KDE Plasma 5.19 Released (kde.org) 18
jrepin writes: The KDE community has released Plasma 5.19, the popular free and open-source desktop environment. "In this release, we have prioritized making Plasma more consistent, correcting and unifying designs of widgets and desktop elements; worked on giving you more control over your desktop by adding configuration options to the System Settings; and improved usability, making Plasma and its components easier to use and an overall more pleasurable experience," reads the announcement. For a complete list of what's new, you can visit the Plasma 5.19 changelog.
KDE Plasma is awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
It puts every other desktop OS interface to shame, including Windows and Mac.
Just wow (Score:3, Funny)
In this release, we have prioritized making Plasma more consistent, correcting and unifying designs of widgets and desktop elements; worked on giving you more control over your desktop by adding configuration options to the System Settings; and improved usability, making Plasma and its components easier to use and an overall more pleasurable experience.
Infinitive, present participle, past, and past participle all rolled into a single press release... lacking only future participle, condescending to the language of choice in the release... the language of Madison Avenue idiots, meant to befuddle the moronic publicus, hopefully confusingly pleasing to the target market.
Goody (Score:5, Insightful)
Back when I was a KDE 3 user and KDE 4 was released, I was pretty much horrified. It was hot garbage compared to what I was used to, and while the KDE site declaimed responsibility saying it was for development, all the distributions started including it anyway. I really do blame the KDE folks for this for calling it 4.0 and not something like 3.99 or at least throwing an alpha (which was the quality at the time) or whatever.
I became an XFCE user for a while after that, checking in on KDE 4 occasionally. But as time and releases rolled on, a year or so later, the 4 branch was far better and where the 4.0 release should have been, although still not quite up to the 3.5 branch.
By the time 5 was released, it was back to being, by far, my favorite environment. I can only imagine what the Linux desktop mix would have looked like if they'd handled the 4 release better. It's back to being a great default desktop, but without narrowing the options down to nearly nothing like Gnome has done.
It's smooth, beautiful, I can set it up to work EXACTLY like I want, and the "k" apps like kwrite and dolphin (d apps?) are excellent to the point I don't want to replace them with something else, but actually use them (with some exceptions like Calligra which I always replace with libreoffice).
And again, I don't have to dread each release like with gnome, wondering what fresh horrors the developers (or at least the UX people) have wrought.
Well done, and I can't wait to take it for a spin!
Sam
Re:Goody (Score:4, Interesting)
It's smooth, beautiful, I can set it up to work EXACTLY like I want...
It's an excellent desktop, and it's by far my favorite.
...and the "k" apps like kwrite and dolphin (d apps?) are excellent to the point I don't want to replace them with something else, but actually use them...
KWrite is very good for small to largish files, but it's completely incapable of handling moderately large files. Of course, most GUI text editors have the same problem, so KWrite is in good company.
Dolphin is so painful to use that it borders on being an abomination. And now the KDE developers have neutered Konqueror so much that it has become borderline unusable as a file manager. At this point, I feel safe in saying that KDE no longer has a useful file manager.
And KMail, KOrganizer, and the rest of KDEPIM essentially died with the introduction of that cantankerous piece of crap called Akonadi. I had used them from almost the very beginning, but the entire KDEPIM suite went from awesome to useless in one fell swoop, and it took all of my data with it (the files were still there, but were essentially useless without the programs to manage them). I had to painstakingly transfer my email and calendars to other programs. To this day, the KDEPIM suite fails to even start on a fresh install of Kubuntu.
Then there is the ioslave infrastructure, which was a great concept that was left to wither on the vine.
...(with some exceptions like Calligra which I always replace with libreoffice).
KOffice had a lot of potential, and was very usable for its time, but I think there just was never the developer manpower for it to get feature parity with other office suites. One day, it just went quietly into that good night.
So while KDE still is a great desktop, it is slowly dying the death of a thousand small, bad design decisions. It's gotten to the point where I cringe whenever there is a new release, as I'm wondering what useful features got the axe this time. There hasn't been any useful new feature in KDE for quite a few releases, but there have been tons of regressions.
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But enough bitching. THA
Re: Goody (Score:2)
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fish:// seems to work with Dolphin. Does for me, at least.
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I use fish://user@myserverip every day in dolphin and it Just Works(tm)
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Serious question: What is wrong with using Konsole as a file manager. cd, ls, kde-open, mv, rm.
Bash terminals are the only file managers that I have ever used. What does a GUI file manager provide?
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What does a GUI file manager provide?
Granted, Dolphin is barely better than the command line, but Konqueror (before the KDE devs started butchering it) was the most awesome file manager I had ever used. Here are the major features:
1) Arbitrary split panels, and panels within panels within panels. This feature remains, but it way less useful with the removal of profiles. I typically have four panels (sometimes six to eight) open to my various servers, making drag and drop file sharing among servers trivially easy.
2) Tabs. Different tabs for dif
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the "k" apps like kwrite and dolphin (d apps?) are excellent to the point I don't want to replace them with something else,
I KWish KThey KHad a KBetter KNaming Konvention.
Call me, when ... (Score:1, Troll)
... you stopped using monocrome uslessly minimalist icons that you need to stare at and hover your mouse over, just to know what they are.
Instead of actually pretty, colorful, that have usefulness as their primary goal, and not an almost mentally ill obsession with minimalism.
If you are so afraid of being overwhelmed by the world, that you think minimalism (or any -ism, really) is a good idea, please get a therapy. You're harming society. That is: Us.
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At least in Linux you can choose between several DEs. In Windows or Mac OS you're stuck with whatever Microsoft or Apple see fit to provide
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https://kde.org/announcements/... [kde.org]
Breeze is the default icon theme for KDE. And that's superseding the Oxygen theme set that was the 4.x series default. Neither was monochrome, unless you were using the high contrast icon theme for people with vision problems?
Sam
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Lamenting what was lost (Score:3)
I can't remember if it was KDE 3 or 4, but I was an active user of it then. I used to be able to use colon prefixes to, for example start Run "man:tar" and get a localized man page for the tar command.
It also started in under 10 minutes. It could be made to look a lot like Windows was back during the XP days. I realize many in the community hate that but I liked it. The Trinity Desktop forked from this version, but it doesn't get much mindshare.