KDE plasma bugs after each update [Stable Update] 2022-09-12

Hm, I’m really getting worried right now.

I have Plasma 5.25 running on two different machines and no problems whatsoever. I also cannot confirm any of the problems mentioned above.

I really need to assume that I did something completely wrong with my systems, because how could it be possible when everyone else is having problems.

Could you please help me to solve my problem of two perfectly fine running systems?

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@denonom: Using vanilla themes (Breeze or Breath) is fine I think. I don’t have serious problems too (with Breath theme). But the Desktop Grid effect annoys me too much. I can’t swap desktops anymore. Also the animation speed is either too fast or too slow, not as good as 5.24.
So if you don’t find any problems, maybe your workflow is different.

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I don’t think we need an “KDE LTS” spin, but a “KDE Workflow Stable” spin instead.

The problem is not the increment of version numbers.
The problem is that some versions are presented as “stable”. Yes, it’s “stable” because “the code compiles”, “the application(s) start up”. But the user’s workflow is broken by deletion of files, configuration, different, unwanted behavior etc. And at best workarounds are needed to get an usable workflow again.

I think it should help to distrust the KDE Developers and only carefully push (new) versions. They publish unreliable software, so they have to face the consequences.

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Linux has always been YMMV and may I remind everyone that there is no way that a free rolling-release model OS distributed by a small team of enthusiasts is going to work with every hardware and software combination. I’ve had zero issues with the latest Stable release using KDE Wayland on a 2013 Intel-only laptop.

And no, I don’t consider myself to be lucky. I use the Breeze theme and a very vanilla hardware and software setup. Zero reinstalls over the years and very few minor issues that I haven’t been able to resolve through the forums or Google / Arch wiki. I maintain my configs when notified about .pacnew files during updates and read the release announcements for issues. And no, I am not by any means an IT professional.

It’s very upsetting and an emotional time when one’s computer or workflow breaks, but I think it’s troubling and not constructive for the community for a vocal minority (including a forum moderator) to assume they are speaking for the entire community when they are writing how terrible Plasma 5.25 is and that it shouldn’t have been pushed to Stable. The latest Plasma has always been pushed to Stable after a couple of point releases and time and tweaking in Testing. It makes no sense for this time to be any different.

I’m looking forward to Plasma 5.26 in the coming weeks and all the changes it will bring. Thank you for your time and respect.

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I am not speaking for the entire community, and whether I’m a moderator or not is irrelevant. I am however speaking for a large number of Plasma users — most notably the ones who do not use Plasma in its purest vanilla default configuration. Besides, it also causes trouble on the mobile platform.

It was pushed to Stable because a small but very vocal minority — most notably newbies — was throwing a hissy fit over the fact that Stable was remaining on 5.24.6.

However 5.24 is a long-term-support release, which means that it continues receiving updates from upstream — and will even continue being supported when Plasma 6 comes out — whereas 5.25.5 is end-of-the-road for the 5.25 branch before 5.26 arrives, and even the KDE developers themselves are admitting that 5.25 wasn’t exactly their best release.

Manjaro does still continue supporting LTS kernels as well, so having an LTS Plasma makes perfect sense, and then those who wanted 5.25 could have chosen to switch to Testing or use the -git packages.

Rolling-release does not equal bleeding-edge.

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A vocal minority can also serve as a canary in a coal mine. If the (unrealistic) ideal is 100% of users who upgrade face no issues at all, then there is something to note when a rough gauge shows it’s only true for about 80-90%. This is further compounded when there’s a common variable: notably KDE, and more specifically a particular version of KDE. These are showstopper issues and serious breaks in workflow. (I’m certain that if the poll was separated into the different DEs, you’d see the KDE users even lower than 83% of “no issues”. Might even be 80% or as low as 70%.

So I made a conscious decision to hold off on KDE 5.25.5 for my primary computer because of the reports of a “minority of users”.

These users are usually correct, and the longstanding upstream KDE bug reports further make the point. (The developers are in too deep and likely lack enough manpower. There’s a recurring theme of “We fixed something, which breaks something else, and now we’ll try to fix the new bug with…”)


There are also the “quiet” or “I don’t care” users, who simply change their workflow to accommodate poor designs or bugs. In their eyes, there are no issues with KDE.

“Meh. I don’t care if it keeps opening up new tabs when I create a new compressed archive.”

“I don’t usually keep Dolphin open that long.”

“Who even needs thousands of photos in the same folder? I’ll just put them into a bunch of subfolders.”

“Meh, my external SSD is fast enough to keep recreating thumbnails, I don’t care if they’re never cached.”

“Whatever, it’s just a silly error message in the tray, but apparently nothing got corrupted. Doesn’t bother me.”

“Sure it looks like Plasma froze during a move operation from a network SMB share, but as long as I wait long enough, the files should still move to the new folder and I won’t lose anything. Just have to wait for it to unfreeze. It rarely happens anyways.”

“Yeah it’s kind of annoying that dragging my windows away from the side of the screen resizes it to be incredibly small and almost unusable, but I can always just make the window look normal again.”

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guys, sorry for rookie question but can anyone explain the consequences of downgrading to an older kde plasma version, or should i say consequences of being in an unsupported partial upgrade state

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Good question, actually…

Back up everything first and foremost, and cross everything just in case…?

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Potential breakage when installing additional packages that were compiled for Plasma 5.25.5.

Emphasis on “potential”, because it’s like Russian roulette. For now it’ll still work, but there’s no telling whether (or when) it could break. :man_shrugging:

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I am not. So what now?

In other words: We are too dumb to get into trouble :wink:

Joke aside, I thought accommodating to the quirks a rolling release system might bring is one of the key requirements of using Manjaro?

I am deeply confused, especially because it seems that

have the biggest problems.

So the ones tinkering with their systems beyond the standard configurations are the ones who should enjoy preferred treatment and the ones who walk on the default path should go out of the way?

An interesting and at the same time disturbing point of view. Really needs clarification from the developers.

We are not doing any such thing.

Ever since the beginning, the KDE desktop environments — now called Plasma, as of version 4.x — have always allowed for flexibility and customization, and this flexibility has only increased as the desktop environments evolved from one generation into the next.

Granted, some of the themes you’ll find at store.kde.org are outdated — some of them going back to Plasma 4, even — and are no longer being maintained. As such, these themes will no longer be compatible with the current iterations of the desktop. But the rest of them still are, and the takeaway here is that these themes are as such fully compliant with the flexibility in configuration as provided by the software and as intended by the developers.

Quite often, it’s the global themes that cause problems in plasma 5, and specially if they were conceived for Plasma versions before 5.12. But that is not the case for myself, because my global theme is set to Breath, which is the Manjaro-specific variant of the default Breeze theme. I do use a different Plasma theme (i.e. the theme for the panels and widgets) and I am also using a kvantum theme (i.e. the theme for qt-based applications) with a matching window decoration.

Oh, and a different icon set, and cursors that used to come as a default set in the repos but are now in the AUR. Other than that, I am using my own layout for the panels and a custom wallpaper.

The bottom line is that there’s nothing really exotic going on here. The widgets I use are all from the standard offer as supplied by KDE, with three exceptions: Window Title, Window Buttons and Win7 Mixer.

I have 12 virtual desktops — Plasma supports up to 24 — and 2 activities. I have 6 “hot spots” of the 8 that one can define…:

  • Top left: Application Dashboard
  • Middle Left: Activity Switcher
  • Bottom Left: Show Desktop
  • Top Right: Desktop Grid
  • Middle Right: Desktop Overview
  • Bottom Right: Present Windows (current desktop)

As I have already stated elsewhere, telling people that they should stick to the vanilla settings as it comes out-of-the-box is beyond silly. If one were not to use the flexibility of the Plasma desktop, then why is that flexibility even provided?

You also don’t tell a McLaren, Lamborghini or Ferrari owner that they are to use their supercar only for a single trip around the block at a maximum speed of 30 km/h, just as you also don’t buy an Unimog for driving around in the city.

You know what I call tinkering? Running Windows applications on GNU/Linux. Yes, you can do it — to a certain extent — by way of wine, but wine is a translation framework for running Windows binaries on a UNIX system, and as such, those Windows binaries are not native to the underlying GNU/Linux system, and the translation isn’t perfect, simply because it cannot be, given how very different MS-Windows is from UNIX. But, we here at the forum offer support for it nevertheless.

And then there are the gamers. People running games that were originally designed for Windows but have been ported — more or less — to GNU/Linux via a gaming engine that itself also stems from the Windows world. And we offer support to those people as well, even though that’s not what GNU/Linux was designed for.

Why should the — pardon my choice of words — ignorant newbies who don’t understand versioning numbers or the principle behind LTS releases get preferential treatment over the people who actually know the software and have been using it for well over 20 years?

Either way, even said newbies were not left at a disadvantage, because there was a way for them to run 5.25.5 on their systems while the rest of us could continue running the perfectly functional 5.24.6 LTS release. But now there is no way for the rest of us to continue running 5.24.6 without exposing ourselves to potential breakage as a result of choosing a partial-upgrade scenario.

We, the seasoned users, are the victims of the selfishness of the vocal newbies who demanded — yes, demanded — that Manjaro Stable would adopt the badly coded 5.25.5. And the Manjaro developer who made the call to push 5.25.5 into Stable is himself not even a Plasma user — he uses XFCE.

Once again I will apologize for the tone of my post, but if I first have to read that being a moderator somehow exempts me from having an opinion and I then have to read that I am supposedly clamoring preferential treatment, then I am experiencing a slight elevation in blood pressure.

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I thought a lot about this.

What is the use you get a highly customizable D.E., like Plasma, but when you try to customize it, it breaks? Kind of defeats the purpose, I’d say…

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And the Manjaro developer who made the call to push 5.25.5 into Stable is himself not even a Plasma user — he uses XFCE.

Well that’s a pity. I thought the Manjaro dev team would be more professional and at least ask two KDE users in the dev team if the push is a smart move.

Which makes me wonder how many Manjaro devs use KDE…

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Well, a few do, but most of them are focusing on the ARM platform.

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I’m afraid KDE devs are GNOME-ifing their projects, by “accidentally” introducing bugs which hinder customization. Which fend off the users who prefer to customize their desktop environment.
Which means there is room for an alternative which emphasizes on the freedom of customization.

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I completely disagree.

Having used both, there is only 1 similarity: the fact that they both are GUIs.

Plasma is a lot more polished and offers a lot more customization than Gnome. To get a semi-aceptable layout with semi-acceptable functionality (for me) in Gnome, I had to install many extensions. In Plasma, the both layout and functionality is :100: for me. And I don’t have any extensions installed. The only thing I have that’s not standard Plasma, is GLX Dock. And that’s only because I’m too lazy to bother with learning, or figuring out Plank/Latte dock.

Also, as @Aragorn has pointed out, even the KDE developers admit this wasn’t their best work. So they actually admit to mistakes, which is a very rare occurrence these days, so there’s nothing “accidental”. It was a true accident, a.k.a. a mistake.

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:pinching_hand:

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The amount of people having Plasma-specific problems continues to increase. These two are just from this morning. :arrow_down:

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And another one just now… :arrow_down:

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