Something that has proven to be quite divisive in the Linux community for KDE Plasma users is single or double-click to open something, as Plasma 6 will default to double-click.
It will still be configurable of course, but it's a change that has people split with lots of posts across social media arguing about it. Me though? I'm happy about it! Single click to open just seemed like such an odd default to have. Especially so for people coming from Windows, which as we all know is the most used desktop platform - for such a small thing, it just makes sense to match the behaviour there.
On top of that, Plasma 6 will also have touchpads have tap to click turned on by default now that touchpads aren't as bad as they were 9 years ago when the original decision was made.
Another big change is how bug reporting happens when apps crash on Plasma, with it being much more simplified with an option to report the issues automatically. So you won't even need to sign up for a Bugzilla account, bugs get reported quicker and hopefully this will means bugs get solved faster.
There's so much more the KDE team have been doing for Plasma lately, here's some highlights:
- Keyboard brightness level on many laptops now shows an on-screen display for the change.
- When toggling keyboard backlight off / on it now remembers the original brightness level.
- Minimum screen brightness now set to 1 so you can't accidentally turn it off.
- Dolphin’s settings window has gotten an overhaul to re-arrange things to be more logical.
- Starting a Plasma Wayland session in VirtualBox is now more reliable.
- They fixed the ability to monitor NVIDIA GPUs using System Monitor, and improving compatibility with multi-GPU setups (Plasma 5.27.8).
- System Settings' minimum window size is now smaller, fitting better into low-resolution 1366×768 screens with thick panels.
- Plasma Wayland improvements like keeping copied text from XWayland apps after it quits.
What do you think to all the changes coming to Plasma 6? Is there something you're particularly pleased or displeased with coming to Plasma 6?
This is the way.
I'm sure they have statistics to know which one people use more often (or rather, how many people do that change immediately), so they'll simply have made that the default.
QuoteIt boils down to our market position. People who use KDE Plasma are vastly more likely to be switching from another desktop OS than they are to be using Plasma as their very first desktop OS experience. And switchers know double-click
The ability to monitor GPU was first broken in 2021 because they didn't want users to access raw sensors and what the driver was presenting to avoid duplicates I suppose so you had to patch it to revert from blacklisting those sensors. As a result every fix was broken by a new driver, I hope this time it will be fixed for good.
Add to that the fact that KSysGuard was nice and tidy, now you have so much real estate lost, when I monitor things I think the density of data visible in one go is important.
In the mean time Psensor never had a problem to monitor anything.
Plus, in Plasma a lot of settings seem to come and go in the UI after every upgrade and you need to search in 5 different config files to put back your preferences.
Quoting: TheSHEEEPSingle click to select. Double click to open.Exactly! What kinda savage uses single click for opening things outside of a web browser? This has always been the case.
This is the way.
Quoting: BogomipsAdd to that the fact that KSysGuard was nice and tidy, now you have so much real estate lost, when I monitor things I think the density of data visible in one go is important.
I'm not sure what about this isn't nice and tidy (also, yes, my PC is named ubertoaster ).
I mean, what I personally use it most for is checking/killing processes so I set the processes view to be the default when you open the program. And that view seems to be pretty much identical to ksysguard?
Quoting: BogomipsIn the mean time Psensor never had a problem to monitor anything.Had a ton of problems for me and regularly kicked the bucket while the machine was running.
And that is across multple machines with different mixtures of AMD/Intel/Nvidia. And different distros, too.
To be honest, I don't even know what the widgets I currently use for displaying temps use, but it isn't psensor (the package is not installed).
But whatever it is, it has worked for me flawlessly so far.
Quoting: BogomipsPlus, in Plasma a lot of settings seem to come and go in the UI after every upgrade and you need to search in 5 different config files to put back your preferences.Not my experience at all. Unless you count major version upgrades - in that case, some incompatibilities is kind of what you'd expect.
But I agree it would be nice if they put more effort into converting settings from older versions.
Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 29 August 2023 at 12:23 pm UTC
I have my own hacky patch against 5.27.6 that corrects the ordering. Backporting the upstream fix was too hairy.
Quoting: TheSHEEEPQuoting: BogomipsAdd to that the fact that KSysGuard was nice and tidy, now you have so much real estate lost, when I monitor things I think the density of data visible in one go is important.
I'm not sure what about this isn't nice and tidy (also, yes, my PC is named ubertoaster ).
I mean, what I personally use it most for is checking/killing processes so I set the processes view to be the default when you open the program. And that view seems to be pretty much identical to ksysguard?
Quoting: BogomipsIn the mean time Psensor never had a problem to monitor anything.Had a ton of problems for me and regularly kicked the bucket while the machine was running.
And that is across multple machines with different mixtures of AMD/Intel/Nvidia. And different distros, too.
To be honest, I don't even know what the widgets I currently use for displaying temps use, but it isn't psensor (the package is not installed).
But whatever it is, it has worked for me flawlessly so far.
Quoting: BogomipsPlus, in Plasma a lot of settings seem to come and go in the UI after every upgrade and you need to search in 5 different config files to put back your preferences.Not my experience at all. Unless you count major version upgrades - in that case, some incompatibilities is kind of what you'd expect.
But I agree it would be nice if they put more effort into converting settings from older versions.
The fact that you have a minWidth and minHeight is already a problem in itself, but I use more graphs in my page and it is impossible to display the legend because it takes all the space, for example Core temps and load with 20 cores. The titles for each panel are way too big for me so legend + title take the same space than the graph itself that is really small and harder to read.
Psensor pulls data from sensor available through the system nothing more.
And yes, I was mainly talking about major updates that brake a thing every time for me (as an example from the back of my head the delay in ms between clicks for a double-click).
Also note that I am on Debian so every time it comes with something broken it is likely to stay that way for 2 years if it is only fixed in major version and not backported…
Generally, KDE has grown a lot on me over the years. I used to be firmly in GNOME (2) territory for many years, but I never really liked GNOME 3. KDE was trying too hard to look like Windows for a long while, but it's a really good alternative these days. Switched a year or two ago, and not going back to GNOME.
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