AUA: We are the Plasma dev team. Ask Us Anything about Plasma 6, gear 24.02, Frameworks 6 and everything else in the upcoming Megarelease.

David, Nate, Josh, Marco, Carl, and Niccolò are here ready to answer all your questions on Plasma (all versions), Gear, Frameworks, Wayland (and how it affects KDE’s software), and everything in between.

Fire away, Lemmy!

We were expecting to be done in an hour and we have past the 2-hour mark already! Time flies when you are having fun.

Thank you for all the questions and the welcoming and friendly atmosphere, but the devs must get back to making Plasma 6 great.

Please keep the conversation going and KDE contributors will continue to answer over the next days as time permits.

Thank you all!!

linucs ,

Thanks for the AUA! Really excited about the Mega Release and even more for the future after!

My question is regarding Nate’s original proposal for the KDE goals “Professionalise KDE” if I remember well. Now, I know that the goal was changed and the scope reduced to “Automatization and Systematization” but I truly believe the original proposal’s spirit could have a huge impact on the whole ecosystem.

For example I remember the proposal contained the plan to hire a person working “full time” on actively finding fundings and grants and applying to them. We got the Mega Release fundraiser but for example on the forum I found discuss.kde.org/t/…/9916 and it looks like a waste of potential to not apply for grants because no one has the time to do so.

Is there anyone at KDE, maybe among the Board, who is still trying to make the “Professionalise KDE” happen?

P.S. I know you guys just want to reach the biggest amount of people but maybe we could start having the AUAs/AMAs and similar, only on Lemmy and a post on Reddit saying that the event will be hosted on Lemmy. This would make the Lemmy community the official one and could convince people to make the switch for the “exclusive content”. It’s not a critic, just want to see Lemmy prosper.

Pointedstick , (edited )

As a Board member now, I’ll answer this one. To a certain extent I ran for a seat on the Board because I realized that proposing this via a Goal was the wrong place to do it, and the more effective way to push for that change was by being on the Board. And now that I’ve been elected there, yes I do still want to do it and push for it internally where possible. However now that I have a fuller picture of the e.V.'s situation, I realize that there are budgetary concerns that must be met before we do more hiring, and KDE e.V. operates under extremely strict German nonprofit rules that make it not as simple as it might appear. Now, in an ideal world this person would be effectively self-funding, but we need to make sure we can afford them in the first place! It’s a bit of a chicken-egg situation, really.

Note that we’ve already done a certain amount of professionalizing KDE inasmuch as it means “KDE e.V. hires professionals to work on KDE.” KDE e.V. does indeed now employ multiple technical engineers to work on various areas of the software stack, and I want to see this grow even more. But, we need more money to make it happen, and until we do have that employed professional fundraiser, it’s up to existing members of the Board and the community to improve the revenue side of the equation so that it becomes possible! That’s why I’m so happy with the progress of the current fundraiser. 700 new members means at least 70,000€ of new recurring yearly income, which is enormous for KDE e.V. If we can keep up this kind of fundraising performance, we can do so much cool stuff in the next few years.

linucs ,

Thanks for the thorough answer Nate, can’t wait for KDE world domination!

troyunrau ,
@troyunrau@lemmy.ca avatar

You folks are awesome 👍👍

csolisr ,
@csolisr@hub.azkware.net avatar

In regards to theming, there's one thing that sticks like a sore thumb, and it's the fact that most if not all themes for Qt currently use the Kvantum engine ( github.com/tsujan/Kvantum ), which sadly is not well integrated with KDE in things as basic as supporting Plasma's color schemes and dynamic icons. Do you have any plans to collaborate directly with Kvantum, or with any other particular theming team other than Breeze's?

Pointedstick ,

A challenge for integrating with Kvantum is that it isn’t great for theming QtQuick due to bugs in our existing creaky theming infrastructure, as well as development direction preferences on the part of Kvantum’s maintainer.

One thing we have planned and want to work on during the Plasma 6 lifecycle is a new unified theming system that can apply to all KDE and Qt apps, GTK apps, and Plasma. The idea is to have a new theme that can be directly consumed by Qt’s Qstyle (for QtWidgets apps), KDE’s QtQuick desktop style (for desktop QtQuick apps), KDE’s Plasma style (for Plasma), as well as KDE’s GTK theme. Essentially we would end up with a new theming engine and each of the existing themes we have would consume those themes. This would replace the current approach where the C++ QStyle is the central source of truth and our QtQuick desktop style pulls content from it, while our Plasma and GTK themes are totally separate and have to be changed manually.

The new proposal is in fact not unlike how Kvantum already works, but it’s not rally made for easy upstreaming and it also uses SVG as the basis for its themes. We’d like to build our own thing and investigate using CSS as the basis for themes.

Needless to say, this is not happening for Plasma 6.0. :) But I’m hoping we can get it done sometime in the next year or three.

renesman ,

How do you copy windows features before they are even announced?

davidre ,

We don’t have a spy that’s for sure!

Pointedstick ,

whistles innocently

constancies ,
@constancies@metalhead.club avatar

@Bro666 With the transition from QT5 to 6 and Plasma 5.27's implementation of wp-fractional-scale-v1, will most KDE apps now be able to fractionally scale without using the upscale-downscale method? (Or in other words, how QT apps fractionally scale under X11)

davidre ,

That’s correct!

constancies ,
@constancies@metalhead.club avatar

@davidre While KDE doesn't oversee LibreOffice development, since they also have a QT6 backend for their UI, might they also benefit from this? Currently fractional scaled LibreOffice under Wayland with the QT5 backend is extremely laggy, presumably due to the upscale-downscale method.

leopold ,

LibreOffice uses its own toolkit called VCL which uses a number back-ends to render using native toolkits on all platforms, similar in concept to WxWidgets. I don’t know if the way VCL works allows Qt6 fractional scaling to just work, but a Qt6/KF6 back-end already exists and can be forced by setting SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=qt6 or SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=kf6, so you should be able to try it out right now.

RegalPotoo ,
@RegalPotoo@lemmy.world avatar

What is the plan for rolling the mega release out to Neon users?

Are there plans for updating Neon once the 22.04 lts is released?

Thanks

davidre ,

Neon unstable/testing already contains the relevant branches. Neon user edition should receive it as normal when it releases. When Neon will update its Ubuntnu base is a question for Neon developers.

RegalPotoo ,
@RegalPotoo@lemmy.world avatar

Thank you! Will switch my laptop over to testing tonight and see how it goes

kellyaster ,
@kellyaster@kbin.social avatar

Hello David, Nate, Josh, Marco, Carl, and Niccolò. How are you all feeling today?

Pointedstick ,

Feeling just fine. :)

carlschwan ,
@carlschwan@floss.social avatar

@kellyaster @Bro666 Pretty hungry but I'm cooking a ratatouille right now to fix this issue :)

davidre ,

Relaxed at the moment :)

notmart ,

just had dinner, therefore, great :D

Horsey ,

KDE Connect is something I keep my eye on and check in every once in a while: Is there a dedicated page tracking updates specifically to KDE Connect? I’m really very much looking forward to a time where it is feature compete with Android compared to Apple’s continuity platform. I would absolutely love to move to Android+Linux as my daily drivers, but I feel like I’m giving up on too much by leaving the Apple ecosystem.

Does Connect use BTLE?
Could you guys implement an auto tethering option between phone/PC?
How instant are notifications synced? Do notifications disappear on one side or the other when viewed on one or the other platform?
Maybe implement a “link to KDE” notification toggle to mirror the “link to windows” functionality of Android?

carlschwan Mod ,

Is there a dedicated page tracking updates specifically to KDE Connect?

It is part of KDE Gear, so generally in the gear release announcement. The last few releases were not that big in term of feature but the next one includes some goodies.

Does Connect use BTLE?

KDE Connect will have the Bluetooth backend enabled by default with the next gear release (24.02). I’m not sure if this is BTLE or normal Bluetooth.

Could you guys implement an auto tethering option between phone/PC?

No idea :(

How instant are notifications synced?

For me it is pretty instant. I never miss my Bereal notifications thanks to it :)

Do notifications disappear on one side or the other when viewed on one or the other platform?

Yes

Maybe implement a “link to KDE” notification toggle to mirror the “link to windows” functionality of Android?

No idea :(

ericjmorey ,
@ericjmorey@programming.dev avatar

I haven’t used KDE in a long time because I’ve been keeping things simple and just accepting most defaults on Pop!_OS.

What would be the most compelling reason, in your opinion, to make the effort to try out KDE?

davidre ,

I think everyone has different preferences on how they use their machine. However I would invite to just try Plasma out. One thing where it stands out is in my opinion that you can tailor it to your wishes and use case.

Pointedstick , (edited )

In addition to the obvious answer of “because our software is really good!”, IMO an under-appreciated reason is that KDE truly is an anarchic and largely volunteer-run community. As long as there are passionate volunteers, there will be KDE; you don’t have to worry about it just dying one day should some big corporation pull the plug for some reason. We’ve all become so accustomed these days to software being disposable, but KDE really does give you a measure of longevity and continuity that you’re unlikely to get elsewhere, especially without paying a lot of money for it.

jawa21 ,

In your opinion, what is the most substantial change/addition slated for the megarelease?

carlschwan Mod ,

For me personally, it’s the updated breeze theme. But I might not be completely objective here, since I drove this effort quite a lot :)

Some screenshots to see the difference: invent.kde.org/websites/…/diffs

davidre ,

It may be not user visible and technically not a Plasma but Qt change but I find the work so that apps survive the compositor restarting amazing. See …davidedmundson.co.uk/…/qt6_wayland_robustness/

Pointedstick ,

One of the most visible ones for me is that most common multimonitor workflows Just Work™ in the Wayland session now. There are still edge cases, but we’ve put a huge amount of effort into this.

GravitySpoiled ,

KDE is easy to use and very powerful.

In your opinion, why do many people prefer GNOME over KDE? Do you agree with them? How are you planning to close the gap?

notmart ,

We do aim to improve our design and usability further as much as possible, however, one of the nice things of free software is really this big choice. There are different projects and one size never fits all, if some people find the software written by our friends over GNOME more suited with their needs, that’s totally fine.

It would also be interesting hearing on the motivations for this choice tough, as it always help us improving

Pointedstick , (edited )

Actually Plasma is generally more popular than GNOME every time surveys are conducted. However we have to keep in mind that the direct consumers of a DE are actually not the end users, but rather the distributors who package and distribute it. There are a number of historical reasons why many distributors ended up picking GNOME over Plasma including accessibility, corporate sponsorship, an easier packaging experience, and the rocky KDE 4 rollout burning a lot of trust. So what you end up with today is many distros shipping GNOME despite pent-up desire for Plasma. It’s a great illustration of how you need to keep your direct users happy.

And I think that pent-up desire is being unleashed these days due to various changes in our ecosystem. Plasma is better than ever and version 5 had a much less painful release compared to 4, with us aiming to do even better in Plasma 6. We also see an increasing number of hardware vendors shipping devices with Plasma on it (kde.org/hardware/), who had a strong financial incentive to listen to their customers by picking Plasma over GNOME. In addition, KDE’s accessibility game is ramping up hugely, and we have more robust corporate sponsorship than we used to with Valve and Blue Systems putting tons of resources into KDE. Finally, GNOME seems to be becoming more hostile to their downstreams, causing them to need to do more of their own development or else migrate to be a fork or skin of Plasma. Interesting developments.

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