KDE Plasma 6.1 Released (kde.org) 42
"The KDE community announced the latest release of their popular desktop environment: Plasma 6.1," writes longtime Slashdot reader jrepin. From the announcement: While Plasma 6.0 was all about getting the migration to the underlying Qt 6 frameworks correct, Plasma 6.1 is where developers start implementing the features that will take you desktop to a new level. In this release, you will find features that go far beyond subtle changes to themes and tweaks to animations (although there is plenty of those too). Among some of the new features in this release you will find improved remote desktop support with a new built-in server, overhauled and streamlined desktop edit mode, restoration of open applications from the previous session on Wayland, synchronization of keyboard LED colors with the desktop accent color, making mouse cursor bigger and easier to find by shaking it, edge barriers (a sticky area for mouse cursor near the edges between screens), explicit sync support eliminates flickering and glitches for NVidia graphics card users on Wayland, and triple buffering support for smoother animations and screen rendering. The changelog for Plasma 6.1 is available here.
KIO still sucks (Score:2)
This NEVER seems to fail with GVFS, and it's been a problem with KIO sin
Re: KIO still sucks (Score:1)
That seems like it would cause problems with fstab and multiuser/automounts as the creds donâ(TM)t necessarily get passed by the user. Who made that design decision.
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KIO started out as a good idea, but there was no follow-through. It copies entire files before those files can be used, rather than implementing a real virtual filesystem.
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Could you reproduce the bug in another distro? Not that I don't trust you or criticize your choice of a distro, but different distros expose these sort of bugs differently, and it would be interesting to know what is the most appropriate place for a bug report.
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On Rocky 9 KDE, I actually still have the problem where I sometimes have to refresh the directory in Dolphin, because new files don't show up if they were copied though another mechanism (eg. If I 'cp' a file from the command line into a folder I have open in Dolphin, it doesn't always show up there until I hit F5. I chalk this up to Rocky not having the latest KDE plasma.
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I did "touch ~/test" and "rm -f ~/test" and dolphin updated in both cases in nearly exactly one second (kio 6.3.0 / dolphin 24.05.1 / not using plasma).
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If your issue happens with the default install on the distro, then this is something to report to the distro bugtracker.
I also have weird integration issues with KDE software, which I believe to come from my manually-, poorly-configured gentoo.
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Re: KIO still sucks (Score:2)
..and this KIO issue relates to Plasma how exactly? Cos they both come with KDE? Or?
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A long time ago Plasma was the name of a specific component in KDE. What used to be called KDE is now called the KDE Plasma Desktop. KIO is a core component of the Plasma Desktop. So yes KIO is a part of Plasma and directly relates to it.
Re:KIO still sucks (Score:5, Interesting)
I love KDE Plasma -- It's my current desktop of choice, running on Fedora 40. But, I still STILL have problems opening files over samba with specific applications. Open a smb:// in Dolphin, and then try playing an mkv with VLC. Sometimes, though I may be imagining this, it works. But, almost every single time, it fails, because Dolphin/KIO/kio-fuse passes the smb URL to VLC, instead of the /run/user/me/smb... link, like it should.
This NEVER seems to fail with GVFS, and it's been a problem with KIO since... well, since KIO.
It doesn't matter which setup I use, I always mount smb shares and access everything with real file system paths. Keeps things consistent across setups: /home/myuser/mounts/smbvideo1 -o user=myuser,uid=1000,forceuid,nounix
#!/bin/sh
mount -t cifs \\\\192.168.1.47\\homes
smb URL?
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VLC doesn't use KIO, so KDE needs to use a workaround. Try a KDE video player and it works like a charm.
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Yeah, "workaround" is an apt way of putting it.
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Here it works.
And when you use non-KDE programs, you don't compare KIO with KIO, but KIO with access over a virtual FS implemented using KIO. Of course it is worse.
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Here (Manjaro) VLC works fine, just like SMPlayer and MPC Qt. /run/user/1000/kio-fuse-xEgQTA/smb/ as the address for the file.
And I do get
Been using Fedora KDE Desktop w/ Plasma 6(.1?) (Score:1)
..for several days now, but I finally reverted back to Windows yesterday. I plan to switch the day Windows 10 support ends. Given the features listed, I think it was Plasma 6.1.
I was able to make it look gorgeous and even function just like Windows 10, far better than Linux Mint! What impressed me most was the ability (although well hidden) to invert screen colors with a keystroke. What a huge plus for me and my near blind diabetic eyes! Windows Magnifier can do this, too of course.
My only issues preve
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> 3. I literally couldn't find a video player that didn't suck. I use MPC-HC on Windows, which has so many usability features that just blow my mind. Yet only VLC is available on Linux. Everything else is super feature poor, and inexplicably proud of it. The default "Dragon" video player on Fedora couldn't even play lots of video codecs.
I'm sorry about this comment, but here comes the typical "you're using linux wrong"... codecs are installed system-wide, and all video players should be using the same un
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I'm sorry about this comment, but here comes the typical "you're using linux wrong"... codecs are installed system-wide, and all video players should be using the same underlying libraries. [...]
I use VLC and SMPlayer.
VLC uses its own included codecs, not the system ones...
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That's true I think for ffmpeg, but apparently not for openh264.
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It does support GPU acceleration and it is enabled by default, so in that case it's using driver codecs...
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Interesting... On my distro (Gentoo) it pulls in system codec packages (libx265, libx264, libwebm, dav1d, etc...), I wonder if it links them statically in the end...
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I know how codecs work, which is why I was surprised that installing openh264 worked for VLC, but not Dragon. VLC obviously does something extra. I think it's doing some ffmpeg stuff internally. I did try SMPlayer, however it wasn't up to MPC-HC standards. VLC is great as something that "works," but its interface features are not impressive.
I was surprised Linux doesn't have a really knockout video player, frankly. It's a "fun" feature and isn't hard to implement (just use VLC lib!).
Flatpaks (or snaps
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> I know how codecs work, which is why I was surprised that installing openh264 worked for VLC, but not Dragon.
Ok, Dragon is a KDE player, right? That means it uses Phonon, so if VLC works, then maybe setting Phonon to use the VLC backend will make it work too. I think the default is phonon-gstreamer. ...
Just thinking out loud, not a Fedora user. Found this: https://rpmfusion.org/Howto/Mu... [rpmfusion.org]
Also not many things use openh264, most use x264.
> I was surprised Linux doesn't have a really knockout video pl
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phonon-gstreamer
One thing I have learned while using a Qt/KDE based system is to never, ever install anything starting with 'g' or you could end up with totally fubared dependencies. So no thanks there.
Also not many things use openh264, most use x264.
No one mentioned that one, but openh264 worked and didn't fubar anything. I was trying to make as few changes as possible. I have no clue why this is such an issue on Linux and not on Windows. Maybe Windows developers just make a much greater effort to maintain compatibility when releasing new APIs?
NixOS is doing somethi
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> 2. Dropbox is the only could storage provider that works, and it is a horrible, incredibly limited limited experience. It'll show a red icon when syncing is not working, but will not tell you why. No logs even. Well, OneDrive kind of a little bit works, but getting it working was probably going to be too hard, and I bet it was too limited, too.
The usual suspects for cloud storage either don't support Linux at all, or do a terrible job of it.
There's an app called InSync https://www.insynchq.com/ [insynchq.com] that ha
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Thanks, that's what I was looking for. Do any of those support 0 length local placeholders, or showing a progress bar as they're downloaded?
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pCloud does; you can choose to sync folder or just access them through the "pCloud Drive", which downloads them on demand. Not sure if it displays a progress bar somewhere for that as it's happening, I don't use that feature.
Not sure about InSync's support for that.
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Awesome. Will keep pCloud in mind for my next Linux journey. InSync costs money on top of the actual cloud service so maybe not for me. Thanks.
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Thanks, that's what I was looking for. Do any of those support 0 length local placeholders, or showing a progress bar as they're downloaded?
Insync has a small GUI that you can open that shows you, visually, what files are being synced. I've used it for years now with no complaint between several computers (desktop and laptop) and the files are just there. The bigger ones take a little longer but with 1gbit network it is almost instantaneous.
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This is pretty off-topic, but about your diabetes induced blindness, you may want to check this review:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov] (Lifestyle Medicine: A Brief Review of Its Dramatic Impact on Health and Survival)
Here's a video by one of the authors: https://nutritionfacts.org/vid... [nutritionfacts.org] (What Causes Insulin Resistance?)
I know I'd try anything to keep my eyesight, but to each their own.
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KDE 6.1 is NOT in Fedora 40 yet.
Fedora is probably not the best if you're not already familiar. It's a solid building block OS, but you have to manually enable lots of things.
-Codecs. You have to add the RPM Fusion repo, then you can install all the non-free codecs: https://ostechnix.com/how-to-i... [ostechnix.com]
-GTK-KDE theme issues. Have you checked under the KDE system settings panel: Appearance->Application Style->Configure GNOME/GTK Application Style... (button on the bottom-right of the window)?
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Wow, great tips! What distro is based on Fedora that has all this set up already?
I swear I went through the Settings --> Appearance screen a million times and never saw any GNOME/Gtk setting. Will check it again when I install Fedora again later. Thanks.
Anyone else dislike the UI? (Score:1)
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At the time, I hated the KDE glass icons, so I used Gnome and disliked its poor customizability.
When I look back at it, maybe I should have just changed the theme.
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I do. I think it's mostly achievable in Plasma 5, at least. I haven't played much with 6 yet.
Just use Oxygen for everything instead of Breeze.
Then there are those who still prefer KDE 3. [trinitydesktop.org]
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wobbly windows (Score:2)
Does it come with wobbly windows? (honest question)
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Unless they've removed it, I'd say yes.
https://userbase.kde.org/Tips/... [kde.org]
I have to ask... (Score:1)
... is 2024 the year for Linux on the desktop ?
(ducks)
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Put it this way, my nine-year-old niece installed neon about a month ago (yes, she was able to install it herself). And when I later asked how she liked it, she responded "It's great! It's pretty, and it works just like windows except without... bothering you all the time"
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