Updated: March 25, 2024
A couple of weeks ago, I tested Plasma 6 for the first time. Long story short, the test was somewhat of a dud. While the desktop environment delivered, the underlying test platform, KDE neon, did not. I was not able to install the distro on an AMD-powered laptop, due to errors in the installation wizard itself, and consequently, I had to limit my review to just the impressions from a virtual machine setup. C'est la Tux.
Now, there's a new image of the KDE neon User Edition available, so perhaps I will be so lucky, lucky lucky, or something. All right, time to repeat the test. My IdeaPad 3 machine, AMD processor and integrated graphics. If this turns out fine, in the third review, we shall expand to a system with an Intel processor and a discrete Nvidia card. So hybrid graphics, Nvidia vs. Wayland, ought to be interesting. Let's start, then.
Installation
This time around, it worked. Well, there were still problems. Namely, the clock warning, the AMDGPU oops, the nonsense warning from Calamares regarding the size of the EFI partition. But despite those, the distro installed fine, and also picked up Windows 11, which resides in the system's dual-boot configuration. Not that I like or approve of that system, but it's there for testing and complaints. The entire process took 6 minutes, despite warnings about EFI partition size, and the fact I was running on battery, unplugged.
Impressions ... again
Not bad, but there were some quirks. The Wayland session logs in with scaling set to 125% by default. Not sure why, but it's like that. X11 logs in at 100%. There are no user folders in your home, i.e., Downloads, Documents and such. You will need to create those yourself, if you like. This ain't no biggie, but it's strange after seeing this used as the default in Dolphin since forever. Also, as I remarked the last time, the floating panel/menu plus the cartoon-like wallpaper seem wrong, in my opinion. They make the distro/desktop look somewhat immature.
I think the font color is wrong, as always, as it ain't black and thus doesn't offer the most ideal contrast. There's also no subpixel rendering used by default. I set this to RGB, and this helped right away. Plus, I changed the fonts using my so-called Brooze theme.
I am not sure why there's no bottom border, or if the left border is wrong. Visual bug?
System updates, like Windows? What, nope
One thing that super-annoyed me is that Discover offered updates as a single bundle - you have no idea what you get, and by default, these updates get installed on reboot. W00t. Windows much? There's ZERO reason to apply updates in a Windows fashion. None whatsoever. This is taking the worst of Windows and applying it to Linux. Also, there are tons of potential issues with this, including troubleshooting, disruption to user session, lost time, pointlessness of it, and then some.
You can change this, and then, the updates will be applied in the normal, sane fashion.
The statement - recommended to maximize system stability is nonsense. An example of tech mentality where you offload the burden of building high-quality software onto the end user. Nope. Either the process works or it does not. If it doesn't, fix it. If it does, there's nothing to do. But asking the end user to choose regarding something so critical like updates is wrong. And the whole after-reboot patching is also wrong.
Not sure why the total size shows midway across the screen - a visual bug?
But there were lots of little problems with updates. Among them, the failure to update firmware. First, there was this message (which I failed to screenshot, so here it is from the logs):
Fwupd Error 16 Blocked executable in the ESP, ensure grub and shim are up to date: /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/shimx64-fedora.efi Authenticode checksum [...] is present in dbx
What? Why would the updater care about an old Fedora shim on my EFI partition? What? Then, it complained about my battery being too low - even though the laptop was plugged. I can understand that, but then, why is this not the case for all updates. Also Discover showed the wrong battery level - it said 21%, but the system actually had 17%, according to the system tray. So something somewhere is off.
I added WINE from upstream, and simply couldn't install it - broken dependencies in the distro:
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
libsane1:i386 : Depends: libpoppler-glib8:i386 (>= 0.18.0) but it is not installable
Recommends: sane-airscan:i386 but it is not installable
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.
The update process eventually worked. I didn't need to force the firmware update, and the error went by itself. So the whole thing feels like one just panic scare for no good reason whatsoever. And it also highlights the many problems with KDE neon. Yes, it's a test distro, but I would expect these issues in the Developer Edition or such. Not the User Edition. And in all my past testing, the distro was much more robust. There seems to be no quality testing whatsoever.
I also noticed that the distro sources include a PPA. It is Mozilla's, which is fine, but I absolutely do not like the idea of a PPA being used for updates. I know it ain't any different from adding EPEL to CentOS or Packman to openSUSE and such, but as I mentioned these before, while it's okay for games and testing, I would not want that for a serious productivity setup. That would undermine the foundation of how that system runs, and how it's managed.
Quirks
I mentioned how Spectacle now lets you turn shadows on/off. Fantastic. The only problem is, the image command buttons are at the top of the Spectacle UI. This is Gnome-like, and also, ergonomically wrong. The UI flow for left-to-right languages is top-down, left-right, so having command buttons up there completely breaks productivity. It also departs from how Plasma did it so far, and how most other Plasma programs still manage it. There's no reason to do this randomly.
I also struggled with colors in Kate. It uses its own color scheme, and predictably, the fonts are too pale. You can change the color scheme, but my Brooze wasn't there. I had to create a brand-new color scheme. I am not happy. Kate seems to be getting more and more features, which is nice, but there's no reason to clutter it, or turn it into an IDE. It still needs to be a text editor, and appeal to people other than just software developers.
Kate also has an annoying startup overview - where you choose your session. Not well designed. Too busy. On a separate note, notifications about removed widgets never disappeared. I had to manually x them.
Under X11 (and subsequently under Wayland), I noticed a problem with the system area. The icons got detached somehow, leaving a big gap. I solved this by scaling the icons up and then down. It seems there's a bug somewhere, which prevents proper auto-scaling of panel elements, and such.
Finally, Samba speed was somewhat low, and as the last quirk, I'd like to call out system area tooltips. Early on in the testing, they would disappear after only 2-3 seconds, but later on, they would remain shown as long as the mouse cursor hovers over. So, not sure about that. Anyway.
Plasma looks
I spent a little bit of time polishing things - making it look more serious, mature and such. I mean, we all know what we can have, once the bugs are fixed and such. It will take some time to bring Plasma 6 to perfection, and that's fine. The only issue is, the tech demonstrator also needs to be stable ...
When not misbehaving, Discover be nice.
Dolphin looks the part, after some visual tweaking.
Wayland vs X11!!!!!!!!!
Ah! The big question! Did everything work just fine in Wayland, or was I forced to switch to X11? As I mentioned many times before, I'm not a developer, and I don't care about ideologies. I care about the end-user experience. For the past forever, Wayland has failed to deliver functional parity to X11. Like many "newer" technologies, it's more complicated and it breaks things. GRUB2, Systemd, PulseAudio, to name a few, these are things that perhaps work for machines in a data center, but are less suitable for simple ordinary home users, as much as Linux users can be classified thus. But that's the thing, no one should have to be "devopsy" to be able to use their system. The same applies to Wayland, perhaps even more so.
Let's start with the positives:
- The user session was blisteringly fast. Really. Superb speed and responsiveness.
- I installed and tried a bunch of programs - Gparted, Grsync, LyX, GIMP, IrfanView via WINE, DOSBox, and then some. Wayland handled all these without problems.
Now, the negatives:
- My IdeaPad 3 has a wonky screen. It is too bright, and with low contrast. To use it without your eyes watering over time, you need to reduce the brightness, but more importantly, the gamma factor. I would do this quite often in the past, but then, to my surprise, I discovered there's no such option here. Quickly, I realized this is Wayland-specific. You can change gamma just fine in the X11 session. And this helps so much with the ergonomics. If you have a shiny, high-quality monitor or screen, great. If not, tough luck.
- I logged into the X11 session, and redid all of my steps there. I soon realized that X11 was ever so slightly faster and more responsive (in line with all my past reviews), and even the visual clarity of UI elements and fonts was better. Not sure how, but the 125% scaling in X11 was not exactly the same as 125% scaling in Wayland.
- Rearranging panel icons works so much better in X11. In Wayland, they would erratically "drop" and it would take me multiple attempts to sort them out. You need to take the icons out of the panel before placing them where you want. In X11, you simply drag, and things happen with precision.
- Wayland boot + login is slower - 15-16 seconds compared to about 12-13 seconds for X11.
- Wayland didn't properly save my session, it would only preserve Firefox, but not say Spectacle or Dolphin. In X11, I had no such issues.
Now, I am also aware that Wayland also can't do remove display forwarding and whatnot, but this is not something I could test, and did not affect me personally. I also haven't tried to remap keyboard keys, which is something I may want or need to do, especially on this laptop. All in all, after so many years, Wayland still can't match X11. And so, taking everything into consideration, I switched to the X11 session.
Running with X11 ...
Conclusion
As before, there are two layers to this review. One, Plasma. Two, KDE neon. The latter disappoints big time. I know it's supposed to be a sort of beta thingie, but then, if anyone downloads and tests it, what impression do they get, and how does that reflect on Plasma? Over the years, this distro was mostly okay, but in this last round of testing, I'm seeing major problems, major regressions. If I were to extrapolate from that onto the global Linux distro estate, things look grim. But then, I've had excellent time with my Kubuntu 22.04 on several machines, so it can't be all bad. Not sure what to say. KDE neon confuses and frustrates me.
The Plasma 6 desktop is predictably fast, elegant, beautiful, stylish, highly customizable, and slick. There are problems, which are understandable for a major revision. Well, mostly understandable. There are some obvious bugs and issues that should not be there. I am also somewhat skeptical regarding some of the cosmetic choices, like the wallpaper and the floating elements. All in all, Plasma 6 still isn't ready for primetime. It's great, but not as polished as 5.27. And that's ok.
Speaking of Wayland, as it was deliberately chosen as the default, it ain't ready, either. It works better than before, but I still don't need or want a beta-quality product on my desktop. Considering how long it's been since this thing came about, the results are meh. Again, I'm not a developer, I don't care for a five-monitor setup. I'm just an ordinary user, one screen, no fancy stuff. I want my programs and games to run without issues or glitches. That's all. Everything else is completely irrelevant.
My next test will be even more ... radical than this one. I will boot KDE neon on my 2014-era IdeaPad Y50-70, now exclusively running Linux. I will "destroy" my Kubuntu setup, but hey. This will be a super-interesting test, as the machine comes with some interesting potential snags - an Nvidia card plus integrated Intel HD graphics, 4K display. Old drivers, new drivers, suspend & resume, Wayland, we shall see. That would be all for now.
Cheers.