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PayPalDeveloper Nate Graham has highlighted more recent work for the KDE Plasma desktop environment (the one the Steam Deck will come with) and it's all sounding great.
Continuing their effort to prevent breakage, just like stopping the Discover software centre removing your desktop, Discover now cannot uninstall itself. That's right, previously Discover was able to end up removing itself from your desktop! Now though, it won't as there's new checks in place.
Discover is also seeing something of a UI overhaul now too for application pages. So when you click on something in Discover you're interested in installing, you'll now get clearer information on each app like the size and version information.
It's really nice to see so much effort being put into Discover, since that is the way users are supposed to find and install apps on Plasma. Even more fixes came in like it no longer crashing when you install or uninstall more than one Flatpak app at once, showing the correct size for "very very large" packages, a better screenshot pop-up for applications when you're viewing their page and the list goes on.
Wayland improvements continued apace too like Kate (the text editor) no longer flashes when you hit Ctrl+S to save your changes and dragging-and-dropping various things to XWayland apps no longer sometimes makes them stop accepting clicks until the system is restarted.
Dolphin (the file manager) improvements coming along too like it no longer crashing if you cancel an archiving job in the middle that was initiated from one of Dolphin’s context menu "Compress" items. The list goes on, as Graham mentions the blog posts only scratch the surface of the working going into KDE Plasma.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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gradyvuckovic Feb 5, 2022
Hope Nate and the team are ready for the onslaught they're going to receive when the Deck starts shipping. Lots of people who have never used Linux, KDE, Discover, Dolphin, Kate, etc, are going to be using their software for the first time, and probably vocal on their feedback of what they like and don't like. It's going to be a lot to digest but should be interesting none the less.
19 Likes, Who?
Yeah, Plasma keep breaking thing on my computer so that I don't have to break them I suppose.
9 Likes, Who?
Flashy, fast, and flexible. Yeah, I can see why Valve might've chosen it for the Steam deck.
I'm strangely thrilled that the Discover upgrade will be including version dates.
I think knowing a version number may be helpful, but knowing the age of that version is immediately useful when I'm considering a bit of software.
Kudos KDE!
I'm strangely thrilled that the Discover upgrade will be including version dates.
I think knowing a version number may be helpful, but knowing the age of that version is immediately useful when I'm considering a bit of software.
Kudos KDE!
17 Likes, Who?
I still have Muon around for package management on my KDE system. Discover is nice, don't get me wrong, but it's not as flexible as good old Muon.
4 Likes, Who?
This just occurred to me ...
How do the DE based UI package managers work? Like are they separate from the system package manager, or do they send in generic command into the package manager? Or perhaps share a backend (like the database)?
I will say, it looks very nice. Kinda has the same vibe as your phone app store, which should be familiar to a new user.
How do the DE based UI package managers work? Like are they separate from the system package manager, or do they send in generic command into the package manager? Or perhaps share a backend (like the database)?
I will say, it looks very nice. Kinda has the same vibe as your phone app store, which should be familiar to a new user.
1 Likes, Who?
Mountain Man Feb 5, 2022
Never used Discover. I've always used whatever package manager comes with my distro.
2 Likes, Who?
mr-victory Feb 5, 2022
How do the DE based UI package managers work? Like are they separate from the system package manager, or do they send in generic command into the package manager? Or perhaps share a backend (like the database)?KDE Discover and Gnome Software Center use an abstraction layer called PackageKit. PackageKit has implementations for each package manager ie. on Arch (based) it uses ALPM (Arch Linux Package Management library) to interact with system.
6 Likes, Who?
Never used Discover. I've always used whatever package manager comes with my distro.
it updates your themes, so look into it once a month. it should be enough.
0 Likes
no_information_here Feb 5, 2022
I still have Muon around for package management on my KDE system. Discover is nice, don't get me wrong, but it's not as flexible as good old Muon.
I still use Synaptic, even though it is a relic now. I don't like all the dependencies being hidden from me, but I understand it would be confusing for new users.
3 Likes, Who?
Discover never really worked well on openSUSE for me. It took ages to refresh Flathub with a progress bar locked into 98 % without any movement. It always greets me with a checksum failure. It is a bit sad, as YaST is powerful, but not nearly as nice when browsing for software.
0 Likes
Hope Nate and the team are ready for the onslaught they're going to receive when the Deck starts shipping. Lots of people who have never used Linux, KDE, Discover, Dolphin, Kate, etc, are going to be using their software for the first time, and probably vocal on their feedback of what they like and don't like. It's going to be a lot to digest but should be interesting none the less.
Most will never see it, all they will see is Steam's front end.
Us on the other hand will immediately dig in to it and see how to
1 Likes, Who?
At least I have Fedora and NVidia who keep their promise of breaking things (especially in that combination, as fedora people pushed 5.16.5 kernel fully aware they'll fuck over nvidia users, and rpmfusion was too slow with the 5.10 driver. But well, Fedora gives nothing for proproetary drivers and we can run old kernels too.
If KDE stabilizes, I still have NVidia and their proprietary crap to break things for good. I am very happy with my setup, but I wished I could have gotten my hands on a AMD card ... which was simply not possible then.
If KDE stabilizes, I still have NVidia and their proprietary crap to break things for good. I am very happy with my setup, but I wished I could have gotten my hands on a AMD card ... which was simply not possible then.
0 Likes
I still have Muon around for package management on my KDE system. Discover is nice, don't get me wrong, but it's not as flexible as good old Muon.
Unfortunately Muon doesn't handle the various packages like flatpak, app image and snaps and the stores where they are distributed.
That makes it difficult
1 Likes, Who?
CyborgZeta Feb 5, 2022
I don't use Discover, myself. I've gotten used to installing everything I need through the terminal.
That said, I like it better than GNOME Software.
That said, I like it better than GNOME Software.
0 Likes
At least I have Fedora and NVidia who keep their promise of breaking things (especially in that combination, as fedora people pushed 5.16.5 kernel fully aware they'll fuck over nvidia users, and rpmfusion was too slow with the 5.10 driver. But well, Fedora gives nothing for proproetary drivers and we can run old kernels too.
If KDE stabilizes, I still have NVidia and their proprietary crap to break things for good. I am very happy with my setup, but I wished I could have gotten my hands on a AMD card ... which was simply not possible then.
There is also negativo17 for Fedora, https://negativo17.org/nvidia-driver/ or https://negativo17.org/multimedia/ .
I prefer those above rpm fusion, it feels more curated and a bit more modern. It already has the 510 driver.
Last edited by jens on 6 February 2022 at 12:25 am UTC
0 Likes
At least I have Fedora and NVidia who keep their promise of breaking things (especially in that combination, as fedora people pushed 5.16.5 kernel fully aware they'll fuck over nvidia users, and rpmfusion was too slow with the 5.10 driver. But well, Fedora gives nothing for proproetary drivers and we can run old kernels too.
If KDE stabilizes, I still have NVidia and their proprietary crap to break things for good. I am very happy with my setup, but I wished I could have gotten my hands on a AMD card ... which was simply not possible then.
There is also negativo17 for Fedora, https://negativo17.org/nvidia-driver/ or https://negativo17.org/multimedia/ .
I prefer those above rpm fusion, it feels more curated and a bit more modern. It already has the 510 driver.
That's actually an interesting suggestion. I didn't know that repo (yet), but well, being new to Fedora who can blame me :D. Just installed the drivers from there, seems to work properly.
I'll see where this leads, repos like this - at least in other distros - have the tendency to get dropped at some point. We'll see. At least they currently seem more up to date than rpmfusion.
[edit] they even have a steam repo... with nvidia and steam I'm well done, I think I can switch properly to their repos. They even have Spotify. Steam, Spotify, NVidia are usually my software issues ... all covered. Nice.
Last edited by STiAT on 6 February 2022 at 1:01 am UTC
0 Likes
KDE Plasma continues improving to stop you breaking things
Tell KDE to stop Breaking Itself First.
0 Likes
KDE Plasma continues improving to stop you breaking things
Tell KDE to stop Breaking Itself First.
I am longer on KDE than you probably use Linux (since 1998). Get the FUD out. It hardly breaks. It hardly has had stability issues.
They do have issues with maintaining all that config options though. And the effort to actually get those things fixed is a good one.
I had more issues with Gnome breaking and reinventing itself than with KDE.
I actually do have a hard issue with Gnome which was not fixed in the past 10 years. Multiple keyboard inputs make the whole desktop freeze on input for 200-300 MS.
Which is really bad if you play games with a Naga, ReDragon 508 or a Corsair Scimitar.
Last edited by STiAT on 6 February 2022 at 1:12 am UTC
3 Likes, Who?
KDE Plasma continues improving to stop you breaking things
Tell KDE to stop Breaking Itself First.
I am longer on KDE than you probably use Linux (since 1998). Get the FUD out. It hardly breaks. It hardly has had stability issues.
They do have issues with maintaining all that config options though. And the effort to actually get those things fixed is a good one.
I had more issues with Gnome breaking and reinventing itself than with KDE.
I actually do have a hard issue with Gnome which was not fixed in the past 10 years. Multiple keyboard inputs make the whole desktop freeze on input for 200-300 MS.
Which is really bad if you play games with a Naga, ReDragon 508 or a Corsair Scimitar.
Spare the Drama it was a joke to a dumb headline.
0 Likes
slaapliedje Feb 6, 2022
Flashy, fast, and flexible. Yeah, I can see why Valve might've chosen it for the Steam deck.Yeah, I think more and more developers are realizing that arbitrary numbers for their software is kind of pointless. I think that the trend toward YY.MM.patch_level is quite useful. On the other hand, you have people who misinterpret what CentOS was doing with their 7.9.2009... as that's Major.Minor.YYMM. Someone tried to explain to me that they don't have point releases anymore and just use the year/month... Doesn't help that RHEL doesn't follow that versioning... Anyhow, just a bit of a rant as I've ran into this...
I'm strangely thrilled that the Discover upgrade will be including version dates.
I think knowing a version number may be helpful, but knowing the age of that version is immediately useful when I'm considering a bit of software.
Kudos KDE!
Ha, so I'm one who likes to have multiple DEs installed, but I had to remove KDE as my / partition was getting full...
0 Likes
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