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

[J. Roeleveld]

On Tuesday, April 12, 2016 01:21:37 PM Dale wrote:
> J. Roeleveld wrote:
> > On Tuesday, April 12, 2016 02:04:47 AM Dale wrote:
> >> <<< SNIP >>>
> >>
> >>
> >> Dale
> >>
> >> :-)  :-)
> >
> > Dale,
> >
> > Considering the amount of changes, did you reboot the system or at least
> > killed everything running at least once?
> >
> > That should also help with the stability.
> >
> > Also, I used the following 2 meta-packages:
> > kde-apps/kde-apps-meta
> > kde-plasma/plasma-meta
> >
> > This gave me most stuff, including the configuration for virtual desktop
> > in the same place (SystemSettings)
> >
> > Start that, then search for "Virtual Desktops" and the only working icon
> > is
> > where you need to be.
> >
> > The pager thing to select the virtual desktops appears magically then.
> >
> > --
> > Joost
>
> Update and some info for Joost.

Thanks, as I now have a bit more time, I will add my own thoughts as well.

> I been playing with this a while and found some things.  First, I had to
> get to the settings part which would only give a error working.  When I
> got to the edit part, I figured out that for some reason, it was still
> trying to run the KDE4 command, which was removed during the upgrade of
> course.  So, I got that back by giving it the new command,
> systemsettings5 I think was it.  That helped.

Hmm, I actually started it from the K-menu. When it's opened, you can search 
through all the entries by simply typing.
I did do an " emerge --depclean " before trying to configure things. Eg. 
systemsettings for kde4 disappeared already.

> Once in there, I found
> lots of things to help get things to where I could work with them.  I
> found out that I could add multiple desktops back and at that point, the
> desktop pager thingy appeared and worked.  I guess when it is set to 1
> desktop, it doesn't show up or something.

Which seems logical behaviour to me. And the same happened here after 
configuring it.

> I also got it to where it
> wouldn't turn my monitor off and lock the screen if I turned my head a
> minute.

I use my laptop also when at "public" places, like at a customer. Which means 
the auto-lock-screen-after-5-minutes is a useful feature.
Now if only I could have that time auto-adjusted based on the network it's 
connected to? :)

> Then I found out how to adjust the size of fonts in a lot of
> other places.  Now that helped a lot.  I was using a magnifying glass to
> read some stuff.  I also set the numlock to on.  I have numbers in my
> password and that was getting annoying to have to turn on.
>
> I very rarely reboot.  After a big upgrade, I just go to single user,
> use the checkrestart command to be sure and then go back to default
> runlevel.  I also generally clear the cache and such too.  I restart or
> kill anything checkrestart shows if needed.

I had issues where checkrestart wouldn't kill enough, or didn't notice changes 
to configuration. Hibernate (eg. suspend-to-disk) didn't work from kde until I 
rebooted.

> I do have those packages installed.  I emerged plasma-meta and that
> pulled in a lot.  Since I run some unstable stuff already, I had to
> adjust some things to get emerge happy.  After that, it was a large
> download and a lot of compile time.

Those 2 pull in nearly everything.

> As it is, the biggest thing is that it doesn't seem to carry over
> settings from KDE4.  It seems to start out fresh just like if it was a
> clean install.

That is actually mentioned in the upgrade-guide. Just not in so-many words.
I actually think that's a good thing as a lot of the issues I had when first 
switching to KDE4 was caused by left-over settings from KDE3. A fresh start 
helped a lot.

> Other than that, it's OK.  I still get the occasional
> plasma crash tho.  It's not as often but it still pops up on occasion.

I've had 1 today, when I clicked on the up-pointing triangle to get all the 
hidden systray items. That was, so far, the only one.

> I may start a emerge -e world.  I haven't done that in a while anyway
> and it usually clears up weird issues that can't quite be figured out.
>
> Oh, I had to switch to sddm for this too.  You just change the setting
> from kdm to sddm and it just works.

Same here, and mentioned in the upgrade-guide.
I actually did the change to SDDM before switching to KDE5/Plasma.

> 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.

Yes, you can.
Google for " sddm themes ".
They go in " /usr/share/sddm/themes "

The OCD one looks like the KDM Oxygen theme...

Now for my thoughts:

I haven't found a decent colourscheme yet (There wasn't one for KDE4 either)

Most of the apps are ok, just waiting for KDevelop 5 to appear in the tree.

My biggest complaint though:
KSnapshot has disappeared and been replaced by " Spectacle ".
It might be a technically better solution, but the primary reason I absolutely 
love KSnapshot is it's ability to quickly take a new snapshot of the same 
region (adjusting slightly when necessary) and then it defaulting to the next-
numbered filename in the same folder when selecting "Save As".

With Spectacle I end up having to redefine the region every single time and 
having to click multiple times to get to Save As and then it always goes back 
to some Pictures folder. The quick-save (which includes a Quit-action) uses 
timestamps.
In other words, I end up spending more time clicking needlessly during my 
work, or renaming manually after the activity is finished.

--
Joost