KDE Usability & Productivity: Week 78

Usability & Productivity 1 Minute

It’s time for week 78 in KDE’s Usability & Productivity initiative! This week I think people have been taking a breather following a super intense sprint, and some are even on vacation–myself included. So this week’s report is going to ba a bit light, but it’s still got a few cool goodies!

New Features

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

User Interface Improvements

Next week, your name could be in this list! Not sure how? Just ask! I’ve helped mentor a number of new contributors recently and I’d love to help you, too! You can also check out https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved, and find out how you can help be a part of something that really matters. You don’t have to already be a programmer. I wasn’t when I got started. Try it, you’ll like it! We don’t bite!

If you find KDE software useful, consider making a tax-deductible donation to the KDE e.V. foundation.

Published by Nate

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40 thoughts on “KDE Usability & Productivity: Week 78”

  1. I was updated my Manjaro KDE to 5.16 a few days ago and that is super awesome!
    Performance of KDE is getting better and better along with UI/UX improvements!
    That’s exciting guys!
    Looking forward to see what will be new in Breeze revolution!
    Thank you guys!

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    3. Dunno, sorry. I don’t tend to focus much on non-Breeze themes. I believe in the power of defaults! 🙂

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    4. Hello Nate,

      Just wanted to put in a usability feature request. Could you consider creating a small UI for assigning devices for use in a multi-seat configuration? For now, the only way to create new seats and assign devices is through the un-intuitive commandline through loginctl. Please help!!!!!

      Thanks!

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    7. Nate said:

      “This sounds like a major project, but it does seem important for an enterprise environment (see also https://phabricator.kde.org/T11080). Can you provide an example of an alternative app that does this?”

      I only know of two applications which are listed on the Wikipedia Page for Multiseat Configuration. But neither are in working order when I tried them and do not look to be well supported.

      en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiseat_configuration#GNU/Linux

      There is a utility called automseat that was designed for the MDM display manager, and there is a python based utility called Bicefalo. I don’t know about the impact for enterprise clients, but this would be a major usability step forward for my two videocard/two seat home setup. Thanks!

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  2. The Konsole tiling is great!

    However, the tab bars seem to take a lot of unnecessary space.
    Is it possible to hide the Konsole’s tab bars or to shrink them to a line similar to the one in tmux?
    They could be blended in again when the mouse in the moved in the upper area of a sub Konsole window. 🙂

    Furthermore, it is possible to save and load the Konsole’s arraignment?

    Happy vacation!

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    1. Heh, the tab headers were something I pushed for and personally really like. The author wasn’t the biggest fan himself, so I have a feeling he’d be willing to make them optional. Saving and loading arrangements is another good idea. Please file feature requests at https://bugs.kde.org, as always. 🙂

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  3. Dolphin Execute button run the script in background not in Konsole to interact with it, so can’t provide par example a sudo password.. or passwrd for encrypted drive,…
    This is more important than other features in Konsole. I ran a lot of small scripts like loading encrypted drives,… is not as easy as par example in Ubuntu Mate where that Execute button is execute in Terminal, so I can Interact with the script. This is one Issue that make me avoid KDE Plasma.

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    1. That’s an interesting issue. I could see your request being annoying for scripts that don’t require interaction, but I can see how it breaks those that do. Maybe it should be optional, triggered with a “run interactively in a terminal window” checkbox in the dialog or something. Please file a bug at https://bugs.kde.org!

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    2. All my scripts require interaction, at least a sudo password, all my scripts do some administrative configurations,….
      If KDE Plasma is a Desktop for Linux should care about running scripts. Of course there are two alternatives.
      – right click > Activities > Run in Konsole – this require more clicks to start the script and concentrate on menu to find the right selection + on close I have to push CTRL+SHIFT+W to close window, so a lot of things to run a script when runing a script in Linux should be easily like in Ubuntu Mate,
      – of course open Konsole and try to go in terminal to folder or insert folder address and script name to be run, witch is not easiy even compare with a double clik and pus an Execute In terminal Button

      Ubuntu Mate is not the only desktop that has that button “Run in Terminal”

      Of course this desktop has other big issue that par example in Ubuntu Mate does not exist.
      – an SD card is not loaded automatically on insertion – so difficult for my mother to use it
      – no ssh authentication Automation , if I have filezilla, unison, remmina … and at lest 2 user on the PC i have to add manually the key in at lest 60 configuration files, this can be done automatically, but I ask myself why I should do it, (if I make later a new config file I have again to write the key file in it), if Ubuntu Mate ca do automatic authentication no matter what app you use it.

      So I ask myself how KDE plasma consider itself a Linux Desktop, for running script and doing SSH connection is not implemented any usability,(just recently someone added that CTRL+ALT+T to start Konsole) as default.
      Because of those three Isses I ditch again KDE desktop and I keep using Ubuntu Mate, even Caja is slower than Dolphin, at lest that desktop run strong…

      Even I write this form KDE Plasma on a laptop just bought one week ago, I will remove it and install Ubuntu Mate, KDE Plasma is nice Desktop, its design fits my Laptop more than Mate, but I don’t want to struggle on basic staffs, when Mate run smooth… I see a lot of improvements on it in last years but is not very usable for me….

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  4. Gnome already works under Wayland by default. How much time KDE needs to reach the same state of things? It is not usable under Wayland still.

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    1. I’m trying to figure out exactly what GNOME is supposedly doing better in Wayland than KDE. I have both installed on my laptops and both are equally “broken” in Wayland. I’m also still trying to figure out how Wayland is more useful than X? Be careful when you answer, I’ve been using desktop Linux for the last 23 years.

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    2. >I’m also still trying to figure out how Wayland is more useful than X?
      At least it is much faster than X. Didn’t you knew that?

      >Be careful when you answer, I’ve been using desktop Linux for the last 23 years.
      Oh, yeah. I’m already scared.

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    3. Let’s keep this civil, fellas. Tough-guy talk over the internet is just silly; nobody can see how big your muscles are or how red your sports car is. 🙂

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    4. Thanks! I didn’t mean for my comment to be uncivilized. I just wanted to avoid the B.S. that comes from some folks in the community zealously promoting yet another project that is supposed to save the Linux desktop. I’ve been around long enough to see many of these projects crash and burn. Wayland has been around for 10 years and it has yet to prove itself. It is way too buggy and doesn’t support a lot of things that Xorg supports. When it has at least 90% compatibility, I’ll get excited. So far it seems that Wayland’s compatibility sits at around 60% (just pulling that out of the air, would love to see some real numbers).

      Anyway. thanks for great job the KDE Team is doing! I’ve been using KDE since version 1.0. Besides the slight hiccup with 4.0’s release, you folks have never let us down. KDE gets better and better each year while other desktops regress.

      I would love to see KDE do automatic HiDPI scaling like GNOME. I would also like to see touch support improved for both Xorg and Wayland. I have a Surface Pro 4 and I am having issues with touch not working correctly with the Application Dashboard (full screen menu) under Xorg. I works great for Wayland, but keyboard support and support for Wine games is not great in Wayland at this time (along with a ton of other bugs).

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    5. >At least it is much faster than X. Didn’t you knew that?

      What, in general, is much faster.. desktop loading times, app loading times? What scale are we measuring the speed in.. milliseconds, microseconds, nanoseconds?

      I hadn’t used GNOME on Wayland in a few months (I just used Plasma under Wayland a few days ago on my Surface Pro), so l decided to give it a try again after your initial post. I agree with you that GNOME works better under Wayland than Plasma at this time. Unlike Plasma, GNOME’s desktop scalability did not freak out when the desktop was first launched on a HiDPI display; Plasma has an issue with desktop widgets and the Latte-Dock becoming freakishly huge when the desktop is first launched under Wayland. Also, unlike Plasma, GNOME under Wayland was able to run my favorite game under Wine, Red Alert 3, with no issues; Plasma under Wayland screws up the placement of the game’s splash screen (puts it bottom right instead of center) and the games menus are unusable making the game unplayable.

      However, Wayland itself is still not ready for daily use. There are still A LOT OF APPS that run fine under X that do not work well, or at all, under Wayland. Screen rotation, Onboard, and Cairo-Dock are just a few. Wayland also locks up my computers (Surface Pro 4 and ROG Strix GL702 VM gaming laptop) when I log out of GNOME or Plasma after trying to run a Wine game. Wayland needs to be more stable and drop in compatible with Xorg FOR ALL APPS before it is viable.

      >Be careful when you answer, I’ve been using desktop Linux for the last 23 years.
      >>Oh, yeah. I’m already scared.

      That statement wasn’t supposed to make you scared. It was supposed to make you think before you spoke. There is a difference between someone just discovering Linux yesterday and someone who used it for decades. Experience keeps me from getting too excited over “the next best thing.” I’ve wasted too much time chasing after Unicorns to know that they don’t exist.

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    7. For me it’s actually usable already. I guess it depends on your use cases. To make it work better for your use cases, the answer is the same as it is for everything else: more development work will make it better faster! 🙂

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    8. For example. The very simple thing: keyboard layout indicator is broken. It is enough for me to not to use it under Wayland.

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    9. Exactly. I use different keyboard layouts for different languages so this is a must for me. I just can’t understand how such a small thing can be broken for so long.
      That and lack of global menus – keep me successfully away from Wayland. Besides, I never could run it for longer than a few minutes. After that, it crashed or showed some serious bugs that made it unusable.

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    10. because KDe developers are inefficient. KDe advisers were the first to announce wayland integration several years ago and PLASMA environment the last operating system which probably will integrate it.Truth is that they lie about wayland. They are not able to make it working because they are inept.

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    11. James, that’s both rude and inaccurate, and I’m disappointed that you would post it.

      First of all, it’s not very nice to insult people who are providing you software for free, and on their own blogs too! If you don’t like the state of Plasma’s Wayland session, either don’t use it (the X11 session is perfectly usable), or help make it better. But insulting it and the people who are trying to make it a reality is not appropriate behavior.

      Also, your assertion is that Plasma will be “the last operating system which probably will integrate it” cannot possibly be true. In reality, Plasma is the second-best supported DE for Wayland, behind GNOME, and other popular software such as XFCE, MATE, Cinnamon, Linux Mint, and ElementaryOS are basically ignoring Wayland. Plasma devs by contrast are actively working hard on it, and Wayland work was a top priority at the Plasma Sprint not two weeks ago. Wayland-related KWin patches (e.g. to support window rules). Sure it’s not there yet, but it’s getting better with each release. If you want to help get it there faster, then file high-quality bugs and submit patches. But insulting the people who are making it happen is unlikely to be as effective.

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    12. Just a one note, Nate. A bug-report with keyboard layout indicator under Wayland is created a long time ago.

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  6. Brief report this week, but everyone deserves a nice rest after a lot of months of hard work.

    Wow, Konsole seems really nice. I have to try the tiled split mode, looks fantastic.

    I’ll try Wayland session on my Plasma 5.16.2 right now, to test it, i suppose in my personal case of use it will work flawlessly, i’ll report it if that’s not the case.

    Thank you very much as always Nate and everyone else at KDE Community, take a huge and nice rest, to recharge the batteries for another round of KDE development time.

    Bests to all mentioned above ^^.

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    1. I’m actually able to run Wayland from git master right now and it’s amazingly usable. There are quirks and papercuts, but for my personal use cases it’s quite bearable. 🙂 The development is going quite well I think.

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    2. How long does the plasma session take for you to completely start? Compared to the X11 session, I can count around 10 seconds from the login until the plasma logo disappears and the wallpapers shows up, while the X11 one appears immediately. 😦

      Then there’s still no option to set fractional scaling. O:-) So it’s not usable for me on my laptop. 😦

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    3. It is because you’re using only one keyboard layout and not using Yakuake with Kickoff panel at the top of the screen.

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