Q4OS Forum

Clint Burtwood

Member

Registered: 2020-02-16

Posts: 23

KDE Plasma LTS not stable

Any thoughts?

This, coming from main KDE developer Nate Graham https://pointieststick.com/2021/08/06/t … ment-23179

Clearly, the latest and greatest KDE Plasma is the way to go, developers have abandoned the LTS and it appears it's actually very far from "stable". The amount of bugs squashed and improvements to KDE Plasma every week is absolutely staggering, you can't even compare LTS to the latest release anymore. Yes, they are THAT far apart.

Let's wrestle about this! GO.

Rosul

Member

Registered: 2021-06-16

Posts: 6

Re: KDE Plasma LTS not stable

KDE was not and probably never will be a stable environment. Choose only for convenience and functionality
Maybe the latest versions of Plasma are the best, but rolling is not a good choice
Although for the recent Steam Deck Valve chose KDE (and Arch)

Last edited by Rosul (2021-08-15 14:32)

tlmiller76

Member

From: AZ, USA

Registered: 2016-11-29

Posts: 455

Re: KDE Plasma LTS not stable

Any thoughts?

This, coming from main KDE developer Nate Graham https://pointieststick.com/2021/08/06/t … ment-23179

Clearly, the latest and greatest KDE Plasma is the way to go, developers have abandoned the LTS and it appears it's actually very far from "stable". The amount of bugs squashed and improvements to KDE Plasma every week is absolutely staggering, you can't even compare LTS to the latest release anymore. Yes, they are THAT far apart.

Let's wrestle about this! GO.

Ummmm...duh?

That's the point of LTS, feature freeze so that there's not constant changes.  As far as it being unstable, I can imagine, since there's only a single distribution that I'm aware of that uses LTS Plasma.  Kubuntu LTS.  Debian 11 is on 5.20.5 and will backport their own security patches (I'd much rather see them just keep up with Plasma, to be honest).  Neon obviously is always the latest.  Anything based on Arch is the latest.  Feren is...somewhere in between LTS and the newest, currently on 5.21.x (even though apparently they do use Neon packages for their Plasma).  There might be some of the smaller distro's that use it, but none that I'm aware of.  Generally, LTS gets well tested because of so many people using it, but it seems to me with most people that I've read about if htey're using Plasma on Ubuntu, they're probably using Neon > Kubuntu.  So yeah, it's kinda pointless to even HAVE a LTS version of Plasma (IMO) as things set.

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Q4OS Trinity machine - Crelander E160.  Intel Celeron N5105, 16GB LPDDR4, 512GB m.2 SATA SSD, Intel UHD graphics, Intel 7265 Wifi 5 + BT 4.x, 16" 3072x1920 LCD.

Tolkem

Member

Registered: 2019-10-06

Posts: 487

Re: KDE Plasma LTS not stable

I'm using Norbert Preining's repo and have KDE Plasma 5.21.4 in Q4OS Gemini. https://www.preining.info/blog/tag/kde/ Plasma 5.22 is currently available too, but haven't been able to upgrade to that one as it always tries to remove kde-plasma-desktop which of course is not desirable, and actually I tried once, then wanted to re-install kde-plasma-desktop, but that didn't work, so I just "timeshifted" my way back to 5.21.4. I have to say that there are some new and useful features in newer Plasma versions, though most development seems to be focused on aesthetics. I also have KDE Neon Testing(on Wayland) and Arch with KDE installed in the same machine. Plasma 5.23 does look promising.

Last edited by Tolkem (2021-08-15 20:33)

Clint Burtwood

Member

Registered: 2020-02-16

Posts: 23

Re: KDE Plasma LTS not stable

Plasma 5.23 does look promising.

It does indeed. In my little imaginary happy place there would be a Q4OS with the latest KDE Plasma.. Until that day arrives my only Q4OS laptop has Trinity on it. I am spoiled now. After first following Nate Grahams weekly blog posts and reading about all the work that's happening in KDE and Plasma in particular by a massive amount of contributors, I have tested KDE Neon and OpenSUSE until finally landing on Fedora KDE. I'm never ever going to use anything but the latest KDE Plasma, there's so much getting fixed and refined all the time. Most you wouldn't even realize while using Plasma but go read what Nate reports every Saturday and you'll be amazed when you find out what happened under the hood during the week. I might as well go all in superfanboy-mode and declare here: I have had not one single issue or crash while using the spanking new Plasma, not one single hitch. Oh wait that was a lie, in KDE Neon I did run into some issues..Their ubuntu base was to blame, but still, it happened on KDE Neon. So it had to go.

Tolkem

Member

Registered: 2019-10-06

Posts: 487

Re: KDE Plasma LTS not stable

Plasma 5.23 does look promising.

I'm never ever going to use anything but the latest KDE Plasma, there's so much getting fixed and refined all the time. Most you wouldn't even realize while using Plasma but go read what Nate reports every Saturday and you'll be amazed when you find out what happened under the hood during the week. I might as well go all in superfanboy-mode and declare here: I have had not one single issue or crash while using the spanking new Plasma, not one single hitch. Oh wait that was a lie, in KDE Neon I did run into some issues..Their ubuntu base was to blame, but still, it happened on KDE Neon. So it had to go.

Yeah, I follow Nate's blog too, as well as planet KDE, and agree with you in that using latest Plasma can be very beneficial, however, IMHO most development now seems to be focused on aesthetics, and fix a few bugs here and there, and then those bugs are in KDE apps most people don't use, i.e. elisa, dragon player, kmail. For example, in Wayland plasmashell keeps crashing when connecting an external monitor, and so far there's no sign that it will be fixed in 5.23. Apart from a few things like the command HUD in all KDE apps, that you can access to in 5.21 by pressing Ctrl + Alt + i which brings a dialog popup box, where you can search and access various settings and actions, I don't see much difference, between 5.20, which is available in Bullseye/Gemini, and 5.21, regarding important features I mean, well at least for me, that is. Now, if we talk about the look and feel, that's a different story;  there are noticeable changes in all fronts.

tlmiller76

Member

From: AZ, USA

Registered: 2016-11-29

Posts: 455

Re: KDE Plasma LTS not stable

One good thing about Bullseye is that Norbert has said he will continue building current plasma for Bullseye even after it goes stable for as long as he can without having to build any QT packages.  So at least for a while, should still be able to use his packages to keep a fully up-to-date plasma on anything based on Bullseye.

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Q4OS Trinity machine - Crelander E160.  Intel Celeron N5105, 16GB LPDDR4, 512GB m.2 SATA SSD, Intel UHD graphics, Intel 7265 Wifi 5 + BT 4.x, 16" 3072x1920 LCD.