David, Nate, Josh, Marco, Carl, and Niccolò are here ready to answer all your questions on Plasma (all versions), Gear, Frameworks, Wayland (and how it affects KDE’s software), and everything in between.
Fire away, Lemmy!
We were expecting to be done in an hour and we have past the 2-hour mark already! Time flies when you are having fun.
Thank you for all the questions and the welcoming and friendly atmosphere, but the devs must get back to making Plasma 6 great.
Please keep the conversation going and KDE contributors will continue to answer over the next days as time permits.
Thank you all!!
How do you copy windows features before they are even announced?
We don’t have a spy that’s for sure!
whistles innocently
is this true
You folks are awesome 👍👍
Hello David, Nate, Josh, Marco, Carl, and Niccolò. How are you all feeling today?
@kellyaster @Bro666 Pretty hungry but I’m cooking a ratatouille right now to fix this issue :)
Hey there KDE team! What is your favorite feature that is coming along with Plasma 6 (or even with the KDE Gear / KDE Framework updates)?
For me it’s definively the new overview effect, I already use it all the time on my Plasma dev session.
I just upgraded to the RC today, and gave this a try - it looks absolutely beautiful! Major props to you and the team!
KDE Connect is something I keep my eye on and check in every once in a while: Is there a dedicated page tracking updates specifically to KDE Connect? I’m really very much looking forward to a time where it is feature compete with Android compared to Apple’s continuity platform. I would absolutely love to move to Android+Linux as my daily drivers, but I feel like I’m giving up on too much by leaving the Apple ecosystem.
Does Connect use BTLE?
Could you guys implement an auto tethering option between phone/PC?
How instant are notifications synced? Do notifications disappear on one side or the other when viewed on one or the other platform?
Maybe implement a “link to KDE” notification toggle to mirror the “link to windows” functionality of Android?Is there a dedicated page tracking updates specifically to KDE Connect?
It is part of KDE Gear, so generally in the gear release announcement. The last few releases were not that big in term of feature but the next one includes some goodies.
Does Connect use BTLE?
KDE Connect will have the Bluetooth backend enabled by default with the next gear release (24.02). I’m not sure if this is BTLE or normal Bluetooth.
Could you guys implement an auto tethering option between phone/PC?
No idea :(
How instant are notifications synced?
For me it is pretty instant. I never miss my Bereal notifications thanks to it :)
Do notifications disappear on one side or the other when viewed on one or the other platform?
Yes
Maybe implement a “link to KDE” notification toggle to mirror the “link to windows” functionality of Android?
No idea :(
In your opinion, what is the most substantial change/addition slated for the megarelease?
For me personally, it’s the updated breeze theme. But I might not be completely objective here, since I drove this effort quite a lot :)
Some screenshots to see the difference: https://invent.kde.org/websites/product-screenshots/-/merge_requests/51/diffs
Thanks for all the great work on kde! I was wondering if the KDE theme refresh, (brise) and icon (app and plasma icon) proposals are going to happen in plasma 6.1? Or is that not on the table? Also, are there plans to have KDE connect support making your phone a webcam?
Edit: grammar
offtopic, but why is this comment yellow? never seen that before.
EDIT: Oh wait, I think it’s to mark unread comments. Haven’t seen that before. Must be a new thing.
I have no idea, what client do you use? (Its not yellow for me on sync) Edit: yeah maybe I don’t know to be honest
I just use the web client
The instance has recently been updated.
With HDR making its debut on Plasma, what are the plans moving forward?
From what I have seen getting games to work in HDR currently requires the correct vulkan layers and a recent gamescope version?
As a side question, will there be an easy way to get HDR working with the Steam flatpak for the Plasma 6 launch?
A near term plan is to make it so you don’t have to use any Vulkan layer to make it work, by having gamescope use the protocol directly. After that, add support to all the other clients - Mesa, SDL, glfw, mpv, Krita, Chromium and so on
will there be an easy way to get HDR working with the Steam flatpak for the Plasma 6 launch?
You can run Steam in gamescope, doesn’t matter if it’s sandboxed or not.
Thanks for the response, excited to see more support being added!
You can run Steam in gamescope, doesn’t matter if it’s sandboxed or not.
So, installing your Vulkan layers and gamescope-git on the host and running
ENABLE_HDR_WSI=1 gamescope --hdr-enabled --hdr-debug-force-output --steam -- env ENABLE_GAMESCOPE_WSI=1 DXVK_HDR=1 DISABLE_HDR_WSI=1 flatpak run com.valvesoftware.Steam -bigpictureshould do it on Plasma 6?Yes
There’s been an undercurrent of discussion I’ve noticed (and tend to agree) that C++ is not the most friendly language for new/outside contributors, even the newer standard you use. Is there an effort to bring first class support/documentation for another higher level language as well? e.g dart/ruby/lua/python/javascript/C#/go (whatever is most feasible)
I have some very, very, very, very WIP KDE widgets for Dart/Flutter in a project running. Currently it has almost nothing but it already automatically switches color theme when you switch color schemes in KDE for example 😄
Don’t expect too much of that though, it’s very unofficial and something I’m doing whenever I feel like it.
What’s the best or recommended way to test out Plasma 6 RC2?
And
What has been the hardest problem to solve moving to Qt6?
What’s the best or recommended way to test out Plasma 6 RC2?
See also: https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Plasma_6#How_to_use/test_it
I haven’t used KDE in a long time because I’ve been keeping things simple and just accepting most defaults on Pop!_OS.
What would be the most compelling reason, in your opinion, to make the effort to try out KDE?
Thanks for the AUA and all the work on KDE, especially with plasma 6.
It’s not really a question, more of a request, but is it possible you all could make the kwrite/kate situation less complicated? I don’t mind having options, but from what I understand, you can only have them both installed (or none), not one or the other. Also, if I want Kwrite to be the default editor, I have to go into every supported mime type (file association) and switch the default (instead of just once for all of them).
My preference would be that there’s only one text editor (to cause less confusion; maybe just have a toggle button to switch between basic and advanced modes), and to make it easier to change file associations for common file types (like text files, video files, music, images, etc.); even if it’s technically a different file format, e.g. .mp4 vs .mkv for videos, I should only have to set the default app once.
@Bro666 With the transition from QT5 to 6 and Plasma 5.27’s implementation of wp-fractional-scale-v1, will most KDE apps now be able to fractionally scale without using the upscale-downscale method? (Or in other words, how QT apps fractionally scale under X11)
In regards to theming, there’s one thing that sticks like a sore thumb, and it’s the fact that most if not all themes for Qt currently use the Kvantum engine ( github.com/tsujan/Kvantum ), which sadly is not well integrated with KDE in things as basic as supporting Plasma’s color schemes and dynamic icons. Do you have any plans to collaborate directly with Kvantum, or with any other particular theming team other than Breeze’s?