Ready to get the latest and greatest from the KDE team? The awesome Plasma 5.25 release is officially out now. This is the desktop environment used on the Steam Deck when in Desktop Mode! Hopefully Valve will update it at some point.
One of the big new additions is the extension of what you can customize. Accent colours for example, can be automatically picked based on your background making everything fit nicely together. It's optional of course, you can set the colouring however you like. You can also now have floating panels, that will gracefully stop floating when you maximise a window and it looks pretty slick.
Switching between windows and workspaces is now a breeze, thanks to the new Overview affect that's shipped. This gives you a good look at everything you have open, allowing you to also search through apps, documents, and browser tabs with KRunner and the Application Launcher.
There's also masses of upgrades and new additions to touchscreen input and gestures on a touchpad. Oh, and the Discover Software app had the application pages redesigned to give you access to more and better info on what you're downloading and plenty of upgrades to their Flatpak handling.
See their flashy release trailer below:
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There's also absolutely loads (hundreds!) of improvements and fixes for Wayland support too.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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fenglengshun Jun 15, 2022
Quoting: itscalledrealitysnipHuh, is it an issue with thunderbolt/dock or something? I know that the dock life is generally pretty awful on Linux (though in general it isn't great unless you're running everything Apple I guess?) which is what Valve is trying to improve (and they're running a version of KDE themselves).
On my PC with a 1080p old Toshiba TV (connected via VGA-input with a DisplayPort adapter) and 768 even older Acer monitor (also via VGA-input but with HDMI adapter this time) things generally work fine, even when I put the PC to sleep. That said, sometimes they also wouldn't wake from sleep if I've left it to sleep for like 3 hours or something, so I do have some Sleep issues as well.
As far as I can tell, things seems to be fine? I haven't gotten the Plasma update yet, running on Garuda I'll probably get it in a week or so. The new update seems to have a connected displays profile manager so I hope that might include a fix for your issues.
Quoting: slaapliedjeI haven't played with it yet, but does the KDE Overview let you also search?Yes, actually. At first it was limited to only searching open Windows, but it seems to be able to search other stuff as well. That said, I never liked Baloo and I recently tested and liked Pop_OS 22.04 so KDE search is of limited use to me and I just use rofi to switch Windows and open new apps, while using the much, much better FSearch for searching files.
That said, it's not a full "KNOME" experience yet. Moving windows between screens on KDE Overview is finally added in 5.25 but I don't think we have a moving between workspaces while on Overview yet. Moving windows between screens was a pretty late addition/announcement so I think we should see other surprise fixes on 5.26 and I'd expect 5.27 is when everything from Overview to Wayland to mature enough for GNOME user's standards.
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How can I get multiple mouse pointers? That's something I wanted to have forever! I think it's one of the things that holds back voice control and automation back the most...
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Quoting: GuestQuoting: scaineQuoting: GuestQuoting: slaapliedjeQuoting: 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.
Sure. I wasn't saying Linux was better. I was saying Windows is (nearly) as bad.
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Quoting: CZiNTrPTHow can I get multiple mouse pointers? That's something I wanted to have forever! I think it's one of the things that holds back voice control and automation back the most...
I wish I knew! When you plug in a second mouse, at least on KDE, you just two mice fighting over a single pointer! But Liam's SteamDeck video on its keyboard showed that each thumb gets their own pointer, so it must be possible somehow. I suspect that all the work for this stuff is related to multi-touch and not multiple mice.
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Quoting: scaineI wish I knew! When you plug in a second mouse, at least on KDE, you just two mice fighting over a single pointer! But Liam's SteamDeck video on its keyboard showed that each thumb gets their own pointer, so it must be possible
somehow. I suspect that all the work for this stuff is related to multi-touch and not multiple mice.
Haven't tried it myself but:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Multi-pointer_X
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Quoting: GuestQuoting: slaapliedjeQuoting: constThat'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.Quoting: GuestQuoting: scaineQuoting: GuestQuoting: slaapliedjeQuoting: 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.
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...
Yes, you can search directly from the desktop on kde - there's two ways to do it 1) just start typing on the desktop and the search will appear and 2) press alt+space and that will bring up the search bar
I think slaapliedje was asking about the new KDE Overview desktop plug-in, which was introduced in 5.24. And yes, when you activate Overview, it's extremely Gnome-like. It scales all the active (including minimised) windows smoothly, and when you start typing, you get a krunner-like search box which can open apps, and so on.
The only problem with Overview currently is that even when you bind it to ALT-F1, it won't activate on a single tap of the super-key. You have to manually enter a terminal command to bind the key correctly before this becomes possible. Hopefully they fixed it in 5.25, but I don't think so.
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Most of the time, Linux is better than Windows at treating a new instance of the same hardware you already had as the same device when the old one is not present. Windows insists on installing a new driver instance for a new instance of the same hardware you replaced. If I change monitors on my desktop (something I had to do recently because one kept not getting recognized as there by the computer), as long as the ports I plug them into are the same and the resolution is the same, they will be arranged just as they were before. Mind you, this is using Xfce. I would have expected Plasma to behave similarly, but I have not used it with multiple monitors.
In my experience, LightDM with multiple displays will put the login dialog on whichever screen the mouse pointer is on, unless you have mirrored displays, in which case it will put it on both/all. Again this is with Xfce as the desktop; it seems that LightDM can tell whether I have Xfce set to mirror or extend my desktop. I've heard that Xfce doesn't handle triple monitors well, but I have only used it with dual monitors, which it seems OK at.
In my experience, LightDM with multiple displays will put the login dialog on whichever screen the mouse pointer is on, unless you have mirrored displays, in which case it will put it on both/all. Again this is with Xfce as the desktop; it seems that LightDM can tell whether I have Xfce set to mirror or extend my desktop. I've heard that Xfce doesn't handle triple monitors well, but I have only used it with dual monitors, which it seems OK at.
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slaapliedje Jun 15, 2022
Quoting: GuestI hit the 'meta' key and that now works by default like Gnome does. I wasn't aware you could just start typing. But then again I almost always have some terminal or other open and never click on the empty desktop.Quoting: slaapliedjeQuoting: constThat'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.Quoting: GuestQuoting: scaineQuoting: GuestQuoting: slaapliedjeQuoting: 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.
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...
Yes, you can search directly from the desktop on kde - there's two ways to do it 1) just start typing on the desktop and the search will appear and 2) press alt+space and that will bring up the search bar
But that wasn't the question. macOS has 'Mission Control' which is pretty much just like the Overview in KDE and Gnome's Activity thing... But you can't use Spotlight within it, unlike Gnome's set up, you hit the key, start to type and it'll list things either installed, or in the 'app store', search online, etc. It's lovely. Was just asking if Overview specifically has similar functionality. Guess I need to reboot into my KDE/Garuda install and find out :)
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slaapliedje Jun 15, 2022
Quoting: CFWhitmanMost of the time, Linux is better than Windows at treating a new instance of the same hardware you already had as the same device when the old one is not present. Windows insists on installing a new driver instance for a new instance of the same hardware you replaced. If I change monitors on my desktop (something I had to do recently because one kept not getting recognized as there by the computer), as long as the ports I plug them into are the same and the resolution is the same, they will be arranged just as they were before. Mind you, this is using Xfce. I would have expected Plasma to behave similarly, but I have not used it with multiple monitors.
In my experience, LightDM with multiple displays will put the login dialog on whichever screen the mouse pointer is on, unless you have mirrored displays, in which case it will put it on both/all. Again this is with Xfce as the desktop; it seems that LightDM can tell whether I have Xfce set to mirror or extend my desktop. I've heard that Xfce doesn't handle triple monitors well, but I have only used it with dual monitors, which it seems OK at.
Windows constantly likes to just detach / attach hardware. Detects certain things as new all the time, and others confusingly it is just fine with swapping around. I usually run my work laptop between two different docks, but they'll randomly need my mouse to be unplugged and plugged in.
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slaapliedje Jun 15, 2022
Quoting: ShmerlColor 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
Man, I wish I could have enjoyed owning a SailfishOS device... I really miss being able to use my N9 or even N900.... now that 3G is essentially dead.
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