
KDE Ships Second Beta of Next Generation Plasma Workspace - Tsiolkovsky
http://kde.org/announcements/plasma5.0-beta2/
======
gnufied
About 4 years ago, I switched from KDE/Kubuntu to OSX. Not because I hated
KDE, but because my job needed OSX. It takes divvy, sizeup, apptivate,
bartenderapp to do, what I was able to do with KDE out of box. The dual
monitor support in OSX is still not in par with KDE.

I have been using Kubuntu/KDE as my main workstation for last couple of months
and I love depth of how much is possible with window environment. I think KDE
works pretty well for powerusers as well as beginners and I am excited to see
its new update!

~~~
tenken
and yet every OSX diehard will think you're on crack and KDE is inferior.

~~~
micampe
Please don’t stir conflict by only reasoning in terms superior and inferior.

Things are _different_ , no need to order them, especially on one single axis.

~~~
mwfunk
You made the point I was trying to make far better than I did. Whether or not
it's the poster's intent, the terms superior and inferior imply that there is
some objective judgement being made about the thing being discussed that is
independent of one's personal preferences.

I honestly think that almost all pointless flamewars in tech forums about the
relative merits of various languages/operating systems/editors/desktop
environments/whatever stem from confusion among the participants over whether
personal preferences or objective qualities are being discussed. It doesn't
help that for a lot of people in the larval hacker stage, there is no
distinction between objective and subjective judgements- if they happen to
prefer vi to emacs, they interpret that as meaning that vi is intrinsically
better in some way, and isn't just a better fit for their particular workflow
or whatever.

------
jcromartie
This screenshot:
[http://kde.org/announcements/plasma5.0-beta2/plasma50b2-netw...](http://kde.org/announcements/plasma5.0-beta2/plasma50b2-networks.png)

Is this supposed to illustrate the "beta-ness" of the release? Because it's an
atrocious UI. Two different-sized "wrench" icons next to each other? What are
those checkboxes for? What does the little blue bar above the wireless symbol
supposed to indicate? The blue lock is lost in the wireless icon in the
network list (the eye is terrible at distinguishing blue shapes on a noisy
background like that). It goes on and on...

~~~
Shamanmuni
It has some minor issues, sure, but I'm completely missing the atrocious part.
In fact, I think it's quite nice, hope to use this UI soon. It would be great
if you could send an email to the developers with your observations as, you
know, it's a beta and some help is always needed.

I wonder why so many design-related critiques sound as if someone comitted a
crime against humanity. C'est la vie, I suppose.

~~~
mpyne
> I wonder why so many design-related critiques sound as if someone comitted a
> crime against humanity. C'est la vie, I suppose.

The comments here were even more virulent with the last beta. I didn't even
bother to comment then, what can you say to people who expect multi-million
dollar polished U/I out of a beta from one of the last large community-
developed open source projects, as if KDE has some sort of hidden pool of paid
artists and capital development programs?

Even Firefox on Linux still looks worse than KDE (IMHO) but people (even on
HN) don't stop to base their opinion on Firefox based only on that.

As for me, I'm incredibly proud of those who develop the visual design for
KDE, especially since they do so with no compensation. KDE has come a _very_
long way since KDE 2 and 3 and that is almost entirely from true volunteer
effort; while there is always room for improvement I think KDE looks good. Not
even "good for what resources we have", but good _per se_ , and if the
screenshot of this beta is any indication KDE's Plasma 5 will look even
better.

------
johnchristopher
Based on the screenshots it seem KDE devs tone down their interface to simpler
visuals (icons, colours, shades and all the blingbling I usually associate KDE
with).

Is that the trend for the next iteration of KDE ? (I like it)

~~~
veeti
Yes, they have a new design project:
[http://wheeldesign.blogspot.fi/](http://wheeldesign.blogspot.fi/)

Although in my opinion their work hasn't exactly been a huge improvement so
far. It's just a flatter coat of paint with the same issues that already
plague KDE: inconsistent padding and spacing, terrible organization (think
system settings) and so on.

~~~
KAMiKAZOW
You link to a blog and yet you apparently don't read it. KDE System Settings
is being redisigned as well. Just scroll down a bit:
[http://wheeldesign.blogspot.fi/2014/05/system-settings-
and-n...](http://wheeldesign.blogspot.fi/2014/05/system-settings-and-new-vdg-
members.html)

The redesign is not in this beta and, depending how long it takes, maybe won't
make it into the first final release either. Partially it's even by design.
It's not intended that Plasma 5 diverges too much from the current release to
ease the transition.

~~~
ama729
I have to say, this[1] looks downright impressive. Congrats everyone!

Edit: To add a bit more to the conversation, does the change from Canonical to
Blue Systems[2] changed much to the development of Kubuntu/KDE?

[1]
[https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-asFPvnoidnw/U4cXbGCcv2I/AAAAAAAAM...](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-asFPvnoidnw/U4cXbGCcv2I/AAAAAAAAM3I/dEIyVSNFf_w/s1600/SystemSettings-
New_zpsce8cb0ac.png)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Systems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Systems)

~~~
baldfat
Only my opinion and probably wrong BUT

KUbuntu = Worst KDE integration and the cause for why so many people have a
negative view of KDE!

OpenSUSE = Best KDE integration

~~~
pestaa
What makes you say KDE is badly integrated in Kubuntu?

~~~
KAMiKAZOW
Kubuntu constantly ships pre-release software. One example in the current
"stable" LTS is this touchpad config panel:
[http://imgur.com/JIuCNqg](http://imgur.com/JIuCNqg)

------
aruggirello
I'm enthusiast of KDE. Keep up the good work guys!

BTW I'm using KDevelop to edit PHP. It's come a long way since its
introduction, and is now almost on par (feature-wise) with Netbeans, which
makes it the second best free PHP IDE for Linux!

------
cmpaul
This tickles me: "With a substantial new toolkit stack below come exciting new
crashes and problems that need time to be shaken out." I think I'll refer to
all crashes as "exciting" from now on.

------
kozhevnikov
I found it hilarious that the first screenshot links to a thumbnail ending in
'-wee.png' and goes to full size when 'wee' removed. I'm easily amused. Are
developers Scottish?

------
intull
I like KDE a lot for its UI/UX. KDE actually has the potential to intuitively
replace Windows in many households with shared systems and also in educational
institutions. But the only major problem with KDE is that its very heavy and
takes a lot of resources.

Does the next generation workspace just change the UI/UX or optimize stuff
too? The post doesn't talk much about that.

~~~
KAMiKAZOW
Actually more optimization is taking place than visual refreshes. Porting the
stuff to Qt5 (esp. QtQuick2) should speed everything up on non-ancient PCs.
Visual refreshes are just easier to explain. ;-)

~~~
intull
Its not speed I'm bothered about. KDE is more or less very smooth at that. Its
the resources it takes! The CPU is always nearly being utilized on a small-
medium scale, and nearly 700mb is taken away at boot-time and gathers upto 2gb
upon usage. That's too high, at least I think so.

Would KDE actually require so much for all the features it gives or can that
actually come down?

~~~
milliams
Why would it matter if a piece of software uses CPU and RAM if it doesn't
negatively affect the performance of the system?

~~~
Narishma
It may not impact the performance, but it certainly does the battery life and
fan noise in a laptop.

------
jbert
Is there an easy way with KDE4/dbus to get functionality similar to KDE3/dcop?

Example task:

1) inspect running konsole task to find exposed interfaces

2) find one related to background colour

3) script up "change background colour to red in current konsole" command

Last time I looked at the KDE+dbus situation (early KDE4) it seemed this was
really hard.

~~~
emilsedgh
Of course. It's DBUS. You can trigger dbus functions using QDbus. `qdbus
org.kde.konsole` shows you available functionality. Browse through it.

~~~
jbert
Thanks. qdbusviewer shows some available interfaces.

Looks like a bunch of konsole stuff never got implemented as dbus interfaces
in KDE4. This specific use case seems to be covered by the konsoleprofile
command (I wonder why the devs chose that route instead of exposing a dbus
interface).

------
oridecon
Kickstart me some decent icons already, geez. I think it's the number one
complain every single time somebody opens a KDE thread.

Anyway, I don't use KDE but I think it does a lot of good things and I wish
them luck. Using XFCE right now and couldn't be happier.

Also: they could take a very clean approach, like really minimal design and
leverage their customization options (that they are famous for) to a few
themes and let the community do the rest. Like "sane defaults" that don't
scare newbies. I know it's not easy.

------
doktrin
I think what strikes me about DE upgrades like this is that they don't appear
to add anything fundamentally new or promise to provide me with a meaningfully
improved or more efficient experience.

For my part - ever since switching to i3, I can't really see myself using any
other WM. Once I got used to not touching the mouse, I lost all desire to use
a traditional mouse centric GUI.

~~~
pestaa
I use KDE at work and rarely touch the mouse to switch between windows. I have
two monitors, and a couple of keyboard shortcuts, but power-usage comes with a
price. I bet i3 needs a little tinkering too.

~~~
doktrin
> _I bet i3 needs a little tinkering too._

IIRC, the only real tinkering I did was to re-jig the navigation shortcuts to
resemble VIM bindings. From a user's perspective i3 is comparable to xmonad,
but configuration wise it's an order of magnitude simpler.

i3 does, however, come at a price. Not being inside a fully functional DE
means a lot of normally trivial tasks require active thought and engagement,
at least at first, since they will have to either be handled via the command
line or by seeking out the correct application (e.g. managing wi-fi
connections, handling dual-monitors & monitor rotation, etc.)

------
tormeh
Can I press super/win-key, type [name of application], press enter and it
brings up the [application]? It didn't when I last tried, and I don't want a
window manager that doesn't behave in that way. Windows, Gnome shell and Unity
does it - it's not hard.

~~~
klearvue
Alt+F2 in KDE to bring up KRunner but you can change it to whatever keys you
like

~~~
tormeh
Nice. I don't get why they can't just use the super key by default like
everyone else, but it's not a very big problem. Is it a fuzzy search? How does
it handle "term" and "temrinal"?

~~~
KAMiKAZOW
They can use the key. They just don't change default keyboard shortcuts during
a release cycle (first generation Plasma precedes both Unity and Gnome Shell).

------
gpo
For God's sake. I don't care a dime about fancy UIs. I mean, I really, really,
really don't care. I want a robust and reliable system that doesn't change all
the time for no good reason. I want a worthy Outlook alternative. Outlook is
much more than just an email client. Kontact, Evolution and
Thunderbird+Lightning just aren't good enough (they're simply full of bugs and
I've tried all 3 of them). Why waste all those manhours in useless ice candy
and not improve those instead?

~~~
KAMiKAZOW
People who develop desktop themes are NOT the same who program PIM software.

~~~
gpo
You're right. After all, what we're seeing here is just a small theme revamp.

------
jacquesm
KDE is slowly losing ground. It used to be my desktop of choice but that was
in the knoppix days. Now there is of course Kubuntu but I switched (more or
less by accident rather than by design) a while ago and I don't think I'll be
switching back. My desktop is practically invisible to me anyway, all I run on
a normal workday is firefox, a terminal window and thunderbird.

The one piece of software from the KDE distro that I really love is Konsole.

~~~
andmarios
If you love Konsole, give yakuake a try. It is Konsole in quake fashion; you
press F12 and a terminal drops down. I can't imagine life without it.

~~~
dikei
I absolutely love yakuake. One of the reason why I'm still using KDE.

~~~
mikevm
There's Guake for GNOME (and Unity):
[https://github.com/Guake/guake/](https://github.com/Guake/guake/)

~~~
chronid
Guake in GNOME3 was pretty broken the last time I used it (a lot of time ago,
it was the thing that made me switch to a tiling WM). Something changed
lately?

------
madprops
I see they got rid of that peanut to manage widgets in the panel. I never
liked that.

------
Sharphunter
The latest update really disappointed. I'd rather re-built the distro myself.

------
noobSemanticist
I wish we had a way to run KDE on a retina MBP...

------
josephschmoe
I would be so happy if when companies make announcements, they included a link
at the top telling you what their product is.

