
KDE Plasma 5 - pavlov
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/08/kde-plasma-5-for-those-linux-users-undecided-on-the-kernels-future/
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agumonkey
Am I the only one who lost interest in Desktop Environments ? I'm either
satisfied with bare minimum (XFCE/ThunarFM...) or barest minimal
(wmii/xmonad...).

KDE5 is surely a great piece of tech but I fail to see what's new except for a
cleaner KDE4 in terms of UX; these days I feel dom/javascript bear more
innovation (maybe too much).

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mike-cardwell
Gnome, Unity, KDE. I couldn't care less. They all let me launch apps and
switch between them quickly and easily. That's all I need from a desktop
environment. I don't understand why people feel so passionate about them.

~~~
rplnt
Gnome doesn't let you switch easily (alt-tab is somewhat bad). Gnome doesn't
let you see your apps well (huge waste of space for candy graphics). [and the
list with Gnome goes on and on]; KDE doesn't let you launch them easily (yay
for ignoring super-key). KDE is super unstable. I'm sure there are caveats
with Unity as well. Simply, there is still reason to chose one or the other,
these systems are not interchangeable in looks, feel, or functionality.

~~~
jkbyc
Alt-Tab works perfectly fine for me in Gnome Shell (I was initially annoyed by
Alt+` to switch windows within a program group but now I find it useful). I
find the app overview also clear and very usable. And it's nice that it's
JavaScript-based so I can tweak some minor things easily (hot corner on
external monitors).

For Unity I'm probably simply not in the target group, I don't like it.

I left KDE many years ago because I found it buggy and bloated. Maybe it's
time to give it a look but I'm happy with my Gnome Shell (in a very nearly out
of the box configuration).

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marrs

      I was initially annoyed by Alt+` to switch windows within a program group but now I find it useful
    

Oh, you're joking. They will have pinched that one from Apple. I've gotten
used to it as well, but it's one of Mac's worst features, and completely
opposed to the notion of activities over apps, which I remember was a big
thing for Gnome when they were discussing their v3 vision (which at the time I
found compelling and is probably best realised today on Windows Mobile).

Personally, I left Gnome because it felt unrefined and designed for a device
other than a conventional laptop (i.e. one without a touch screen). I left KDE
many years before then because I found the UI too busy, but they seem to have
left that behind them so it might be time for me to take another look as well.

~~~
jkbyc
Well, I never was much concerned about UI/desktop visions and philosophies.
Maybe I am missing out on something, I don't know. I like that Gnome Shell
goes pretty much out of my way most of the time and works for me without
tweaking, without bloat and is intuitive enough (plus I like its rudimentary
support of window tiling). I agree with other people commenting here - I
simply want to get my work done and don't care much about else, I especially
don't care how well it works with touch screens - I don't have any use for
that.

On the other hand, the persistent sessions/activities in KDE someone mentioned
sound intriguing.

What did you switch to?

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smacktoward
A weird thing about this article is the way it's all "ewww, Unity, that's for
tablets, gross."

One of the things I like about Unity on the desktop is _how keyboard-oriented
it is._ Features like the Dash and the HUD are specifically aimed at exposing
functionality without requiring you to take your hands off the keyboard in
order to push a mouse around. Which is appealing, at least to me. But whatever
it is, it definitely is not tablet-oriented.

It's true that Canonical's vision for Unity is that it will eventually scale
up and down beyond desktop/laptop displays, but they have absolutely not taken
the Windows 8 approach of starting with a touch UI and then jamming it onto
machines where it doesn't fit. Instead they've come up with a core set of
metaphors (the Dash, scopes, etc.) and then looked for ways to present them
appropriately on different platforms, which seems much more sensible.

~~~
moystard
I could not have said that better: I actually love the keyboard oriented
approach of Unity. If you further install Unity Tweak Tool / Ubuntu Tweak, you
can also get keyboard shortcuts for tiling and organizing your application
windows. I used to be a Gnome Shell user, but Unity has definitely convinced
me in its last version and I feel more productive than ever, as I rarely have
to touch my mouse when coding.

If only there was a decent launcher on Linux, I could definitely put OSX
behind me.

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jiggy2011
> If only there was a decent launcher on Linux, I could definitely put OSX
> behind me.

I like synapse, it's very fast and simple.

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moystard
I tried it, as well as Gnome Do, but it is far from being as feature complete
and extensible as Alfred.

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fafner
I think KDE is doing the right steps with KDE5 technology-wise. But I'm still
very confused by the way KDE split up the project and started to do separate
releases. Now we have Plasma5 and I think there is a 5 version of the
frameworks but not of KWin etc. I mean sure it will help them get the projects
released and tested. But I'd love to hear a "KDE 5 released" announcement and
install it. Instead of "One part of KDE 5 was released" announcement every
once in a while.

And yeah Breeze looks awesome. Can't wait to use it.

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sho_hn
Nah, it's not that hard. There's three parts:

* KDE Frameworks 5, which is a modularized, tiered set of libraries and runtime components that complement Qt with functionality useful to building apps and shells.

* KDE Plasma 5, a set of shells implemented using Frameworks 5. Plasma Desktop is the most prominent of those. KWin is part of Plasma, FWIW, so sure, it's at 5 now.

* KDE Applications. Not yet at 5, but will increasingly ship ports of individual applications to KF5 over the next releases.

Contrast this with KDE 4 development. KDE 4.0 (which contained all of these
things in one) came years after the last major release of KDE 3, thus stopping
the world cold for its entire development cycle, and e.g. preventing apps from
doing feature releases. Separating these things and releasing them
independently means that Plasma continued to make 4.x releases during ramp-up
of Frameworks 5 development, KDE Applications kept doing feature releases
while Plasma 5 is materializing, and so on. It's just a lesson learned from
the last round. It's certainly more complex from a "SKU" perspective, but the
net effect on users is not leaving them stranded for years. The effect on
developers has actually been increased productivity: Plasma 5 development
happening against already somewhat-stable Frameworks 5 instead of starting out
at the same time, for example.

~~~
fafner
That does make sense. But it still leaves me a bit wondering what the state of
KDE5 is. I mean when can it be considered as released and ready for
production? Will Kubuntu ship Plasma5/KF5 next release (14.10) even if the
applications are not yet ready?

~~~
sho_hn
> I mean when can it be considered as released and ready for production?

A fair question :). Let me summarize:

* KDE Frameworks 5 made its first stable release on July 7th, 2014. That's since been followed by Frameworks 5.1 one month later. It's monthly releases from here on out. This is production-ready code.

* KDE Plasma 5 made its first stable release on July 15th, 2015. This was followed by Plasma 5.0.1 one month later. Plasma 5 does monthly maintenance releases, while feature releases are on a three-month interval, i.e. Plasma 5.1 will be released in October. 5.0 is considered a stable release, but it's a dot-oh with some rough edges (nothing comparable to 4.0 at release, though), and the distros are also still doing their integration work right now. The release notes and an errata list provide some guidance there. Most distros will replace Plasma 4 as default with 5.1 or 5.2 later this year, when everything will have settled nicely.

* KDE Applications is doing a 4.14 feature release this month. This will be the last one built entirely on the KDE 4 libraries. Future KDE Applications releases will start shipping ports of apps to Frameworks 5, at the discretion of their individual maintainers/dev teams (some have had porting branches for a good while).

> Will Kubuntu ship Plasma5/KF5 next release (14.10) even if the applications
> are not yet ready?

I'm not 100% on top of the plans of the Kubuntu community, but I believe 14.10
is still going to use Plasma 4 by default - you might want to look into that
more closely though, I'm not certain. I'm sure they'll offer Plasma 5 for
interested users in some form as well though. They probably do already. KDE 4
apps still run in Plasma 5, of course, so that's no limitation (and KF5 apps
also run in Plasma 4, for that matter).

Yes, on the promo front this does mean we don't get to do a big "BANG! It's
KDE 5!" moment, but it also has some advantages for promo - e.g. driving home
that KF5 isn't useful just for making apps that run in Plasma, and by
implication that KDE Applications aren't useful just in Plasma.

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srean
As an fvwm user (nothing fancy in my configs) whenever a thread like this
kicks up, I scan the comments for other fvwm users. Maybe I will run into one,
nope, not one to be found. Fvwm user feels lonely.

~~~
kbenson
Generally an FVWM user, but been running Windows lately for work. I still keep
my customized configs[1] around for when I need them though, as whenever I use
a *nix for a workstation, it's invariably what I install.

1: Of course, part of the fun of running FVWM is seeing screenshots of other
people's FVWM setups or features of other window managers, and then finding
someone who's done the same in FVWM and porting their configs or implementing
it yourself, usually within a few hours at most. It's hard to explain to non-
FVWM users just how versatile it is.

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marktangotango
If computers are to aid humanity via 'intelligence amplification', one might
suppose that the UI would be a siginificant enabler in this regard. So, one
might suppose in a future era, when a lot of work has been done to achieve
this, probably much nearer the singularity, there will be UI which are vastly
different than today. Will it be a single machine based UI (ie a desktop) or
something else?

~~~
VLM
There are also "bandwidth" issues not just generic intelligence amplification.
May very well end up being a CLI, that certainly is higher bandwidth / lower
latency than any sort of GUI.

Also market segmentation. Lets talk Vietnam. You reach the drooling masses
with a graphical action movie like "Platoon". You reach the intellectuals with
a book like "Fire in the Lake". There is no universal human "right" or "wrong"
just different tools.

Given the above paragraph it is highly likely that noobs / non technical
people will stick with touch and GUI and productive tech people will stick
with somewhat more elaborate CLIs.

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jacquesm
The kernel doesn't have much to do with the desktop environment running on top
of it, what would the kernel's future have to do with KDE Plasma 5?

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StevePerkins
As with all headlines on Ars Technica, and similar sites, it has to do with
getting you to click the link.

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xorcist
It's also never the journalist who writes the headline. It's the dude hired to
make people click on them.

