KDE Plasma 5.25 Released

Long-time Slashdot reader jrepin describes Plasma as "a popular desktop environment, which is also powering the desktop mode on the Steam Deck portable gaming console."

And this week the KDE Community announced the release of KDE Plasma 5.25: This new version brings many improvements...

- The accent colour can now be set based on the prominent colour from the current desktop background image (it updates if you use slide-show wallpapers) and it applies to more graphical elements.

- Floating Panels add a margin all around the panel to make it float while no window is maximised.

- Touch-screen mode can now be activated by detaching the screen, rotating it 360, or enabling it manually.

- The Global Theme settings page lets you pick and choose which parts to apply.

- The Application page for Discover has been redesigned and gives you links to the application's documentation and website, and shows what system resources it has access to.

- Panels can now be navigated with the keyboard, and you can assign custom shortcuts to focus individual panels.
Lilputing.com adds that "There's a new Overview effect that zooms out to display previews of all currently-running apps and virtual desktops. You can access this view with a four-finger pinch on a touchscreen or touchpad, and from this view, you can also search for apps, documents, or browser tabs or add, remove, or rename virtual desktops."

Question

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Can the default Mint desktop (Cinnamon) be switched to use Plasma?

Re:

[paxmees]

yes

Re:

[msk]

Yes.

One example: https://www.ghacks.net/2021/10... [ghacks.net]

Re:

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Cool, thank you. I may give this a try.

Rotating 360deg?

[thegarbz]

This brings back memories of the Xbox360 meme how people will turn 360 degrees to walk away. I presume we don't need to close the laptop lids to reset the degree counter to 0 before we go full 360degree and "fold into tablet orientation" which is what the KDE team appear to be trying to describe.

Bloat

[metrix007]

Last time I used KDE was some version of 4, and there were *so many* services running, so so many that seem to be unnecessary, I think I remember Akonadi being a big culprit. Gnome never seemed as bloated.

Is 5 still like that, a ton of services having to run just to enable a DE?

Re:

[RoccamOccam]

I've disabled Akonadi. Without that running, KDE is buttery smooth.

Re:

[StormReaver]

I've disabled Akonadi.

KDEPIM/Akonadi has caused every single bit of data loss I have ever had with KDE. Once I stopped using KDEPIM in its entirety, all of my problems were solved. I absolutely loved KMail and KOrganizer, but their dependency on Akonadi (and the corresponding data trashing it causes) rendered them both unusable.

I was very happy that there was a conversion utility to transfer many years of email from KMail to Thunderbird, but I had to start over with calendaring since I couldn't find a way to transfer those to Li

Re:

[rnturn]

Akonadi... ugh. Quite the resource hog.

``I was very happy that there was a conversion utility to transfer many years of email from KMail to Thunderbird, ...

That's one thing I've never worried about after setting up an IMAP server.

... but I had to start over with calendaring since I couldn't find a way to transfer those to Lightning.

I seem to recall that while there wasn't a simple "click here to import everything" button, I was able to export calendars to iCal format for importation into Lightening. W

Re:

[ArchieBunker]

Plasma is nice but I don’t understand the two volume control icons. That and the stupid fucking keyring thing that always wants a password for chrome. I force uninstall that package and everything still works.

Re:

[NobleNobbler]

Yeah, I agree with you. It's as if one hit for a trusted resource gives you the equiv. of a windows UAC prompt but the added pleasure of typing your password (and encouraging you to make it 123)

Re:

[bill_mcgonigle]

You can have PAM log you into the keyring. It's absurd that distro packages don't enable this by default .

The deeply paranoid could always disable it. But trusting your DE but not your DM greeter is as paranoid as you can get.

Re:

[Catvid-22]

I think one of the goals of the KDE project was to make developing KDE programs easier, such that a developer could develop, for example, an email client with less code than somebody developing something similar for GTK or Gnome. (Gnome is probably moving in this direction as well.)

KDE Plasma 5.25

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Does it really still fit on a 5.25" floppy? That would be quite the accomplishment.

different background images on different virtual d

[aRTeeNLCH]

Does KDE 5.25 allow too have different background images on different virtual desktops once again, without fiddling and merely creating the illusion? The one feature my wife used to show her friends how cool her system is... And it got taken due to activities being hotter, though no one could ever explain why virtual desktops can't be used for the exact purpose activities are supposed to be used for...

Re:

[slack_justyb]

Does KDE 5.25 allow too have different background images on different virtual desktops once again

Nope and it's not ever coming back. The end. [kde.org] If you want it, head over to XFCE.

Re:

[aRTeeNLCH]

Thanks, I remember that bug report but never got that end conclusion from it. From the comments it does seem that xfce is the only true replacement but I'll have to see if it offers all the other features like further actions for show windows of current/all desktops...

Re:

[rnturn]

``Does KDE 5.25 allow too have different background images on different virtual desktops once again, without fiddling and merely creating the illusion?

No. The decision was made a few years ago to round file different background on virtual desktops.

But... You can have different background/wallpapers with KDE Activities. And a different Favorites menu for each activity. For example, my "Audio" activity has all of the audio-related applications in the Favorites drop-down but nothing else. The Web activity h

Re:

[aRTeeNLCH]

Like I said in another reply, all 3d desktop stuff, and now that I think if it, all page stuff was broken. I guess I'll have to have a look what's working now with activities, because it wasn't a whole lot last time I checked, I think they got pagers working...

Re:

[aRTeeNLCH]

Okay, I had a look with a recent version of plasma, activity pagers work great, easy to move windows within and between activities. But "present windows" is purely workspace related, so presenting windows from all activities isn't possible (edge action in desktop behaviour, corner actions). Note that that function is really great with workspaces in grid view. The animation to switch between activities also leaves lots to be desired, as in: dude where's my cube? Or grid, or whatever...

Re:

[JThundley]

Activities basically are virtual desktops and can be used the same way. And yes, you can different wallpapers on them.

Re:

[aRTeeNLCH]

I know, but show windows on all desktops and other 3D desktop stuff doesn't work, nor the cube view (started with compiz), at least last time I looked.

Updated a workstation from

[oldgraybeard]

Ubuntu 20.04 with kubuntu to 22.04 with kubuntu as a test. Anyone, else find that a collapsed Shade window does not re open? I have to manually re size the window each time, back to what it was. Is this a KDE Plasma issue or a kubuntu issue? Anyone know how to fix this?

I used to love KDE, but it brokeâ¦

[FellowConspirator]

Specifically, I periodically used to use it remotely over X11 or using an X VNC service, and all was well. For some time now, there have been issues accessing it from remote X servers. It seems like it insists that it run local and have a certain level of XGL support. Iâ(TM)ve never found a functional work around. Since then, Iâ(TM)ve been less of a fan.

Moving apps via the panel desktop/activity mgr

[rnturn]

Hoping they've fixed/re-introduced that.

I can remember when you could simply drag the outline of a window in the panel desktop or activity manager and move it to a different desktop/activity. That's been broken for some time forcing a right click in window headers to bring up the "Show in Activities" menu, more clicks to select/unselect Activities, and finally, clicking on the root window to make the change. Not a good user experience when your desktop recovers after a crash/power outage and KDE dumps most

Steam Deck runs an old KDE Plasma (and kernel)

[rklrkl]

I'm on the "Main" beta OS channel on my Steam Deck, which is the most bleeding edge a member of the public can be. It gets 1 or 2 new SteamOS updates a week, so Valve is still working at a frenetic pace nearly 4 months after the Deck's release.

Weirdly though, both the kernel (5.13.0 - almost a year out of date and has some AMD APU improvements in later releases) and KDE Plasma (5.23.5 - two significant versions behind and over 5 months out of date) seem to be lagging well behind. I've encountered quite a few bugs in the Deck's Desktop Mode (Discover store is particularly unstable) that I suspect 5.24/5.25 have probably already fixed, so it makes Desktop Mode on the Deck what Americans would term "a janky experience".