Just to get it out of the way: I’m a bit older than of most you. I’m an old school FOSS contributor: Slackware, couple kernel merges, and some weak device driver contributions.

I’m just not WOW’d by this Plasma release that is spoken as a Herculean effort. I’m seeing the news everywhere, and it seems everyone is clamoring to get it, but it mostly seems like 90% cosmetic changes, no? I must be missing something.

Here are the things I’ve gathered are non-cosmetic:

  • Update to QT6
  • Better Wayland interactions (HDR notable)
  • Compositor improvements for gaming

Everything else seems like eye candy. I feel like Gnome and forks, or Xfce have been faster to the fight on these things, and this KDE release took many years. So what do I have wrong here?

  • ZephrC@lemm.ee
    401·
    9 months ago

    You think Xfce has been “faster to the fight” on what exactly? It’s famously slow to do anything. It still doesn’t even have Wayland support at all, let alone support as good as Plasma.

    Plasma vs Gnome is a lot more subjective depending on your priorities, and Gnome was certainly faster to get to Wayland as it’s primary display protocol. I’m not quite sure about what else you might think Gnome is faster at though. It’s actually way behind in things like gaming support and HDR.

    Plasma 6 was specifically planned to focus on a polished release and reduction in technical debt, not introducing flashy new features. I haven’t tried it yet, but I LIKE those priorities for a major porting effort. I’m looking forward to trying it when it comes to my distro.

  • Strit@lemmy.linuxuserspace.show
    34·
    9 months ago

    Update to QT6

    This one is a big thing. Lots of stuff changed between qt5 and qt6, so it was a massive effort to get done. They also used this “rewrite” to clean up the code a lot.

  • Fryboyter@discuss.tchncs.de
    251·
    9 months ago

    Here are the things I’ve gathered are non-cosmetic:

    Based on https://kde.org/de/announcements/megarelease/6/, I think that many more things are not just purely cosmetic changes.

    I must be missing something.

    I would say you simply have the wrong expectation that with a so-called mega release a lot of big changes have to happen that the user has to notice immediately. However, many of the changes in Plasma 6 are probably not huge. But many smaller changes are also many changes.

    And as others have already written, the changeover to QT 6 was probably not an easy task.

    I also see Plasma 6.0 as a basis for things that are planned in Plasma 6.1 or later versions, for example, and are therefore not yet visible to the user. Articles on the development of Plasma are regularly published at https://pointieststick.com, which provide a more detailed insight into the development process.

  • leopold@lemmy.kde.socialEnglish
    16·
    9 months ago

    Faster to the fight for what? Wayland? Xfce doesn’t even have a working Wayland session yet, so surely not. The new Plasma update is indeed being hyped for stability and Wayland. Wayland is finally ready to be used by default and that’s a big deal. Many of the biggest issues with 5.27 have been fixed, which has improved usability a lot. HDR is also a big deal, people have been waiting for years for it to work on desktop Linux. Yes, there is also a lot of “eyecandy”. People constantly complain Plasma looks ancient compared to GNOME, so they’re doing something about it.

    • lemmyvore@feddit.nlEnglish
      1·
      9 months ago

      HDR is also a big deal, people have been waiting for years for it to work on desktop Linux.

      Unless I’m missing something they’re going to wait a bit more, no? Plasma 6 only has experimental support. Neither X nor Wayland support it. Cosmic says they’ll support it but Cosmic is not here yet.

      Some Steam games can use HDR if you have a patched kernel and the latest Nvidia/AMD drivers but they do so without help from the desktop environment. That’s pretty much the only use case I can think of, not sure I’d call it a “big deal”.

  • calm.like.a.bomb@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    12·
    9 months ago

    As others have said, moving to QT6 was a massive effort. There were a lot of changes due to that. And if you would have followed their progress, they always said the user will only see minor changes, so there’s that.

    Another thing that has changed is much better Wayland support and this is also a big effort.

  • bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
    101·
    9 months ago

    So you’re saying you don’t see the value in a piece of software which provides a graphical interface getting updated graphics? Of course the update is a lot of eye candy. That’s literally how you improve a DE. You make it look better.

    • just_another_person@lemmy.worldOP
      47·
      9 months ago

      I’m wondering why the entire community is collectively shitting themselves over a minor overhaul, when other DEs have been making big swinging changes.

        • just_another_person@lemmy.worldOP
          49·
          9 months ago

          You mean “swinging”? I’ll also bite. Things that would make me switch:

          • incorporating Valve’s work
          • Simplifying KDE apps and menus
          • Fix the fullscreen composite issues
          • Fix dbus access for apps launched via KDE
          • Hone the media controls like GNOME
          • Fix Kwallet so it doesn’t crash on every unexpected error
          • Stop the constant refresh rate negotiation for VRR and make it not blank screens
          • Stop the unnecessary userland restrictions for devices like USB ports
          • Stop secondary mounts to remote locations just because I connected that one time
          • If the secret store isn’t working, just say so. Don’t loop and ask me if I want to relaunch

          All fairly low-hanging fruit.

  • ScottE@lemm.ee
    31·
    9 months ago

    So what do I have wrong here?

    Nothing, as far as I’m concerned. I guess DEs have to constantly change or they become stale to some people. I’m an older guy than the normal demographic here too and stale is exactly what I want. I run i3 with a bunch of terminals, a browser, and sublime text when vi in a terminal isn’t enough (yes, it’s really vim, but it’ll always be vi to me), and I xsetroot the classic weave pattern for my background. That’s it. I don’t need or want menus, widgets, themes, file managers or anything else. I guess someday Wayland will win, and I’ll be forced to do something different, but until then, not changing this extremely productive and efficient environment.

    • just_another_person@lemmy.worldOP
      22·
      9 months ago

      Friend, thank you. This is this informed explanation I wanted, and turns me to appreciating the work. I’d give you a token if I could.

  • Buffalox@lemmy.world
    2·
    9 months ago

    One thing that annoyed the hell out of me with KDE/QT, was that the numpad didn’t work for shortcuts, so I couldn’t tile windows with it.
    Does QT6 still have this problem?

        • Para_lyzed@lemmy.world
          1·
          9 months ago

          As far as I know, it should be vanilla. I haven’t tried the KDE version though, as I’ll be switching to Kinoite/Fedora Atomic KDE when Fedora 40 releases. My understanding is that Fedora doesn’t really make opinionated changes to their DEs, but I don’t know that for a fact.

  • Handles@leminal.spaceEnglish
    512·
    9 months ago

    In my personal and very subjective experience though, KDE is generally 90% cosmetic. I even cringe when a package requires QT as a dependency because I always associate it with the extraneous bling of KDE.