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A KDE developer who regularly blogs about all the work going into the KDE ecosystem through the likes of the Plasma desktop environment and the various applications, has given an overview of what they expect to see through 2021.

Sounds like there's plenty of exciting work coming up for KDE and Plasma this year! Nate Graham mentions in the latest post that amongst other things, they might finally have a "Production-ready Plasma Wayland session". A lot of work went into this through 2020 and before that Graham mentioned that it "felt like a mess" but a whole year of progress changed that. Through 2021 we can expect to see a "trend of serious, concentrated Wayland work to continue in 2021" and to be in a better shape for more people to use.

Quite a long time coming, as it's been said that Wayland would replace X11 for years now and having KDE in top shape with it will certainly help push it forwards even more.

Something else exciting coming up is a replacement for the 'Kickoff' application launcher (Windows users would know it as a 'Start menu'). There's a merge request open, which they expect to be available in the Plasma 5.21 release for the new design and it's looking really quite slick:

On top of all that they're looking to get fingerprint support ready throughout the entire tech stack including everywhere you would need it from the login screen and the lock screen to their KAuth authorization library.

KDE does always look impressive, with tons of options for customization and hopefully 2021 shall be a big year for it.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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WorMzy Jan 4, 2021
Last time I tried it, the only things that prevented me using it on a daily basis was 1) it was missing primary selection support, and 2) some windows (i.e. pop-ups) had window decorations when they shouldn't. If these are fixed, then I probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
BielFPs Jan 4, 2021
I'm not a fan of KDE, but it's really nice to see the main DEs finally giving priority to Wayland, I hope others can also start to default to Wayland too, so it can improve faster.

For the gaming side, I saw a lot of improvement once I started to use Wayland (only downside for me is having to use gnome, but Manjaro team did a good job with customization)
Shmerl Jan 4, 2021
I'm waiting for adaptive sync support in Kwin on Wayland. That's a big gaming feature that's missing now.


Last edited by Shmerl on 4 January 2021 at 3:34 pm UTC
ziabice Jan 4, 2021
There's also the KWinFT project to try. Release Notes for the latest release are interesting because they explain well the differences with actual KWin.


Last edited by ziabice on 4 January 2021 at 5:11 pm UTC
Shmerl Jan 4, 2021
It doesn't have adaptive sync either yet as far as I know.
Looking forward to trying it out. In the meantime, KDE/Plasma on X still runs perfectly for me so I am not in a rush.
Koopacabras Jan 4, 2021
my biggest gripe with Wayland and Plasma is Kmail not working on the box that you read messages there's a transparent box... useless.
a0kami Jan 4, 2021
I remember a short while ago looking into Wayland, wasn't Nvidia hindering Wayland adoption because of a few things they don't support in their drivers or things they did wrong ? Can't quite exactly remember what was it about (VA API or VDPAU ?)
Or is this completely irrelevant and speaking nonsense ?
Shmerl Jan 4, 2021
Quoting: The_Aquabatmy biggest gripe with Wayland and Plasma is Kmail not working on the box that you read messages there's a transparent box... useless.

It's working now for me with latest Plasma, I tested it very recently.


Last edited by Shmerl on 4 January 2021 at 8:59 pm UTC
Shmerl Jan 4, 2021
Quoting: aokamiI remember a short while ago looking into Wayland, wasn't Nvidia hindering Wayland adoption because of a few things they don't support in their drivers or things they did wrong ? Can't quite exactly remember what was it about (VA API or VDPAU ?)
Or is this completely irrelevant and speaking nonsense ?

I'd say if you want to use Wayland which is the direction of the modern Linux desktop, ditching Nvidia should be the first step.
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