KDE Plasma 5.25 is out now, here's some of what's new

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: itscalledrealityEr…we’re halfway through the year and there’s very little about fixing multimonitor support, one of the biggest hurdles for those switching to Linux. I’m hoping that suggested promise earlier in the year is actually met. The stitched-together giant desktop just doesn’t work well.

It’s great they learned about color detection so they can apply accent colors and other vanity features but who does that really help?

Was talking to a colleague about this yesterday. Windows still has shit multimonitor support as well. Funny enough, the last time I remember really great multimonitor support was when I had a Matrox card...

Quoting: itscalledrealityNope it's not games, it's definitely how KDE handles multimonitors. When my computer sleeps then wakes again, it does not properly restore my desktop and monitors to their previous state

I don't think sleeping works as well as it should in general, never mind waking up... oh wait, you're talking about computers... my comment still stands.

What issues does Windows have with multimonitor support? I havent seen any

He was having problems with it scaling incorrectly when moving around monitors with different resolutions.

Quoting: scaine

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: itscalledrealityEr…we’re halfway through the year and there’s very little about fixing multimonitor support, one of the biggest hurdles for those switching to Linux. I’m hoping that suggested promise earlier in the year is actually met. The stitched-together giant desktop just doesn’t work well.

It’s great they learned about color detection so they can apply accent colors and other vanity features but who does that really help?

Was talking to a colleague about this yesterday. Windows still has shit multimonitor support as well. Funny enough, the last time I remember really great multimonitor support was when I had a Matrox card...

Quoting: itscalledrealityNope it's not games, it's definitely how KDE handles multimonitors. When my computer sleeps then wakes again, it does not properly restore my desktop and monitors to their previous state

I don't think sleeping works as well as it should in general, never mind waking up... oh wait, you're talking about computers... my comment still stands.

What issues does Windows have with multimonitor support? I havent seen any

I use multimonitor at work on Windows - it's not exactly a shit-show, but it's not any better than what I had under gnome when I last used multi-monitor, about 2 years ago. Maybe a bit worse - Windows frequently (well, a couple of times a week) just doesn't detect the monitor when it's plugged in. App windows frequently (all the time) start on the wrong window too, Windows seems to prefer the primary (laptop) monitor for just about everything, which just gets a bit annoying. A few times a week, I can plug in my external monitor and Chrome is just... gone. Technically it's still running, but it's shot off into the ether - somewhere miles up to the top-left, I think? I have to close it down and restart it for it to re-appear. Biggest pain though is that when I sit at a new hot-desk at work, there's an identical Dell monitor for me to plug into, but despite that, Windows treats it like it's never heard of such a thing before, and I have to reposition it over to the left of my laptop again. God knows how many of those "monitor position" profiles my registry has stored now. I bet it's HK_LOCAL_MACHINE too, so I'll lose them all when I get a new laptop and I'll have to re-train them all again...

But multi-monitor support is incredibly complex. For example, if you have your apps all laid out nicely across two monitors, then unplug your hub/monitor, all your apps squeeze onto one monitor, which is expected. Then plug the external monitor back in again, everything just stays on that squeezed up screen and you have to lay them all out again, which is a pain. But is that expected? Or should they re-position back to the multi-monitor layout? I know I'd like them to, but I bet there are plenty of use-cases out there where that's a bad idea.

How about when modals pop up - should they use the primary monitor, the monitor of the window creating the modal, or the monitor which has the mouse pointer (what about multiple mouse pointers...)? What about notifications, where do they pop up? What about alt-tab, or Overview?

What about when to resize window contents when dragging a window between two monitors with different DPI settings?

What about multiple refresh rates. Or freesync?

I mean, it's all solvable, and it's frustrating that it's still NOT solved, but it feels like both Windows and all the various Linux DEs still have to figure this stuff out.

Ha, 'not exactly a shit-show' and then describe a shit-show. I try very hard to make sure I have matching monitors, and that sometimes fixes the issues (especially with scaling, etc). But I have the issue where one of the screens randomly don't work. I've had issues with them blinking on and off (which I think is an issue with the cable, as I switched to using the mini-DP port vs HDMI and that went away).

My set up at home is rather esoteric. 3840x1200 monitor on the bottom, with two 2560x1440 monitors up above. All three support 144hz, but I can't get 144hz on one of them as it's via HDMI. But so far I haven't had these odd issues. I think some of this is based on using a 3080 RTX card?

So when will I be able to finally change KDE enough that it works just like Gnome Shell, but with Qt?

Quoting: wolfyrionI have some problems with it

Applications do not autostart somehow...

Quotejournalctl --user -b  17:00:20
Jun 14 16:42:05 xWx systemd-xdg-autostart-generator[1322]: /home/wolfyrion/.config/autostart/org.kde.latte-dock.desktop:9: Unknown key name 'InitialPreference' in section 'Desktop Entry', ignoring.
Jun 14 16:42:05 xWx systemd-xdg-autostart-generator[1322]: /home/wolfyrion/.config/autostart/org.kde.latte-dock.desktop:17: Unknown key name 'TerminalOptions' in section 'Desktop Entry', ignoring.
Jun 14 16:42:05 xWx systemd-xdg-autostart-generator[1322]: Configuration file /home/wolfyrion/.config/autostart/xdotool.desktop is marked executable. Please remove executable permission bits. Proceeding anyway.
Jun 14 16:42:05 xWx systemd-xdg-autostart-generator[1322]: /home/wolfyrion/.config/autostart/xdotool.desktop:15: Unknown key name 'TerminalOptions' in section 'Desktop Entry', ignoring.
Jun 14 16:42:05 xWx systemd-xdg-autostart-generator[1322]: /home/wolfyrion/.config/autostart/cadence.desktop:1: Unknown section 'Carla Shortcut Group'. Ignoring.
Jun 14 16:42:05 xWx systemd-xdg-autostart-generator[1322]: /home/wolfyrion/.config/autostart/cadence.desktop:6: Unknown section 'CarlaControl Shortcut Group'. Ignoring.
Jun 14 16:42:05 xWx systemd-xdg-autostart-generator[1322]: /home/wolfyrion/.config/autostart/cadence.desktop:11: Unknown section 'Catia Shortcut Group'. Ignoring.
Jun 14 16:42:05 xWx systemd-xdg-autostart-generator[1322]: /home/wolfyrion/.config/autostart/cadence.desktop:16: Unknown section 'Claudia Shortcut Group'. Ignoring.
Jun 14 16:42:05 xWx systemd-xdg-autostart-generator[1322]: /home/wolfyrion/.config/autostart/cadence.desktop:21: Unknown section 'ClaudiaLauncher Shortcut Group'. Ignoring

caused by the systemd boot which turned on by default in 5.25

kwriteconfig5 --file startkderc --group General --key systemdBoot false

then reboot fixed it!


Last edited by wolfyrion on 14 June 2022 at 6:28 pm UTC

I daily drive gnome, but if I ever decide to leave gnome it will likely be for KDE.

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: scaine

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: itscalledrealityEr…we’re halfway through the year and there’s very little about fixing multimonitor support, one of the biggest hurdles for those switching to Linux. I’m hoping that suggested promise earlier in the year is actually met. The stitched-together giant desktop just doesn’t work well.

It’s great they learned about color detection so they can apply accent colors and other vanity features but who does that really help?

Was talking to a colleague about this yesterday. Windows still has shit multimonitor support as well. Funny enough, the last time I remember really great multimonitor support was when I had a Matrox card...

Quoting: itscalledrealityNope it's not games, it's definitely how KDE handles multimonitors. When my computer sleeps then wakes again, it does not properly restore my desktop and monitors to their previous state

I don't think sleeping works as well as it should in general, never mind waking up... oh wait, you're talking about computers... my comment still stands.

What issues does Windows have with multimonitor support? I havent seen any

I use multimonitor at work on Windows - it's not exactly a shit-show, but it's not any better than what I had under gnome when I last used multi-monitor, about 2 years ago. Maybe a bit worse - Windows frequently (well, a couple of times a week) just doesn't detect the monitor when it's plugged in. App windows frequently (all the time) start on the wrong window too, Windows seems to prefer the primary (laptop) monitor for just about everything, which just gets a bit annoying. A few times a week, I can plug in my external monitor and Chrome is just... gone. Technically it's still running, but it's shot off into the ether - somewhere miles up to the top-left, I think? I have to close it down and restart it for it to re-appear. Biggest pain though is that when I sit at a new hot-desk at work, there's an identical Dell monitor for me to plug into, but despite that, Windows treats it like it's never heard of such a thing before, and I have to reposition it over to the left of my laptop again. God knows how many of those "monitor position" profiles my registry has stored now. I bet it's HK_LOCAL_MACHINE too, so I'll lose them all when I get a new laptop and I'll have to re-train them all again...

But multi-monitor support is incredibly complex. For example, if you have your apps all laid out nicely across two monitors, then unplug your hub/monitor, all your apps squeeze onto one monitor, which is expected. Then plug the external monitor back in again, everything just stays on that squeezed up screen and you have to lay them all out again, which is a pain. But is that expected? Or should they re-position back to the multi-monitor layout? I know I'd like them to, but I bet there are plenty of use-cases out there where that's a bad idea.

How about when modals pop up - should they use the primary monitor, the monitor of the window creating the modal, or the monitor which has the mouse pointer (what about multiple mouse pointers...)? What about notifications, where do they pop up? What about alt-tab, or Overview?

What about when to resize window contents when dragging a window between two monitors with different DPI settings?

What about multiple refresh rates. Or freesync?

I mean, it's all solvable, and it's frustrating that it's still NOT solved, but it feels like both Windows and all the various Linux DEs still have to figure this stuff out.

Ha, 'not exactly a shit-show' and then describe a shit-show. I try very hard to make sure I have matching monitors, and that sometimes fixes the issues (especially with scaling, etc). But I have the issue where one of the screens randomly don't work. I've had issues with them blinking on and off (which I think is an issue with the cable, as I switched to using the mini-DP port vs HDMI and that went away).

My set up at home is rather esoteric. 3840x1200 monitor on the bottom, with two 2560x1440 monitors up above. All three support 144hz, but I can't get 144hz on one of them as it's via HDMI. But so far I haven't had these odd issues. I think some of this is based on using a 3080 RTX card?

Well, the thing is, I suspect that it's okay at static multi-monitors, but it's just pretty flaky with hot-desking style of moving your laptop around an office and plugging into various different monitors/meeting rooms. Although at least Zoom Rooms takes care of the meeting rooms these days (no need to muck about with HDMI now). So it's probably inflated a little. And as I say, Gnome had much of the same issues - not remembering window placement, and so on.

Quoting: slaapliedjeSo when will I be able to finally change KDE enough that it works just like Gnome Shell, but with Qt?

I've already emulated it pretty much perfectly as far as I can tell. The only thing missing was the combined window-reveal & search bar, but the Overview matches that pretty nicely now. So, yeah, no going back to Gnome for me.


Last edited by scaine on 14 June 2022 at 7:05 pm UTC

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: scaine

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: itscalledrealityEr…we’re halfway through the year and there’s very little about fixing multimonitor support, one of the biggest hurdles for those switching to Linux. I’m hoping that suggested promise earlier in the year is actually met. The stitched-together giant desktop just doesn’t work well.

It’s great they learned about color detection so they can apply accent colors and other vanity features but who does that really help?

Was talking to a colleague about this yesterday. Windows still has shit multimonitor support as well. Funny enough, the last time I remember really great multimonitor support was when I had a Matrox card...

Quoting: itscalledrealityNope it's not games, it's definitely how KDE handles multimonitors. When my computer sleeps then wakes again, it does not properly restore my desktop and monitors to their previous state

I don't think sleeping works as well as it should in general, never mind waking up... oh wait, you're talking about computers... my comment still stands.

What issues does Windows have with multimonitor support? I havent seen any

I use multimonitor at work on Windows - it's not exactly a shit-show, but it's not any better than what I had under gnome when I last used multi-monitor, about 2 years ago. Maybe a bit worse - Windows frequently (well, a couple of times a week) just doesn't detect the monitor when it's plugged in. App windows frequently (all the time) start on the wrong window too, Windows seems to prefer the primary (laptop) monitor for just about everything, which just gets a bit annoying. A few times a week, I can plug in my external monitor and Chrome is just... gone. Technically it's still running, but it's shot off into the ether - somewhere miles up to the top-left, I think? I have to close it down and restart it for it to re-appear. Biggest pain though is that when I sit at a new hot-desk at work, there's an identical Dell monitor for me to plug into, but despite that, Windows treats it like it's never heard of such a thing before, and I have to reposition it over to the left of my laptop again. God knows how many of those "monitor position" profiles my registry has stored now. I bet it's HK_LOCAL_MACHINE too, so I'll lose them all when I get a new laptop and I'll have to re-train them all again...

But multi-monitor support is incredibly complex. For example, if you have your apps all laid out nicely across two monitors, then unplug your hub/monitor, all your apps squeeze onto one monitor, which is expected. Then plug the external monitor back in again, everything just stays on that squeezed up screen and you have to lay them all out again, which is a pain. But is that expected? Or should they re-position back to the multi-monitor layout? I know I'd like them to, but I bet there are plenty of use-cases out there where that's a bad idea.

How about when modals pop up - should they use the primary monitor, the monitor of the window creating the modal, or the monitor which has the mouse pointer (what about multiple mouse pointers...)? What about notifications, where do they pop up? What about alt-tab, or Overview?

What about when to resize window contents when dragging a window between two monitors with different DPI settings?

What about multiple refresh rates. Or freesync?

I mean, it's all solvable, and it's frustrating that it's still NOT solved, but it feels like both Windows and all the various Linux DEs still have to figure this stuff out.

Nothing that you describe does Linux do better (as much as I love linux, lets be real here)...I run linux on an Nvidia card, so that means no wayland support - and if you look at common complaints about xorg its that it has atrocious dual screen support, particularly on kde.

Don't even get me started on how neither SDDM nor LightDM support projecting to external screen on boot on a laptop, a basic feature available on windows and one which KDE devs refuse to fix.

Ouch! I mostly use GDM on any laptops, and switch back and forth between Garuda / Debian with KDE / Gnome respectively. SDDM likes to display the password prompt on all three screens, as if they don't consider multiple displays at all. Gnome correctly remembers the primary display and only displays the login there.

Outside of having to move the two 2k screens above the super-ultrawide one, I haven't had to change it since, both Gnome and KDE have kept them in their proper places between reboots. Windows generally do start up in the same place every time.

Since I have an nvidia card, I don't use Wayland, not sure if that would be worse or better. I can even enable gsync on all three.

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: scaine

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: itscalledrealityEr…we’re halfway through the year and there’s very little about fixing multimonitor support, one of the biggest hurdles for those switching to Linux. I’m hoping that suggested promise earlier in the year is actually met. The stitched-together giant desktop just doesn’t work well.

It’s great they learned about color detection so they can apply accent colors and other vanity features but who does that really help?

Was talking to a colleague about this yesterday. Windows still has shit multimonitor support as well. Funny enough, the last time I remember really great multimonitor support was when I had a Matrox card...

Quoting: itscalledrealityNope it's not games, it's definitely how KDE handles multimonitors. When my computer sleeps then wakes again, it does not properly restore my desktop and monitors to their previous state

I don't think sleeping works as well as it should in general, never mind waking up... oh wait, you're talking about computers... my comment still stands.

What issues does Windows have with multimonitor support? I havent seen any

I use multimonitor at work on Windows - it's not exactly a shit-show, but it's not any better than what I had under gnome when I last used multi-monitor, about 2 years ago. Maybe a bit worse - Windows frequently (well, a couple of times a week) just doesn't detect the monitor when it's plugged in. App windows frequently (all the time) start on the wrong window too, Windows seems to prefer the primary (laptop) monitor for just about everything, which just gets a bit annoying. A few times a week, I can plug in my external monitor and Chrome is just... gone. Technically it's still running, but it's shot off into the ether - somewhere miles up to the top-left, I think? I have to close it down and restart it for it to re-appear. Biggest pain though is that when I sit at a new hot-desk at work, there's an identical Dell monitor for me to plug into, but despite that, Windows treats it like it's never heard of such a thing before, and I have to reposition it over to the left of my laptop again. God knows how many of those "monitor position" profiles my registry has stored now. I bet it's HK_LOCAL_MACHINE too, so I'll lose them all when I get a new laptop and I'll have to re-train them all again...

But multi-monitor support is incredibly complex. For example, if you have your apps all laid out nicely across two monitors, then unplug your hub/monitor, all your apps squeeze onto one monitor, which is expected. Then plug the external monitor back in again, everything just stays on that squeezed up screen and you have to lay them all out again, which is a pain. But is that expected? Or should they re-position back to the multi-monitor layout? I know I'd like them to, but I bet there are plenty of use-cases out there where that's a bad idea.

How about when modals pop up - should they use the primary monitor, the monitor of the window creating the modal, or the monitor which has the mouse pointer (what about multiple mouse pointers...)? What about notifications, where do they pop up? What about alt-tab, or Overview?

What about when to resize window contents when dragging a window between two monitors with different DPI settings?

What about multiple refresh rates. Or freesync?

I mean, it's all solvable, and it's frustrating that it's still NOT solved, but it feels like both Windows and all the various Linux DEs still have to figure this stuff out.

Nothing that you describe does Linux do better (as much as I love linux, lets be real here)...I run linux on an Nvidia card, so that means no wayland support - and if you look at common complaints about xorg its that it has atrocious dual screen support, particularly on kde.

Don't even get me started on how neither SDDM nor LightDM support projecting to external screen on boot on a laptop, a basic feature available on windows and one which KDE devs refuse to fix.

Ahm.. I have a 2-3 monitor setup, running KDE on SDDM and my login screen is always showing on all active monitors. One of the screens is regularly turned on and off and I have no issues. I can actually choose the loginscreen I want to prompt (though I always wonder why it isn't just mirrored). I suspect configuration issues? I really wonder what all of you are even talking about.
My only issue with changing monitor setups is damn java awt applications getting unusable, but that's not KDEs fault.

Quoting: const

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: scaine

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: itscalledrealityEr…we’re halfway through the year and there’s very little about fixing multimonitor support, one of the biggest hurdles for those switching to Linux. I’m hoping that suggested promise earlier in the year is actually met. The stitched-together giant desktop just doesn’t work well.

It’s great they learned about color detection so they can apply accent colors and other vanity features but who does that really help?

Was talking to a colleague about this yesterday. Windows still has shit multimonitor support as well. Funny enough, the last time I remember really great multimonitor support was when I had a Matrox card...

Quoting: itscalledrealityNope it's not games, it's definitely how KDE handles multimonitors. When my computer sleeps then wakes again, it does not properly restore my desktop and monitors to their previous state

I don't think sleeping works as well as it should in general, never mind waking up... oh wait, you're talking about computers... my comment still stands.

What issues does Windows have with multimonitor support? I havent seen any

I use multimonitor at work on Windows - it's not exactly a shit-show, but it's not any better than what I had under gnome when I last used multi-monitor, about 2 years ago. Maybe a bit worse - Windows frequently (well, a couple of times a week) just doesn't detect the monitor when it's plugged in. App windows frequently (all the time) start on the wrong window too, Windows seems to prefer the primary (laptop) monitor for just about everything, which just gets a bit annoying. A few times a week, I can plug in my external monitor and Chrome is just... gone. Technically it's still running, but it's shot off into the ether - somewhere miles up to the top-left, I think? I have to close it down and restart it for it to re-appear. Biggest pain though is that when I sit at a new hot-desk at work, there's an identical Dell monitor for me to plug into, but despite that, Windows treats it like it's never heard of such a thing before, and I have to reposition it over to the left of my laptop again. God knows how many of those "monitor position" profiles my registry has stored now. I bet it's HK_LOCAL_MACHINE too, so I'll lose them all when I get a new laptop and I'll have to re-train them all again...

But multi-monitor support is incredibly complex. For example, if you have your apps all laid out nicely across two monitors, then unplug your hub/monitor, all your apps squeeze onto one monitor, which is expected. Then plug the external monitor back in again, everything just stays on that squeezed up screen and you have to lay them all out again, which is a pain. But is that expected? Or should they re-position back to the multi-monitor layout? I know I'd like them to, but I bet there are plenty of use-cases out there where that's a bad idea.

How about when modals pop up - should they use the primary monitor, the monitor of the window creating the modal, or the monitor which has the mouse pointer (what about multiple mouse pointers...)? What about notifications, where do they pop up? What about alt-tab, or Overview?

What about when to resize window contents when dragging a window between two monitors with different DPI settings?

What about multiple refresh rates. Or freesync?

I mean, it's all solvable, and it's frustrating that it's still NOT solved, but it feels like both Windows and all the various Linux DEs still have to figure this stuff out.

Nothing that you describe does Linux do better (as much as I love linux, lets be real here)...I run linux on an Nvidia card, so that means no wayland support - and if you look at common complaints about xorg its that it has atrocious dual screen support, particularly on kde.

Don't even get me started on how neither SDDM nor LightDM support projecting to external screen on boot on a laptop, a basic feature available on windows and one which KDE devs refuse to fix.

Ahm.. I have a 2-3 monitor setup, running KDE on SDDM and my login screen is always showing on all active monitors. One of the screens is regularly turned on and off and I have no issues. I can actually choose the loginscreen I want to prompt (though I always wonder why it isn't just mirrored). I suspect configuration issues? I really wonder what all of you are even talking about.
My only issue with changing monitor setups is damn java awt applications getting unusable, but that's not KDEs fault.

That's what I meant by SDDM having the login dialog on each screen, vs Gnome it shows only on the primary, with the other two just showing a background. While SDDM isn't mirrored, each screen acts like it's an individual process of sddm running. It's just... odd. Not really something that breaks the world, just strange.

I haven't played with it yet, but does the KDE Overview let you also search? One thing I hate about the mac, since I'm so used to Gnome is that when in the 'overview' you can't use Spotlight...

Color syncing reminds SailfishOS ambience idea. Cool concept and it's nice to see.

Waiting for Debian testing to finally get Qt 5.15.4 to be able to switch to the KDE Wayland session and avoid that nasty monitor sleep bug.

https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/qtbase-opensource-src