The dust is starting to settle now the huge KDE Plasma 6 release is out in the wild, with it beginning to land for more distributions but there's been some issues. Thankfully, the release wasn't anywhere near as troublesome as KDE Plasma 4, which I'm sure some readers have memories of.
Firstly, for people using KDE neon, it looks like they had some problems. As mentioned in a news post, the developers of KDE neon apologised for packaging problems in the "User Edition", with more fixes coming as they continue putting out the fires of the new release.
Plasma 6 has also now landed for Arch Linux, so if you run updates you should see it available. Arch is a rolling distro, so it's no big surprise to see it be one of the first to fully roll it out. Much like the KDE neon update, you can expect some issues here and there while things become a bit more tested.
Pictured - KDE Plasma 6
Also, the first Plasma 6 point release is out with Plasma 6.0.1. It's only a small one but with some necessary bug fixes.
Development on Plasma 6.1 is already heating up too. As Nate Graham has been blogging about recently like the addition of a new KWin effect called Hide Cursor, that allows you to automatically hide the cursor after a certain period. Plus an option to allow XWayland apps to eavesdrop on mouse buttons, various UI improvements are coming too like the newer Cube effect not working with fewer than 3 virtual desktops actually now telling you why and prompting you to add more. A previous blog post also highlighted a big fun new feature for Plasma 6.1 with a "fake" session restore (while they wait for the Wayland protocol to be finalised) that re-opens apps you had at the last logout, so all apps should properly re-launch on login and this works on X11 too.
Have you been testing out Plasma 6? What do you think? Let me know in the comments.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Quoting: PlintslîchoAlso, Plasma 6 takes up quite some noticeable amount of RAM at times, even though the system is idling.
If you aren't using KDE PIM (Kmail and etc.) try to disable Akonadi server - it eats a ton of RAM for something you might not use.
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PSA FOR ENDEAVOR OS USERS: I’ve broken two different installations due to issues with plasma 6. Only update if you must
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Quoting: sonic2kkHas anyone been able to get tearing to work for fullscreen games/general applications? Not having much success, even with Adaptive Sync turned off too, but even on my two other displays without Freesync I'm not seeing any tearing with the option enabled in System Settings.
As far as I understand Xwayland and KWin now fully implement the tearing protocol, and Mesa 24 should have support for the protocol as well. Tried out `MESA_VK_WSI_PRESENT_MODE=immediate` as well for some DXVK games, but not having any luck. Same story with Gamescope using `--immediate-flips`.
Videos in the Steam Overlay when fullscreen have tearing but that's regardless of this setting and always in the same spot.
I'm not really interested in having in on practically, I'm just morbidly curious to see tearing on Wayland, either in games, fullscreen YouTube videos from a browser, or anywhere.Maybe there's a step I'm missing or something isn't quite ready to be enabled at the flick of a switch yet.
Although for what it's worth, I did try the "Enable Tearing" option on my Steam Deck with the same games to see if I could introduce some tearing, and still couldn't see it. Maybe my eyes just aren't too sharp
I can't imagine it's easy to indues tearing on such weak hardware as the Steam Deck. It really depends on the game, the hardware and the player. Some people a sensitive others are not. For me it's like looking at one of those 3D illusion images. Once I see it I cannot un-see it :)
Again it depends on the game but if it's a multiplayer game I think the vast majority would take screen tearing over input lag. But if you are playing a turn-based single player game than you probably wont care :) But allowing screen tearing is a very important feature for a very large portion of gamers. At least for those of us coming from Windows were this has been an option for ages. Many would even call it basic. I do see there is some drama surrounding screen tearing in the Linux community, which I don't understand at all. Giving users options apparently does not include screen tearing :)
Quoting: no_information_hereI narrowly escaped the Neon upgrade disaster by checking the forums before doing the update. The Neon maintainers really messed up pushing an unfinished and untested version of Plasma 6 through to their basic User distro. I am thinking of moving back to Kubuntu since I don't need bleeding edge anymore.
That's why they keep saying that KDE Neon is not a distro. If you are not a KDE developer, a happy tester or really need the bleeding edge Plasma features, I would pick a real distro. Whatever you fancy I'm not here to sell you anything, but this is not the first time KDE Neon has had problems with upgrades.
Quoting: tmtvlQuoting: 14This is sarcastic, right? You don't get anything from a donation. It's not a trade.
Yes, it was a joke. I'm not actually gonna ask a refund on my donations just because Plasma 6 is the worst 'upgrade' since GNOME 3. And hey, I get it: they want new users so if they feel like they have to tell the old users to go fuck themselves so be it. It's fine, I just get irked when that happens.
Hey if that's how you feel then that's how you feel. I'm a long time user of Plasma 5 and I'm, so far at least, pretty happy with most of the changes in Plasma 6. I don't have it on my main PC yet but I threw KDE Neon on my laptop and I got very few issues. I don't do a lot of customization though, only move the panel to the left side and some small things. Single-click or double-click as default don't matter to me as long as I can set double-click - like it should be *wink wink*. All in all I think Plasma 6.3, or whatever it will be, will be very solid by the time Kubuntu 24.10 is released.
Last edited by Brokatt on 12 March 2024 at 3:13 pm UTC
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Plintslîcho Mar 12
Quoting: ShmerlQuoting: PlintslîchoAlso, Plasma 6 takes up quite some noticeable amount of RAM at times, even though the system is idling.
If you aren't using KDE PIM (Kmail and etc.) try to disable Akonadi server - it eats a ton of RAM for something you might not use.
Thanks Shmerl, but the service isn't running on my system. It's no big deal, really. I was just astonished that the system at times uses ~ 2GB of RAM when there's not much going on.
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well, it's out for Tumbleweed, but ... it did NOT go well for me. In the middle of a zypper dup it just crashes the entire DE to a login screen. every time. repeatedly. Even after reboot. Had to snapper back to an old snapshot to fix it. It left my system with half installed Plasma 5.x and half 6.0.
edit:
I got it to work! Currently running plasma6
I received some awesome support from the official forums, and they suggested I dump the DE and go down into system terminal by hitting ctrl-alt-f4 and doing the zypper dup there. It worked. Love that community!
Last edited by Jarmer on 14 March 2024 at 12:55 am UTC
edit:
I got it to work! Currently running plasma6
I received some awesome support from the official forums, and they suggested I dump the DE and go down into system terminal by hitting ctrl-alt-f4 and doing the zypper dup there. It worked. Love that community!
Last edited by Jarmer on 14 March 2024 at 12:55 am UTC
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Quoting: PlintslîchoQuoting: ShmerlQuoting: PlintslîchoAlso, Plasma 6 takes up quite some noticeable amount of RAM at times, even though the system is idling.
If you aren't using KDE PIM (Kmail and etc.) try to disable Akonadi server - it eats a ton of RAM for something you might not use.
Thanks Shmerl, but the service isn't running on my system. It's no big deal, really. I was just astonished that the system at times uses ~ 2GB of RAM when there's not much going on.
2GB out of?
In my case it does, but only when Discover is looking for updates, when said task ends, it returns to 1.2-1.5 GB out of 8GB.
I think it could be optimized a bit more, but even in the current state, uses a lot less than Windows 10/11 (with the former using almost 2.5GB while idle and the latter skyrocketing to 3.6 GB)
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I've never been concerned much about ram system usage, just as long as something doesn't go off the rails and start consuming all of it ... Like for instance right now I'm on Plamsa6 and I've got all my normal work-day apps open:
spotify
standard notes
signal
slack
firefox
librewolf
chromium
kate
steam (in background idling)
and I'm using 6 gigs of ram out of 32. Seems perfectly reasonable to me.
spotify
standard notes
signal
slack
firefox
librewolf
chromium
kate
steam (in background idling)
and I'm using 6 gigs of ram out of 32. Seems perfectly reasonable to me.
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no_information_here Mar 15
Quoting: BrokattQuoting: no_information_hereI narrowly escaped the Neon upgrade disaster by checking the forums before doing the update. The Neon maintainers really messed up pushing an unfinished and untested version of Plasma 6 through to their basic User distro. I am thinking of moving back to Kubuntu since I don't need bleeding edge anymore.
That's why they keep saying that KDE Neon is not a distro. If you are not a KDE developer, a happy tester or really need the bleeding edge Plasma features, I would pick a real distro. Whatever you fancy I'm not here to sell you anything, but this is not the first time KDE Neon has had problems with upgrades.
Yeah. I have been running linux for over two decades. I do know what I am doing. Neon has made revisions to its goals several times and the "user" edition gets less and less stable with each step. Yes, it is a distribution, regardless of what they try to say, but they have gotten to the point now where no-one should use it for anything requiring stability. Like work.
It is their right to change course, just as it is entirely correct to call them out.
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Quoting: no_information_hereQuoting: BrokattQuoting: no_information_hereI narrowly escaped the Neon upgrade disaster by checking the forums before doing the update. The Neon maintainers really messed up pushing an unfinished and untested version of Plasma 6 through to their basic User distro. I am thinking of moving back to Kubuntu since I don't need bleeding edge anymore.
That's why they keep saying that KDE Neon is not a distro. If you are not a KDE developer, a happy tester or really need the bleeding edge Plasma features, I would pick a real distro. Whatever you fancy I'm not here to sell you anything, but this is not the first time KDE Neon has had problems with upgrades.
Yeah. I have been running linux for over two decades. I do know what I am doing. Neon has made revisions to its goals several times and the "user" edition gets less and less stable with each step. Yes, it is a distribution, regardless of what they try to say, but they have gotten to the point now where no-one should use it for anything requiring stability. Like work.
It is their right to change course, just as it is entirely correct to call them out.
Good for you. I was agreeing with you that KDE Neon is too unstable and especially their upgrade process has always been shaky. I don't think KDE Neon should be used by anyone other than KDE devs, but that is my opinion. I'm sure anyone with decades of Linux experience have no problem making it work, but personally I don't need the hassle.
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