I don’t think there was a call by users to remove activities, I believe it was the devs on account of activities being a little utilized feature (for whatever reasons). I think they figured the codebase would benefit from simplification by removing activities.
Yea the KDE devs screwed the pooch so hard on this one that the eyes popped out and rolled out the door. IMO 6 could have waited and they could of better spent the time making the dock system like Latte and combining the best features of virtual desktops and activities so there aren’t two systems. As for the docks the new setting that popup when you enter edit mode are a joke. They look like a child made them. Then for some if you have a panel set to autohide and enter edit mode the one bar hides behind the panel making it impossible to exit edit mode. Luckily launching any fullscreen app will end edit mode.
I agree. Trying to configure the dock/panel is kind of painful, and it doesn’t seem to offer all the options it used to. I think you used to be able to set the dock to be under windows… now you can’t.
So far Plasma 6 seems identical to 5, except with new bugs, missing features, and Wayland works well enough that I could switch to it… or more like I had to switch because X11 performance is much worse than in Plasma 5. Maybe I’m not remembering properly, but it seems like Wayland performs with 6 the way X11 did with 5.
I’m really not sure why they bothered. Maybe I’m missing what amazing features are buried in this somewhere? I don’t understand… the way people talked about it, it sounded like it was a game changing release.
The biggest change I see besides the bugs is the multi-colored system tray icons (which you still can’t reorder) which look objectively worse than they used to. Also you still can’t adjust the opacity of panels when they are in translucent mode.
I don’t understand what the devs were doing all this time other than wasting time because they had to rewrite everything for QT6. Bryan Lunduke did a video recently about how there’s not really any progress anymore with desktop environments… and when I watched it all I could think about was KDE 6.
Users like myself on the other hand don’t use and have used activities or virtual desktops. I am also pleased with the plasma panel and don’t miss Latte dock (except its ability to copy the panel to another display).
So that is just one point of view.
I do believe the panels have been problematic in plasma 6. (Kind of makes me glad I haven’t touched the 6 mega release because I’m waiting for a stable ISO.)
There are bug reports for the panel that are apparently being worked on, if not fixed already in some cases.
Sluggish is the word I would use. Both acceleration and mouse speed to high and still sluggish.
If you haven’t touched 6 then you don’t have anything to add.
They have to keep upping the version numbers. Windows is up to version 11, if they’d stayed at 5, KDE wouldn’t even be half as good as Windows. 
I don’t think KDE deserves all the negativity that is being heaped upon on it personally. I’m typing this on a Samsung Android phone bought new only a few months ago. The hardware and software is produced by two of the largest technology companies in the world. The experience should be flawless, but for the last several weeks I have to wait about ten seconds for what I’ve typed to fully appear on my screen. Talk about lag, it’s painfully slow, and this is on a top of the line pricy piece of brand new technology.
Most people are running KDE on hardware that is likely 5 or more years old, and KDE is a fully gratis OS with no cost to the user. For the money, KDE beats the hell out of my cell phone in my book, (screen cracked already).
Given the choice of which performs better between my new pricy Samsung Android phone and my 3 year old computer running KDE, KDE is easily the winner. I’m sure they’ll get the glitches worked out soon enough on my phone (as they should), because they are produced by billion dollar technology companies. KDE is insignificant in comparison to Samsung and Google, so you need to cut KDE some slack IMO.
KDE beats the hell out of Windows, or any other Linux desktop IMO, so I can live with any bugs until they get them ironed out. I couldn’t imagine what I would do if the KDE project folded, I couldn’t possibly ever go back to Windows. So think long and hard before badmouthing KDE, because the alternatives are far worse IMO.
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Personally, I would use KDE even if I didn’t have enough RAM.
I’d rather do without the visual settings, the right-click is important to me.
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I’m going to assume that that’s a direct quote from a Manjaro dev. 
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Oh no you didn’t!!! 
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Yes probably you do not understand.
There’s this thing called technical dept in software projects.
Which basically means, there’s shitty code that makes everything more difficult.
The port from qt5 to qt6 gives a possibility to get rid of such code.
Which means no new features but the time for a feature to be developed on the new codebase will be way easier.
That is also connected to why the activities might not be the nicest thing for the developers.
It is lot of weird code that somehow touches everything.
So you adjust something on one place and it breaks something somewhere else.
But generally that’s what the guys were actually doing.
Preparing a stable base for the future.
Me with some 20 years of software production can only say I am very amazed at what was done there.
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And that they are releasing it for free
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10 posts were merged into an existing topic: Off Topic Chit Chat - (Silliness factor 5)
I actually do completely understand what goes into software development.
Let me say what I really meant by my statement, since you took it too literally:
I don’t see much value in the practice of rewriting software over and over with effectively no functional difference. It’s just a forever cycle of more bugs, less bugs, then more bugs again… and not much to show for it.
I’ll feel better when my system works as good as it did with KDE 5 and X11… but right now it’s extremely annoying.
LOLOLOLOLOLOL…LOLOLOLOLOLOL…LOLOLOLOLOLO…omg, I’m running out of breathe.
I’m sorry. You just described “My Life With KDE For the Past 20-Some Years.”
Personally, I’ve never experienced a smoother transition. I’m sorry you’re annoyed. 
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I’m with you on this. Like Wayland, Plasma 6 was not and is still not ready for prime time.
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That’s pretty wild considering this transition included the disaster of Wayland replacing X11.
I was more of a Linux minimalist before I discovered Garuda, preferring window managers without DEs… I hadn’t really used KDE much before Plasma 5.
It works well for me because every piece of hardware on this 2019 desktop computer–a name brand I’ve bought from since 1988–was purchased with Linux in mind. Add to that, a few years running Linux of all flavors, and Arch for around 10 years. So I have a number of presets & dropins that I use, whether it’s KDE Plasma or GNOME Shell. They tend to eliminate most glitches before they happen.
I read the Garuda & Arch Forums several times a day. I have the “luxury” of being physically retired, I’m 72, and I don’t panic (any more). I’m also an active member the Arch Testing Team–you can be, too–just so I have some little part, no matter how small, in exactly how Plasma 6 runs in Arch. We test and sign-off on packages before they can move into core, community etc. Arch repositories. Not just Plasma. Others test GNOME (hopelessly), XfCE, etc.
I did this entirely because I’m a selfish asshole and I’ve been burnt during earlier KDE transitions and wanted to be forewarned and forearmed. I swear to God. 
Oh, man, ArchBang became my favorite after the demise of #!.
Nowadays the right hardware is essential to a Happy Linux Time. As a general rule of thumb my advice is, if you love gaming and have nVidia, run Windows.
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Nothing could make me run Windows. Garuda KDE Dr460ized Gaming Edition has been perfect for all the gaming I do, and I have a 6950XT.
My hardware is fine. KDE 6 and Wayland aren’t.
The worst thing is the KDE global menu is broken in Wayland, and the only workaround is to set the window focus mode to Focus Under Mouse.
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I dislike & don’t use global menus, which could most definitely impact user-experience. Those are the um, “non-essential” contributions to Plasma I don’t use so don’t have to worry about/troubleshoot.
Boutique distributions like Garuda sometimes do, and the best a user can do is just have patience. Many times the underlying subsystems have to set into order first, i.e. first KDE, then Garuda.
Trust me when I say I know the Garuda developers have their whole hearts into giving all their users the best experience possible. But also remember that while Arch may be “leading edge” there are distributions like Garuda that incorporate some advanced features and might be more correctly called “bleeding edge” distributions. So now you’re running with the big dogs.
You knew what the snake was before you picked it up, right?
You rock!
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I wanted to try Wayland, so I installed Plasma 6, after years of using MATE. Some few things to get used to, but KDE is pretty awesome.
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