KDE developer Nate Graham, the same person who recently said they may become the "Windows or Android" of the FOSS world is back again with more thoughts - this time about keeping it simple.
The Plasma desktop is pretty darn powerful, that's for sure and it has a massive amount of customization options for practically every little thing. For many people this is great, however it can also have a detrimental affect on the experience by new users and users less comfortable with computing. So what's the answer? Graham thinks they need to keep things simpler out of the box.
Pictured - KDE Plasma on my own desktop.
What this doesn't mean is Plasma is going to get "dumbed-down". Sounds like they're not going to be targetting people in the lowest category of computing skill with their thinking. Noting that they would likely never be happy with KDE and that "GNOME and ElementaryOS can have those users".
Instead, the plan sounds like it's more a case of ensuring every part of Plasma comes with sane defaults "Essentially we need to fully embrace Plasma's motto of 'Simple by default, powerful when needed' [for] all KDE software, not just Plasma".
As an ending note, Graham mentions how some of this is already happening like "our simple-by-default Kirigami apps gaining power and customization opportunities, and our powerful-by-default QtWidgets apps gaining better default settings and a streamlined appearance".
What are your thoughts?
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Yeah. I'm not sure they're right about that though.Hey, I'm not sure that they're right either. I mentioned upthread that their policy of turning on all the taps has consequences that can be undesirable. I just mentioned that they're currently wary of the "Advanced Settings" approach. And I'm sure we can all think of examples where "users of great ego will find the basic view insulting even if it meets their needs better than the advanced view."
And I mean, the extra options don't have to be very hidden, it could be just you click on that fuzzy line at the bottom of any given little options page that says "more options", and it sinks down and reveals them. And if you are a serious options person, well, you can have an option to reveal them all by default.
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Maybe one day, in a perfect world, KDE would finally become stable enough to daily drive it. But I guess that's besides the point.
Running it daily for many, many years.
Don't know what you're talking about.
They break stuff on a regular base. I am using it as a daily driver too since 1998 (1 year break using Budgie though), and have been contributing to KDE for some years (I do not any longer).
KDE is more complex than necessary, especially because of the reason that you can customize so much.
The ony thing which I find really stable is KWin, and it's certainly better than mutter.
Everything else breaks every here and there, KIO in Dolphin, GetNewStuff, Settings crashing applying a global theme (as in the cuttent version), shell "hangs" because some effect ticks out, panel crashing, dual screen not working properly (not saving settings, not setting wallpaler, can't interact with one screen, not enumerating devices properly, having issues having two identical monitors to identify them properly), Dolphin can't display Android Storage any longer (complaining you should use MTP while you do already), audio devices disappearing and never showing up again...
And thats just a few of those I experienced in the past 6 Month only using stable releases.
They break a lot, often in the name of fixing something breaking some other stuff. The beast is so complex it's almost impossible to test.
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Sane defaults is fine, but don't force the design paradigms of Windows 11 or OSX on us and don't remove any features for the sake of simplicity. Now that Microsoft is trying to be Apple, KDE should try to be Microsoft when it still cared about productivity - ie classic taskbar, powerful window management, competent file management, etc.
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He's right. An abundance of customisation options are great for tinkers, but tinkerers are a minority of technology users, and that abundance of customisation options that is so great for tinkers increases the likelihood of user caused instabilities.
i once customized my theme A LOT, then i realized something obvious: im not an designer.
i wanted an pretty system but didnt knew how to do that, so outsourcing was the best option.
not to mention that most of my design choices where... too distracting to actually work on my computer.
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I really wished they did a review to check which options belong where.
On KDE, i regularly find options that belong in the preferences in some context menus or the application menu. Or vice versa. Or options that belong in the application can only be changed in the global kde settings.
In the end, the application menus and context menus are cluttered and it's hard to find the things you want to do. If KDE would improve here, i think the usability would already be very very high without the need to remove any features.
Last edited by const on 1 December 2021 at 7:14 am UTC
On KDE, i regularly find options that belong in the preferences in some context menus or the application menu. Or vice versa. Or options that belong in the application can only be changed in the global kde settings.
In the end, the application menus and context menus are cluttered and it's hard to find the things you want to do. If KDE would improve here, i think the usability would already be very very high without the need to remove any features.
Last edited by const on 1 December 2021 at 7:14 am UTC
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@ The People saying Plasma is unstable, you are probably running Ubuntu?
Thing is, as far as I'm aware, kde has no lts branch, so if you want the latest bugfixes you need the latest version, but ubuntu is stuck to whatever version was the one on release, so 20.04 is lacking behind in bugfixes over 1 and a half year now. 18.03 3 and a half year.
Extra points if by change the version on release was one with a lot of new not throughly tested features.
Thing is, as far as I'm aware, kde has no lts branch, so if you want the latest bugfixes you need the latest version, but ubuntu is stuck to whatever version was the one on release, so 20.04 is lacking behind in bugfixes over 1 and a half year now. 18.03 3 and a half year.
Extra points if by change the version on release was one with a lot of new not throughly tested features.
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@ The People saying Plasma is unstable, you are probably running Ubuntu?
Thing is, as far as I'm aware, kde has no lts branch, so if you want the latest bugfixes you need the latest version, but ubuntu is stuck to whatever version was the one on release, so 20.04 is lacking behind in bugfixes over 1 and a half year now. 18.03 3 and a half year.
Extra points if by change the version on release was one with a lot of new not throughly tested features.
I was running on Arch Linux. Dolphin was the worst offender. Sometimes it didn't refresh the contents of the directory. like when extracting a zip/rar or whatever archive, it didn't update its contents automatically. It also crashed from time to time. The list view of files didn't auto-resize its columns according to the window size, so i had the horizontal scrollbar to see the file creation dates for example on smaller window. Panel settings were a finnicky. Sometimes changing something messed all up and panel resized itself weirdly. Main menu just straight up segfaulted several times without loading at all, had to use legacy main menu (or launcher was it called iirc). Kwin, while it worked mostly without issues, there were times when everything froze on the screen, mouse input and all worked, but playing videos or the window refreshes didn't update, had to disable/enable compositing to make it work again. Also for whatever reason kwin compositor didn't turn off when launching games in proton for whatever reason, had to manually turn it off. Worked fine with native games. plasmashell was eating RAM like no tomorrow after several days of uptime.. it creeped up to 3.5GB at times for this process alone.
Just to name few issues i had during my 5-6 month of using it.
edit: i used 5.21, 5.22 and 5.23 iirc
Last edited by Xpander on 1 December 2021 at 8:01 am UTC
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I'm a long, long time user of KDE; I've kept defaults, I changed everything, I left only the bare k-tools, I added them all, I themed every desktop/activity, and fiddled with per-window and per-app settings.
I don't care how much (or little) customizability KDE gives me. Usually it's plenty.
I care about one thing, and one thing only.
A simple, one click, RELIABLE, system-wide, PORTABLE, forever-supported way of doing two tasks:
1. Save all the settings, geometries, fonts, menu items and orders, colors, thicknesses, EVERYTHING for all K/Qt apps, in a text file called "${HOME}/all_my_kde_settings.cfg"
2. Restore all the settings, geometries, fonts, menu items and orders, colors, thicknesses, EVERYTHING for all K/Qt apps, from a text file called "${HOME}/all_my_kde_settings.cfg"
So I won't want to rip my soul yet again if I have to prime another machine like my ultra-customized main rig.
I don't care how much (or little) customizability KDE gives me. Usually it's plenty.
I care about one thing, and one thing only.
A simple, one click, RELIABLE, system-wide, PORTABLE, forever-supported way of doing two tasks:
1. Save all the settings, geometries, fonts, menu items and orders, colors, thicknesses, EVERYTHING for all K/Qt apps, in a text file called "${HOME}/all_my_kde_settings.cfg"
2. Restore all the settings, geometries, fonts, menu items and orders, colors, thicknesses, EVERYTHING for all K/Qt apps, from a text file called "${HOME}/all_my_kde_settings.cfg"
So I won't want to rip my soul yet again if I have to prime another machine like my ultra-customized main rig.
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Maybe one day, in a perfect world, KDE would finally become stable enough to daily drive it. But I guess that's besides the point.
Running it daily for many, many years.
Don't know what you're talking about.
Although I too have used KDE for like five years now without looking back, it is far more unstable than other DEs. I have installed it on three different machines (Kubuntu), and I still get frequent crashes with Dolphin, the plasma dashboards or even sometimes software I didn't even know were running (like the Bluetooth applet which I since deactivated). I never had such issues with Mateo or LXDE.
I'm not complaining though, the overall experience is really good and KDE really suits my tastes ! But still, yes, I wouldn't call it "perfectly stable". Or is it my distro (Kubuntu) ?
Kubuntu is not a good example of KDE integration. Try KDE Neon if you want a Ubuntu based distro with a stable KDE.
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[quote=CatKiller]part of KDE's UI guidelines.. is that an option is only worth having if it's worth having on by default. /quote]
I'm sure that's absolutely not a KDE guideline. That sounds like GNOME. I've never heard that saying for the ~3 years I've been following KDE.
The opposite philosophy is truer. "Simple by default, powerful when needed." Now, do all KDE apps follow that mantra? Not really.
That's part of trying to enforce a vision with an OSS suite. Only so much you can do if you're not the maintainer.
For example, Kate is a mess of buttons by default. They're all opt-out, but they should be opt-in. There's a great notepad program in there, but it's overwhelmed by unnecessary options upon install.
Kate was just replaced with Kwrite as the default notepad app. Coincidence? Absolutely not.
Robust programs can be streamlined. Streamlined programs can't be robust.
KDE is the only DE right now trying to make something modernized and pretty, without neutering customization and functionality. There are more edge-cases, but it's the only way to get something truly worthy of a daily driver for anyone, imo.
I'm sure that's absolutely not a KDE guideline. That sounds like GNOME. I've never heard that saying for the ~3 years I've been following KDE.
The opposite philosophy is truer. "Simple by default, powerful when needed." Now, do all KDE apps follow that mantra? Not really.
That's part of trying to enforce a vision with an OSS suite. Only so much you can do if you're not the maintainer.
For example, Kate is a mess of buttons by default. They're all opt-out, but they should be opt-in. There's a great notepad program in there, but it's overwhelmed by unnecessary options upon install.
Kate was just replaced with Kwrite as the default notepad app. Coincidence? Absolutely not.
Robust programs can be streamlined. Streamlined programs can't be robust.
KDE is the only DE right now trying to make something modernized and pretty, without neutering customization and functionality. There are more edge-cases, but it's the only way to get something truly worthy of a daily driver for anyone, imo.
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I think saying that Elementary and Gnome are for "those users" is absolutely the wrong mindset if they want to be the mainstream option like Windows or Mac OS.
Totally agree. GNOME and Elementary is the last thing I'd want to give a casual end-user coming from Windows. Familiarity will always trump clean design for people who use software as an appliance. KDE is pretty much in that sweet spot, but for a couple settings and the odd bugs. The amount of small bugs quashed in the last year or so has been staggering, though.
Don't give your grandma GNOME people, please... For your own good!
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Already linked upthread:part of KDE's UI guidelines.. is that an option is only worth having if it's worth having on by default.
I'm sure that's absolutely not a KDE guideline.
Most people never change most of the default settings for their software. Any feature which is off by default is likely to be missed by most users. Therefore, when proposing a new feature, don't make it configurable and leave it off by default. Have confidence in your designs and features! New features and design changes should be on by default, if they should even be configurable at all.
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Kubuntu is not a good example of KDE integration. Try KDE Neon if you want a Ubuntu based distro with a stable KDE.KDE Neon is the opposite of a stable KDE. Its purpose is to push out new versions of KDE immediately.
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Don't give your grandma GNOME people, please... For your own good!Yep. They're all chewy and make grandma cross.
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They break stuff on a regular base. I am using it as a daily driver too since 1998 (1 year break using Budgie though), and have been contributing to KDE for some years (I do not any longer).
I think it's actually the same year for me. I installed Debian in 1998, and I cannot remember ever having used anything but KDE for more than trying out something. Of course, I did get a share of bugs and crashes in 23 years...
And thats just a few of those I experienced in the past 6 Month only using stable releases.
... but if your list is from half a year, I'm really surprised. I get my usual problem after updating nvidia drivers, sometimes write permissions when mounting my phone are wrong, but I think that's about it. I had a bigger problem with the database thing (akonandi?) going wild over my data in I guess the last but one Debian update, but that's at least half a decade ago. Maybe using Debian stable and not the latest release anymore is helping me.
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Mohandevir Dec 1, 2021
They break stuff on a regular base. I am using it as a daily driver too since 1998 (1 year break using Budgie though), and have been contributing to KDE for some years (I do not any longer).
I think it's actually the same year for me. I installed Debian in 1998, and I cannot remember ever having used anything but KDE for more than trying out something. Of course, I did get a share of bugs and crashes in 23 years...
And thats just a few of those I experienced in the past 6 Month only using stable releases.
... but if your list is from half a year, I'm really surprised. I get my usual problem after updating nvidia drivers, sometimes write permissions when mounting my phone are wrong, but I think that's about it. I had a bigger problem with the database thing (akonandi?) going wild over my data in I guess the last but one Debian update, but that's at least half a decade ago. Maybe using Debian stable and not the latest release anymore is helping me.
Thing is, they all have bugs, depending on use case... It's only a matter of determining what is a game breaker bug, for you and then choose your desktop accordingly.
Example: Screen flickering while using Steam Link, on Gnome, is a game breaker for me.
Edit: And my personnal experience seems to point in the direction of graphics drivers, more often than not. Some bugs seem to be exclusive to AMD and others to Nvidia. But I didn't do an extensive search on the matter.
Last edited by Mohandevir on 1 December 2021 at 9:18 pm UTC
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TromboneSteve Dec 1, 2021
I started to like KDE once I stopped trying to customize everything after a fresh install.
Now I just set all the theme-related stuff to dark mode. After that, I only change settings if something comes up that I really want changed.
Now I just set all the theme-related stuff to dark mode. After that, I only change settings if something comes up that I really want changed.
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... but if your list is from half a year, I'm really surprised. I get my usual problem after updating nvidia drivers, sometimes write permissions when mounting my phone are wrong, but I think that's about it. I had a bigger problem with the database thing (akonandi?) going wild over my data in I guess the last but one Debian update, but that's at least half a decade ago. Maybe using Debian stable and not the latest release anymore is helping me.
That's for sure, debian stable is certainly stable, but as a software developer the base is too old for me.
The list is from the past 6-9 month, so those issues are really ones which either exist or existed (in example most of the dual-screen stuff is solved by now).
The file indexer thing you meant is probably Baloo - ye, I had my fair share of issues with it too, but that ended about a year ago.
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From a pure User perspective (i'm not into software development)i wish for 2 things:
- if i'm going after some customization, most of the time i don't want to see ALL options. Just give me the most common ones and let me see the advanced options only if i ask for that
- give me a reliable source of help. I'm absolutly fed up with "Look into the forums." where i get 10 "solutions" to my problem, every single one of them contradicting the others, on different hardware, then i have to figure out if it is a problem of the distro or the DE, then i have to type in some cryptic commands in the shell according to other forum members and hand them other infos which i barely understand myself and hope that the guy (or lady) has the patience to help till the end. That is absolutly not helping to get confidence.
- if i'm going after some customization, most of the time i don't want to see ALL options. Just give me the most common ones and let me see the advanced options only if i ask for that
- give me a reliable source of help. I'm absolutly fed up with "Look into the forums." where i get 10 "solutions" to my problem, every single one of them contradicting the others, on different hardware, then i have to figure out if it is a problem of the distro or the DE, then i have to type in some cryptic commands in the shell according to other forum members and hand them other infos which i barely understand myself and hope that the guy (or lady) has the patience to help till the end. That is absolutly not helping to get confidence.
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KDE Neon is the opposite of a stable KDE. Its purpose is to push out new versions of KDE immediately.
Which is still far more stable that whatever Kubuntu delivers. Also, is not like you get nightly builds of KDE Neon, you always the latest stable version released (unless you go for the developers edition).
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