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!!

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

troyunrau ,
@troyunrau@lemmy.ca avatar

You folks are awesome 👍👍

AVincentInSpace ,

is this true

image macro, featuring Spongebob using a pair of binoculars and Patrick holding a notepad, pencil at the ready, captioned “Microsoft waiting for the release of Plasma 6”

merthyr1831 ,

inb4 floating taskbar in Windows 12

merthyr1831 ,

Hey folks!

With Wayland becoming the “Default” for most distributions now, will KDE begin to integrate some Wayland only features that you’re excited about?

I’ve seem some very interesting experiments for swapping desktop sessions (GNOME to KDE to Sway whole CSGO was running) all without losing state, and storing application state to disk.

Pointedstick ,

In fact there are already quite a few Wayland-only features. You can read about them on community.kde.org/…/X11_Known_Significant_Issues.

merthyr1831 ,

GPU Hotplugging is one I’m pretty hyped for! Hybrid graphics laptops aren’t too different from a GPU hotplugging scenario either, and they’re usually quite janky on Linux getting the external displays to work usually means swapping from hybrid mode to dGPU mode (restarting the X session in the process). At least with Wayland that (eventually) be a lot more graceful!

notmart ,

on the side of our apps (or anything written with Qt) all of that (and most important seamless compositor restart/crash recovery with the application surviving) everyhting should be there for 6.0. with other toolkits the mileage might vary (depending when they include the required changes, when a given distribution packages them and so on)

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

russjr08 ,
@russjr08@bitforged.space avatar

Hey there KDE team! What is your favorite feature that is coming along with Plasma 6 (or even with the KDE Gear / KDE Framework updates)?

carlschwan Mod ,

For me it’s definively the new overview effect, I already use it all the time on my Plasma dev session.

russjr08 ,
@russjr08@bitforged.space avatar

I just upgraded to the RC today, and gave this a try - it looks absolutely beautiful! Major props to you and the team!

macattack ,

What is one KDE feature developed within the last few years that you think is extremely productive/helpful yet is rarely utilized/talked about.

Pointedstick ,

Plasma Vaults! It’s the best implementation of having a little encrypted bucket to put your important files in that I’ve ever used, on any platform. It’s very well integrated into Plasma as a 1st-party supported feature, and it works wonderfully.

semperverus , (edited )
@semperverus@lemmy.world avatar

I use plasma vaults! Its great for homework folders and tax information!

One frustration with vaults though is that theres no clean way to make a portable vault on a USB stick or backed up to a cloud provider (nextcloud, google drive, etc) without digging into weird dot-folder paths and manually entering links to these in a text config file. FUSE-style integration would be rad.

EDIT: The primary use case for this would be to be able to carry sensitive information around like PII, tax, password vaults, family photos, documents, and so on, in such a way that you always have it on you (like on a keychain) or backed up elsewhere, and would be especially useful in cases of disaster - but if you drop and lose it somewhere, a malicious actor doesnt suddenly have your data.

Pointedstick , (edited )

That’s a fantastic idea. I’ve had the same thought myself.

One challenge with making it portable is that you need something that will work on any machine you plug it into. If there’s an emergency and you need the data on there when you don’t have your main computer, it’s likely that the machine you plug it into isn’t running Plasma. For this reason I think a hardware-encrypted flash drive with physical number buttons on it suits the use case better. That way you decrypt it with your fingers, and then the contents are readable on any random Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS etc device you have to plug it into.

semperverus ,
@semperverus@lemmy.world avatar

Thats a good point. I wonder how difficult it would be to package vaults as a standalone .exe or get it onto the Microsoft store like how Kate is.

If I have skills in python and mostly work on ETL-style scripts, how difficult would it be to jump in and try to make this happen? Im just now learning ADO pipelines at work, but I don’t really work with compiled code.

I feel like i’d be jumping into the deep end.

Pointedstick ,

Packaging it as a standalone binary for different platforms seems like a good plan. I have no idea how hard this might be to do though, sorry. But you can always propose it in one of KDE’s chat channels or mailing lists and see if it piques anyone else’s interest or they feel like helping you do it!

Certainity45 ,

I see a huge potential for mobile users in Vault.

davidre ,

It has not been developed in the last few years but always krunner! A recent-ish feature that was already in Plasma 5 is to bind key presses to your extra mouse buttons or tablet tool buttons

macattack ,

Moving to Linux w/ a Logitech MX3 mouse, I legit spent 2-3 days troubleshooting across solaar and piper before I got logiops to work. I’ll disable it and dig around the KDE settings to try for a more integrated solution that is easily editable.

notmart ,

to me, the new kwin tiling that first appeared on 5.27, but this will probably change, as feature development on it is about to reopen :)

sohrabbehdani ,
@sohrabbehdani@lemmy.world avatar

is there any plans for more mobile friendly applications?

the only problem that i have currently with plasma mobile is the lack of mobile friendly applications :)

Bro666 OP Mod ,
@Bro666@lemmy.kde.social avatar

Josh says: “Yes, we are always interested in making our applications mobile-ready and almost every new KDE application uses Kirigami our convergent framework. Some of our older applications such as Okular, Dolphin, etc need more work on mobile but this is something that’s being worked on.”

Bro666 OP Mod ,
@Bro666@lemmy.kde.social avatar

Carl says: Also take a look at plasma-mobile.org which lists most of the kirigami apps that work on mobile.

carlschwan Mod ,

In addition to that Josh said, we have a list of mobile friendly first party applications here: plasma-mobile.org It’s not completely up to date and is missing some newer additions.

sohrabbehdani ,
@sohrabbehdani@lemmy.world avatar

thanks your for sending this link :)

is there any plans for tok to return? the need for a proper telegram client is a lot , telegram desktop cannot be as good as a native client on mobile screen.

Bro666 OP Mod ,
@Bro666@lemmy.kde.social avatar

Josh says: “Unfortunately we lack a maintainer for Tok. If anybody would like to step up…”

MylesRyden ,
@MylesRyden@vivaldi.net avatar

@Bro666 @sohrabbehdani

Tik says she will do it.

Bro666 OP Mod ,
@Bro666@lemmy.kde.social avatar

That would be awesome. community.kde.org/Get_Involved#Start_Here.21

sohrabbehdani ,
@sohrabbehdani@lemmy.world avatar

and I don’t know if it is a right place to ask, but the maui toolkit hig is missing :)

PureTryOut ,
@PureTryOut@lemmy.kde.social avatar

It’s not really KDE though, it’s kinda it’s own thing…

Bro666 OP Mod ,
@Bro666@lemmy.kde.social avatar

A close cousin 😉

leopold ,

Maui confuses me. The Plasma Mobile homepage features Index, Pix and Vvave prominently. Additionally, those three and Nota are featured on apps.kde.org and the git repositories for all Maui applications are hosted on KDE’s GitLab at invent.kde.org/maui. Index in particular is very important for KDE, since it’s the only mobile-friendly file manager Plasma Mobile has. The Maui blog is also aggregated on Planet KDE. So clearly Maui is very closely related to KDE.

However, Maui Shell is hosted on Nitrux’s GitHub, not KDE. Maui apps also don’t use a lot of standard KDE infrastructure like bugs.kde.org. Plus, the elephant in the room, Maui apps have a totally different HIG from the rest of KDE. Mauikit apps are convergent, use CSD and force the standard Maui theme. They always use hamburger menus over menubars and rarely use more than one window. Apps focus on simple interfaces and simple feature sets. Some of these things, such as convergence, preference for hamburger menus and single window interfaces are also found in some Kirigami applications, but in Maui it’s universal. It feels like a Qt version of GNOME much more than it feels KDE. Combine Maui Shell with Maui applications and you end up with a desktop environment which has nothing in common with KDE’s flagship Plasma. So what’s Maui? How is it related to KDE? I don’t get it.

PureTryOut ,
@PureTryOut@lemmy.kde.social avatar

Yeah it’as weird. Afaik the apps are part of the KDE but the shell is not. No clue why, I’d remove Maui entirely from KDE tbh…

Index is, as you mentioned, really the only option on Plasma Mobile for managing your files, but Pix and Vvave can be replaced with Koko and Elise respectively. We should probably make work of that.

notmart ,

We sure do plan of moving more and more of our app to the new convergent ui toolkit made with QML and Kirigami, in the future more and more of our apps should become mobile ready

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 :(

domi ,
@domi@lemmy.secnd.me avatar

With HDR making its debut on Plasma, what are the plans moving forward?

From what I have seen getting games to work in HDR currently requires the correct vulkan layers and a recent gamescope version?

As a side question, will there be an easy way to get HDR working with the Steam flatpak for the Plasma 6 launch?

Zamundaaa ,

A near term plan is to make it so you don’t have to use any Vulkan layer to make it work, by having gamescope use the protocol directly. After that, add support to all the other clients - Mesa, SDL, glfw, mpv, Krita, Chromium and so on

will there be an easy way to get HDR working with the Steam flatpak for the Plasma 6 launch?

You can run Steam in gamescope, doesn’t matter if it’s sandboxed or not.

domi ,
@domi@lemmy.secnd.me avatar

Thanks for the response, excited to see more support being added!

You can run Steam in gamescope, doesn’t matter if it’s sandboxed or not.

So, installing your Vulkan layers and gamescope-git on the host and running ENABLE_HDR_WSI=1 gamescope --hdr-enabled --hdr-debug-force-output --steam – env ENABLE_GAMESCOPE_WSI=1 DXVK_HDR=1 DISABLE_HDR_WSI=1 flatpak run com.valvesoftware.Steam -bigpicture should do it on Plasma 6?

Zamundaaa ,

Yes

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.

Blisterexe , (edited )
@Blisterexe@lemmy.zip avatar

Thanks for all the great work on kde! I was wondering if the KDE theme refresh, (brise) and icon (app and plasma icon) proposals are going to happen in plasma 6.1? Or is that not on the table? Also, are there plans to have KDE connect support making your phone a webcam?

Edit: grammar

leopold ,

offtopic, but why is this comment yellow? never seen that before.

EDIT: Oh wait, I think it’s to mark unread comments. Haven’t seen that before. Must be a new thing.

Blisterexe ,
@Blisterexe@lemmy.zip avatar

I have no idea, what client do you use? (Its not yellow for me on sync) Edit: yeah maybe I don’t know to be honest

leopold ,

I just use the web client

Bro666 OP Mod ,
@Bro666@lemmy.kde.social avatar

The instance has recently been updated.

davidre ,

Also, is there plans to have KDE connect support making your phone a webcam?

That’s an amazing idea! Currently I am using my laptop next to my desktop screens as a sudo webcam :D

Blisterexe ,
@Blisterexe@lemmy.zip avatar

Yeah the only way to do it right now is using droidcam, and I took one look at the documentation and gave up, and continued using my bad webcam. Also afiak the new pipewire video portals should make that feature easier to implement.

Edit: thank you for the reply!

KindaSuS ,

You should check out “scrcpy”, it’s on GitHub and it is great for using your phone as a webcam and more things.

Blisterexe ,
@Blisterexe@lemmy.zip avatar

scrcpy

thanks!

leo ,
@leo@lemmy.linuxuserspace.show avatar

What’s the best or recommended way to test out Plasma 6 RC2?

And

What has been the hardest problem to solve moving to Qt6?

Pointedstick ,

What’s the best or recommended way to test out Plasma 6 RC2?

Neon Testing in a VM (or on bare metal if you’re adventurous). Arch with the kde-unstable repo is good too, but that also includes a snapshot of the unreleased Qt 6.7 which introduces more bugs.

What has been the hardest problem to solve moving to Qt6?

Personally I’d have to say the large number of API and behavior changes in QtQuick that Qt 6 has brought. We use QtQuick very heavily throughout KDE, so this has required a lot of mandatory porting work, more than in our QtWidgets-based software. And there have even been changes between Qt 6.5, 6.6, and 6.7, so it’s still a bit of a moving target

leo ,
@leo@lemmy.linuxuserspace.show avatar

Thanks for the answers! You and the others on the team are doing a fantastic job of convincing me to not use any other desktop :)

notmart ,

To just test out without any risk and not touching any running system i would suggest a live image such as KDE Neon Unstable which has dailiy updated snapshots of our software stack

as moving to Qt6 from a developer POV, It has been remarkably uneventful. there are api changes for sure (Especially on the QML side of things) but the changes are not as great as say, Qt4 to Qt5.

leo ,
@leo@lemmy.linuxuserspace.show avatar

Thank you so much for the info. I think I’ll be grabbing a Neon ISO and give it a whirl on real hardware. Gotta do it right, ya know? :)

herzenschein Mod ,
@herzenschein@pawb.social avatar

What’s the best or recommended way to test out Plasma 6 RC2?

See also: community.kde.org/Plasma/Plasma_6#How_to_use/test…

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.

Auzy ,

Firstly love the window tiling system. Have you thought about something similar to magnet which allows a window to fill 2 '/columns of the grid simultaneously?

notmart ,

Good idea

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