A week ago, the sources to KDE Frameworks 5.1.0 were released and together with Willy Sudiarto Raharjo we did some private beta testing of the packages I created from those sources.
A couple of hours ago I received word that the sources for KDE Plasma 5.0.1 were tagged, but unfortunately some of the tarballs were not generated properly so I have to wait until after the weekend so the release team can fix them.
It is my intention to release a set of packages for Frameworks 5.1.0 and Plasma 5.0.1 when the Plasma sources are publicly announced. Please note that this is still very much an early-adopter experience. Do not expect to find a 100% functional desktop after installing the packages. The Frameworks 5 and Plasma 5 packages should be installed on top of a KDE 4.13.3 installation on Slackware-current (no KDE 4 packages will be replaced) and I have taken great care to keep KDE 4 and KDE 5 separate, down to to the level of configuration files.
This means that you should be able to try out SDDM (the replacement of the KDM graphical session manager) and the new Plasma-shell and KWin and get a hang of what is all to come next year. If you’re done play-testing or want to get rid of it, it will be as easy as removeing the KDE 5 packages and you’ll be back in your KDE 4 desktop.
You don’t have to remove the KDE 5 packages in order to get logged into your familiar KDE 4 desktop by the way – just choose the appropriate Desktop Environment. As I said, the two environments don’t bite.
One thing you will notice, is how fast the new desktop is. The Plasma Desktop in KDE 5 uses an all-new, fully hardware-accelerated graphics stack on top of Qt5 and the Frameworks5 libraries, and the effect is amazing. Resource usage is still high but the reason for that is known: it is caused by a design issue in KWin and that is currently being worked on.
KDE 5 has been my default desktop for the past week (using Plasma 5.0.0 package), and I hope that the update to Plasma 5.0.1 will fix a couple of pesky bugs.
Wait for my packages, they should be available before the next weekend – I hope.
Eric
That’s a great news, Eric! I’m anxious to put my hands on KDE Frameworks and Plasma 5, but waiting patiently to get the quality of your work put into these new and exciting packages.
Let me know if you need some beta testers for this. I’m going to be more than glad to help you and KDE team out.
As always, Martin’s blog post is one good hint about next KWin update: http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2014/07/a-kdecoration2-update/
The memory consumption dropped from 200 MB to 40 MB, which is a great improvements, but it will be part of future updates.
@Willy, I was reading this article right now! I never paid to much attention to KWin resource usage. I’m not the ‘bit brush up’ kind of user that squeeze every possible byte out of memory (or get track of it).
Anyway, by reading this, it get me curious enough to find out how much memory my 4.13.3 KWin is using at this very moment, when I have my typical usage scenario in place:
RES: 77608
SHR: 33848
200MB is about 259% higher in resources than the actual 4.13.3 KWin. But 40MB is 51,9% of it! This is, by all means, impressive.
I’m aware that we’re not going to see a release of this huge improvement anytime soon, but it’s definitively worth waiting to get this 200MB now and, “out of the blue”, get this huge drop.
Well, I’m in… Breeze is so beautiful! 😉
Wow Eric, that’s a fantastic news!
Now we’re all waiting for you packages…
Wow. Cannot wait to get those packages. Thank you again for all you do, Eric!
I, as well, would love to be a beta tester if ever needed. :^)
The packages I will release next week are essentially beta packages.
The KDE.SlackBuild script for KDE 5 has not fully matured yet (but that does not affect the compiled packages, only makes it a bit harder for you guys to recompile them). The Plasma 5 packages are in fact only a sub-set of a full KDE system, so when you are running the Plasma 5 desktop you will find things are missing, and other things are provided by the old KDE 4.13 packages. Over time, I will add more KDE packages based on Frameworks 5 instead of (like they are now) kdelibs 4.
@alienbob thx for info. Do you know if kmail from KDE Frameworks 5.1.0 and Plasma 5.0.1 will be backward compatible with kde-4.13 or there will be migration process
similar to migration from kde3 to kde4?
@Jarek: If i’m not mistaken, KMail is included in the Applications, not in Framework nor Plasma.
So they are focusing on the framework and plasma first because they migrated to Qt5 and QML and make sure the base is solid first and they will start porting the applications soon afterwards.
@Willy Sudiarto Raharjo thx for comment
so we should wait a bit longer for aplication migrations.
Right ON! Eric! Happy Hacking and St Isidore continue to bless you with good work for decades to come.
Hello,
great news, Eric. It’s nice to know that you are already working on a SlackBuild.
So far, I’ve only used the neon ISO to play around with it. I noticed the clock/calendar does not show holidays etc. anymore. Will this be added in a future release? I found this to be a really nice feature of KDE.
lems
Hi lems
I only create the packages. Functionality is something which is determined by the KDE developers. The new Plasma features are not all working (stable) yet, I expect that the functionality will expand and stability will increase.
The packages are all done and ready, and Willy has been doing some private beta testing the past few days and uncovered a few issues in the SlackBuild which I have (or will soon) fixed. The Plasma announcement on kde.org should be today or tomorrow and if all the packaging bugs Willy reported have been fixed I will upload then ASAP after the announcement.
Hi,
thanks for the quick reply, Eric. Yes, you’re right, I should probably kontact (sic 🙂 the KDE developers about the calendar.
I’m looking forward to the packages. Thanks, Eric and Willy, for working on this!
lems
@lems
See this for more information about clock and calendar: https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Clock
They are online!!!
‘This is a first preview for Slackware, of the KDE Frameworks 5.1.0 combined with Plasma 5.0.1.’
YAY! 😀
Happy upgrades!
Hi Willy,
thanks for the link! I’ll check it out.
lems
Eric,
After the KDE5/Plasma4 upgrade, some of the default Akonadi agents do not start anymore. They are:
– AkoNotes
– Maildir
– KAlarm Calendar File
Some of them have multiple entries on Akona Console.
Within Akonadi Console, enabling debug and trying ‘Restart Agent’ and ‘Toggle Online/Offline’ actions doesn’t produce any output at all. They seems as dead.
Let me know if I can provide any more useful information.
I am going to write a new blog post, and THERE I will answer questions. Please a bit of patience.
Eric,
Sure! I’m all patience with you. I was just saying, as a bug report in case you and Willy have missed something. Sorry if I sound inpatient.
I’ll keep my mouth shut up to your new blog post. 😡
Thank you!