable software package "big" release being imminent. Not directly related but the Debian developers go through this decision making too with each release cycle, often choosing older versions of software rather than bleeding edge.

KDE 5.27.x is stable. KDE 6.0 might or might not be as stable. Moving Slackware 15.1 to Qt 6 affects SBo maintainers too.

Perhaps Eric's ktown testing will prove 6.0 stable and robust. Eric has more than half a clue.

With or without KDE 6.0, the 15.1 development cycle is looking to be about two years. I suspect with all of the complexities of modern software and dependencies, Pat probably would find a two year cycle to be palatable.

While always fun, speculating on a 15.1 release date is futile until the Current change log announces major GRUB changes and demotion of Lilo.

One thing Slackware users can rely is 15.1 will be stable one way or another. I am leaning toward wanting 5.27.x, but if Eric can pull a Bullwinkle rabbit out of the hat with his ktown testing, then I expect KDE 6.0 to be stable and not disruptive.

It is mostly about Plasma-6, but a few bugs fixes for Plasma-5 were also mentioned.
The full article can be found at, https://pointieststick.com/2023/11/1...een-recording/