
This week in KDE: polishing the System Tray and more - jrepinc
https://pointieststick.com/2020/03/14/this-week-in-kde-polishing-the-system-tray-and-more/
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thesimp
I've used Kubuntu as a normal every day desktop for some time and there are
two simple annoyances that popup in my mind:

\- when I get a notification in the systray that there is an update I click on
it but nothing happens. Then I have to click on the Update Manager which also
presents itself in the systray as having an update to start the actual update
process. Why can't the program giving the notification be started directly
from the notification popup window?

\- the restart/shutdown dialog is infuriating!. When I click on restart or
shutdown I get presented with a full screen overlay in which I have to click
again on restart or shutdown. Ok: I understand the need for a confirmation.
But the click area is very sensitive and I you accidentally just outside of
the icon area you will be dropped back to the desktop. ARGH! Why do UI
designers always think that everyone has some sort of FPS aiming capability
with the mouse and can repeatedly click with pixel accuracy?

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viraptor
I agree the UI for the second point is annoying. There's a workaround though:
The option you wanted is preselected. You can press enter and get the action
you wanted without a mouse.

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andrew_xor_andy
In my personal experience, I've found KDE to be technically more interesting
than Gnome, but Gnome to be better designed in terms of user experience.

I wish Gnome could match the power/performance of KDE, or KDE could match the
user friendliness and visual consistency of Gnome...

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jsjddbbwj
Polishing is something the KDE taskbar desperately needs. Glad to see it
happen.

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neilalexander
That mouse pointer in particular. It is hideous and distracting.

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weare138
You can change the mouse pointer in KDE.

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aliswe
Just wanted to point out that this kind of response puts off many would-be
users of any software.

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weare138
I honestly don't see how the default mouse pointer in KDE is hideous or
distracting.

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/Kubuntu_...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/Kubuntu_18.04_KDE_5.12.7-el_Screenshot_20190306_221603.png)

[https://kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.12/kdeconnect.png](https://kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.12/kdeconnect.png)

~~~
aliswe
Never seen it before so tbh it looks kinda .... Obese?

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shmerl
How is the progress of subsurfaces clipping bug in the Wayland session? It
takes a really long time.

Is there any public info on the progress?

~~~
Vogtinator
Do you mean
[https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-54888](https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-54888)?
That's a Qt bug, not in KDE software.

~~~
shmerl
No, I mean this one:
[https://phabricator.kde.org/T10530](https://phabricator.kde.org/T10530)

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hexo
Did they already add "turn off all animations and needless movements, fades
and transparencies" option? I guess not, and I'd really appreciate it. KDE
would became useful for me again. Seriously, I've booted live USB on thinkpad
x240 and there was some current KDE running. For a few minutes I thought there
was something very wrong with laptop, but it was KDE making feel core-i7 like
lowend celeron. It makes me wonder if authors use that environment on very
high-end machines exclusively. Also "start menu", sorry for the naming, feels
like unstoppable carousel to me (those sliding tabs). All this is a pity
because I really do like QT for development, but unstoppable animations are
no-go

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Arnavion
>Did they already add "turn off all animations and needless movements, fades
and transparencies" option?

Yes, ~10 years ago.

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michaelmrose
This highlights the difference between defaults and options.

Options that would solve a users problems often go unused leaving the user
with a negative opinion.

Maybe as part of first run it ought to set a default useful based on current
performance.

It might also be worthwhile to think about how it degrades under pressure. Is
it possible to notice frames dropped or delayed and degrade more gracefully.

~~~
simion314
I think there are some blacklisted video cards. I assume is is not as easy as
you think to write the code that detects the perfect thresholds where
animations are smooth all the time. I would like to assume that most KDE users
are competent enough to at least google the answer on how to turn the
animations off and desktop effects too (I mean somehow they installed a KDE
distro finding a checkbox should be much easier).

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michaelmrose
In theory but never overestimate human competence or underestimate the value
of good defaults.

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simion314
There will always be some people that will disagree with the defaults. plus
metrics/telemetry is disliked by many users and is not built into the
software. Knowing what settings are changed often could help, though it
depends on project, I see many GNOME users changing defaults with adding a
system tray extensions and nobody cares.

