I'm aware that I might come across as sounding like this guy. But when it comes to computers, I like to be a control freak and I loved KDE Plasma for letting me be such. But with the switch to Plasma5, it just seems like I no longer have complete control over my desktop, and that's really annoying.
In my opinion, Plasma5 is still in an alpha state. (not even beta) The only (two) ways that I noticed that Plasma5 is better than Plasma4 are definitely NOT enough to justify use of Plasma5—they are very minor advantages. However, all of the ways that Plasma5 is worse than Plasma4 are, in my view, major issues. All around, Plasma5 is just straight up worse than Plasma4.
It seems that Plasma5 was developed on the philosophy of “change for the sake of change.” To me, that's stupidity. Don't change something unless there's a reason to change it. (Similarly, I see no reason for X to be replaced, but that's a different issue.) Otherwise, certain things will inevitably just end up worse. The “change for the sake of change” philosophy is what ruined Gnome (when they went from Gnome2 to Gnome3), and now it seems like the same philosophy has ruined KDE Plasma.
Before I start, I feel the need to pre-emptively answer the question of “Why don't you just use 14.04LTS with Plasma4 if you think Plasma5 is so bad?”. The answer is that I need to use the 15.04 release in order for my touchpad to have the the functionality of scrolling with a middle-click and trackpoint drag. (That feature is very important to me. That feature alone made me come back to *buntu after using openSUSE for about 1.5 years.)
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Ways in which Plasma4 > Plasma5
(1) taskbar's clock display
I like my taskbar clock to display the following things:
--hour (always with two digits, even when it's <=9)
--minutes (always with two digits, even when it's <=9)
--seconds (always with two digits, even when it's <=9)
--AM/PM indicator (although 24-hour time is ideal, I need to use 12-hour.)
--day of the week (as a 3-letter abbreviation, with the first letter capitalized)
--month (as a 3-letter abbreviation, with the first letter capitalized)
--day of the month (always with two digits, even when it's <=9)
For example, I consider the following display to be the ideal:
04:17:57 PM Sat Jul 04
In XFCE (which is what I use now because Plasma5 sucks), I can get that display very easily: I just shove “%r %a %b %d” (without the quotes) into the configuration textbox.
But there is no way in Plasma5 to get a clock display with all of the items I listed. Actually there is, but the only way to do it is to get a two-line display with the second line in a very small text size. But in Plasma4, a two-line clock display had both lines of the same text size, which is obviously preferable because if one is smaller than the other, than the smaller one is simply not readable in a comfortable way. (Resizing the taskbar height should not be necessary.)
(2) spacing between icons in the Folder / Folderview widget
See here.
(3) folderview: need additional click to browse subfolders
Say that you have a Folder widget for the folder ~/Desktop. One of the nice things about the Folder/Folderview widget is that in addition to allowing you to open a file that is in ~/Desktop, you can also open a file that is in a subdirectory of ~/Desktop. In Plasma4, you did that by a mouse-hover over the subfolder, which then displayed the contents of that subfolder. But in Plasma5, a mouse-hover is not sufficient—you also have to click on that little diagonal arrow to get the subfolder display.
(4) Plasma4 has a QuickLaunch widget. Plasma5 does not.
Title says it all.
(5) Plasma5 gives way too many notifications.
For example, when I remove a widget, I don't need the systray to give me a notification that I just removed a widget. That's pointless and stupid.
(6) “Show Desktop” button
In Plasma4, the “show desktop” widget (that could be added to the taskbar) worked exactly as it's supposed to: click it and everything's minimized. But in Plasma5, I sometimes had to click it twice before it minimized anything. Clicking it once (in certain circumstances) didn't do anything. And once you did get it to show the desktop, the desktop showed faint pictures of minimized windows, so it wasn't as simple as just minimizing everything. That seems to mean that once the “show desktop” button was activated, it had a purpose slightly different than just minimizing everything—I find that undesirable.
I want the “show desktop” button/widget to have exactly the following two functions and nothing more:
—minimize all the windows on the current workspace when I click it exactly once (This shouldn't require two clicks, as it sometimes does in Plasma5.)
--unminimize the windows that were minimized on the first click if I perform a second click
(7)Klipper item on the systray
Klipper in Plasma4 was great, but Plasma5 screwed it up:
--It got renamed to "Clipboard." That falls into the category of change for the sake of change, with no good reason.
--One of the features I loved about the Plasma4 Klipper was that it allows you to make a previously copied item the current selection. As an example: Suppose you copied the phrase "once upon" to the clipboard and then after that, you copied the phrase "a midnight dreary" to the clipboard. A paste action would give you "a midnight dreary." But suppose you wanted to go back to having "once upon" as the current clipboard selection so that a paste action would spit out that phrase. In Plasma4, you could do this very easily--just click on that scissors icon in the systray and then click on the item you want--it then becomes the current selection so that it gets invoked with a paste action. But the Klipper/Clipboard in Plasma5 took away that functionality!!
================================================== =========
Ways in which Plasma5 > Plasma4
(1) Plasma5 is slightly faster.
Performance isn't generally something that I care about (as long as it's at least reasonably fast, which Plasma4 was), but I thought it worth noting.
(2) In Plasma5, the kickoff menu has a search bar. In Plasma4, it didn't.
I'd probably still use Alt+F2 anyway, but it makes sense for the kickoff menu to have a search bar.
================================================== =========
Ways in which XFCE > Plasma
Now that I've been working predominantly in XFCE, I've noticed two advantages it has over Plasma. (The clock formatting that I mentioned earlier is not in this list because it is a way in which XFCE > Plasma5 but it does not qualify as a way in which XFCE > Plasma4.)
(1) XFCE has the option of adding Directory Menus. Plasma does not.
can be added to a panel/taskbar. Looks like this.
In the screenshot I linked to, I set the Directory Menu to operator on /. But you can set it to any directory, including, of course, ~/. In the screenshot, you can see that I have two different directory menus on my taskbar, each referencing a different directory. The XFCE Directory Menu feature is really cool.
(2) Notes
The XFCE panel item called “Notes” (screenshot here) has two advantages over the Plasma “Notes widget”:
--it has tabs
--it can be added to a taskbar/panel, whereas the Plasma notes widget can only reside on the desktop
The significance of this advantage is two-fold:
--it can be accessed whenever your taskbar is visible; you don't need to get to your desktop first
--the contents can be hidden. This feature is missing from the Plasma Notes widget, which ought to (but doesn't) have a button to hide/unhide the contents. When I let someone use my laptop (back when I ran Plasma), I don't mind that they were able to see what I had written in the Notes widget, but it would have been preferable to have been able to hide it.
(3) Mouse Manager
I really like XFCE's mouse settings manager (package name is xfce4-mouse-settings)
It gives more options than all the other GUI mouse managers I've seen before. (Edit: gpointing-device-settings is also pretty full-featured, but I still prefer XFCE's.) Also, it allows you to set a different set of settings for each one of your input devices--that should have been an obvious feature, but the XFCE mouse manager is the only GUI mouse manager I've seen that gives you this power. (It enables me to have different settings for all three of my mouse input devices: trackpoint, touchpad, and actual mouse.)
================================================== =========
Phew. I needed to get that rant out.
My lists are not intended to be exhaustive--these are just the things that stuck out in my mind. If other folks here are so inclined, I invite them to add to my lists by replying to this thread.
In my opinion, Plasma5 is still in an alpha state. (not even beta) The only (two) ways that I noticed that Plasma5 is better than Plasma4 are definitely NOT enough to justify use of Plasma5—they are very minor advantages. However, all of the ways that Plasma5 is worse than Plasma4 are, in my view, major issues. All around, Plasma5 is just straight up worse than Plasma4.
It seems that Plasma5 was developed on the philosophy of “change for the sake of change.” To me, that's stupidity. Don't change something unless there's a reason to change it. (Similarly, I see no reason for X to be replaced, but that's a different issue.) Otherwise, certain things will inevitably just end up worse. The “change for the sake of change” philosophy is what ruined Gnome (when they went from Gnome2 to Gnome3), and now it seems like the same philosophy has ruined KDE Plasma.
Before I start, I feel the need to pre-emptively answer the question of “Why don't you just use 14.04LTS with Plasma4 if you think Plasma5 is so bad?”. The answer is that I need to use the 15.04 release in order for my touchpad to have the the functionality of scrolling with a middle-click and trackpoint drag. (That feature is very important to me. That feature alone made me come back to *buntu after using openSUSE for about 1.5 years.)
================================================== =========
Ways in which Plasma4 > Plasma5
(1) taskbar's clock display
I like my taskbar clock to display the following things:
--hour (always with two digits, even when it's <=9)
--minutes (always with two digits, even when it's <=9)
--seconds (always with two digits, even when it's <=9)
--AM/PM indicator (although 24-hour time is ideal, I need to use 12-hour.)
--day of the week (as a 3-letter abbreviation, with the first letter capitalized)
--month (as a 3-letter abbreviation, with the first letter capitalized)
--day of the month (always with two digits, even when it's <=9)
For example, I consider the following display to be the ideal:
04:17:57 PM Sat Jul 04
In XFCE (which is what I use now because Plasma5 sucks), I can get that display very easily: I just shove “%r %a %b %d” (without the quotes) into the configuration textbox.
But there is no way in Plasma5 to get a clock display with all of the items I listed. Actually there is, but the only way to do it is to get a two-line display with the second line in a very small text size. But in Plasma4, a two-line clock display had both lines of the same text size, which is obviously preferable because if one is smaller than the other, than the smaller one is simply not readable in a comfortable way. (Resizing the taskbar height should not be necessary.)
(2) spacing between icons in the Folder / Folderview widget
See here.
(3) folderview: need additional click to browse subfolders
Say that you have a Folder widget for the folder ~/Desktop. One of the nice things about the Folder/Folderview widget is that in addition to allowing you to open a file that is in ~/Desktop, you can also open a file that is in a subdirectory of ~/Desktop. In Plasma4, you did that by a mouse-hover over the subfolder, which then displayed the contents of that subfolder. But in Plasma5, a mouse-hover is not sufficient—you also have to click on that little diagonal arrow to get the subfolder display.
(4) Plasma4 has a QuickLaunch widget. Plasma5 does not.
Title says it all.
(5) Plasma5 gives way too many notifications.
For example, when I remove a widget, I don't need the systray to give me a notification that I just removed a widget. That's pointless and stupid.
(6) “Show Desktop” button
In Plasma4, the “show desktop” widget (that could be added to the taskbar) worked exactly as it's supposed to: click it and everything's minimized. But in Plasma5, I sometimes had to click it twice before it minimized anything. Clicking it once (in certain circumstances) didn't do anything. And once you did get it to show the desktop, the desktop showed faint pictures of minimized windows, so it wasn't as simple as just minimizing everything. That seems to mean that once the “show desktop” button was activated, it had a purpose slightly different than just minimizing everything—I find that undesirable.
I want the “show desktop” button/widget to have exactly the following two functions and nothing more:
—minimize all the windows on the current workspace when I click it exactly once (This shouldn't require two clicks, as it sometimes does in Plasma5.)
--unminimize the windows that were minimized on the first click if I perform a second click
(7)Klipper item on the systray
Klipper in Plasma4 was great, but Plasma5 screwed it up:
--It got renamed to "Clipboard." That falls into the category of change for the sake of change, with no good reason.
--One of the features I loved about the Plasma4 Klipper was that it allows you to make a previously copied item the current selection. As an example: Suppose you copied the phrase "once upon" to the clipboard and then after that, you copied the phrase "a midnight dreary" to the clipboard. A paste action would give you "a midnight dreary." But suppose you wanted to go back to having "once upon" as the current clipboard selection so that a paste action would spit out that phrase. In Plasma4, you could do this very easily--just click on that scissors icon in the systray and then click on the item you want--it then becomes the current selection so that it gets invoked with a paste action. But the Klipper/Clipboard in Plasma5 took away that functionality!!
================================================== =========
Ways in which Plasma5 > Plasma4
(1) Plasma5 is slightly faster.
Performance isn't generally something that I care about (as long as it's at least reasonably fast, which Plasma4 was), but I thought it worth noting.
(2) In Plasma5, the kickoff menu has a search bar. In Plasma4, it didn't.
I'd probably still use Alt+F2 anyway, but it makes sense for the kickoff menu to have a search bar.
================================================== =========
Ways in which XFCE > Plasma
Now that I've been working predominantly in XFCE, I've noticed two advantages it has over Plasma. (The clock formatting that I mentioned earlier is not in this list because it is a way in which XFCE > Plasma5 but it does not qualify as a way in which XFCE > Plasma4.)
(1) XFCE has the option of adding Directory Menus. Plasma does not.
can be added to a panel/taskbar. Looks like this.
In the screenshot I linked to, I set the Directory Menu to operator on /. But you can set it to any directory, including, of course, ~/. In the screenshot, you can see that I have two different directory menus on my taskbar, each referencing a different directory. The XFCE Directory Menu feature is really cool.
(2) Notes
The XFCE panel item called “Notes” (screenshot here) has two advantages over the Plasma “Notes widget”:
--it has tabs
--it can be added to a taskbar/panel, whereas the Plasma notes widget can only reside on the desktop
The significance of this advantage is two-fold:
--it can be accessed whenever your taskbar is visible; you don't need to get to your desktop first
--the contents can be hidden. This feature is missing from the Plasma Notes widget, which ought to (but doesn't) have a button to hide/unhide the contents. When I let someone use my laptop (back when I ran Plasma), I don't mind that they were able to see what I had written in the Notes widget, but it would have been preferable to have been able to hide it.
(3) Mouse Manager
I really like XFCE's mouse settings manager (package name is xfce4-mouse-settings)
It gives more options than all the other GUI mouse managers I've seen before. (Edit: gpointing-device-settings is also pretty full-featured, but I still prefer XFCE's.) Also, it allows you to set a different set of settings for each one of your input devices--that should have been an obvious feature, but the XFCE mouse manager is the only GUI mouse manager I've seen that gives you this power. (It enables me to have different settings for all three of my mouse input devices: trackpoint, touchpad, and actual mouse.)
================================================== =========
Phew. I needed to get that rant out.
My lists are not intended to be exhaustive--these are just the things that stuck out in my mind. If other folks here are so inclined, I invite them to add to my lists by replying to this thread.
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