There's no place like... KDE: Plasma 5.27 is out and GNOME 44 hits beta Version 5.27, the latest LTS release of the KDE Plasma desktop, is out, and a beta of the latest GNOME, version 44, is here too. KDE Plasma 5.27 is the new Long Term Support release, and is expected to be the last release in the 5.x series. At some point, Plasma 5 should be replaced by the shiny new Plasma 6, based on the new …
GNOME..........how much can go wrong when mindless creeps decide on technology for the rest of us??
Well.....there's the abortion that is GNOME3 (or GNOME4).......when there's nothing wrong with GNOME2!!! (See XFCE for confirmation!!!)
Then......there's GTK4......when there's nothing wrong with GTK3.....
Please.......enough with the bulls**t about the latest and (not) greatest!!!!!
I have four basic tests for any desktop environment:
* If I have two monitors but one of them is turned off, displaying another source, or is otherwise unavailable, can I be sure that a newly-opened window won't appear on the unavailable monitor?
* Can I set a movie playing on one monitor and then switch virtual desktops on the other monitor without the movie vanishing?
* Does middle-clicking a window title bar push the window to the back?
* Can I disable auto-raise-on-click?
My current favoured desktop is Mate (Mint 20.3) but even that fails the first two tests.
Figuring if a monitor is off is hard for a graphics output. The EDID data from the monitor is meant to be powered from the graphics card, so unless the EDID data has the field for monitor power included ther may be no way to tell. Some monitors do this but others don't and it's not something you find in many review tests.
Many monitors can be switched between several inputs. Do you want your computer to think it's off when it's on but switched to another source?
All I really want is for windows to open on the screen I'm currently looking at. The computer can make a reasonable guess at which one I'm looking at based on where the mouse is, and I'm quite happy to have launchers and suchlike on both screens, since that reduces mouse movement anyway.
(My preferred way of working, which no longer seems to be possible in modern distros, is actually pre-Xinerama multi-monitor X, where the screens have independent sessions running on them. You can't drag windows between them, which I guess is why it fell out of fashion - but in every other respect the behaviour's more logical and predictable. If a screen's switched off or displaying another source you simply won't interact with it, so nothing will appear there.)
What you want is a bit like a multi seat setup, which seems to be possible on Ubuntu, see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Multiseat.
Alternatively, you can probably achieve (close to) what you want using kwin scripts. For example https://store.kde.org/p/1617640/ to open on the screen which has the mouse and https://store.kde.org/p/1658915 to only have virtual desktops on one monitor.
The first one isn't really fair, as I think there is no way for a pc to know if a otherwise available display is switched to another source. Unless perhaps when the screen fakes an off state on inactive inputs. But this KDE release has had a major rework for multi monitor support.
The second one can be done in KDE, windows can be set to sticky so they are visible on all desktops. There's also activities as an alternative for virtual desktops, which you may or may not like for your workflows.
The other two are probably configurable. Lots of settings is what KDE does...
One thing that instantly ticks me off, after 5.27 versions of KDE, they still can't get the number of processor right in the about page (first screenshot).
I would love to have a machine with 2x-i7-2640M CPU:s. That be something of a franken-machine.
Somehow I don't think QT 6.0 will fix the buggy KDE codebase.
"When GNOME 3 first appeared, the app formerly known as Nautilus got a serious prune and lost quite a lot of functionality. ... But now, some new features are making their way into file manager."
And poor gnome users only had to suffer 15 years with a crippled file manager. Man, that's progress.
(don't laugh, konqueror fared no better when KDE4 appeared, and it's still not up to par for single-click use Plasma)
"some folks like automatic tiling, and others hate it"
There's a third group. I might be the only one, but it's "folks who have no idea what automatic tiling is".
It sounds like the sort of thing that I would hate, but if you have to finger a special button to activate it, that's fine. Options that are available if I want them are good. Bizarre and unexpected behaviours imposed on me for the sake of novelty are not good. I'm looking at you, Windows versions from 8 onward.
-A.
"The Krunner global search tool has improved ranking of search results by relevancy"
Whenever I see that word on a computer screen a little bit of me dies.
First of all, the word is "relevance". There is no such thing as "relevancy".
Second, and more important, the "search tool" (or whatever it is) has absolutely no idea what I think is relevant.
Ban it.
-A.
[Author here]
> Whenever I see that word on a computer screen a little bit of me dies.
It is a word and it has been for some five centuries.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/relevancy
It is probably also relevant to say that the "-ize" form of verbs (e.g. "customize") is perfectly valid _British_ English and is not an Americanism.
Some of these popular beliefs are incorrect.
I was not previously aware that some people disliked "relevancy" but I will henceforth try to reduce my usage of it.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
