Testing Plasma 6 (Beta) on Endeavour OS - is this approach any good?

Desktop Environments Plasma
61

Haven’t been able to use my Plasma 6 setup much the last couple of days.

Have noticed some things I’m unsure if I should report them or not:

  • META-1, 2 etc to start apps pinned to the panel doesn’t work. From memory that always used to work OOTB. Will investigate. And see if that has been reported already.
  • Can´t get Dolphin to show previews of jpg’s when they are on a network share. All settings seem to be right (compared to my Plasma 5 setup), still no joy so far.

These are things I came across during my daily use of this Plasma 6 setup.
Nothing spectacular so far. I’m not (yet) trying edge use cases.
Am about to switch on wobbly windows, though - without them Plasma doesn’t really come alive, it seems. :wink:

I first want to understand if I need to install the testing repositories to have a valid baseline. Unsure about that too, so far.

Clearly I’m no expert. Willing, yes, able not so much :smile:

Edit: Windows wobble well on Plasma 6!

62

Good to know because i can’t live without my wobble windows!

63

I’m actually glad to read yours (and everyone else’s) feedback and pleased that most things seem to work fine.
I am just about to consider updating to 6 myself for the main driver, especially based on what I read here. That’s the only way we get the bugs out…by exposing them to the light of day :slight_smile:

64

They do for me, yes, but can´t guarantee anything beyond that, though.
Your mileage may be different :smile:

65

For those interested, here are the release dates for Plasma 6 Beta1, Beta 2, RC1 etc:

https://community.kde.org/Schedules/Plasma_6

66

Well bear in mind, I test drove it a month or so before you did (on a separate installation)…it seemed nearly good enough then. Considering the complexity of KDE, I’m actually rather proud of the developers.

67

hear, hear.

I second that.

68

As plasma users, we have lot of chance to have them. They share a lot the progression compared to Gnome for example.

Blogs:

https://blog.davidedmundson.co.uk/
Videos:
https://www.youtube.com/@niccoloveslinux/videos

I know that other members also have blogs but i don’t remember the links :sweat_smile:

69

Ok, I took the leap. Looks good though I did have an unported clock widget. I’m still trying to close that window lol.
Also application launcher. Hopefully the widgets will get ported soon.
I really like the changes to edit mode.

70

They have done a good job indeed. Much better than it was, in my opinion.

Edit: typo

71

Anyone else on Plasma 6 also noticing this?

On Plasma 5 the META-1 etc key combinations work out of the box. On Plasma 6/Wayland i can’t get them to work so far.
I have not yet found a related setting.

Perhaps it’s a bug? But I wouldn’t know which application is involved.

I’ll do some sleuthing today.

72
73

Great to see people are testing - I’ll have a read. Thanks!

74

I think I need to add the repositories:

core-testing 
extra-testing

to /etc/pacman.conf as per [1].

It’s a simple case of un-commenting the appropriate lines in pacman.conf, but still I’d like some guidance please.

The article says:

core-testing is the only repository that can have name collisions with any of the other official repositories. If enabled, it has to be the first repository listed in your /etc/pacman.conf file.

The article also says:

The kde-unstable entry should be first in the list of repositories (i.e., above the core-testing entry).

I think these two sentences are colliding, but English is not my first language, so I may very well misread the information.

Any advice?

[1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Official_repositories#Testing_repositories

75

People at KDE are working hard - just sent in my second bug report. Within 5 minutes Nicolas Fella had added some extra information.

I suppose Nicolas is not a bot? :thinking:

Edit: Nicholas is no bot: @nicofee@floss.social.

76

Did you get things straightened out yet? I have not installed any widgets yet…

77

Almost all widgets will need some rewrite because they are lots of small change.

78

Thanks! Will read the info tomorrow. :+1:

79

I’m not a developer, so this information goes well above my head, but I gather that there’s quite a lot of work involved in getting plasmoids ported to Qt6/Plasma6.

So, I assume plasmoids that are ported need some serious testing as well.

80

I contacted @nicofee@floss.social (Nicolas Fella) for advice. As he is involved in KDE I hope he is “in the know” about these things.