KDE Plasma 5.8 LTS Now Available In Beta Form

[phoronix]

Phoronix: KDE Plasma 5.8 LTS Now Available In Beta Form

The beta of the upcoming KDE Plasma 5.8 -- the first Plasma 5 long-term support release -- is now available for early testing...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=KDE-Plasma-5.8-Beta

[SaucyJack]

Hopefully they finish their multi monitor support soon. I get horrible graphical corruption when leaving a full screen app, even if i turn off kwin in advance.

[lunarcloud]

Hopefully they finish their multi monitor support soon. I get horrible graphical corruption when leaving a full screen app, even if i turn off kwin in advance.

From the release page:

[...]This release sees many bugfixes in multi-screen support[...]

[balouba]

Hopefully they finish their multi monitor support soon. I get horrible graphical corruption when leaving a full screen app, even if i turn off kwin in advance.

I clicked comments to say that. But you've taken care of it lol - so instead I'll rant a bit to get it off my chest and onto the internets:

The multi monitor support is pretty bad - in fact I think its gotten worse, and im talking about x11 here (since wayland support is still too buggy for use anyway).
I reported bugs which usually end up being "its not us its x/y/z (qt/xorg/intel/kwin-not-kdisplay/kdisplay-not-kwin" then I follow up to show where the problem is and... then radio silence.

At the end of the day, on most computers running kde plasma at work we all have the same problems. all laptops have usually intel cpu/gpu of different years, diff distros, and everyone has the same set of issues:

- monitor connect/disconnect not always detected (i hate this one, disconnect laptop and you cant see your window because kwin thinks they're on the other monitor)
- DPI issues (depending on the window you look at the DPI is sometimes different, specially for the mouse cursor scaling)
- plasmashell not always displaying on both monitors (nobody here has a 3 monitor setup so its always 2), often time one is a "black desktop" and one has plasmashell showing. No restart of plasma shell fixes that, apparently, its an intel or xorg bug - though at the same time gnome does not trigger this issue and at the end of the day its useable on gnome :/
- graphical errors - more rare but always eventually happens, flickers and stuff. maybe an intel driver issue, though again only plasma triggers it.
- plasma panels disappear - also rare but also always ends up happening, unsure how to reproduce, though apparently plasma thinks the monitor geometry is different than what it is. only deleteing config fixes this.
- setup is not remembered. have to resetup screens every time we start plasma. fuck yeah.
- sometimes kdisplay thinks my 2nd display is "off" and ive to switch it on/off in kdisplay for it to be on, instead of always being on when you connect it by default. Go figure.

So don't get me wrong, i like kde/plasma and most things work ok. But the multi display support is REALLY REALLY bad right now. I fix stuff up with xrandr scripts but there are some things I cannot work around.

Now I know I should just go code the fixes and propose them. I'm not that good at this though and yeah, it's not my priority. At the end of the day, I just wish the support was better.

[SaucyJack]

From the release page:

Yeah, that doesnt mean anything. People have so many issues with multi monitor set ups there's no guarantee that mine got fixed.

[kokoko3k]

My dualhead config works well.
What is really a problem to me is that plasmashell process memory usage grows and grows.
It started yesterday with 200MB and now is over 700.
Check by yourself, you just need to use plasma elements.

[SaucyJack]

I clicked comments to say that. But you've taken care of it lol - so instead I'll rant a bit to get it off my chest and onto the internets:

The multi monitor support is pretty bad - in fact I think its gotten worse, and im talking about x11 here (since wayland support is still too buggy for use anyway).
I reported bugs which usually end up being "its not us its x/y/z (qt/xorg/intel/kwin-not-kdisplay/kdisplay-not-kwin" then I follow up to show where the problem is and... then radio silence.

At the end of the day, on most computers running kde plasma at work we all have the same problems. all laptops have usually intel cpu/gpu of different years, diff distros, and everyone has the same set of issues:

- monitor connect/disconnect not always detected (i hate this one, disconnect laptop and you cant see your window because kwin thinks they're on the other monitor)
- DPI issues (depending on the window you look at the DPI is sometimes different, specially for the mouse cursor scaling)
- plasmashell not always displaying on both monitors (nobody here has a 3 monitor setup so its always 2), often time one is a "black desktop" and one has plasmashell showing. No restart of plasma shell fixes that, apparently, its an intel or xorg bug - though at the same time gnome does not trigger this issue and at the end of the day its useable on gnome :/
- graphical errors - more rare but always eventually happens, flickers and stuff. maybe an intel driver issue, though again only plasma triggers it.
- plasma panels disappear - also rare but also always ends up happening, unsure how to reproduce, though apparently plasma thinks the monitor geometry is different than what it is. only deleteing config fixes this.
- setup is not remembered. have to resetup screens every time we start plasma. fuck yeah.
- sometimes kdisplay thinks my 2nd display is "off" and ive to switch it on/off in kdisplay for it to be on, instead of always being on when you connect it by default. Go figure.

So don't get me wrong, i like kde/plasma and most things work ok. But the multi display support is REALLY REALLY bad right now. I fix stuff up with xrandr scripts but there are some things I cannot work around.

Now I know I should just go code the fixes and propose them. I'm not that good at this though and yeah, it's not my priority. At the end of the day, I just wish the support was better.

Honestly the experience has been better for me lately. Kde used to randmize my desktops and layouts every time i booted and at least that got fixed.

[Namenlos]

My dualhead config works well.
What is really a problem to me is that plasmashell process memory usage grows and grows.
It started yesterday with 200MB and now is over 700.
Check by yourself, you just need to use plasma elements.

A friend temporarily solved the problem of memory consumption in using the intel igpu instead of r600 with a HD57xx or HD67xx gpu, he uses arch I think debugging symbols are hard to use there iirc. If you too use r600, can you check if this is the case with your setup too?


Does anyone know when QT5.8 alpha (or beta in a few weeks) will land in neon dev? Is there any url with packages I can check?

[kokoko3k]

A friend temporarily solved the problem of memory consumption in using the intel igpu instead of r600 with a HD57xx or HD67xx gpu, he uses arch I think debugging symbols are hard to use there iirc. If you too use r600, can you check if this is the case with your setup too?


Does anyone know when QT5.8 alpha (or beta in a few weeks) will land in neon dev? Is there any url with packages I can check?

I'm using arch, but my gpu is an nvidia + proprietary drivers.
Is your experience different ?
I mean... starting plasma, see memory used by plasmashell, next open the start menu, the clock... play with widgets and check memory again.
Doesn't the ram used by plasmashell grows for you?
Just doing soo brings it from about 250 to 430.

For comparison, with plasma-desktop from kde4, same system, it starts at 220 and may grow till 250...260MB.

[theghost]

Really great new features, the unified looks, the shutdown artwork etc.
Hopefully Kwin becomes stable again for me. Atm, it always crashes on Steam fullscreen videos.