KDE developer Nate Graham continues blogging about how KDE and Plasma are evolving and there's been some great improvements recently, along with some huge plans for 2022.
Making things easier for users is important and the KDE team are clearly taking on a lot of feedback. A major new feature is that Dolphin, and anything that hooks into KIO, can now create, move, copy, trash, and delete files in non-user-owned locations. Instead of just giving you a warning and not letting you do anything, it should now ask for a password and let you do what you need to without resorting to a terminal window. Nice. This change should land in KDE Frameworks 5.91.
Wayland improvements also came in recently like supporting greater than 8-bit colour, the ability to open the current directory or any other folder you right-click on in any app, not just the file manager with Konsole.
As for their 2022 plans, which aren't set in stone, more of a guide - there's a lot!
One of the big things for 2022 is to have Wayland at a stage for KDE where it can completely replace the X11 session. Another I'm particularly interested in is improvements to multi-monitor support, modernizing Breeze icons and a big focus on what they're calling the "15 minute bug" initiative - to clean up issues that appear within the first 15 minutes of loading into Plasma.
Sounds like KDE and Plasma are going places in 2022. This is going to be good news for the Steam Deck too, since the desktop session uses Plasma.
Quoting: clatterfordslimNever been a fan of Dolphin, like Nautilus it's too locked down. So whenever trying a new OS, I install Nemo.KDE Manjaro and Nemo fan here as well, but I haven't installed Nemo in a few years because I seem to remember installing Nemo feeling like it was also installing half of Mint to get it to work. Is that still the case?
Quoting: PhlebiacThey do... you just have to use divisions of the native resolution. So if have a panel that does 1920x1080, you could do 1280x720 and 960x540 and they look fine. Others will be fuzzy and not look great. For something like the Amiga V4SA, using the 540p or 720p on most widescreen monitors is probably preferable to 1080p, just due to the AmigaOS not handling high DPI very well.Quoting: slaapliedjeI still remember when you could put in multiple resolutions into your XFree86 config file and then change between the resolutions with some shortcut keys (like control+alt+number?).
It was Ctrl+Alt+[+|-]; pretty useful on CRT displays, but most digital flat panels don't handle anything other than native resolution all that well.
Quoting: iiariAnd really, why install half of Mint when you could just install Mint?Quoting: clatterfordslimNever been a fan of Dolphin, like Nautilus it's too locked down. So whenever trying a new OS, I install Nemo.KDE Manjaro and Nemo fan here as well, but I haven't installed Nemo in a few years because I seem to remember installing Nemo feeling like it was also installing half of Mint to get it to work. Is that still the case?
Quoting: clatterfordslimNever been a fan of Dolphin, like Nautilus it's too locked down. So whenever trying a new OS, I install Nemo.Pretty sure most of all those features are in Nautilus. Dolphin, as is the rest of KDE, the layout is kind of all over the place.
Nemo has all the features that is missing in other file managers. Moving and copying files to home folder folders, plus external or other drives that Nemo lists on right click of said file. Caja in Mate has not got this feature. Caja only sends file to desktop or home folder, not the individual folders. Duplication of files, making links to, extracting compressed files, open as root, preview of thumbnail when choosing a picture to upload from Pictures or wherever the picture is? These are all what I like about Nemo. Linux Mint Team really done a brilliant job with their file manager.
I always set Nemo to run as default and with a few gsetting commands in Terminal, can get Nemo to function as the original default file manager did or does. I use Manjaro XFCE for gaming and have Nemo set as default on there. I use Linux Mint XFCE Ulyssa as my Daily OS and that is running Nemo too, as I do not like Thunar. Have KDE Manjaro the community edition in Virtualbox and have set Nemo as default, all the screen effects are working flawlessly, going to be installing it on my old 2008 Windows 8 ready, that never saw Windows 32GB of Ram ASUS gaming machine, now used as a media PC, as Manjaro KDE is the best I've ever used through out the KDE family from Kubuntu to Neon. KDE Manjaro just does what it's to supposed to do, which all the other KDE desktops should do without breaking. Maybe because Neon and Kubuntu are heavily with Ubuntu I don't know? As Distro Tube said on YouTube and I highly agree, Canonical are concentrating to much on Snaps, which most people including myself do not like.
Quoting: PhlebiacAnd one of the driving reasons for Gnome to still exist. Qt has passed through more hands than my sister. Ha!Quoting: SilverCodeIt is a Qt5 problem though that the KDE devs are waiting to be fixed upstream.
That's not good news - Qt5 is officially EOL, and won't get updates except for paying customers. So unless there is a consensus on a community-updated Qt5, don't hold your breath.
5.15.2 released in Nov 2020 was the end; they tell everyone to move to Qt6 instead:
https://wiki.qt.io/Qt_5.15_Release#Qt_5.15_release_plan
While the commercial release is up to 5.15.8 as of yesterday:
https://wiki.qt.io/Qt_5.15_Release#Release_Plan
Note how they even list known security issues in the old 5.15.x releases... FWIW, this type of scenario was one of the original motivations for the GNOME project to start, way back when. KDE came first, but relied on (not fully open) Qt.
But seriously, Qt/Trolltech has bounced between a bunch of different owners. Was amusing when the Nokia N900 was based mostly around GTK, then Nokia bought Trolltech, and the N9 was partially Qt, and was going in that direction, but MS's Trojan Horse killed that off and Qt was bought up by someone else...
Quoting: iiariQuoting: clatterfordslimNever been a fan of Dolphin, like Nautilus it's too locked down. So whenever trying a new OS, I install Nemo.KDE Manjaro and Nemo fan here as well, but I haven't installed Nemo in a few years because I seem to remember installing Nemo feeling like it was also installing half of Mint to get it to work. Is that still the case?
Yes some Cinnamon stuff, but nothing major that will make it feel like you're installing Mint itself.
Making Nemo Default is a breeze too. Do not uninstall your original file manager though.
In Terminal
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background show-desktop-icons false
xdg-mime default nemo.desktop inode/directory application/x-gnome-saved-search
Enable Nemo to open in your terminal
gsettings set org.cinnamon.desktop.default-applications.terminal exec terminal of choice
Quoting: IzaicQuoting: tamodoloQuoting: FredrikI wonder if that means hdr support is coming. And I also hope they will make wayland usable with nvidia cards too.
I think support for higher than 8bit color is needed before HDR. It's 2022 and I still can't output 10bit color space to my monitor...
That was added this week, and is mentioned in the post.
True. Now it's a matter of time for drivers to include this. nVidia is improving the support for wayland but nvidia settings still don't allow any changes.
Quoting: tamodoloFunny thing is, one of the first consumer level cards to support 10bit color was the Matrox Parhelia... and I am pretty sure the Linux drivers supported it back then.Quoting: IzaicQuoting: tamodoloQuoting: FredrikI wonder if that means hdr support is coming. And I also hope they will make wayland usable with nvidia cards too.
I think support for higher than 8bit color is needed before HDR. It's 2022 and I still can't output 10bit color space to my monitor...
That was added this week, and is mentioned in the post.
True. Now it's a matter of time for drivers to include this. nVidia is improving the support for wayland but nvidia settings still don't allow any changes.
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