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!!

  •  Horsey   ( @Horsey@kbin.social ) 
    8•5 months ago

    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?

    •  Carl Schwan   ( @carlschwan@lemmy.kde.social ) 
      7•5 months ago

      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 :(

  •  Auzy   ( @Auzy@beehaw.org ) 
    5•5 months ago

    Firstly love the window tiling system. Have you thought about something similar to magnet which allows a window to fill 2 '/columns of the grid simultaneously?

  •  Domi   ( @domi@lemmy.secnd.me ) 
    5•5 months ago

    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?

    •  Zamundaaa   ( @Zamundaaa@discuss.tchncs.de ) 
      2•5 months ago

      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.

      •  Domi   ( @domi@lemmy.secnd.me ) 
        2•5 months ago

        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 -bigpicture should do it on Plasma 6?

  •  Blisterexe   ( @Blisterexe@lemmy.zip ) 
    5•5 months ago

    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

    •  Pointedstick   ( @Pointedstick@lemmy.kde.social ) 
      0•5 months ago

      Actually Plasma is generally more popular than GNOME every time surveys are conducted. However we have to keep in mind that the direct consumers of a DE are actually not the end users, but rather the distributors who package and distribute it. There are a number of historical reasons why many distributors ended up picking GNOME over Plasma including accessibility, corporate sponsorship, an easier packaging experience, and the rocky KDE 4 rollout burning a lot of trust. So what you end up with today is many distros shipping GNOME despite pent-up desire for Plasma. It’s a great illustration of how you need to keep your direct users happy.

      And I think that pent-up desire is being unleashed these days due to various changes in our ecosystem. Plasma is better than ever and version 5 had a much less painful release compared to 4, with us aiming to do even better in Plasma 6. We also see an increasing number of hardware vendors shipping devices with Plasma on it (https://kde.org/hardware/), who had a strong financial incentive to listen to their customers by picking Plasma over GNOME. In addition, KDE’s accessibility game is ramping up hugely, and we have more robust corporate sponsorship than we used to with Valve and Blue Systems putting tons of resources into KDE. Finally, GNOME seems to be becoming more hostile to their downstreams, causing them to need to do more of their own development or else migrate to be a fork or skin of Plasma. Interesting developments.

  •  morrowind   ( @morrowind@lemmy.ml ) 
    4•5 months ago

    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)

    •  PureTryOut   ( @PureTryOut@lemmy.kde.social ) 
      5•5 months ago

      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.