Love your PC to look flashy? The KDE team put in a lot of effort to be both beautiful and functional with the latest Plasma 5.21 release which is out now. Part of the ongoing work to make KDE Plasma look as good as possible, with lots of work big and small going into many areas in this release.
Plasma 5.21 from KDE brings in the brand new application launcher, featuring two panes to make it simple to find the programs you want to launch long with improved navigation for different input types. The older Kickoff launcher is still available too for anyone who prefers it. Plenty of improvements to the default Plasma theme with a refreshed colour scheme and header style, a new Breeze Twilight theme combining dark and light together, there's a brand new Plasma System Monitor for keeping an eye on your system, huge progress towards great KWin and Wayland support as part of their mission to have first class support for Wayland and much more.
Check out their release video:
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The team dedicated this release to Gustavo Carneiro, a KDE contributor from Brazil that died in January of COVID-19.
See the full announcement here.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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furaxhornyx Feb 17, 2021
Also for those that thought the K and G brandings weren't so bad, I have one word for you.....
Galculator
Enough said.
This one gets installed by default with the Cinnamon edition of Manjaro, and each time I want to open the calculator, I curse whoever had this
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TheRiddick Feb 17, 2021
Wonder how long it will be until this rolls out in Manjaro main distro. Outside of the -git packages which I've had issues with before (some apps compiled against the main non-git version).
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Also for those that thought the K and G brandings weren't so bad, I have one word for you.....To be fair, the Gnome calculator is just Calculator, and Galculator is an unrelated project. But yeah, the name is silly.
Galculator
Enough said.
1 Likes, Who?
Pretty cool. Will take some time until it gets into Debian, though.
I always liked KDE. I don't know why. Maybe because it was default on Knoppix when I tried Linux for the first time about twenty years ago but I always had a soft spot for it.
Over time I used fluxbox and then the awesome enlightenment DEs, e16 and e17. Unfortunately the alpha version of the last e17 desktop environment I tried ran more stable than the subsequent beta and release versions so I switched back to KDE.
I always liked KDE. I don't know why. Maybe because it was default on Knoppix when I tried Linux for the first time about twenty years ago but I always had a soft spot for it.
Over time I used fluxbox and then the awesome enlightenment DEs, e16 and e17. Unfortunately the alpha version of the last e17 desktop environment I tried ran more stable than the subsequent beta and release versions so I switched back to KDE.
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I'd prefer qtcurve, but as far as i know the visual configuration tools are no more, so it is a bit hard to craft a new theme.QtCurve 1.9 from official Arch repos
In the kde4 era i've had a lot of fun making themes with it :)
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You don't need to run Kate with sudo. If you really must, you can do the sensible thing and use sudoedit, but Kate will prompt for authorisation when saving a privileged file when run as a normal user anyway.
Not having an easy solution for privileged use of Dolphin is a pain: some file management tasks, particularly as a new user, are much less error-prone when done in a graphical file browser. But you wouldn't have been using sudo with Dolphin in the old days anyway: it would have been kdesu.
Finally someone with a brain, thank you!
Instead of complaining that KDE forbids running some apps as root, read up why and how to do privileged actions in those apps...
2 Likes, Who?
KDE Plasma continues to evolve as a stable, robust, and beautiful desktop. What amazes me is how much FUD that still exists when I read about this wonderful desktop environment everywhere on the Internet. Unstable, bloated, uses too much ram; those things have not been true since forever. There are so many unique things about KDE that lead the way on the Linux desktop whether it be KDE connect, vaults, latte dock...
As for Dolphin as root going away, may I introduce you to the best file manager around - Krusader? Thank me later.
As for Dolphin as root going away, may I introduce you to the best file manager around - Krusader? Thank me later.
2 Likes, Who?
So, are you able to configure it without manually modifying style text files?I'd prefer qtcurve, but as far as i know the visual configuration tools are no more, so it is a bit hard to craft a new theme.QtCurve 1.9 from official Arch repos
In the kde4 era i've had a lot of fun making themes with it :)
Because for me i just can't click on the edit button as i do for oxygen or breeze, it is grayed out.
Last time i was able to do it was with kde4.
koko@slimer# ls -la /usr/lib/qt/plugins/ks*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 67400 10 nov 22.01 /usr/lib/qt/plugins/kstyle_breeze_config.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 112456 10 nov 22.00 /usr/lib/qt/plugins/kstyle_oxygen_config.so
koko@slimer# pacman -Ql qtcurve-qt5|grep plugins
qtcurve-qt5 /usr/lib/qt/plugins/
qtcurve-qt5 /usr/lib/qt/plugins/styles/
qtcurve-qt5 /usr/lib/qt/plugins/styles/qtcurve.soAlso, qtcurve window decoration is gone
Am i missing something?
--EDIT--
Yes, i was missing qtcurve-kde :-P
Now i miss just the window decoration part.
Is it available somehow?
Last edited by kokoko3k on 17 February 2021 at 2:06 pm UTC
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oldominion Feb 17, 2021
Wonder how long it will be until this rolls out in Manjaro main distro.I bet it will take some time since it is still in the testing on Arch. And as far as I know Manjaro takes like two weeks after Arch release (correct me if I'm wrong, haven't used Manjaro for over a year.)
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Vim wasn't installed, Nano wasn't installed... tried kate, but it wouldn't let me open it with sudo... talk about annoying.For some reason Garuda comes with Micro preinstalled... I was stumbling across this, too. But other than that, I'm very happy with Garuda Dragonized. For me, after some tweaks, it is solid as a rock and looks amazing.
1 Likes, Who?
To be fair, the Gnome calculator is just Calculator, and Galculator is an unrelated project. But yeah, the name is silly.
I did not know that. Thanks for the info. I guess I'm a little biased into believing every app that starts with a K or G is one of thier projects ( I see you trying to sneak away there too, Q).
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You don't need to run Kate with sudo. If you really must, you can do the sensible thing and use sudoedit, but Kate will prompt for authorisation when saving a privileged file when run as a normal user anyway.
Not having an easy solution for privileged use of Dolphin is a pain: some file management tasks, particularly as a new user, are much less error-prone when done in a graphical file browser. But you wouldn't have been using sudo with Dolphin in the old days anyway: it would have been kdesu.
Finally someone with a brain, thank you!
Instead of complaining that KDE forbids running some apps as root, read up why and how to do privileged actions in those apps...
I'm well read on why they did it, and I still believe it to be a monumentally poor decision. Indeed, if you have to "read up on why" or research "how to do privileged actions in those apps", the KDE devs have failed.
Indeed, I don't use KDE because of it. The only way I could feasibly set up my computers in KDE is to install replacements for Kate and Dolphin - two of the more core applications to the whole KDE experience. So, nah.
1 Likes, Who?
Now I am curious, what is it why you need to run Kate as root? To edit restricted files? Or is pressing save and then entering your password to complex?You don't need to run Kate with sudo. If you really must, you can do the sensible thing and use sudoedit, but Kate will prompt for authorisation when saving a privileged file when run as a normal user anyway.
Not having an easy solution for privileged use of Dolphin is a pain: some file management tasks, particularly as a new user, are much less error-prone when done in a graphical file browser. But you wouldn't have been using sudo with Dolphin in the old days anyway: it would have been kdesu.
Finally someone with a brain, thank you!
Instead of complaining that KDE forbids running some apps as root, read up why and how to do privileged actions in those apps...
I'm well read on why they did it, and I still believe it to be a monumentally poor decision. Indeed, if you have to "read up on why" or research "how to do privileged actions in those apps", the KDE devs have failed.
Indeed, I don't use KDE because of it. The only way I could feasibly set up my computers in KDE is to install replacements for Kate and Dolphin - two of the more core applications to the whole KDE experience. So, nah.
1 Likes, Who?
Now I am curious, what is it why you need to run Kate as root? To edit restricted files? Or is pressing save and then entering your password to complex?You don't need to run Kate with sudo. If you really must, you can do the sensible thing and use sudoedit, but Kate will prompt for authorisation when saving a privileged file when run as a normal user anyway.
Not having an easy solution for privileged use of Dolphin is a pain: some file management tasks, particularly as a new user, are much less error-prone when done in a graphical file browser. But you wouldn't have been using sudo with Dolphin in the old days anyway: it would have been kdesu.
Finally someone with a brain, thank you!
Instead of complaining that KDE forbids running some apps as root, read up why and how to do privileged actions in those apps...
I'm well read on why they did it, and I still believe it to be a monumentally poor decision. Indeed, if you have to "read up on why" or research "how to do privileged actions in those apps", the KDE devs have failed.
Indeed, I don't use KDE because of it. The only way I could feasibly set up my computers in KDE is to install replacements for Kate and Dolphin - two of the more core applications to the whole KDE experience. So, nah.
Last I used Kate (to edit /etc/autofs entries for mapped drives) was about 18 months ago and there was no such facility of prompting for a password when saving to a protected area. But then, that's irrelevant in my use case, because I was editing files that area, not creating them... but I couldn't run Dolphin as root either, and since those files are 600 permissioned, nothing except root can read them.
So yeah, I needed to run those apps as root. However, now that they've added root detection, instead of running, they simply say "This cannot be run as root", and exit. Maybe they've improved the situation by now? Who knows. All I know is that it was (and probably still is) a poorly designed restriction that pissed me off, and still does whenever I bother to try KDE again.
I mean, how stupid a decision is it really? That I had to install Thunar AND geany, just so I could make a single line edit to my file, the way I've done so for years, and the way that I can do so on every other desktop environment available? That's... pretty stupid, I reckon.
But you seem to think this is cool - that's fine. Use KDE, and enjoy its dubious protections. I just can't be bothered with security through obscurity. This accomplishes very little and just gets in the way (of my workflow, at least). I own my machine - I have "sovereignty" of it. But when I run KDE... apparently not. Apparently it knows better?
Nah. That's not for me. That's not a mindset I agree with.
1 Likes, Who?
I mean, how stupid a decision is it really? That I had to install Thunar AND geany, just so I could make a single line edit to my file, the way I've done so for years, and the way that I can do so on every other desktop environment available? That's... pretty stupid, I reckon.
On KDE Plasma on can install Konqueror in under a minute. By the way, it's a really awesome Midnight Commander, twin pane file manager (and more).
Konqueror is KDE's Webbrowser and swiss-army-knife for any kind of file-management and file previewing.
Features:
Webbrowsing using KHTML or KDEWebKit as rendering engines
File management using most of Dolphin's features (including version-control, service menus and the basic UI)
File management on ftp and sftp servers
Full featured FTP-client (you can split views to display local and remote folders and previews in the same window)
Embedded applications to preview files (e.g. Okular and Calligra for documents, Gwenview for pictures, KTextEditor for text-files)
Different kinds of plugins: Service-menus, KParts (embedded applications), KIO (accessing files using special protocols like http or ftp) and KPart-plugins (like AdBlocker...)
1 Likes, Who?
I mean, how stupid a decision is it really? That I had to install Thunar AND geany, just so I could make a single line edit to my file, the way I've done so for years, and the way that I can do so on every other desktop environment available? That's... pretty stupid, I reckon.
On KDE Plasma on can install Konqueror in under a minute. By the way, it's a really awesome Midnight Commander, twin pane file manager (and more).
Konqueror is KDE's Webbrowser and swiss-army-knife for any kind of file-management and file previewing.
Features:
Webbrowsing using KHTML or KDEWebKit as rendering engines
File management using most of Dolphin's features (including version-control, service menus and the basic UI)
File management on ftp and sftp servers
Full featured FTP-client (you can split views to display local and remote folders and previews in the same window)
Embedded applications to preview files (e.g. Okular and Calligra for documents, Gwenview for pictures, KTextEditor for text-files)
Different kinds of plugins: Service-menus, KParts (embedded applications), KIO (accessing files using special protocols like http or ftp) and KPart-plugins (like AdBlocker...)
Someone further up also mentioned Krusader, too! I'm not actually a huge fan of split-pane file explorers, but I do prefer file explorers which offer the facility if required. I tend to replace Nautilus, with its fork, Nemo, for that very reason. Nautilus patched out F3, whereas Nemo keeps it available. Very handy for when you have multiple file copies to perform.
I did give KDE another few hours of airtime on my laptop, via Endeavour O/S, a few days ago. However, I quickly ditched it - more a reflection on Endeavour than KDE though. I get why Liam like Endeavour, but at its core, it's still Arch, and needs soooo much more work for basic things. I went on to try Elementary OS, but was put off by how custom everything felt. That and the fact that they really push the paid apps at you in their store. Which is kind of awesome really, but it's little in your face. I jumped ship to Pop OS, which I'm continuing to run now, day three. It's okay, but Gnome Shell is generally such a gigantic step back in functionality. I'm not sure I can stand it. I'm going to persevere for a few weeks at least, however, before deciding whether to reformat back to Mint. Give it a chance to win me over.
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Someone further up also mentioned Krusader, too! I'm not actually a huge fan of split-pane file explorers, but I do prefer file explorers which offer the facility if required. I tend to replace Nautilus, with its fork, Nemo, for that very reason. Nautilus patched out F3, whereas Nemo keeps it available. Very handy for when you have multiple file copies to perform.Caja on Mate also has that option.
1 Likes, Who?
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