 The first thing I do after a new release of KD 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 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 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-put criticism with insults and stuff. Hello, baby bugger. 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 what's 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 Elementorio as 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, Elementorio 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 going to keep using it. Skillshare is an online... Okay, so let's go actually learn about that and where's the button. Let's see what's the first thing he says about KDE Plasma. He's emulating some kind of Elementorio. So head over there and start learning. So to begin with, I used KDE Plasma on Manjaro for the past month. I customized the interface. He 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 full 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 love in the third parties than just Breeze, even though Breeze, I think is a pretty strong contestor. To my liking, emulating some kind of Elementorio. Let me try to guess. It's Lattedock. That was a easy guess. And although Lattedock 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, we'll 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. It was layout. If you want to have this kind of customization, Linux Scoop made a dedicated video. See, there are like all of the videos and the articles on how to do this customization, which says, OK, install Lattedock, set things, 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 take 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 Kvantum. Kvantum cannot be a third party theme. But if maybe in the future, we'll be able to have Plasma, sorry, application themes 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, saying 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 bought a new computer and my bank account is 1,325 years lighter. So if you want to become a patron 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 US 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. But the default theme in light mode is pretty bland and looks a bit old, especially the buttons. OK, the context of that, of course, is the blue ocean redesign. For quite some time, KDE developers and the VDG has worked on this redesign 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 he 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, 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 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 don't. Okay, that's very fair. I'm the leader of the consistency goal. And that's why I've done the consistency goal. So the biggest issue there is 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% 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 KDE plus and 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 hamburger menu component was done and it's a very cool component. Like you add stuff to the hamburger menu and it disappears from toolbar. You remove it and then it appears on the toolbar. It's like adaptive, pretty cool I think. And of course, we try to add this component throughout KDE applications. And some accepted it as is. And some like, I think, Ocular said, okay, not by default, we can have it, but not by default. Some people say that it's a bad component. We're doing our best to design the components. And if you're against hamburger menus, many developers, like many designers actually like it inside of the VDG. So 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 it's there and that's the best I think we could currently do. And look or feel the same at all. On the one hand, you have apps 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 hamburger 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, KOrganizer, if I had never used it, it would be like the first day and if I was an average user, I would panic. Too many stuff thrown at my face and I think that's the reason people like use Google Calendar or Google Mail that are super simple and widely used. And especially because people use so much, most of the people I think use Google Mail, there's not much interest in like developing KOrganizer and Camille. I do know people that work on them and that's very nice, but because the code 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. He 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 bugs, please make simple layout. That's a few requests and I think that we're moving towards that direction. I'll make 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 amazing how many things you can do with it even though it never makes you anxiety because of all the options. So that's a good application doing it and it's KuriGami. 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 for them to be customizable. So I think that's the direction we're going to or slowly writing new applications in KuriGami as an example, K 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 the application 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're 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 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 K mail. They don't look updated visually to look like something like that. Again, he mentioned K organizer and K mail. I talk about that already and luckily there's not enough interest to have so many developers working on that. That's a bit sad but that's how it goes. It's 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 least application along the lines of getting things GNOME or PLANNER? And I couldn't find an equivalent. Calendar, calendar, calendar does that. equivalent of Audacity for the KDE desktop? There's none, let's be honest, there's none. Now generally all the smaller utility... 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. Cities 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 luck. And that's fair, you're indeed out of luck because the concept in KDE, the philosophy is really you have one monolithic, sorry, hard word monolithic application that has everything. Maybe it's a bit hidden, not very hidden but you need to know what you're looking for. 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 there 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 save as a different format. So I understand this concern but I don't think that KDE's philosophy is really allied with what he's saying. I think that here at KDE we do prefer like application that do more stuff rather than many applications that do less if I understood what he meant. Now, of course you can always install non-KDE apps on KDE and that's what I did with the GIMP planner audacity. I also installed the GNOME disks 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 disks did in two clicks. Now that's where KDE grabs the advantage again. It integrates GDK apps a lot better than GNOME integrates Qt apps. Yeah, the GDK 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 however, there's an 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 word and maybe the new GDK 4 being not very open to theming, to third party themes and there was some talk about dropping it which would make me sad but on the other hand it's a bit difficult from what I've gathered to maintain and GNOME isn't 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 anything 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 GDK. 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 iOS is a weird experience. Those applications do not look integrated and they do not look native. But using GNOME apps on KDE is a more simpler experience and it honestly looks good to the. Yeah, it's a bit sad, I think. Points 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 Lattidoc to have your Plasma panel with all of the Plasma plus, like kick off the application launcher in GNOME. So you have GNOME with the GNOME or KDE apps, whatever you prefer, and the Plasma panel. Like, that's crazy. But you can do that if you want. I'll just put that there. Now, I praised the other launch 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, KDE 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 KDE, trying to reorganize better some of 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're 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 bigger search bar. 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 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 GD Plasma because every system setting category is called KCM and I think, I'm not an expert, but I think each KCM has somewhere, just ask me and I'll find out if you want, but has 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 KD 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 saying other good stuffs about KD 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 begged for money already. So 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 hesitate to like or dislike if you didn't. You can also subscribe and turn on notifications. One last thing I want to say is, I just showed the parts where he like criticizes KD Plasma, although there's some good inside of them too. But he also spends a lot of time praising it. So I 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 most of the time. Also, 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 in tie, I'm in tie.