Concerned About Upcoming "Plasma" Version 5...

[JeZ-l-Lee]

Hi,

I love current Kubuntu 14.04 L.T.S. 64Bit and use it everyday on my development desktop and netbook.
I used to use Ubuntu with Gnome 2.x until "Unity" came out and quickly moved over to Kubuntu.
Will I have a similar terrible experience with this upcoming "Plasma" Version 5 ??

I like a shiny desktop similar to Windows 7.
(blurred transparent panel and window tiitle bars)
Will I be able to have shiny desktop with new "Plasma" Version 5 ?
Will all the current panel widgets work in "Plasma" Version 5 ?

I hope it is great, but I fear the worst with this upcoming change.
I don't want to be forced to use XFCE & Xubuntu...

Jesse

[claydoh]

You can keep kde 4 for a while, as plasma 5 won't be the default till 15.04, at the earliest. I can't say how users will take the changes, but they won't be any where as radical as the change from kde 3 to kde 4. , or even gnome 2 to gnome 3/unity.


Mostly, the Desktop (plasma) is seeing things rewritten in qml, not much new in feature land really. Currently, there are a few widgets and config Sections missing until they get ported, but overall, feature wise, things are pretty much same. As to applications, those are separate from Frameworks 5 and Plasma 5, and are actually same 4.14.x you have in the current kde.

Again, no big changes, imnsho, but each person has their own threshold for change tolerance. I suggest giving the plasma 5 iso a try as a live session to see what's going on.

I'm using this as my daily desktop, I should attempt a write-up or something.

[dtr]

You should still be able to customize Plasma 5 the same much the same way as we do now. Personally, I'm not a fan of all this flat, mono-chrome icons, and boxy rectangular themes branded as hip and modern, but is really a throw back to the early 90s GUI design when graphics sucked.