This week in KDE: KDE-powered Steam Deck revealed!

Big big news today: Valve has announced the Steam Deck–a handheld gaming device running KDE Plasma under the hood! This is a big deal, folks. By using a Linux-based OS, Valve is hugely improving the gaming space on Linux, (eventually, hopefully) removing a blocker for a lot of people. And by running KDE Plasma, tons of people will gain exposure to our software when they use the device docked with a monitor, keyboard, and mouse–because yes, you can do that! This thing is a real computer and can be used like one too!

I’m really excited for the Steam Deck, and I see it as evidence that my plan for KDE World Domination is both achievable and in progress. We are going to get KDE software onto every device on the planet, folks!

Full disclosure: I worked (and am still working) on QA for the KDE software side of this project

In addition to that very exciting piece of news, KDE contributors continued plugging away on the usual crop of cool stuff:

New Features

System Monitor and sensor widgets can now display load averages for many sensor types (David Redondo, Plasma 5.23)

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

Dolphin no longer sometimes crashes when hovering the cursor over the “Activities” item in the context menu (Harald Sitter, Dolphin 21.08)

Gwenview and Dolphin no longer crashes on launch if DBus is not available (Alex Richardson, Gwenview and Dolphin 21.08)

Okular no longer sometimes fails to display FictionBook books (Yaroslav Sidlovsky, Okular 21.08)

Improved the reliability of sorting in Dolphin when folder sizes are using real on-disk sizes (Christian Muehlhaeuser, Dolphin 21.08)

Empty folders in the trash now display the placeholder text “Folder is empty” instead of “Trash is empty” (Jordan Bucklin, Dolphin 21.08)

In the Plasma Wayland session, KWin no longer sometimes crashes when unplugging or re-plugging certain external displays (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.22.4)

The ksystemstats daemon (which provides sensor data to System Monitor and the various sensor widgets) no longer crashes on launch for some people with certain hardware (David Redondo, Plasma 5.22.4)

Info Center now displays correct information about non-x86 CPUs (Harald Sitter, Plasma 5.22.4)

KWin’s DRM pipeline has been completely overhauled to offer far-reaching improvements, such as faster speed and startup time, automatic recovery from certain driver bugs, and a modernized infrastructure to make future improvements easier (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.23)

When using Plasma’s optional systemd startup feature, KWallet now unlocks properly when it would otherwise be able to (e.g. the wallet is named “kdewallet”, its password matches the login password, and all the necessary PAM bits have been set up properly) (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.23)

When using Plasma’s optional systemd startup feature, the Baloo file indexer now starts up correctly (S Page, Plasma 5.23)

Info Center now shows a placeholder message when the Energy page would be blank, instead of, well, a blank page (Harald Sitter, Plasma 5.23)

In the Plasma Wayland session, left or right-clicking on an app’s System Tray icon no longer causes that app’s icon to start bouncing near the cursor as if it were being launched (David Redondo, Plasma 5.23)

Slightly reduced the resource usage for all QtQuick-based KDE desktop software (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Frameworks 5.85)

Selecting a custom app/binary in the System Settings Default Applications page now works (David Edmundson, Frameworks 5.85)

When using a custom Plasma theme that lacks graphics for a UI element that Breeze does have graphics for (e.g. the header bar thingy that you see at the top of a lot of applets and notifications), the Breeze theme graphic is no longer inappropriately used anyway (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Frameworks 5.85)

User Interface Improvements

Thumbnail previews now respect the scale factor and always look sharp and crisp (Méven Car, Dolphin 21.08)

Kate now ships by default with a session, which means that all of its session-specific features like automatically remembering open documents get enabled by default (Michal Humpula, Kate 21.12)

When showing arrows in the scroll tracks, the arrows are now always visible, rather than only being visible when hovering the cursor over the track (Jan Blackquill, Plasma 5.23)

In the Plasma Wayland session, the virtual keyboard state’s enablement/disablement status is now remembered when you restart the system (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.23)

System Monitor now exports a global menubar so that those of you who use a Global Menu applet can find things there just as you expect (Felipe Kinoshita, Plasma 5.23)

Buttons for sensors in System Monitor’s customization UI now look better (Noah Davis, Frameworks 5.85)

Traditional in-window menubars in QtQuick-based KDE apps now look like they do in other apps (Janet Blackquill, Frameworks 5.85)

…And everything else

Keep in mind that this blog only covers the tip of the iceberg! Tons of KDE apps whose development I don’t have time to follow aren’t represented here, and I also don’t mention backend refactoring, improved test coverage, and other changes that are generally not user-facing. If you’re hungry for more, check out https://planet.kde.org/, where you can find blog posts by other KDE contributors detailing the work they’re doing.

How You Can Help

Have a look at https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved to discover ways to be part of a project that really matters. Each contributor makes a huge difference in KDE; you are not a number or a cog in a machine! You don’t have to already be a programmer, either. I wasn’t when I got started. Try it, you’ll like it! We don’t bite!

Finally, consider making a tax-deductible donation to the KDE e.V. foundation.

49 thoughts on “This week in KDE: KDE-powered Steam Deck revealed!

  1. Just a thought for the on-screen keyboard. From my use of it I would love to see an option where you can force and hide it or use the auto mode as some 2 in 1 do not correctly report the status of the tablet mode and even ones that do showing and hiding can be a bit hit an miss at times.

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    1. There is a manual mode where you can force it to never appear. If you’re *not* using this mode, then it should show and hide dynamically irrespective of tablet mode. So theoretically you can already kinda do this.

      Like

  2. Great stuff, as always!

    >>When using Plasma’s optional systemd startup feature, KWallet now unlocks properly when it would otherwise be able to (e.g. the wallet is named “kdewallet”, its password matches the login password, and all the necessary PAM bits have been set up properly) (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.23)

    >>When using Plasma’s optional systemd startup feature, the Baloo file indexer now starts up correctly (Skier Page, Plasma 5.23)

    While I can confirm there’s a problem with Baloo systemd startup, I couldn’t reproduce kdewallet issue (Manjaro user here). And here’s the question: I manager to easily make Baloo run properly on a system startup, this looks quite an easy fix, why queuing it to 5.23 instead of 5.22.4?

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    1. David tends to be fairly conservative with regards to backporting fixes to the stable release. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as I broke the LTS a few months ago by backporting a supposedly safe change. 😦

      If you can test the changes on stable and verify that they don’t break anything, please go ahead and ask for the commits to be backported by posting comments to https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kwallet-pam/-/merge_requests/6 and https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-workspace/-/merge_requests/960.

      Liked by 1 person

  3. The only minor bug that irritates me is that thumbnail previews are empty in wayland. Seeing the bug report, it seems that even the cause is still not known. Hopefully it gets fixes and then i can finally have ideal kde experience

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  4. Fantastic news RE SteamDeck! Honestly I’m at a loss as to why Plasma hasn’t become a more popular default amongst distros. Here’s to our continuing conquest. Muahahahaha!

    Liked by 1 person

    1. But you suck at KDE’s PR anyway at same time and KDE misses chance to gain some popularity…

      When I heard about SteamDeck using KDE Plasma, I immediately went to http://kde.org/ and ‘nothing’.
      Ok, so went straight to https://kde.org/hardware/ and still nothing.

      Today I’ve got email (I’m subscribed to your blog) with big SteamDeck photo and info you are proud of being QA assurance for KDE Plasma at Valve, so immediately checked again kde site (with hardware subpage) with dissapouintment again.

      Maybe you are the only ‘QA’ guy, not ‘PR’, but anyway you are the most recognizable “KDE Guy” writing frequently posts about KDE Plasma roadmap and upcoming releases, so I guess you got pretty strong position in KDE Developers Community, so you can demand posting info about SteamDeck not only in hardware subpage, but also in ‘news’ , ‘announcements’ and maybe even on main KDE page.

      Why is it so important? Because KDE Plasma has only fraction of linux users(vs Gnome users), but Gnome users will only fraction of SteamDeck population. Yes, SteamDeck will reverse “KDE vs Gnome” statistics ^^
      Typical computer users knows(maybe not really, but heard about that) what Windows, iOS, MacOS and Android is. They maybe heard about Linux, but know that read in SteamDeck announcements everywhere that’s based on ArchLinux and UI use Plasma Desktop (and wonder what’s “Plasma”) S othey google it, goes to http://kde.org/ and finds nothing about SteamDeck, so they thinks it’s maybe other Plasma Desktop (unrelated to SteamDeck). If they ever find this kde.org page, because omitting “SteamDeck” buzzword lowers kde.org pagerang…
      And when they see some Slimbooks, Pinephones…they thinks it’s only used by some unknown craptops and crapphones(I wonder if it can even make phone calls, and send SMS/MMS, because except Nokia N900/N9/N950 all Opensource-based phones endeed as fiasco).
      But when typical, teenager computer user would see thats Plasma is used on Valve SteamDeck, he can think that he want to use it on his desktop (especially after using docked SteamBox in desktop mode)

      So please fix it, because KDE Plasma needs such promotion!

      I hope you don’t feel attacked by me. I really appreciate on what you are doing for Plasma desktop from beginning, so please keep up the good work!

      Liked by 1 person

    2. Indeed, I had that same thought. Unfortunately KDE had no advance notice of the launch day or even the hardware details, and our biggest web guy just stepped down recently. It definitely needs to be done though. I was thinking of taking a stab at it, but I am currently on vacation with limited KDE time and have poor web skills. Maybe you might want to look into it?

      Liked by 1 person

    3. I’m not KDE developer, so don’t have appropriate permissions, nor I’m web guy too (but I guess it’s CMS managed, but maybe I’m wrong, so maybe I could try at least [at least 2/3 of my brothers are webprogrammers, but not me, so at least I would have some technical support in case of ;-).

      For me main KDE page (and hardware page) looks substantially wrong. There’s some poorly rendered laptop, that looks syntetic. Pictures on hardware page looks also like renders, not real photos(maybe they are so heavily photoshopped). For me it all looks unreal and for me it got negative connotations with Vapor-Ware (like on Kickstarter/Indiegogo campaigns).

      I think that at least in hardware page there should be real photos.
      I would also replace that rendered laptop on main page, with compilation of real photos of four devices with Plasma Desktop visible on screen:
      1) Laptop (best looking one. I would prefer black, but not sure if Pinebook or Slimbook looks better on photos)
      2) Phone (PinePhone is ugly, but there’s not much choice with KDE Plasma anyway ;-). And It’s FLOSS related)
      3) Some tablet. I guess Plasma desktop is more usable on tablet, than Phone (year ago when wanted to switch MeeGo on Nokia N9 to something with working WebBrowser I found that Plasma distros looked OK on paper, but Phone functions like Calling or Bluetooth were unusable then. But for Tablet it would be enough)
      4) SteamDeck (yeah, it would be really great promotion for KDE Plasma. I don’t think any sane person would accuse KDE of free SteamDeck promotion/marketing (and not otherwise, like using SteamDeck brand to promote KDE without Valve permissions 😉

      Anyway I don’t think that such changes could be made immediately by somebody unknown in community (not strong and recognizable leader like[You are KDE’s Miguel de Icaza ;-] you without proper discussion before [and general agreement for them).
      Even you cannot force something, that everybody disagrees and entering territory which is more taste/opinions related(than technical) is not so easy and prone to conflicts. At least adding SteamDeck to hardware page shouldn’t be controversial (but I guess preferred would be some smoothed photos to fit rest of the page), but I would be happy to see SteamDeck (because of recognize-ability, it would be huge promotion) on main kde.org page too.

      From pure curiosity I started goolging and found that:
      https://community.kde.org/KDE.org/Site_Status

      I have no idea what ‘chihuahua’ is and cannot google it (in this context), but because all page is marked as ‘outdated’ on beginning, maybe it’s irrelevant at all 😉

      On main page I found some KDE Invent:
      https://invent.kde.org/websites/kde-org/-/blob/c63fe831a8f28c2944b122e0477d2efa271b9b83/content/hardware.md

      So I guess that’s maybe the way to edit by hand, using some mix of Markdown and HTML inserts (at least there’s no PHP snippets 😉

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    4. @memfaul

      I maintained the website during the last three years and recently retired. Help with the website is always welcome and it needs a constant maintenance, something I’m now unable to do.

      > I’m not KDE developer, so don’t have appropriate permissions, nor I’m web guy too (but I guess it’s CMS managed, but maybe I’m wrong, so maybe I could try at least [at least 2/3 of my brothers are webprogrammers, but not me, so at least I would have some technical support in case of ;-).

      I didn’t have appropriate permissions when I started too and becoming a KDE developer is easy 🙂 If you want to help and need a bit of help to get started, I’m generally available on the weekend, just ping me in the #kde-www:kde.org matrix channel or KDE Web telegram channel (https://community.kde.org/Telegram).

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    5. @carlschwan: While I was thinking there’s nobody to do it, I wishedI could help adding SteamDeck’s info, because I’m personally excited there will be not-so-niche Open (even more then beloved Nokia N9/N950) handheld Device(it’s rare in DRM times) with so innovative input support (so many analogs sticks , touchpads and bottom buttons[was thinking about chorded keyboard for terminal], and that it would be huge protomtion for KDE Plasma (I think that KDE Plasma should be really proud it has been choosen as DE in top-tier consumer device, not directed for computer hackers)

      But I fear you want to train replacement for yourself that will be hard working for free on developers demand, mainly editing texts(Markdown and maybe styles) and editing graphics, and will be responsive all the time.
      If it would be some programming work, when I would learn something that would help me in future, then I would be happy to agree and cooperate.
      But it sound like time-consuming, boring work, without any bigger rewards (like even gaining usable knowledge), so I must probably refuse. If you are experienced web-developer, that it’s not so time-consuming for you(because you know what exactly what to do). But for me it sounds, like it would be hard, boring and taking much free time work, without visible benefits (even friendship 😉

      But thanks for proposition and feel free to contact me again.

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  5. I really hope, the SteamDeck will be a success and Valve really solves the AntiCheat-Issue – and of course i was pretty exciting when reading that SteamOS 3.0 will be on Arch and KDE!

    And when reading about load-average sensors i already got my hopes up that we can select all sensors again (bug 438318), but it seems that will need some more time…

    Liked by 1 person

  6. Wow, what great news!!! All the best with the Steam Deck and let it bring Plasma to many more users. This shows that Plasma is indeed production ready, otherwise Valve wouldn’t trust in you. 🙂
    Also the updates for 5.23 look very promising and seem round up the desktop in a great pace.

    Do you know if the Steam Deck run an X11 or a Wayland session? Could you ask David please, I think he should know! 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I might be wrong about this, but I believe the plan is to use Wayland by default–just like the PinePhone does.

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    2. This could eventually mean that KWinFT with Wlroots Wayland library support is most certainly under study by the valve devs team.

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    3. Based on the fact that Roman is paid by Valve and the fact that Valve didn’t let him go after the kwin/kwinft split debacle, one can assume it’s more probable Valve will use kwinft in future in place of kwin. Maybe finally it’s a good time to leave hurt egos behind and try to mend fences for betterment of kde? This is a big opportunity to solve this kwinft fork issue.

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    4. To my knowledge, he was sponsored by Valve several years ago before forking KWin, and is no longer being sponsored by them. Do you have more up-to-date information you could point me to?

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    5. @angrylinuxuser: Did you ever heard about legacy steamos-compositor and new gamescope? (It’s the WM that actively develops with appropiate patches for wayland, xwayland and mesa).

      @Nate: Is your work public(some git repo or archlinux PKGBUILDS, or even binary repo)?
      I would like to test Steamdecks’s Plasma (already reserved 2 units) on normal machine. I’m especially interested in it’s input and virtual keyboard. I was thinking about adding chorded keyboard support (the other problem is test device, SteamController got only two bottom buttons(vs 4 in SteamDeck, still would be better to have 6-8 bottom buttons), which is crucial for chorded input. I know that average user will prefer OnScreenKeyboard, but with chorded input, typing could be faster than with normal keyboard (especially virtual), and would replace laptop on-the-go (I’m not the gamer, but reserved SteamDecks, because of open nature, innovative controls and potentially big community, so long live after abandonment by Valve. Especially because I can install any x86_64 linux distro on it, and it will fully work 😉
      Do you know of Valve is planning to release new SteamController with SteamDeck layout (I guess it would be crucial for multiplayer or even single player, while docked). Releasing such controller now, would help developers customize their games/apps for SteamDeck already.

      And about Wayland session (I’ve always got fresh system with kde-unstable), it really sucks in case of my intel-based laptop. It loses input aftter suspending and go some other problems, so I’m using Xorg Plasma sessions with disabled option of disabling compositor for fullscreen apps (because Firefox stops redrawing of some old windows, after running MPV)

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    6. I’m not aware of a place where you can publicly access the SteamOS source code, sorry (and for that matter, I don’t have access to it either).

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    7. 5.23 may be though, and that’s the version that would end up shipping with this device. Have you used the Wayland session recently? It’s really in great shape today.

      Also keep in mind that Plasma itself is mostly just sitting there in the background on this device. It’s primarily a gaming machine and Plasma and the supporting KDE frameworks are mostly there providing the infrastructure for Steam and the games. The fact that Valve chose Plasma instead of GNOME, XFCE, or something else is a huge vote of confidence.

      Liked by 3 people

    8. > Have you used the Wayland session recently? It’s really in great shape today.

      I use Plasma Wayland as my daily driver 🙂

      > Also keep in mind that Plasma itself is mostly just sitting there in the background on this device.

      I’m concerned about what’ll happen when they dock it. Wayland has some great advantages relevant to that use of course — better scaling, mixed refresh rate, mixed DPIs…

      Anyway yeah, I sure hope 5.23 shapes up to be good enough to do Wayland by default, at least on that specific set of hardware.

      Liked by 1 person

    9. > 5.23 may be though
      By now I would rather say 5.25 than 5.24. There are still lot’s of (tiny and bigger) culprits left. 😉

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    10. @Nate
      I don’t like how you are acting in this blog post and discussion, because:
      1) At first (in post) you act like you are working in SteamDeck team as Plasma QA Assurance
      2) Later you stated you haven’t seen device and don’t have access to it’s codebase(even KDE Plasma one), but because you presented yourself as working in SteamDeck people threats your answers as definitive, so you are making disinformation because of that…because it looks like you don’t know answers (but nobody threats you like average poster there, but KDE Guru, especially because you wrote ”Full disclosure: I worked (and am still working) on QA for the KDE software side of this project”
      Maybe you should clarify if you work for Valve or not, and if you have any internal knowledge about SteamDeck, or maybe your answers are based on pure speculation (I have feeling that all your SteaDeck knowledge is based on public press/media coverage]
      I’m probably angry at you, because I wass excited after reading your post, I would get more answers and test their Plasma fork, because of your involvment in SteamDeck’s project. But now I’m strongly dissapointed, because you gaved all us hope, that has been taken brutally later 😉

      @Alex”
      I guess that because of gamescope(Wayland Valve’s windows manager and compositor, developed recently by Valve) and Mesa and Xwayland patches to work with it(allowing to window fullscreen apps, by scaling them and changing aspect ratio[it an add black bars), it looks like they want bring Wayland, but, but I guess (because it’s easy to switch forth and back between Xorg and Wayland session) they will decide not long before schedule, depending on outcome (which solution will give better compatability and performance, but which especially will show less problems [more important than performance])

      There are few problems:

      Wine/Proton is X11 only (so it can work using Xwayland). There’s wine’s fork using wayland, but works only for some fullscreen apps.

      While SDL2 apps (until statically compiled, should work natively with wayland, SDL apps not (they should work using Xwayland). There’s SDL1->SDL2 translation layer, but it’s still very bugy with many apps(and I guess Valve is smart enough to not take a risk at this point)

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    11. As I said, I worked on QA for the Plasma software side of the project. This did not require having, seeing, ore even knowing about the device hardware itself. This kind of arrangement is completely standard in the tech industry, to prevent leaks. I have “internal knowledge” only of the software side. I know nothing about the hardware itself that isn’t common public knowledge.

      I do not work for Valve–I work for Blue Systems, and in my capacity as a Blue Systems employee, I have done QA work that was paid for and directed by Valve for this project.

      I’m not sure why you’re mad at me, but it seems like you’ve blown me up to be some kind of larger-than-life figure in your mind. But I’m just a regular person who’s passionate about KDE and is fortunate enough to work on KDE software for a living. Nothing more, nothing less. 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

    12. I’m not really mad at you, but dissapointed, because I hoped you wrote that and that code will be released to test 😉

      I heard in the past about you and Blue Systems, so It sounded strange you wrote about Valve. But now it adds up. But because you work for QA for Plasma, and they will modify heavily it(especially input side), it sounds strange you haven’t saw nor device, nor modified code.

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  7. I’m really excited for the SteamDeck. First things I’m planning to boost the machine is a removal of systemd-Linux and systemd-KDE. Just hope that all the Valves tools and softwares will be Free and open-source.

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    1. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but a significant contribution to make KDE Plasma a gaming-ready desktop environment is based on the scheduling improvements introduced by the systemd user-session capabilities, such as having different slices/cgroups for background activities, apps, UI components and gaming priorities.

      We should be really thankful for Valves investment in improving those aspects of KDE Plasma!

      Liked by 2 people

  8. I think the Breeze merge request for “Gapless autohiding scrollbar arrows; Option to auto-hide arrows in KCM” is a more elegant and configurable fix than what has just been merged by just deleting the auto-hiding scrollbar functionality entirely.

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    1. It should indeed–with special focus on performance, battery life, and stability, since those are the biggest things Valve cares about for this device.

      Liked by 1 person

  9. will it use Plasma LTS? I worry if it’s a rolling release that will not have enough work to stabilize.

    wish you worked months in the version to show case how good it can be.

    a lot of embedded companies use the same ui for years and years because they are so afraid of breaking. video game UI is also full of embedded web for same reason.

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    1. This isn’t something I have a lot of knowledge about, but it’s been publicly reported that the distro is Arch-based, which would imply a pure rolling release for everything. But I don’t know whether Valve will use their own repos to hold back updates for extra QA or freeze certain pieces of software on certain versions.

      Liked by 1 person

  10. I hope this bug that causes all applications crash when screen is turning off will be fixed soon as well. Basically this is main blocker for me from using Wayland session as daily driver. Switching to TTY and unlocking session after screen locker crashed is not very comfortable.

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  11. Wow, such great news about Valve’s support! I always thought that KDE was fantastic and it just needed some more corporate exposure, I’m really happy about this.

    Also great to hear the news about KWin’s DRM pipeline being refined, awesome!

    Liked by 1 person

  12. Heh, my tiny fix to systemd startup got mentioned in your blog! My first Plasma fix, and already two daytime talk shows and a fragrance company have contacted me 😉. It was merely a typo fix in plasma-workspace@.target, no C++ required , but I spent several hours thinking the bug was in the arcana of `systemd-xdg-autostart-generator` generating service files from autostart files.

    @Nate, slight correction: there is no “Skier Page”, I’m just “S Page”; skierpage is my username. Enjoy your vacation, return rested and recharged like a Steam Deck 🎮 🕹️.

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  13. Of course the most prominent bug still hasn’t been fixed: unable to try out Steam Deck because it isn’t released. 😉

    I am looking forward to seeing what performance improvements, if any, will make its way to the mainline KDE Plasma release as a result of Steam and their use on this platform. I imagine Steam will be doing a fair amount of optimisation work for performance, and perhaps the KDE Plasma project can benefit from this.

    Not just in gaming too, but I’m thinking professional workstations and multimedia setups where graphics performance is non-negotiable.

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    1. I don’t think they would invest much into plasma performace optimizations, because it’s already quick enough(especially for such beefy hardware, like SteamDeck)
      They need to optimize UI for small factor, and Input (lack of keyboard), but they are investing already in grpahic drivers stack(Mesa Radeon drivers), Xwayland, wine(proton), dxvk, their proprietiary Steam and Window Manager/Compositor named “GameScope” (so it’s unlikely they will use[so optimize] KDE/Plasma’s KWin, but who knows…)

      Most SteamDeck’s stack is known. Unknown is how they want to imlement DRM and their choice of Web Browser (maybe Firefox, Maybe Chromium, or something else based on Qt/Chromium). It’s hardest part to optimize for small screen, because Web Browsers today are Behemoths, much more complicated than whole Plasma stack 😉

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  14. Apologies for the somewhat late post but this is related to the Steam Deck. Maybe valve is already working on this in SteamOS 3 but if not perhaps this is a suggestion you could forward on to valve.

    PC gaming hardware lacks advanced GUI controls under KDE.
    1) Need a GPU control panel, start basic just a small number of features maybe in time other GPU’s can use it.

    2) Extended Steam Input to cover mice/keyboards features like DPI, RGB control, maybe hardware vendors will get on board and KDE will get some controls, would be really nice to turn off RGB lights that are now on everything!!

    3) System health, cooling control, temp, SSD health built in KDE.

    4) Copy Mageia KDE system information/device manager clone and integrate it into KDE system info, yes this isn’t a driver manager but again windows users will use to know if hardware has been detected.

    It would be amazing if KDE had universal GUI settings for hardware and not need vendor control panels like in windows, maybe pitch it to Valve as windows users are going to go looking for this and find them missing in SteamOS 3.

    Thanks for reading.

    Like

    1. There many GPU graphical tools under Linux.
      Starting with generic ones, like ADRIconf and driconf, going to AMD specific ones:

      0) ADRIconf
      https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/AMDGPU

      1) radeon-profile
      https://github.com/marazmista/radeon-profile

      2) Wattman-GTK:
      https://github.com/BoukeHaarsma23/WattmanGTK

      3) CoreCTRL
      https://gitlab.com/corectrl/corectrl

      There were many discussions about it on reddit and phoronix, over the years, with answers:

      https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/AMDGPU

      Like

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