Dedoimedo: Plasma 6.1 review - A bit better, not enough

[Gandalf_The_Grey]

Conclusion

My guess is that Plasma 6.X won't hit maturity for at least another year. There's nothing wrong with that. If anything, the KDE team should be lauded for not pushing this still-beta desktop environment release onto the Kubuntu 24.04 LTS users. That would have been a disaster. You get to test the new stuff in quiet isolation, and that's totally fine. But then, the underlying system needs to be stable, robust and mature to allow the desktop to flourish. Right now, I'm quite certain, a huge portion of development effort goes into maintaining the KDE neon distro and figuring out its bugs. This is energy wasted, as it could have been invested in improvements in Plasma itself. KDE neon, on its own, simply isn't good enough. Wayland is another detriment.

On its own, Plasma 6.1 is still Plasma. It's pretty nice, and you have the infinite customization, should you want to use it. No other Linux desktop offers that. In terms of consistency, congruence and professionalism, Plasma is light years ahead of everything else. But the 6.X series has had a rough start. Way too many bugs and problems and regressions, 6.1 included. Yes, some of the issues are gone, but fresh ones have crept up in their place. I'm not feelin' the expected level of quality that I'm used to seeing in Plasma. The default visuals are also wonky, amateurish. That won't impress anyone. If anyone cares what I think, there needs to be more focus on the basics, from aesthetics to stability, and certainly no need to add Wayland and Qt 6 into the mix, at the same time. One or the other, not both. As it is, you get too many moving parts at the same time.

Plasma 6 needs to reach maturity before taking on a brand new challenge of display compositors, if ever. If you ask me, never, but hey, definitely not in parallel with the development of a complete new framework. This only makes Plasma look bad, rough, understaffed, and in a state of crisis, and most of it through no fault of its own. Linux people need to start saying NO to inferior software. The journey of mediocrity has started some 10-odd years ago, and it continues without any resistance. GRUB 2, Systemd, PulseAudio, ip and ss instead of ifconfig and netstat, Wayland, you name it. None of these offer tangible, major improvements (if any) over the old stack in the desktop space. Just more complexity, more noise. Enterprise stuff tossed on the desktop with zero regard to usability. Mediocre "modern" replacements, on their own. Anyway, looking forward to Plasma 6.2.

Plasma 6.1 review - A bit better, not enough

Detailed review of Plasma 6.1 desktop environment, installed and tested as part of KDE neon User Edition distribution on a laptop with AMD processor and integrated graphics, including various installation-related quirks with power usage and partitioning, problematic default look and feel...

www.dedoimedo.com

 

[Gandalf_The_Grey]

Plasma 6.2 review - Slowly getting there, but the road is long

Conclusion

Well, here we are. I played with the Plasma 6.2 desktop for a while, collected a bunch of screenshots, and then wrote this report. My findings? Mostly positive. That said, there are (too) many little quirks, bugs and problems, primarily related to the visual side of things. UI borders and separators and such. Thin lines, thick lines, missing lines, too many lines. Wayland still isn't ready for prime time, as crucial accessibility and usability features remain missing. I don't want to use a beta-quality 85% ready thing. Nope. I want feature-complete tools. The system defaults are better, but they can improve still.

This is a very nice desktop environment. I think the transition from 5.X has been mostly okay, smoother than the 4.X to 5.X ride, for sure. Even so, things aren't as optimal as they could be. Wayland shouldn't be part of the Qt6 equation, as it must make life harder for the development team. On top of that, this is the third major release of the new edition, and it still feels somewhat immature. Versioning has lost its meaning in the modern world. What's the point of a GA, when it's merely Beta 5 or Beta 6? The same is true for every distro out there. They get released on a specific date, arbitrarily, but then reach "stability" after 4-9 months. You might as well never declare stable, or keep things perpetually beta (as they often practically are). Technically, it would have made sense for Plasma 6 to be released only next February, and use this year for serious bug squashing. And only then commence work on Wayland, or if you ask me, never.

Well, we can't go back in time, so Plasma 6.2 is Plasma 6.2. It is what it is. And it ain't bad. Plasma 6.2 is beautiful, very fast, mostly robust, and peppered with a slew of various bugs and problems, which will hopefully, eventually go away. Worth testing, just remember, it's still too early to use this for production machines. And we're done here, fellas.

Plasma 6.2 review - Slowly getting there, but the road is long

Review of Plasma 6.2 desktop environment, tested as part of KDE neon User Edition distribution on a laptop with AMD processor and integrated graphics, including improved look and feel, improved overall usability, numerous tiny visual glitches, Wayland vs X11 functionality, responsiveness, and more

www.dedoimedo.com