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KDE Plasma 6 gets double-click to open by default and other improvements

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Something that has proven to be quite divisive in the Linux community for KDE Plasma users is single or double-click to open something, as Plasma 6 will default to double-click.

It will still be configurable of course, but it's a change that has people split with lots of posts across social media arguing about it. Me though? I'm happy about it! Single click to open just seemed like such an odd default to have. Especially so for people coming from Windows, which as we all know is the most used desktop platform - for such a small thing, it just makes sense to match the behaviour there.

On top of that, Plasma 6 will also have touchpads have tap to click turned on by default now that touchpads aren't as bad as they were 9 years ago when the original decision was made.

Another big change is how bug reporting happens when apps crash on Plasma, with it being much more simplified with an option to report the issues automatically. So you won't even need to sign up for a Bugzilla account, bugs get reported quicker and hopefully this will means bugs get solved faster.

There's so much more the KDE team have been doing for Plasma lately, here's some highlights:

  • Keyboard brightness level on many laptops now shows an on-screen display for the change.
  • When toggling keyboard backlight off / on it now remembers the original brightness level.
  • Minimum screen brightness now set to 1 so you can't accidentally turn it off.
  • Dolphin’s settings window has gotten an overhaul to re-arrange things to be more logical.
  • Starting a Plasma Wayland session in VirtualBox is now more reliable.
  • They fixed the ability to monitor NVIDIA GPUs using System Monitor, and improving compatibility with multi-GPU setups (Plasma 5.27.8).
  • System Settings' minimum window size is now smaller, fitting better into low-resolution 1366×768 screens with thick panels.
  • Plasma Wayland improvements like keeping copied text from XWayland apps after it quits.

What do you think to all the changes coming to Plasma 6? Is there something you're particularly pleased or displeased with coming to Plasma 6?

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: KDE, Misc, Open Source
13 Likes
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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27 comments
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TheSHEEEP Aug 29, 2023
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Single click to select. Double click to open.
This is the way.

I'm sure they have statistics to know which one people use more often (or rather, how many people do that change immediately), so they'll simply have made that the default.
tmtvl Aug 29, 2023
For people who are interested in single vs double click, Nate left a comment about how they reached their decision.

QuoteIt boils down to our market position. People who use KDE Plasma are vastly more likely to be switching from another desktop OS than they are to be using Plasma as their very first desktop OS experience. And switchers know double-click
Bogomips Aug 29, 2023
I don't really understand how KDE do things, it seems they don't really care about consistency and/or user friendliness they do what they want and if it breaks things so be it.

The ability to monitor GPU was first broken in 2021 because they didn't want users to access raw sensors and what the driver was presenting to avoid duplicates I suppose so you had to patch it to revert from blacklisting those sensors. As a result every fix was broken by a new driver, I hope this time it will be fixed for good.

Add to that the fact that KSysGuard was nice and tidy, now you have so much real estate lost, when I monitor things I think the density of data visible in one go is important.

In the mean time Psensor never had a problem to monitor anything.

Plus, in Plasma a lot of settings seem to come and go in the UI after every upgrade and you need to search in 5 different config files to put back your preferences.
Raaben Aug 29, 2023
I think it's kinda funny how upset some people get at a change like this single vs double click thing. Every time I play with KDE and it's been in default single click mode, I go and change it to double in 5 seconds and get on with life. It makes sense to default to more familiar or most often used settings.
Linux_Rocks Aug 29, 2023
Quoting: TheSHEEEPSingle click to select. Double click to open.
This is the way.
Exactly! What kinda savage uses single click for opening things outside of a web browser? This has always been the case.
TheSHEEEP Aug 29, 2023
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Quoting: BogomipsAdd to that the fact that KSysGuard was nice and tidy, now you have so much real estate lost, when I monitor things I think the density of data visible in one go is important.

I'm not sure what about this isn't nice and tidy (also, yes, my PC is named ubertoaster ).
I mean, what I personally use it most for is checking/killing processes so I set the processes view to be the default when you open the program. And that view seems to be pretty much identical to ksysguard?

Quoting: BogomipsIn the mean time Psensor never had a problem to monitor anything.
Had a ton of problems for me and regularly kicked the bucket while the machine was running.
And that is across multple machines with different mixtures of AMD/Intel/Nvidia. And different distros, too.

To be honest, I don't even know what the widgets I currently use for displaying temps use, but it isn't psensor (the package is not installed).
But whatever it is, it has worked for me flawlessly so far.

Quoting: BogomipsPlus, in Plasma a lot of settings seem to come and go in the UI after every upgrade and you need to search in 5 different config files to put back your preferences.
Not my experience at all. Unless you count major version upgrades - in that case, some incompatibilities is kind of what you'd expect.
But I agree it would be nice if they put more effort into converting settings from older versions.


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 29 August 2023 at 12:23 pm UTC
rcrit Aug 29, 2023
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The system monitoring was broken with a NVIDIA driver update that added and re-ordered columns in nvidia-smi output. The number and order was hardcoded in ksysguard so since things didn't line up it was skipped altogether. The fix in 5.27.8 was to make it identify the columns dynamically so it shouldn't break again.

I have my own hacky patch against 5.27.6 that corrects the ordering. Backporting the upstream fix was too hairy.
hardpenguin Aug 29, 2023
I uh, thought the double click was the default for long now. Doesn't matter to me, I will configure it to single click anyway.
Bogomips Aug 29, 2023
Quoting: TheSHEEEP
Quoting: BogomipsAdd to that the fact that KSysGuard was nice and tidy, now you have so much real estate lost, when I monitor things I think the density of data visible in one go is important.

I'm not sure what about this isn't nice and tidy (also, yes, my PC is named ubertoaster ).
I mean, what I personally use it most for is checking/killing processes so I set the processes view to be the default when you open the program. And that view seems to be pretty much identical to ksysguard?

Quoting: BogomipsIn the mean time Psensor never had a problem to monitor anything.
Had a ton of problems for me and regularly kicked the bucket while the machine was running.
And that is across multple machines with different mixtures of AMD/Intel/Nvidia. And different distros, too.

To be honest, I don't even know what the widgets I currently use for displaying temps use, but it isn't psensor (the package is not installed).
But whatever it is, it has worked for me flawlessly so far.

Quoting: BogomipsPlus, in Plasma a lot of settings seem to come and go in the UI after every upgrade and you need to search in 5 different config files to put back your preferences.
Not my experience at all. Unless you count major version upgrades - in that case, some incompatibilities is kind of what you'd expect.
But I agree it would be nice if they put more effort into converting settings from older versions.

The fact that you have a minWidth and minHeight is already a problem in itself, but I use more graphs in my page and it is impossible to display the legend because it takes all the space, for example Core temps and load with 20 cores. The titles for each panel are way too big for me so legend + title take the same space than the graph itself that is really small and harder to read.

Psensor pulls data from sensor available through the system nothing more.

And yes, I was mainly talking about major updates that brake a thing every time for me (as an example from the back of my head the delay in ms between clicks for a double-click).

Also note that I am on Debian so every time it comes with something broken it is likely to stay that way for 2 years if it is only fixed in major version and not backported…
Kimyrielle Aug 29, 2023
Good decision. Single-click never seemed to make any sense for me (and probably not for most users). While it always was easy enough to change, the default behavior should be what the majority of users would expect.

Generally, KDE has grown a lot on me over the years. I used to be firmly in GNOME (2) territory for many years, but I never really liked GNOME 3. KDE was trying too hard to look like Windows for a long while, but it's a really good alternative these days. Switched a year or two ago, and not going back to GNOME.
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