Submitted by KDE proudly announces the immediate availability of Plasma 5.0, providing a visually updated core desktop experience that is easy to use and familiar to the user. Plasma 5.0 introduces a new major version of KDE’s workspace offering. The new Breeze artwork concept introduces cleaner visuals and improved readability. Central work-flows have been streamlined, while well-known overarching interaction patterns are left intact. Plasma 5.0 improves support for high-DPI displays and ships a converged shell, able to switch between user experiences for different target devices. Changes under the hood include the migration to a new, fully hardware-accelerated graphics stack centered around an OpenGL(ES) scenegraph. Plasma is built using Qt 5 and Frameworks 5.
This is a pretty major release, and while the cosmetic stuff isn’t all cleaned up yet, I like the new design direction the team is taking – not a huge departure from what came before, but they seem to be making it look a little less… KDE-ish, if that makes any sense.
I’ll be waiting on a few point releases, but I definitely want to try this out. I’ve always been a fan of KDE – stumbles notwithstanding – because it puts a lot of control in the user’s hands to shape the user interface into what she wants. That’s a very rare thing to come by these days, and we should cherish it.
I’m excited to witness the performance improvements that qtquick and Open GL es support might bring.
I just hope the community offers a more consistent icon set. I love the monochrome stuff, but there’s a huge amount of variation in metrics/relief/pseudo-photorealism etc with the stock icons. Some of them are revamped, some of them are unchanged from 4.x, and even some of the newer icons sit very uncomfortably together.
Love the new direction, but I’m glad KDE has a vibrant community – shipping that icon theme is a mistake.
They haven’t finished working on the icons, theme, and many other things. They focused on the underlying tech for this initial version. They are switching to a 3 month release cycle for Plasma and the focus for the next release is to finish the icon set, more of the new default theme Breeze, and to add back in some functionality that existed in KDE 4/Plasma 1.x (they switched to a new version number to match the rest of KDE).
At least they will finish the icon set.
Microsoft, just stops at the initial release and ships the icon sets they have finished, regardless of their consistency.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2014/07/09/10540628.asp…
Still trying to decide if this is a real ding against microsoft, or a credit to them, that they don’t focus on the most trivial part of the OS. On the other hand, they have a huge market cap. Its kind of crazy to think they can’t get icon sets done for a release. What else are they cutting corners on? QA? UX? Security? Maybe they are good judgments, maybe not.
I don’t think it’s a ding against them – they don’t have unlimited resources, and by not spending it on rarely-seen icons, they are allowed to spend them on fixing bugs or security issues.
Raymond Chen’s post that you linked to sums it up pretty well:
On the linked page, it says:
I am sad that this kind of BS has spilled over into the open source world. AFAIK, this is not a for-profit project, so what’s the hurry getting 5.0 out the door? Whatever happened to the concept of ‘when it’s done’? Didn’t they piss off users by rushing a feature-incomplete version of 4.0 out the door?
Actually, though I understand your point of view, I think the only way to let an open source product to get mature is releasing it, in that way, the users will report problems that will be fixed and the developers will start to create apps on top of the new APIs released.
Yeah, I have to agree with this. On the one hand, I love the stability of distros like Debian and Slackware, where the maintainers don’t ship stable code that they don’t feel is ready. They are doing more testing and debugging via the testing or -current branches, and while there are some bug reports still submitted by users, it’s mostly just for minor things.
On the other hand, bleeding-edge distros like Ubuntu and Arch have been pushing the envelope, and that is also a good thing. They may leave some users feeling like they have an unfinished or buggy product, but they also tend to be the groundbreakers when it comes to new features. It’s just at the expense of a truly stable system.
Ubuntu is not bleding edge.
They follow closely, but they still tend to pick some software that is one or two releases behind newest STABLE release, if QA wound not be able to catch up.
Fedora on the other hand…
(OpenSuSE with tumbleweed to some extend…)
Arch is as bleding edge as one likes though
It got supplanted when release cycles started getting shorter. From the when it’s done timeframe of the first distributions, to the 6-month release cycle of Ubuntu, to the rolling release of Arch to the tumbling release of OpenSUSE Tumbleweed.
No. They pissed off some users by rushing a buggy version that didn’t work the way they were used to out of the door. People don’t use most features any way. So pushing this release out without all the features is to work out the bugs before reimplementing all the features on top of it.
Edited 2014-07-16 05:00 UTC
No; the distros did that. KDE 4.0 was exactly what the KDE folks said it was – a release so developers could start playing with it and start building applications for it.
The problem was the distros decided KDE4 should replace KDE3 on everything before it was ready to.
Isn’t that what developer previews are for? There’s a reason why Android L wasn’t called Android 5.0, and why this shouldn’t be 5.0 either, until all the missing features are put back in. As an end user, nothing pisses me off more than new versions of software that come out with fewer features than the old version.
Again, it’s not how many features there are, but what those features are that are missing or still included.
They had Alpha and Beta releases. But there is no guarantee of API stability until the actual release, which is what the 4.0 release was about – releasing a stable API that developers could start targeting.
Many developers won’t start developing for a new platform until the API has stabilized because it’s too much work (and too costly) to keep rewriting for every little new change. Thus it was necessary to get 4.0 out the door just to get application developers to start writing applications for it.
And honestly, you can’t even start to get near equivalence if you don’t have applications.
Now your comparison to the Android versions is not quite accurate. Android has capability to run older stuff. There really is not comparison.
You can’t get there without applications and developer momentum. You need stable APIs to do that, and perpectual alpha/beta cycles don’t get you there.
There kind of is, since both of them are essentially developer previews. As in, ‘Hey, this isn’t quite done yet, but the APIs are stable enough to start developing/testing apps.’ You don’t release something as ‘stable’ in that condition. Or at least you shouldn’t.
But KDE3 was abandoned…
4.0.0 was released on 11 January 2008
3.5.9 was released on 19 February 2008
3.5.10 was released on 26 August 2008
Edited 2014-07-20 20:08 UTC
This was back then: http://www.osnews.com/permalink?592543
This is now: http://www.osnews.com/permalink?592518
Compared to 4->5 transition, 3 was quickly abandoned.
“Release Early and Release Often” is not exactly coming from any other world than the open source one
With the KDE 4.0 release we had the issue that everything was one big blob: the libraries, the desktop and the applications. Back then, the libraries and most of the applications were in good shape, the desktop was not. After more than a year, we really wanted the new and improved apps to get out and the desktop was basically workable so we decided to release. Code that is not in users hands rots away…
We all know how that went.
So, for the 5 series, we split it all up: Frameworks 5.0 (the new name of our modularized libraries) was released last week, the desktop comes now and the Applications still have to start moving to Qt5/Frameworks 5… We weren’t forced to release half-baked stuff but everything came ‘when done’.
I’d say it is a step forward
And expectations of smooth transitions, from KDE1->2->3 were tough precedents to live up to. There wasn’t support for a user switching back & forth between 3 & 4, due to in place translation of config, from KDE3 settings. I responded to the pre-release call for testing, and it was very quickly clear to me, that with the relatively short time left till 4.0, that a train wreck was ahead. Furthermore that need to push out and release developers code meant NOONE could stop it.
Actually the “Release Early and Release Often” is sort of related to the “Worse is better!” idea, shipping a simple 50% implementation which spreads and then justifies later improvement. The old rule of thumb about waiting for version 3 of anything, is based on 1 & 2 not being properly finished products.
KDE 4.0 was developer preview version, in plain english.
Yes. That was mistake on KDE part (since nobody got the message and lots of non-devs tried that release).
But 4.1 and newer where doing good job at targeting casual users.
Well, ‘KDE’ 4.0 was a mess. Plasma was at best a developer preview, while the applications were mostly already in a very good shape. The libraries could already have been released before.
That is why we split it up this time: now, the libraries (Frameworks) and Plasma are released and the applications are coming in december. If we had kept it all one big blob, either the applications would now have been a mess or you all would have had to wait another 4-6 months…
I blogged about this, btw, http://blog.jospoortvliet.com/2014/07/it-all-comes-together-no-more…
Years ago, I worked at a university maintaining the installed applications for professors teaching in computer classrooms. One such application was AutoCAD. I forget which version, but it had only been out a few weeks when I installed it (their release schedule coincided with the academic calendar for once).
The instructor called me up, very unhappy– It seems when he tried to add a door to a wall, AutoCAD would crash.
Searching AutoDesk’s support site, this was a “known issue”, and fixed in the first patch set, released one day after AutoCAD’s launch.
Most modern MMO’s also follow the concept of “release early, release often”.
I honestly think that if people are paying you for your software, you ought to have better QA. In the FOSS world, we simply have no paid people to do QA, so at some point waiting to release something has no benefit. Rather, putting things out, even if not perfect, gets us not only testing but also patches and help. It is a healthy, smart thing to do for a FOSS community.
It is also why the comparisons sometimes drawn with Microsoft, Apple or Google (even Android) make no sense.
That seemed to be the fault of certain distros for rushing to make it their default desktop, even though 4.0 was never intended for mainstream use.
You can imagine what would happen if Microsoft did that with Windows, considered that even getting rid of the “start menu” caused chaos
The distro’s were in a bind. Firstly, KDE4 wasn’t designed and implemented to be used by users in parallel with KDE3, implied a flag day change. Secondly, KDE3 was claimed to have degraded structurally and upstream had given notice of withdrawal of support, within the typical 12-18 month non-LTS lifetime of a distro release. Thirdly, KDE4 had much promise and appeal and was interesting, with the conservative corporate base deployments almost entirely GNOME. Fourthly, the KDE marketing side, most definitely declared KDE 4.0 as “ready for wide scale testing” and appealed for usage. Fifthly, FOSS meant if KDE3 was needed, end users could put in resources to maintain that code base in forked projects.
KDE projects, concluded not being monolithic is the solution, allowing a decoupled progression.
Rather than focus on whether 4.0, 4.1, 4.2 were “ready for prime time”, there’s the longer term damage, caused by user confusion and all the drama.
KDE4 changed so much, and so much of desktop features were broken and with changes to the X stack to. The end-user capacity to adapt was massively exceeded. It has made me conservative about trying things in KDE4, so I end up using and understanding fewer features.
Microsoft has shipped feature incomplete, Win 7 basically just finished & polished the significant changes made for Vista delivering on that foundation. Win 8 featured feature poor Metro, was not even obvious how to exit a non-desktop application, and has air of a half baked non-professional modge, of zero benefit to desktop users.
I am sad that the principle of release early, release often is now called BS.
Could you elaborate on what you’re paying for that makes this a problem?
The button is not fit to my taste. I like gnome button better. KDE’s [button] too small and too cramped, and have round corner. I prefer no round corner
One thing I’ve liked about program docking bars is the zoom in on the three or four nearest buttons, growing the immediate target to click. Why is it that nobody has replicated that in task bars?
The demo really makes the icons minimal in size, which IMHO is a buzz kill for general audiences. I realize target resolutions will be probably up around 1600×1080 or something fairly steep compared to older KDE versions like before. But I cannot imagine a 4K screen using icons a few millimeters tall and that becoming accepted as progress.
Because moving stuff around reduces the predictability and makes it harder to target something. That’s why nobody does that anymore…
into what the user wants maybe?
Its unstable still. I just installed using the neon repo and its still crash happy, a bit more usable than the beta. The crashes could be neon build issues, not sure. I personally am going to steer clear of it until a point release as well, its looking good though.
Its very similar to kde 4 – minor tweaks it doesn’t look like a complete version upgrade, kde 4 with a new theme maybe ? some slight variations.
“Its very similar to kde 4 – minor tweaks it doesn’t look like a complete version upgrade, kde 4 with a new theme maybe ? some slight variations.”
So it means it’s a success!
The desktop shell has been pretty much rewritten from scratch, due to the completely different technology used, QML2.
But one point was to replicate the 4.x interface as close as possible, with just few redesign.
Introducing a big technology change is already traumatic enough, so we kept little redesigns *yet*.
Once the new platform is stabilized, is possible to experiment more UI-wise, hopefully without disrupting people’s workflows
That’s great seriously.
How is Wayland support coming along ?
work is being done on it..
hopefully something testable should come out before the end of the year.
nice
> could be neon build issues
If it’s useful for anyone who’s reading this and wants to try a Neon iso: the neon builds are not a stable product. They are useful for some things (like previewing some features and testing others) although they are not meant for a stable use.
A KDE user can’t be a she?
He or she would be equally awkward in that case, I always prefer something neutral, i.e. “they want”. Just reminds me of those old manuals where every user was a he.
It depends on the English book of someone, if it says that “he” refers to a male, or if it says that “he” refers to a male or a female (e.g. in cases where the gender is not known).
Edited 2014-07-16 12:46 UTC
Next time, for maximum trolling, use “Xy” or something like that.
The user can be a she, but not necessarily is. Hence the gender neutral word “user”, I guess.
Of course they can be, hence why “what the user wants” rather than any particular sex, but if I’m not mistaken your a guy hence why I said typo.
I would love more Female users to use Kde and Linux, believe me I would love more women in computing just generally its become such a sausage factory of a subject.
I’m good with “she”, and I hail from the horribly patriarchal USA. Sometimes gender neutral is even more grammatically awkward than gender biased, and if I’m going to be biased when it comes to tech, it’s going to be pro-female every time. The male-to-female ratio in the tech world is getting better, but it’s still overwhelmingly male, and that sucks.
of course its a bit unstable. thats why only test images are out.
Sounds like KDE are going to get a load of crap for no reason again if people don’t understand what a developer release is for.
They did abandon 3 previously.
Of all the things to be copied, why Windows 8-style obnoxiously oversized window borders? Goodbye screen space and efficiency. To be fair, unlike Windows, KDE will likely retain some way to change its size in the settings, but it’s still bullshit that users will have to dig through KDE’s (last I checked) nightmarish “appearance” settings.
Edit: Never mind, you said “settings”. My bad.
Edited 2014-07-16 16:37 UTC
The KDE project is still releasing KDE SC 4.14 this Fall as a fully supported release of KDE so there is no need for distros to switch over at this point. There is talk of making 4.14 or 4.15 an “LTS” release maintained until at least August 2015 (or longer).
Also the KDE4 Plasma workspaces (the desktop tech) is in LTS maintenance mode until at least August 2015 with the possibility of an extension should Plasma 5.x not prove stable and/or feature rich enough by that point.
I saw some comments on a blog that if one of the LTS distros wanted to maintain the KDE SC 4.x LTS until their support period ends that may be a possibility (I admit that is fully hearsay and not an official position on the part of anyone but internet commentators).
Whether or not a 4.15 release will happen seems to depend on what the state of the community wide porting process to Qt5/KDE Frameworks 5 will be after the release of 4.14.
If Plasma 5.0 is promoted as fully stable, users have only their distros to blame. This is definitely not a repeat of KDE 4.0; IMO. The KDE community is pushing KDE SC 4.x for users and distros desiring a stable base while the new tech matures in places like Arch, Debian Sid, Project Neon (Kubuntu KDE 5 spin), etc.
There is currently no set date for a KDE SC 5.0 release.
Even better, there WON’T BE a KDE ‘SC’ release anymore. The SC’s were a combination of the technically-separate-but-still-released-together desktop/libraries/applications. Now each is on an entirely separate release schedule, we have no need for the term ‘software compilation’ anymore.
So, KDE learned their lesson… (and it was their fault with 3->4)
Edited 2014-07-20 19:43 UTC
http://blog.jospoortvliet.com/2014/07/it-all-comes-together-no-more… – perhaps this can finally lay that discussion to rest. Or bring back the flames!
As KDE Plasma is so configurable, it’s hoped that someone ports the current official themes. E.g. that one is modern and beautiful:
http://www.kdeblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/upgrade3-wee.png
Edited 2014-07-16 17:49 UTC
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
Yes, also that’s what a lot of men tell to attractive girls to make them their girlfriends, though that doesn’t convince them
What, that they can change? Yeah, that’s all lies
Yes, it makes sense. The user interface is more flat. The sharper UI details from KDE-4.x are overkill as the whole idea of KDE is being overkill.
I also like the direction of this.
Specially when I feel orphaned since Unity became the default user interface in Ubuntu and GNOME 3 insanity became the default desktop on most distros.
I think KDE, along with XFCE, are the only hopes as desktop Windows alternatives.
Edited 2014-07-18 15:48 UTC
I think I will stick to 4.x for awhile. I remember the jump from 3.x to 4.x and Im not going through that again.