KDE Dev Reacts to The Linux Experiment's Review of KDE Plasma

the first thing i do after a new release of clear plasma is published is go see the reviews like the people talking about it the articles the videos and what i expect from the videos are all the videos saying what's new the good parts of what's new and the parts of the the bad parts of the new version of kd plasma however most of the times most of the videos even if they come out like weeks later are not about like doing reviews with opinions but rather just a list of the good stuff and a lot of praising which is nice i'm always very happy to hear some praising however sometimes i also look for some criticism like how did my new feature that i implemented do with the users do do they like them sorry do they like it do they don't and sometimes you don't quite see that so some other times i actually managed to see some very well put criticism because of course there's also the bad boot criticism with insults and stuff hello baby vogue and that's bad but sometimes it's like super nice and i love hearing about some well done criticism so today i want to talk about some of the stuff that's highlighted in this video by the linux experiment i've used kde for a month and watch the video well go see it but in a nutshell hey guys this is nick and welcome to my linux experiment i've been using elementor os for the best part of three years now and while i gave a fair shake to kde plasma in the past making a full dedicated video series about it it's been a while since i used it in production well to be fair elementarias is pretty good so i can understand that and i've been secretly using it on my new desktop which i'll definitely make a video about for a month now so i think it's time we take a look at what i liked what i disliked and if i'm gonna keep using it skillshare is an online okay so let's go actually learn about that and um and where's the button let's see what's the first thing it says about kd plasma emulating some kind of element so head over there and start looking at that so to begin with i used kde plasma on manjaro for the past month i customized the interface it customized the interface and that's what a lot of people do and that's very fair of course all the work that i put on the fall theme is gone wasted but i'm just kidding because i've used so many cool third-party themes that i would probably personally use a third-party theme if i wasn't developing for plasma not because breeze is bad but because there's such a wide range to choose from that it's like there's a higher chance to find your secret secret love in the third parties than just breeze even though breeze i think is a pretty strong contester to my liking emulating some kind of elementary let me try to guess is la todok that was a easy gas and although la chadoc was at the time of that video the only application that could do a floating panel now that i've done the patch maybe in the next plasma version will actually get the floating panels by default and the reason why that's particularly important is that i think it says something along the lines of like us layout if you want to have this kind of customization linuxcoop made a dedicated video see there are like all of the videos and the articles on how to do this customization which says okay installation settings change the this applet with this other applet and maybe it's like three hours long and you have to do all of these things to get to your desired look however if floating is implemented in the default panels one can just do a global theme with a layout that's floating and a plasma theme that allows that floating so you can just go in the global themes choose that theme and apply it and that's it which i definitely followed to make this and i left a link to that video on the description below so check it out if you want something that looks like this it kind of looks even better what he did but i didn't want to go to the trouble to do all of these customizations and see that's important because it says there were a lot of things and i didn't want to go through all the trouble to do all of them but if it was a global theme it was just a matter of clicking it and clicking apply and that's why we should allow third-party themes as much as possible to be just global themes of course you can't do that if it's like vantou cavantum cannot be a third-party theme but if maybe in the future we'll be able to have plasma sorry application themes uh just in the get hot new stuff store and that you can actually install on the fly then maybe we'll be able to do that and instead of three hours long videos you can you could just have one global theme that would be very nice now i think at this point it starts praising plasma seeing all the good things but if you watch my channel you know why plasma is good let's hear why it's bad however let me address quickly one thing first so this video might be lagging it might be lagging right now because right there there's this encoding overloaded text also it's not a 1080p but just 720p because my computer is not fast enough to render all of this live which saves a lot of time in editing and regarding that i finally both a new computer and my bank account is 1325 years lighter so if you want to become a patreon or send me a tip over people this is the best time i'm just saying i'm just saying let's get back to the video the bad stuff but well especially since the elementary os notification system is between your phone and your desktop love it now of course not everything is roses and rainbows and there are some things that i really don't like about kde the default theme in light mode is pretty bland and looks a bit old especially the buttons okay the context of that of course is the blue ocean redesign for quite some time kitty developers and the vdg has worked on this drawer design of the interface which is blue ocean of course that doesn't mean that all will be fixed and a good part of blue ocean is actually already shipped on kde plasma and the buttons as an example since i mentioned that were redone the old ones were actually feeling a bit old and hopefully the new ones are better but maybe he's using the new versions of the buttons already and he still doesn't like them which is fair and at this point we can't really make like at this point in time we can't really make super big changes because we need to make sure that breeze feels like breeze maybe in the future that could change but right now like we can't do a revolution however there are some very good third-party themes which is why we have customization in the first place maybe you don't like breeze and if you don't by the way try to understand why and try to write a good comment suggesting changes because we can that way understand regarding what part of plasma we should be focusing on and an example of a good third party theme that i would totally suggest is lightly a bit hard to understand maybe i'll do a video about that sorry to install and maybe i'll do a video about that it changes the appearance of the buttons and maybe one would prefer that but for the default ones we did the redesign in blue ocean i think it landed for the buttons i mean but i'm not sure about that but anyway it will either get better or it already got better and it wasn't enough that could be that could be an explanation i'm using the dark theme which kind of resolves the issue but the default applications theme really needs an update in my opinion of course that's only an issue if you don't change it now my main issue with kde is the applications those are very inconsistent they okay that's very fair you know i'm the like leader of the consistency goal and uh that's why i've done the consistency goal so the biggest issue there is like kde is not a company and because it is not a company we cannot just go around and say hey maintainer of application x do this or you'll get fired the maintainer is probably like 100 uh volunteer and they've done the application so they have the right to say no this is fine i like it like this and of course what the vdg has to do is not like go around saying no you're wrong you're destroying kd plasma that's not a good approach but rather we can try to do a reusable component that's pretty and try to convince other maintainers to use it and i think we're doing a pretty good job lately as an example the new amburger menu component was done and it's a very cool component like you add stuff to the umbrella menu and it disappears from toolbar you remove it and then it appears from the toolbar it's like adaptive pretty cool i think and of course we try to add this component throughout kd applications and some accepted accepted it as is and some like i think ocular say said okay not by default we can have it but not by default some people say that it's a bad component we can we're doing our best to design the components and if you're against unbroken menus many developers like many designers actually like like it inside of the pdg so you know that's what you get but we're trying our best to make sure that it's at least consistent we can do like 100 of it so as an example inocular is off by default but is there and that's the best i think we could currently do look or feel the same at all on the one hand you have abs that have really simple defaults and a lot of power under the hood if you need it well that's dolphin and dolphin is so simple i think my personal opinion because of the hamburger menu if you add a local menu or a crowded toolbar he wouldn't be saying the same i think so i'm biased but i think the ambergram menu does at least a good job even in the usability concerns of making the application simpler like dolphin on the other hand you have applications that really want you to see every single feature panel and option available right out of the box like the calendar yeah k organizer if i had never used it i would be like the first day and if i was a average user i would panic too many stuff thrown at my face and i think that's the reason uh people like use google calendar or google mail that are super simple and widely used and especially because people use so much uh most of the people i think use google mail there's not much interest in like developing k organizer and camille i do know people that work on them and that's very nice but because they could base is so big it would require so many people working on it and sometimes there's just not enough interest now dolphin is a great example of how you can get an app super simple and still have a lot of power under the hood by default there is no menu bar very few toolbar icons and a simple layout but if you live see he said it by default there is no menu bar not too many toolbars because there's hamburger menu i said that in your file manager you can show a folder list an info panel and even a terminal that's what i'd like yep that's actually my dolphin setup but with the terminal on the right all kd apps to be a simple layout without too many panels but for users who really need something more powerful just keep the options to show more panels more toolbars the menu bar everything but other box please make simpler layout that's a few requests and i think that we're moving towards that direction i'll make you know an example take the new system monitor the new system monitor is pretty simple by default you look at it and it doesn't like scream options at you but it's actually extremely customizable you can add all sorts of stuff and you can customize the pages customize the layout it's like amazing how many things you can do with it even though it never like makes you anxiety because of all the options so that's a good application doing it and it's curigami and i think that kurigami does a good job of providing some basic consistency between applications and also making sure that they are not overcrowded by default but also leaves some space to be for them to be customizable so i think that's the direction we're going to we're slowly writing new applications in origami as an example key calendar instead of k organizer which is not to say that k organizer will disappear tomorrow but maybe over the course of years calendar will slowly get all of the features that they need in theory k organizer is actually like a suite of applications but i'm simply fine maybe in the future calendar will reach the point where it has all of the features and the layout is simpler to use so it will have more users so we're moving towards kurigami because i think it does a better job at doing this so we are trying to address this concern it's really really a better experience for somebody who gets used to your app to add features instead of trying to remove them because you don't use them that's a nice way to put it i think it's a that's a very nice way to put it simple by default but powerful when needed because if it was like powerful by default but simple when needed it would be a mess and it said it very nicely now there also seems to be a less sizable community of application developers for kde than for gnome or at least gdk applications a lot of apps look pretty old like k organizer or kmail they don't look updated visually to look like something like again he mentioned k organizer and kml i talked about that already and luckily uh there's not enough interest to have so many developers working on that that's a bit sad but that's how it goes is a very good application i think once you really use it but as it is now it's very hard to get into it dolphin or discover i also couldn't find it it's much easier i think at this point in time to do that applications from scratch like calendar rather than trying to adapt this old application it's not old but the previous application to a completely new concept to the list application along the lines of getting things gnome or planner and i couldn't find any uh calendar calendar calendar does that equivalent of audacity for the kd desktop there's none let's be honest there's none now generally all the smaller youtube which is not a bad thing like audacity works very nicely on the kde desktop we are not trying to do things that we don't know how to do i think if there's nobody that understand these kind of things and would want to make this application it makes no sense for us to try to provide it that is like a very simple one purpose image resizer or file format converter don't seem to exist on kde you have big monolithic applications with ton of options but if you want a simple one purpose two clicks application then you're out of lab and that's fair you're indeed out of luck because the concept in kde the philosophy is really you have one more monolithic sorry hard work monotheistic application that has like everything maybe it's a bit hidden uh not very hidden but you need to know what you're looking for uh again simple by default and powerful when needed and sometimes maybe it would be better to have simple application for very simple things but on the other hand i gotta say that is something very nice of having like one view which does a lot of things and does them well in a very nicely organized ui you open it up you have a left sidebar with all of the operations you can resize it you can rotate it you can also you know save as a different format so i understand this concern but i don't think that kitty's philosophy is really aligned with what he's saying i think that here at kitty we do prefer like application that do more stuff rather than many applications that do less if i understood what you meant now of course you can always install non-kde apps on kde and that's what i did with the planner audacity i also installed the gnome discs app because for some reason the kde partition manager just wouldn't want to let me restore an disk image into an sd card which gnome disk did in two clicks now that's where kde grabs the advantage again it integrates gtk apps a lot better than gnome integrates qt yeah the jdk integration i think it's so nice like i think it's like just one person right now working on it in the past years and they've done a pretty good job i think and uh however there's and however i think i haven't looked much into it but because of some politics stuff let's call it political even though i don't like the world and maybe the new gtk 4 being not very open to theming to third-party themes and there was some talk about dropping it which would make me sad uh but on the other end it's a bit difficult from what i've gathered to maintain and gnome isn't too doing the same for qt applications so even though me personally i would absolutely absolutely want to keep it if the maintainer says okay no i'm actually dropping this thing entirely i would understand them but i would be sad inside but i would understand the fact that you can choose any theme you want for gdk applications under kde is great because it means that these things will look a lot better integrated and not feel so alien oh by the way don't go around saying ah nikolavi said that they're going to remove gtg i didn't say that i said that it was once mentioned in one discussion that means nothing let's be clear it's just that i was recalling that particular discussion using kde apps on gnome or elementor os is a weird experience those applications do not look integrated and they do not look native but using no maps on kde is a more simpler experience and it honestly looks good to the yeah it's a bit sad i think point that i was wondering if i could just run a plasma desktop with gnome apps behind instead of the kde ones you could you could also and this is pretty cool i think use latidoc to have your plasma panel with all of the plasma plus like kickoff the application launcher and gnome so you have like gnome with the no more kd apps whatever you prefer and the plasma panel like that's crazy but you could do that if you want i'll just put that there now i praised the avalanche of settings before and i'm not going to apologize for it but it's also a bit of a hassle sometimes to find a specific thing you're looking for yes we've been working on this for i think years like when i joined kde kd had just redesigned the system settings and it's very hard to convey all of the options to the user i do think that we should remove some options not all of them but some and we are not doing that right now but we are trying to reorganize and with we i don't mean me i mean other people in kd trying to reorganize better uh some the layout sorry the theme the categories i can do this the categories in system settings and there's like usability testing going on i think they're preparing a usability testing test and that's pretty good so slowly we are getting better and better at this hopefully we'll get to one point where we like happy about the result and we will stop tweaking all of the categories the system settings have a handy search feature but it looks for the cat sometimes i just wish we would get rid of all categories in the sidebar and just put a big search bar that would that would be easier category names and not the settings inside if for example i want to know where i can enable the fact that i can move my window to an edge of the screen to move it to another virtual desktop i was trying to type sliding i was trying to try to type moving or virtual desktop it only showed me categories that were named using one of these words about this this is actually a great way to start contributing to gedi plasma because every system setting category is called kcm and i think i'm not an expert but i think each kcm has some more just ask me and i'll find out if you want but as somewhere a list of strings that are associated with that kcm so if you think that a search result should pop up a certain kcm but it doesn't you can just add it to the list of strings as far as i know it and that's actually really easy to do and you can either open up a bug request and send me the link just for sure and i'll try to work on that but you can also try to start helping kde plasma become better just by doing this adding the right strings in the right places hopefully they're localized as well somehow i don't know how this works well that had subcategories that matched this request the setting i was looking for is in screen edges but it could just as easily have been in window behavior or virtual desktops now these settings are awesome but finding them if you don't know where they are can be a bit of a hassle and that's about it for what i didn't like now if i needed to conclude i'd say i really enjoyed using kde thank you and i think you went on seeing other good stuffs about kitty plasma so that's where the good criticism to talk about here ends and that's where my video also ends i already put the ending scene with all the patterns by the way a new one thank you and again i asked i begged for money already so that let's ignore that and the only thing i have to say is that's it for this video guys if you enjoyed don't mistake to like or dislike if you didn't you can also subscribe and turn on notification one last thing i want to say is i just showed the parts where like criticizes kdplasma although there's some good inside of them too but he also spends a lot of time praising it so don't think that if you haven't seen the video it's just something someone sorry that's hating on plasma he's not and go watch all of it if you want to see all of his opinions right now i was more interested in the criticism because that's actually what i'm looking forward um most of the time also good the good parts of course and it makes me really happy to hear like plasma is great i am going to use it but sometimes i also wish to hear about yes plasma is great but i think you could improve in that era or that area that's it bye i'm becoming a super cool youtuber i'm and mentai mentai

Channel: Niccolò Ve

Views: 19,309

Keywords: KDE, KDE Plasma, DEVLOG, DEVBLOG

Id: Ejq7vR_o9sk

Length: 26min 25sec (1585 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 27 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Super_Papaya]

Dev*

[u/eztriks]

/u/veggero since you plan on to buy new more powerful HW, why not a desktop PC and screen with a better price/performance ratio for your video production and development instead of a mobile laptop as you already got like two cheaper ones? Or are you required to work on the road most of the time? :)

[u/keyb0ardninja]

At 16:46 -

Nick: I couldn't find an equivalent of Audacity for the KDE desktop.
/u/veggero: There's none. Let's be honest, there's none.

Sometime back, I too was looking for a KDE equivalent of Audacity, and I did find something: Kwave. It doesn't have feature parity with Audacity, but it's something.

I hope Kwave is developed more actively, because it would be awesome to have an alternative to Audacity.

[u/Now_then_here_there]

I do think it worth noting the mixing up of "KDE Plasma" with "KDE Apps" such that it is, to me, misleading. I use Kubuntu without any of the KDE PIM apps and I am extremely pleased with Thunderbird as my email/calendar/contact manger. Should I credit KDE Plasma for how much I like Thunderbird? Likewise whether or not one appreciaties KMail, it is not a commentary on Plasma. It is a desktop environment, not the universe of possible applications that can be run within it.

[u/kalzEOS]

He brings up some good points, one of them is the style. I like the default breeze, but I've stumbled upon lightly and CuteFish lately, and I can tell ya, they are gorgeous and are both my default interchangeably. I haven't used the default breeze for over a week now, as it started to feel "bland" after finding those other two. Also, Kmail, is so busy and very confusing. Akonadi had a major bug where it takes me to gmail even when I try to add my yahoo accounts. You were right, KDE needs things to be simple out of the box and powerful on the inside.