KDE 5 - How is it?

krotuss · Apprentice Joined: 01 Aug 2008 Posts: 218

I have installed kmail and its dependencies. I do not have kdepim-meta installed.

asturm · Developer Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 8936

OK, so this one likely is a missing runtime dependency on Gentoo, a bugfix is already in tree with kmail-16.12.0-r1. Please update and check back.

krotuss · Apprentice Joined: 01 Aug 2008 Posts: 218

Thanks, that made kmail working again. Although underlaying issues (non copy-able text, broken Details button, no usable debug output) remains. After today updates I am not able to open K-menu on 2/2 of my gentoo installations. It shows up for short period of time and then disappears.

asturm · Developer Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 8936

Please check with a different user profile, such issues are unheard-of.

krotuss · Apprentice Joined: 01 Aug 2008 Posts: 218

Mystery solved: Today I coincidentally set "Focus stealing prevention" to high on both installations. Setting it back to low fixed K-menu problem. Another thing that does not work?

asturm · Developer Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 8936

That's indeed a bug you've found that I can reproduce.

tomtom69 · Posted: Wed Dec 28, 2016 9:16 pm Post subject:

I gave KDE5 another try on one of my (~7 years old) nvidia-based machines.
When I compile everything with -gles2 and switch off really everything which uses composting/desktop effects, KDE5 is quite usuable now. I need to switch off all effects to keep kwin from crashing all the time. Seems to be the fault of nvidia-drivers regarding the higher requirements of KDE5, here nvidia-drivers-304.134:0/304, but I do not have any alternative (nouveau also has severe stability problems with this nVidia GeForce 7025/nForce 630a chipset which were not resolvable). The drivers always worked with KDE4.
So far no problem - I do not need any effects for working, I just want a system that runs stable.

But two things remain:
(1) The window decorations are large.
With kde4 I used decorations like "quartz" or "plastik" which took little space for the window title bar. All KDE5 decorations that I tried use much more space, leaving less space for the content. I do not have any touch-based screen requring large finger usuage, so I would like not to spend that much space just for window title and decoration. Is there any way to reduce the height of the window bars? (did not find any options for this in systen settings)
(2) With desktop effects disabled actions like moving windows run with good performance and little CPU load. The only thing that is slow is drawing the window decorations. If a new window pops up, everything appears as expected, but window decorations lag by about 0,5-1s, which looks strange and annoying. Is there any way to speed up this?

tom

Bloody100 · n00b Joined: 02 Apr 2006 Posts: 7 Location: Berlin

Although i'm not a KDE user, i'm using KDevelop, and the new version 5 is still quite immature (so far), to the point of being useless, at least for me.

Running a built application doesn't work, view options like line numbers or the pointless right-hand graphic representation, are not saved across sessions. The console is no longer available (or i was too dumb to somehow activate it).

Anyway, i just masked all >= dev-util/kdevelop-5 ebuilds and downgraded to version 4, probably for the next year or two...
_________________
Cheers,

Oliver 'Bloody' Lange.

orionbelt · Apprentice Joined: 05 Apr 2006 Posts: 178

Like a Christmas tree, my KDE 5 chugs along from version to version, fixing some problems while creating new ones... Quite insane for a supposedly "stable" package. No doubt KDE luminaries will shortly start working on KDE 6 --and force us to "upgrade" to an alpha-testing version by discontinuing support for KDE 5... (Only it won't happen that time: My alternative DE is already compiled and in place, waiting for the final "straw" to become the workhorse DE...)

Anyway, KDE devs aren't listening to their lusers anyway, so enough with complaints...

I am posting this because the "focus follows mouse" / "focus follows mouse - mouse precedence" / "focus under mouse" / "focus strictly under mouse" options that i have successively enabled on my kwin WM do not work as they should. I.e., when i move the mouse across the screen, more often than not the focus is not on the last window where the mouse stops moving, but in some random intermediate window. I must very often click on the last window (where the mouse stopped moving) in order to switch focus to that window!

This is of course terribly debilitating for someone who wants, and is used to, "focus under mouse". In worst-case scenarios, the text i start typing in the window where the mouse stopped is instead passed to another window, sometimes with annoying or catastrophic results --as in, pressing CTRL-Q on the wrong window and losing work...

I was thinking of making a bug report on KDE's bugzilla but in view of the lively discussions here and the helpful replies by asturm, i figured i might as well post here first, in case i am missing something...

BTW, i was told by a KDE dev at a recent FOSS event that there is only... ONE (1) (!!!) developer currently working on kwin!!! Can someone confirm this?? I so much hope it's wrong...

Goverp · Advocate Joined: 07 Mar 2007 Posts: 2004

One advantage of the latest layered approach (Qt, Frameworks, Plasma, Apps - sorry if I have the wrong hierarchy) is to make it clearer that LXQt may be a better way to go ;-)

I confidently expect KDE6 to introduce a new layer, perhaps wayland/weston support, over the top of kde-apps :-)

_________________
Greybeard

asturm · Developer Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 8936

Layered approach - you mean applications depending on libraries? Yeah, seems like a completely outlandish concept.

KDE 3 consisted of kdelibs-3 on top of Qt3, with Workspace and Applications using them.
KDE SC 4 consisted of kdelibs-4 on top of Qt4 with Plasma-4 and Applications using them.

Now we have:
KDE Frameworks = split-up kdelibs on top of Qt5
KDE Plasma 5 is built on Frameworks and Qt5
KDE Applications is built on Frameworks and Qt5

Goverp · Advocate Joined: 07 Mar 2007 Posts: 2004

What in essence I mean is, there's been a tremendous churn in KDE for virtually no end-user or application developer advantage. (I understand the benefits of layers and the intention to break monolithic libraries into smaller, directed, chunks).

As a specific example, I use UFW as a firewall. There's a KDE4 GUI, kcm_ufw IIRC. The developer has not ported it to KDE5. I thought I'd look at that. It's a reasonably small Python app, so I looked at the porting guide. Ye deities! I have more important stuff to do than try to understand all the changes and linked documents describing API changes. I guess that's what the original developer thought. So another app bites the dust.

With KDE4, I felt the rate at which new apps hit the streets dropped significantly. I don't think I could name any new apps since KDE5 (apart from reworkings of things broken by KDE5). KDE5 might be a wonderful step forward, but it's the apps I use, the desktop is just a means of finding them. (And to add insult to injury, I can't even run the eye candy any more. There's probably some crud left in my configuration, and no doubt it's my fault.)

As for wayland, I was joking, hence the smiley. I know wayland's support's already included. Be nice if I could get it to work, but my desktop locked up and I had to kill it.
_________________
Greybeard

asturm · Developer Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 8936

orionbelt · Apprentice Joined: 05 Apr 2006 Posts: 178

asturm · Developer Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 8936

Qt very much cares about mobile these days, desktop not so much, and fixes are a tedious process to get included. Several KDE devs have Qt accounts, but that doesn't make them 'Qt developers', and they struggle to get patches included as everyone else, despite multiple known issues. Similar to me, where I have a KDE dev account for easier contributing, but that doesn't make me a 'KDE developer' and all my patches go through the review process as anyone elses. I do know of only one 'Qt regular' that is frequently in KDE IRC channels.

orionbelt · Apprentice Joined: 05 Apr 2006 Posts: 178

asturm · Developer Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 8936

No, you don't lightheartedly fork left and right. It is still better to depend on an actual maintained library than a zombie.

orionbelt · Apprentice Joined: 05 Apr 2006 Posts: 178

I said "stable and well-maintained", not a zombie. E.g., the moment Qt5 is declared "unmaintained", have a group of people who will apply security and usability bug fixes but no new features, and have KDE depend on that. Unless KDE has the manpower to follow Qt's development speed without sacrificing packages, features and stability.

I did not mean to imply it in a lighthearted way, but if Qt moves in a direction (mobile) that does not serve KDE's primarily desktop interests, or changes at a speed that KDE cannot match, then there doesn't seem to be much of a choice if KDE wants to offer a stable product.

asturm · Developer Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 8936

We're nowhere near that though, that's why I dismissed the idea. Also with web technologies that you need for certain products like konqueror and kdepim you just can't afford to stay behind on security updates, which will inevitably happen if you don't have the manpower to take care of your fork (you don't). What may happen sooner or later is a separate patchset to Qt for fixes of known bugs.

gerard27 · Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2017 7:16 pm Post subject:

I am on ~amd64,but I don't think that's the cause.
Yesterday I upgraded my box and kde-plasma went to 5.9.4.
The problem I had with the digital clock reappeared.
When I visit a tty terminal upon return a number of digits of the clock disappear.
To fix this I can either log out and in.
What proved to be a better way is right click on the clock and open Digital Clock Settings.
Change the font style and click apply.
After this I can visit tty's w/o the clock digits disappearing.

Wacomtablet settings still no worky.
But the kde devs probably think that nobody uses a drawing tablet,so why bother.
Gerard.
_________________
To install Gentoo I use sysrescuecd.Based on Gentoo,has firefox to browse Gentoo docs and mc to browse (and edit) files.
The same disk can be used for 32 and 64 bit installs.
You can follow the Handbook verbatim.
http://www.sysresccd.org/Download

orionbelt · Apprentice Joined: 05 Apr 2006 Posts: 178

asturm · Developer Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 8936

Come on, you should really know better than that; the guy doing promo videos really only does that. If he stops doing that, we just lose video, but do not gain any code. The members of the VDG really do design mostly; similar to translators who often are not programmers at all.

Wrt wacomtablet, it is not 'the KDE devs' choosing to neglect this piece of KCM; the *one guy* working on this package that - again, is not part of KDE Applications - apparently lacks the time to keep up with xsetwacom changes and finishing the port. But it's not like you can't use your tablet, no?

Also orionbelt, I realise that 'my bug is always the most important bug', but just because you found an issue with one of the plethora of configuration options of Plasma, doesn't render it unusable as a whole. Please check that a KDE bug report exists and if not, open one.

UralZima · n00b Joined: 04 Mar 2017 Posts: 9

Hello. Going back to the topic...
Based on KDE3.5->KDE4 experience, I waited long time before switching to Plasma 5.
When I saw news about Plasma LTS, I decided to upgrade. And you know, I am happy.

I am using it about a year, since 5.8.0, now 5.9.4. All is working fine, stable, and I don't have any noticeable issues. The most amazing feature is Klipper's search bar

No crashes at all.

I am using it on Gentoo-hardened, GCC 5.4.0, Latest hardened-sources with grsecurity and mprotect, ZFS. I keep a list of executables for paxctld which need exceptions on Plasma 5 to work well.

My package.keywords contains this:
kde-frameworks/* ~amd64
kde-plasma/* ~amd64
kde-apps/* ~amd64
kde-misc/* ~amd64
dev-qt/* ~amd64
dev-util/kdevelop* ~amd64
dev-util/kdevplatform ~amd64

So I have latest updates immediately and it was safe for me since 5.8.0.

So personally I would recommend anyone to use Plasma 5 and be active user. I am reporting every bug I found to bugs.kde.org, it takes me 1-2 min, and they are resolving fast.

Plasma is the best DE and I will never switch to gnome/xfce/mate/etc. And it is lightweight, not consuming much resources.

orionbelt · Apprentice Joined: 05 Apr 2006 Posts: 178

asturm · Developer Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 8936