Re: [gentoo-user] KDE and the new plasma 5 thing

[Frank Steinmetzger]

On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 07:53:34PM +0100, Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Tue, 12 Apr 2016 13:21:37 -0500, Dale wrote:

A while ago I set up a VM in which I can observe KDE 5 as it matures. Right
now I find it not yet usable, mostly because many things are not yet ported
and because of random crashes of plasma. (And I too find Breeze too much
space-consuming, plus there are those single-colour icons that are clearly
inspired by Spysoft Windows 10).
Oh well, in the early days of KDE 4 I was a huge fan of KDE 3’s Crystal
icons, and now I really like Oxygen. It is always a question of getting used
to change. But those thin, colourless, sometimes abstract lines really make
it more difficult to recognise stuff, making it also a UX issue.

> > Oh, I had to switch to sddm for this too.  You just change the setting
> > from kdm to sddm and it just works.  It looks different but it works
> > fine.  That may have carried over some settings.  It selected the user
> > and was ready for my password just like kdm did.  Again, it looks
> > different but it seems to work the same.  I suspect one could adjust the
> > settings, somewhere, and make it look like kdm if they wanted to.
>
> That's because kdm is dead. I found sddm a little flakey. On my laptop it
> works more or less as expected, but on my desktop, selecting reboot or
> power off from the desktop drops me back to sddm without rebooting.

I don't particularly like SDDM. I does not allow me to log in using just the
keyboard, I always have to click into the password field after it loaded up.
The field is neither active by default nor can I select it with Tab. Call it
a nitpick, but even Windows lets me enter my password without a mouse. Is it
a problem with my VM or can you confirm this?

This would more belong to a KDE forum, but since I’m at it, I can just as
well blurb it here. :)
I have a similar argument about the new cascading (“old-style”) Application
menu in KDE 5: In KDE 4, I can access any item in the Leave menu (and any
other submenu, for that matter) with Alt+F1 and two letters (as long as they
get a shortcut letter assigned). This is not possible anymore due to the new
search field.
Well, my argument is a bit self-contradicting because in KDE 3 SuSE hat a
similar search field in the menu and back then I actually liked that. But
nowadays we have KRunner for searching. The cascading menu is perfect for
fast keyboard-based navigation using the starting letter. And even though I
don’t use the favorites feature myself, those are also not accessible with
the keyboard at all.

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