KDE 5 - How is it?

leifbk · Posted: Sat Jul 02, 2016 9:57 am Post subject:

In other news: Slackware 14.2 has just been released with KDE 4.14.21, "a stable release of the 4.14.x series of the award-winning KDE desktop environment". And this one's kind of funny: Qubes OS 3.2 to Use Xfce4 by Default Because KDE 5 Is Bloated, Unstable and Ugly.

That being said, I'm quite comfortable with KDE 5 now, even if KDE 4 at the end was a far more polished and mature environment. The best I can say about the current version, is that I haven't experienced any crashes - whatsoever - for weeks. (And BTW I'm pretty sure that I've still got some config files from KDE 3 around.) After the initial run, when Baloo dragged the system down for hours, it has behaved mostly smooth and responsive. But then I'm running ~amd64 on a home-built and recently upgraded rig with most of the components designed for hardcore gamers, - ie. a massively overpowered machine for most purposes. But I love to be done with an "emerge -e @world" in a few hours, while at the same time being able to do anything else that I normally use the computer for: KMail, 4-5 instances of Konsole, ditto for Firefox with ca. 50 open tabs in all, a few KWrite windows, Clementine, and OpenTTD. And behind the scene, a PostgreSQL / Apache / PHP stack for my genealogy work.
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asturm · Developer Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 8935

zBrain · Apprentice Joined: 14 Apr 2006 Posts: 182

Xywa · Posted: Tue Jul 05, 2016 1:57 pm Post subject:

Just fresh info from Today:
https://dot.kde.org/2016/07/05/kde-plasma-57

Sakarias · n00b Joined: 12 May 2007 Posts: 60

franzf · Advocate Joined: 29 Mar 2005 Posts: 4565

Just updated my dads desktop to plasma 5.7 (Qt already was at 5.7) and I immediately face two issues:
* bounds of plasmoids are incorrect: systray, clock and ex-cashew (config button, or how do we call it today?) cover each other, when playmoids are locked te clock only shows 3 out of 4 digits (finally an excuse to be about 10 minutes too late

)
* taskbar doesn't show icons for at least firefox and thunderbird. dolphin and libreoffice seem to work.

Probably more is coming. It's not unusable but clearly worse than 5.6 was...

Perfect Gentleman · Veteran Joined: 18 May 2014 Posts: 1245

Plasma 5.7 is fine as always.

gerard27 · Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2016 5:01 pm Post subject:

Upgraded to 5,7.
Wacomtablet is still not recognized by Systemsettings.
The system however works,can draw in Gimp.
In konsole when you enter:xwacomsettings list devices it answers correctly.
There are bug reports in bugs.kde.org but nobody cares.
I get the impression that smartphones and tablets are now kde's target.
The rest has lost importance to the kde devs.
Gerard.
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The same disk can be used for 32 and 64 bit installs.
You can follow the Handbook verbatim.
http://www.sysresccd.org/Download

kensington · Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2016 8:21 pm Post subject:

gerard27 · Posted: Thu Jul 07, 2016 1:57 pm Post subject:

Of course I did Kensington.

franzf · Advocate Joined: 29 Mar 2005 Posts: 4565

peakeyed · n00b Joined: 18 Nov 2004 Posts: 60

Plasma 5.7 is great!!

dasPaul · Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2016 6:48 am Post subject:

I upraded to 5.7.1. One enhancement so far: multi-monitor configuration (position,refresh rate) gets saved now between reboots, Yippee! Regarding previous versions up to 5.7.1 some stuff still annoys me.
Besides that my second monitor (--right-of HDMI1) is sometimes still initialised wrong... greyish background, no rightclick possible and if I change its setting in the screen setting plasmashell crashes sometimes, sometimes not.. who cares.
Yesterday after a reboot I lost all my favourites entries, pff who cares.
I removed SDDM because when the system puts the screen into standby my fan spins up as if it secretly calculates "the god formula" (I heard this will be fixed with qt 5.7.1 and is dye some GL extension or something and my cheaply Intel GPU...).
Another thing is that if kde isn't started by SDDM but just by startkde in .xinitrc my multimedia keys don't work any more [edit: and reboot, shutdown button disappeared].
I also disabled compositing completely and set it to Xrender because it also makes my fan spin up even with VAAPI 720p Videos. To enable vsync and get rid of tearing I used "compton -b -C -G --vsync opengl --backend glx" which works amazing efficient comparing to kwin's vsync and my fan is completely silent while watching the same video. Maybe that's all an Intel driver issue but I was gone through a lot of up/downgrading packets versions/combinations,xorg settings,sna/uxa and arrived with this current setup. Its works, but in my opinion its far from stable.

Whats also anoying me is the classical ALT-TAB switch. It seems always to select the wrong window comparing to other systems I had. I dont know if this is KDE specific but if I work with many windows and I want to switch to the second last used I have to go through all the other items to activate it. I did not encounter this with openbox/enlightenment/compiz or I am to stupid. :lol:

The only reason I currently stick to KDE is that I heavily use kstars which requires plasma-meta to run properly.
so far, my experience with KDE5

JiriHorky · n00b Joined: 04 Nov 2013 Posts: 2

I need to add some reaction as well, it forced me to register to forum to actually share it.

Long story short short - if you use multiple monitors and change plug/unplug it often during the day *DO NOT INSTALL* KDE5.

I am running the last available KDE5 as of now (5.7.1) and it still has serious bugs:
- the task bar panel does not show up on primary screen. It requires several try/fail cycles in "Display Configuration", enabling, disabling the external monitor to get it running. I still haven't figured out what rule it follows, it seems to be more random than deterministic.
- Plasmashell crashes now and then, it seems to be related to connecting disconnecting external monitor.
- kwin_x11 crashes multiple times a day, so you are unable to move/resize windows

BTW: The things very much worse with gentoo stable's KDE5.5.

Overall, I am really disappointed with the quality of the KDE5 as of now. I am really not doing anything special, but IMHO it's unusable. I need to restart plasmashell, kwin_x11 multiple times during the day, I see crashes after reboot...I only regret that I decided to upgrade from stable KDE4 :-(

I hoped that in version 5.*7*, the standard things will be working flawlessly. I can not imagine a normal desktop user could ever use it (with multiple monitors).

Jiri Horky

asturm · Developer Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 8935

dasPaul · Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2016 1:20 pm Post subject:

cruzki123 · Apprentice Joined: 16 May 2008 Posts: 262

Aiken · Posted: Sun Aug 07, 2016 1:13 pm Post subject:

I have been staying with stable so 5.6.5 and the few annoyances are

Folder view for the desktop can not remember icon positions. This worked in kde4.

I know there is a thread about this, the don't have permission to mount a usb stick problem.

Console kit not letting me shut down my own computer because I have a long forgotten and not being used session from another account of mine logged in. I don't care what some bit of software says, if I want to shut down my own computer I should not need permission and the root password.

Not being able to set the font size in the clock widget any more. Would like to know how to get the date under the time without having to play with the panel height.

The only good thing I have to say about 5.6.5 so far is it has only crashed once and 5.5.1 is the reason some of the desktops and laptops I look after have been migrated to lxqt.
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asturm · Developer Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 8935

Aiken · Posted: Sun Aug 07, 2016 10:06 pm Post subject:

I can not recall ever intentionally do anything with consolekit and do not know if the output of that command is good or bad. Consolekit is configured however it gets configured when it is installed. It is an intermittent problem and has happened several times. Does not help I have not been able to replicate it and last night all that happened was plasma 5 stuffed up the icon positions 3 times before I gave up. Consolekit not allowing a person to shutdown their machine has happened multiple times but can not work out a reliable trigger.

Looking at the gentoo wiki page about consolekit I am left thinking I would prefer if it could be configured to do nothing and leave any permissions to what I have set in /etc/groups and to never interfere.

This is small soho setup with 3 desktops, 3 laptops and multiple servers. There are other annoyances with plasma 5 with things that worked in kde4 where with one machine that user and technology do no go together and that machine has not been updated since plasma 5 went stable. The icons being rearranged with no user input and being told no permission when trying to use usb sticks are show stoppers on that computer and another user gave up on their and went looking for a windows machine just so they could use their usb stick.

Would like to think baloo ignoring the the don't index setting and not stopping then making a machine unresponsive for the better part of an hour generating completely unwanted data that is deleted the moment baloo is killed has to be a bug and not intentional. For our needs we are not finding plasma 5 a suitable replacement for kde4.
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asturm · Developer Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 8935

Aiken · Posted: Sun Aug 07, 2016 11:00 pm Post subject:

That is it. Last time I started clicking anything I could in the device notifier until it worked. My initial experience seems similar to the current last post in that thread. The person who gave up and went windows just said "what tick?" and the person who does not mix with technology that change is too much and unless an initial click of that button means all further usb sticks work then that change means no more usb sticks for that person as the change is too much for them. Every new stick they will fail to get it working.

After doing computer support for that person for around 20 years I am confident that change means no more usb sticks for them.

The icon has since changed and is not a tick any more which confused matters again after just telling one person to click on the tick and there was no tick -> Click to access this device from other applications. As I type I am dealing with rants about change for the sake of change and to a certain extent I agree.
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asturm · Developer Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 8935

I don't think it's an intentional change, it is simply a bug.