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!!
- renesman ( @renesman@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) 16•8 months ago
How do you copy windows features before they are even announced?
- davidre ( @davidre@lemmy.kde.social ) 1•8 months ago
We don’t have a spy that’s for sure!
- Pointedstick ( @Pointedstick@lemmy.kde.social ) 1•8 months ago
whistles innocently
- AVincentInSpace ( @AVincentInSpace@pawb.social ) 14•8 months ago
is this true
- Troy ( @troyunrau@lemmy.ca ) 13•8 months ago
You folks are awesome 👍👍
- kellyaster ( @kellyaster@kbin.social ) 11•8 months ago
Hello David, Nate, Josh, Marco, Carl, and Niccolò. How are you all feeling today?
- Carl Schwan :kde: ( @carlschwan@floss.social ) 10•8 months ago
@kellyaster @Bro666 Pretty hungry but I’m cooking a ratatouille right now to fix this issue :)
- Russ ( @russjr08@bitforged.space ) 9•8 months ago
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)?
- Carl Schwan ( @carlschwan@lemmy.kde.social ) 14•8 months ago
For me it’s definively the new overview effect, I already use it all the time on my Plasma dev session.
- Russ ( @russjr08@bitforged.space ) 3•8 months ago
I just upgraded to the RC today, and gave this a try - it looks absolutely beautiful! Major props to you and the team!
- Horsey ( @Horsey@kbin.social ) 8•8 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•8 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 :(
- jawa21 ( @jawa21@startrek.website ) 6•8 months ago
In your opinion, what is the most substantial change/addition slated for the megarelease?
- Carl Schwan ( @carlschwan@lemmy.kde.social ) 4•8 months ago
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
- GravitySpoiled ( @GravitySpoiled@lemmy.ml ) 5•8 months ago
KDE is easy to use and very powerful.
In your opinion, why do many people prefer GNOME over KDE? Do you agree with them? How are you planning to close the gap?
- Pointedstick ( @Pointedstick@lemmy.kde.social ) 0•8 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.
- Blisterexe ( @Blisterexe@lemmy.zip ) 5•8 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
- leopold ( @leopold@lemmy.kde.social ) 2•8 months ago
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.
- Blisterexe ( @Blisterexe@lemmy.zip ) 2•8 months ago
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
- leopold ( @leopold@lemmy.kde.social ) 2•8 months ago
I just use the web client
The instance has recently been updated.
- Domi ( @domi@lemmy.secnd.me ) 5•8 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•8 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•8 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?- Zamundaaa ( @Zamundaaa@discuss.tchncs.de ) 2•8 months ago
Yes
- Leo ( @leo@lemmy.linuxuserspace.show ) 4•8 months ago
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?
- Herzenschein ( @herzenschein@pawb.social ) 3•8 months ago
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
- ericjmorey ( @ericjmorey@programming.dev ) 4•8 months ago
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?
- morrowind ( @morrowind@lemmy.ml ) 4•8 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•8 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.
- constancies ( @constancies@metalhead.club ) 3•8 months ago
@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)
- csolisr ( @csolisr@hub.azkware.net ) 3•8 months ago
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?