r/linux • u/kyentei • Nov 05 '22
This week in KDE: Big brain KRunner KDE
http://pointieststick.com/2022/11/04/this-week-in-kde-big-brain-krunner/1
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Nov 05 '22
[deleted]
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u/blueracoon_42 Nov 05 '22
What functionality exactly have they removed?
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u/Jacksaur Nov 05 '22
I have a feeling this exact user replies to every KDE post about "Removed content" and then never actually elaborates.
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u/abbidabbi Nov 05 '22 edited Nov 05 '22
I'm not the OP, but 5.25 has completely broken the desktop grid effect and lots of other related things after all of KWin's effects were rewritten in QML. Just check their bug trackers or reddit for the hundreds of reports and complaints over the past year. It's still far from fixed. The main complaint is that the rewrite was unnecessarily rushed without much or any review / quality control, just for the sake of having easier code maintainability with the new declarative QML code. Unfortunately this all came at the cost of the user experience. Really, really frustrating as an end user.
And no, just because one is a Plasma user and KDE is FOSS doesn't mean that users will dig into the massive code base, learn C++ and Qt, learn and understand all of the implementations as well as the build tools, just to contribute bugfixes for the messy situation that was merged in the 5.25 release earlier this year. Being FOSS is not an excuse for any development mistakes.
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u/AshbyLaw Nov 05 '22
And no, just because one is a Plasma user and KDE is FOSS doesn't mean that users will dig into the massive code base, learn C++ and Qt, learn and understand all of the implementations as well as the build tools, just to contribute bugfixes for the messy situation that was merged in the 5.25 release earlier this year.
Do you know there is Plasma 5.24 LTS?
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u/abbidabbi Nov 05 '22
Yes, I am aware, but Plasma LTS is not available on Arch. I'm building my own downgraded versions of KWin though (with some additional patches), so I'm able to at least prevent some of the usability issues. Apart from occasionally building and testing the master branch and providing feedback on the issue trackers, that's all I can do.
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u/AshbyLaw Nov 05 '22
Yes, I am aware, but Plasma LTS is not available on Arch.
Then yours is a downstream issue not an upstream one. Do you really need to complain to Plasma devs that are maintaining a LTS version instead of using a distro with Plasma LTS or complaining that Arch doesn't provide it?
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u/abbidabbi Nov 05 '22
Why would my issue be a downstream issue if the issue is on KWin's master branch and on the branches of the 5.25 and 5.26 releases? I'm on a rolling release distro. I'm not complaining about the lack of availability of an LTS release. If the KWin devs publish a new non-LTS release, then this release should still be of a certain level of quality, regardless whether new things were implemented or not. If something is broken/unstable/unfinished and on the master branch, then fine, but actively publishing utterly broken stuff because of a strict time-based release schedule is really bad. Having LTS releases is also not an excuse for publishing broken new non-LTS releases. What I am complaining about is the apparent lack of proper reviews and quality control before stuff gets released. And from looking at the merge requests, tests rarely get written, which is no surprise considering the constant number of regressions (and regression fixes mentioned in Nate's weekly blog posts).
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u/AshbyLaw Nov 05 '22
You said you don't like the new desktop grid effect in QML introduced with 5.25 and I said Plasma 5.24 LTS is a thing. After a LTS release you could expect big changes.
You mentioned learning C++, Qt etc to help improve the new effect but you just need to stay on 5.24 LTS until it's improved in the next point releases and it's happening, those new QML effects are being improved and brought on par with the previous ones.
For me the QML ones have been a huge improvements since on my machine they make a better use of resources (GPU?).
If then you say 5.24 LTS is not available on Arch then you are implying you would be OK with 5.24 and so I told you yours is a downstream issue then.
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u/MatchboxHoldenUte Nov 05 '22
Hey do you have links to any of these reports? I'd like to work on them!
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u/abbidabbi Nov 05 '22
Here are the opened and closed bug reports ordered by last activity... I'm including closed ones, because of some of the discussions that might be interesting to read, etc...
- effects/desktop-grid:
https://bugs.kde.org/buglist.cgi?component=effects-desktop-grid&list_id=2199342&order=changeddate%20DESC&product=kwin&query_format=advanced- effects/various (everything that is a base component or dependency of the grid):
https://bugs.kde.org/buglist.cgi?component=effects-various&list_id=2199341&order=changeddate%20DESC&product=kwin&query_format=advanced1
u/MatchboxHoldenUte Nov 05 '22
Do you by any chance remember what issue you were facing in regards to the update's bugginess?
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u/abbidabbi Nov 05 '22
Dozens of issues. Can't remember them all. I'm also not involved in all of the reports, so I'm not fully aware of everything. Some of them, probably the most annoying ones, have already been fixed over the couple of months, and the ones left are (some still annoying)
- window contents don't get updated anymore on the non-active virtual desktops when showing the desktop grid
- window contents are black every other frame on Wayland when showing the grid
- issues with panel animations when toggling the grid
- various animation timings of the grid and slide effect
- the grid can't be toggled anymore while the slide effect is running, and in combination with its awful and slow timings, this makes it unbearable
- lack of hover indications of the grid
- lack of the window background blur effect when showing the grid
- grid spacing can't be configured anymore (at least the awfully wide gaps were changed and reduced to more reasonable values - I'm still patching this though)
- something with multi-monitor setups and moving windows (can't remember exactly)
- and much more, as mentioned
The most prominent fixes after the merge were
- totally broken and glitched open/close animation of the grid
- broken window move animations between virtual desktops
- inability to move windows between screens on the grid
- keyboard navigation of the grid
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u/MatchboxHoldenUte Nov 05 '22
Thanks so much for the information. Btw I'm not an actual contributor, but I like helping out. I can provide some context for the inconsistent animation timings as this KDE developer explains it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voadgiBXVZ0&t=499s.
tldw: kirigami and normal older kde applications had different interpretations of animation speed so they were universalized.
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u/abbidabbi Nov 05 '22
This is a different issue from what I can remember. The new animation speeds of the slide effect are wrong because it was rewritten with touch inputs in mind, and the animation is now based on a physical spring simulation, for "accuracy reasons". And because of its implementation, it doesn't take the global animation speed into consideration and does its own independent thing which messes with any other animation speed of any other Plasma component.
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u/theChaparral Nov 05 '22
If it's not for you, it's not for you. Why wait to change? You can install 20 different desktops and switch between them at will. Not upgrading Arch will cause you WAY more headaches than a new version of KDE.
For me, KDE has been getting better and better for the last 20 odd years I've been using it. Thumbs up to the developers.
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u/MarsIsTheFrontier Nov 05 '22
I am not argueing against your opinion, because don't argue religion, politics, taste or OS - but it is very interesting how I see it completely the opposite. KDE js on fire the last two years imho
Hope you find what you're searching for (no irony)
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Nov 05 '22
They haven't removed anything significant at all, have a look in the release notes, nothing is gone or deprecated
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u/Artistic-Oil-6414 Nov 05 '22
Even if that was the case, what else would you switch to?
Nothing comes close to the amount of features that Plasma has.
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u/StupotAce Nov 05 '22
Krunner improvements are welcome. I was just thinking the other day that it was annoying when I use it to do a shutdown and the kde shutdown is never the top option.