KDE Plasma 6 Is Now 'Fairly Livable' (phoronix.com) 33
Prominent KDE developer Nate Graham believes that Plasma 6 is now "fairly livable" and recommends KDE developers and power users / enthusiasts start giving it a try. Phoronix reports: He characterized Plasma 6 as: "Basically everything in Plasma compiles with Qt 6, and at this point Plasma 6 is fairly livable. To give you a sense of how livable, it's good enough that over the past 2 months, I've gone on three KDE-related trips from the USA to Europe, with my only computer running Plasma 6 in "current git master" state, with work-in-progress merge requests applied! Its stability has been good enough that this has caused me no apprehension, and indeed, it's been totally fine on each trip. So seriously, if you're a KDE developer or an adventurous user, start living on Plasma 6! Jump right in, the water's fine. :)"
He went on to write more about the current development activities around Plasma 6. He also shared his personal beliefs around Plasma 6.0 release timing although no official release schedule is yet to be determined. Nate's belief is that Plasma 6.0 will likely be ready for release sometime between December and March.
He went on to write more about the current development activities around Plasma 6. He also shared his personal beliefs around Plasma 6.0 release timing although no official release schedule is yet to be determined. Nate's belief is that Plasma 6.0 will likely be ready for release sometime between December and March.
Agreed (Score:4, Interesting)
Upgraded Debian on my laptop and KDE is looking pretty good. This time the battery level works consistently and not every fifth boot. Yes it was a KDE thing because I could check the battery in a terminal just fine.
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This time the battery level works consistently and not every fifth boot.
Are you talking about laptop battery power, or some other? I don't use my laptop for much, so all of my work in on my desktop. I have never had a problem with KDE >= 4.0 reading my USP power level, but it has never been able to read my wireless keyboard's power. Hell, it doesn't even see my wireless keyboard, though it sees my wireless trackball just fine. I've always thought that was weird.
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Laptop battery level.
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You're running Plasma 6 on your newly-upgraded Debian? Are you sure it isn't 5.27?
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He might be using unstable
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Still 5.27:
https://packages.debian.org/si... [debian.org]
2023 will be the year of the Linux desktop! (Score:1)
Although most people have moved to laptops so never mind.
Re:2023 will be the year of the Linux desktop! (Score:4, Interesting)
Been using Linux on my desktop and laptop for many years now. Less issues than Windows. It's been the year of Linux on the desktop for 20 years or so, at least for me.
I was running KDE 5 for quite a while on Fedora. It ran well and I loved how configurable it is. But something about KDE never quite looks right to me. I'm not sure what it is. I always end up back on Mate. Hits the sweet spot.
It's interesting because my first years with Linux were not so comfortable, with desktops like FVWM that were rather awkward and clunky. I wasn't nearly so comfortable with Linux back then, but when KDE 1.0 came out, it instantly made my computer usable again (other than the single click business), nearly at the same level as Windows 95. That made Linux for me. For reasons that I can't recall, I ended up on Gnome 1.0---which was buggy as all get out---and for some reason stayed with Gnome through 2.x and now to Mate. So I owe a lot to KDE, even if I don't use it. Thank you, KDE! Glad you're still here and thriving.
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When they said Linux on the desktop they meant normal people not people who can install an OS with nothing but a stack of 5.25" floppy disks and the did command.
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Yup it's great that you manage it for them. That works for any OS. Lemme know when grandma is doing her own kernel patches.
I got my 84 year old mom a windows laptop around 2015. Set it up on a monitor, kn, mouse, printer, etc for her. She has never once pulled it off the docking station so it's essentially a desktop. After a few rounds of fussing to tweak things the way she likes I haven't had to do anything since.
Auto install windows updates. Check the virus scanner once a year. That's it.
But she al
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Does your grandma do Windows kernel patches? If not, why bring them up at all?
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Of course she does. As mentioned, I set my mom's computer to auto update.
But no she couldn't do a Linux patch to save the universe even with explicit written instructions.
What was your point or question?
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So she doesn't apply them: the auto-update does. And the auto-update in modern Linux distros is equally capable of doing them, making them a red herring.
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So you allow your kernel to auto update and reboot your Linux machines?
Really?
Wow.....
In any case, I was responding to someone who manages his elderly family's Linux machines.
I do not manage my mom's windows machine. I set it up. She complained about a few things like font size and wanted the Firefox icon in a different spot (don't ask) and I haven't touched it in any real way in years. I occasionally make sure the malware blocker is still running and up to date, maybe once a year.
So that guy still has t
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Do you know any normal people who can blow Windows away and do a fresh install and get it to a usable state? I'm not sure I do. Installing Windows itself, while not the hardest thing in the world, isn't the easiest thing either, but tracking down drivers and software packages (from the correct sources) isn't something I've ever seen your average non-techie person do.
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If you've been running Linux on the desktop for "many years" - how do you know it has less problems than Windows?
Many of us who run Linux by choice are also forced to run Windows. You're assuming that other people would be as ignorant as you would be in a particular situation, which is not a safe assumption.
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Serious question. I've run both (and Unix before Linux existed at all) since win95 and dos before that.
Both require setup by a knowledgeable technical person and both are stable after that if not abused.
What is it about windows that makes it vastly inferior to Linux as a desktop?
Does windows have no strengths over Linux?
There are pros and cons to both systems.
For myself, despite high level experience in both I always chose windows as a desktop. Once in place I never had to do much to a windows systems whe
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What is it about windows that makes it vastly inferior to Linux as a desktop?
The fact that they can't ever get the UI "just right". The problem isn't that they can produce a usable UI, but that as soon as they do, they have to change it.
That's why grandma hates Windows. She's had to re-learn how to use a Windows computer every 2-3 years for the past 30 years, and wants something that "just works".
Every change to the Linux UI has been for the better, and if you didn't like it, you didn't have to us
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Wait, so you say windows users have to change their OS every 2-3 years and the UI changes dramatically?
My mom is still using windows 7. Before that she was on Windows 2000. Before that win95. And dos and whatever going back to before dos even existed.
In each of those she had a desktop. The desktop had icons for her apps. She clicks them. They open. What changed that she cares about?
Under Linux every time there's a new gnome or kde everyone goes ape shit about whatever was changed. Just like the wind
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Worst GUI idea ever? Semi transparent windows so you can't really read either the foreground or background window. Ugh.
Some of us were using the then-unique features of our Riva TNT or Permedia 2 cards (among cheap PC cards anyway, I guess you could have shelled out for an Oxygen) to do that on Windows on purpose. Of course, we had easy controls for using it. I've been thinking of giving Compiz a try again, but last time I did that it was kind of horribly crashy. I used to have a lot of that whiz-bang stuff set up with some really pretty translucent window borders using Emerald with "truglass" IIRC? None of the desktop cube
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I get it with random color schemes and side panels on big monitors and doing whatever to the borders and the whole rest. It's all a matter of personal taste and preference. Totally on board with that whole thing.
What I don't get is when the actual window content becomes semi transparent over another window behind it. Can't really see either content and get a blurry mess instead. Just makes my eyes hurt and gives me a headache. Don't get that one at all. It's n interesting tech demonstration but I don
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I run mostly Gentoo Linux at home, and a combination of mostly Windows 10, CentOS 7, and Kubuntu LTS at work.
Very few problems with Gentoo in recent years. About the worst lately have been Python packages that minorly break with Python updates, and I've learned how to fix or work around most of them.
Very few problems with CentOS 7 as a server, although there were issues when we tried to port our code to RHEL8, mostly due to issues with the code rather than RHEL itself.
Quite a few problems with Kubuntu, but
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Assume much? I've also been using Windows for many years right along side, all versions. And I also was on a team maintaining 800 windows desktops of all kinds and versions for a decade. So yes I do know what I'm talking about. For me Linux is a very pleasant experience 98% of the time. Windows is pleasant at least half the time but constantly frustrates me and there's a ton of crap Windows users put up with that they don't notice anymore. I should start keeping a list. windows 11... not horrible, bu
Livable? (Score:1)
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Not an IT guy (Score:2)
Awesome (Score:2)
That's the quality I demand from my desktop environment. As a dedicated linux user, if it's not livable, I'll give it no more than 3 major releases and five years to become so. Then I'll maybe think about complaining but I'll generally stumble along with it indefinitely.
Yes, I know it's not out yet. I'm just lightly trolling. A little smile on a rainy morning. :) - See the little smile?
Keen to try, not keen to compile (Score:2)
I'm keen to try it out on a spare Thinkpad running Fedora 38. I'm not keen on having to build it all from source to give it a try.
Are there ready-built binaries for Fedora 38 that people can have a play with? Or perhaps for another distro like Kubuntu.
(Basically building from source on a 2-core laptop is just going to take too long.)