In another update on the progress of the upcoming KDE Plasma 6 desktop environment release, there's some fun details from Nate Graham. FYI: KDE Plasma is used on the Steam Deck for the Desktop Mode!
From Graham's usual weekly progress blog post it's noted that Plasma 6 has now set Wayland as the default. As developer Neal Gompa noted in the accepted merge request, "The KDE Plasma experience with Wayland has reached a level of maturity where it makes sense to switch it to the default session."
Another big one is the merging of initial HDR support for gaming (which I previously reported on), that has also now been accepted, using a cut-down version of the upstream protocol that isn't yet finished so that the Plasma team can let people test and play with the HDR implementation for gaming.
One change I'm happy to see is the removal of the need to approve or deny "background activity" of Flatpak apps, it was a bit of a nuisance as Graham said "the whole concept of this has been removed as it was kinda sus and not useful at all".
Plenty of theme improvements for Breeze too as they gave it a bit of an overhaul to have "no more frames within frames" so that instead "Breeze-themed apps adopt the clean design of modern Kirigami apps, with views separated from one another with single-pixel lines".
Plasma start-up time was also improved by multiple seconds.
This is the current roadmap as a reminder as the first big Plasma 6 Alpha is out now:
- 8 November 2023: Alpha
- 29 November 2023: Beta 1
- 20 December 2023: Beta 2
- 10 January 2024: Release Candidate 1
- 31 January 2024: Release Candidate 2
- 21 February 2024: Private Tarball Release
- 28 February 2024: Public Release
That said, it may be quite some time before it trickles down to my Steam Deck. And I'm fine with that.
BlackBloodRum Nov 14, 2023
KDE has a fundraiser for Plasma 6. I just signed up and if you want support them here's the link: https://kde.org/fundraisers/plasma6member/
slaapliedje Nov 14, 2023
Seems odd to me.
Quoting: slaapliedjeShouldn't it be the distribution, not the DE developers which determine if Wayland or Xorg will be the default? I understand when Fedora said they were going to use it by default, or Ubuntu, or whatever. But KDE?All software comes with default configurations, including desktop environments. Distros can change them if they want, but for those that don't Wayland will be the default.
Seems odd to me.
slaapliedje Nov 14, 2023
Quoting: Liam DaweRight, usually the session management is in the sddm or gdm or whichever package. Like the only way I see the KDE project determining that would be if you're installing LFS or something that doesn't change anything from upstream while packaging (like Arch). Most distros split out all the things into different packages, and likely edit them from upstream.Quoting: slaapliedjeShouldn't it be the distribution, not the DE developers which determine if Wayland or Xorg will be the default? I understand when Fedora said they were going to use it by default, or Ubuntu, or whatever. But KDE?All software comes with default configurations, including desktop environments. Distros can change them if they want, but for those that don't Wayland will be the default.
Seems odd to me.
Just seems weird to me. Anyhow, doesn't really matter as long as the sessions are available for each for compatibility (as I've stated elsewhere, I still have some randomly weird issues with Wayland, like Firefox and on-screen keyboards not activating).
I'm still at the stage of switching to Wayland, finding something that isn't working right or irritating me how it works, then flipping back to Xorg. Maybe one day they'll get there... :P
Unless they manage to tackle down ALL the issues in the 105 days (at the time of writing this) remaining until release, with little to no help from Nvidia.
They have been going for a couple years with this and got only a small success, unless a miracle happens, I see this becoming a shitshow.
Linux_Rocks Nov 15, 2023
Mandrake to Mandriva to Red Hat to Fedora to Slackware to Linux Mint. Something Red Hat did pissed me off and made me stop using Fedora. I can't remember what it was anymore. But it made me say fuck you to modern installers, and go to old school Slackware for a while. Mandrake and Mandriva were basically the same thing, and that was the longest stint with a single distro that I've had till Linux Mint. I used to flip-flop between KDE and GNOME on Linux and FreeBSD. Using one on one, and the other on the other. Now I just stick to GhostBSD Xfce Edition with FreeBSD.
I've come a long way from using a retail bought copy of Mandrake 8.1 Standard on a Pentium Overdrive upgraded 486 machine. Having to use the boot floppy to load the CD installer. XD
Last edited by Linux_Rocks on 15 November 2023 at 2:44 am UTC
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