AUA: We are the Plasma dev team. Ask Us Anything about Plasma 6, gear 24.02, Frameworks 6 and everything else in the upcoming Megarelease.

How do you copy windows features before they are even announced?

You folks are awesome 👍👍

is this true

Hey folks!

With Wayland becoming the "Default" for most distributions now, will KDE begin to integrate some Wayland only features that you're excited about?

I've seem some very interesting experiments for swapping desktop sessions (GNOME to KDE to Sway whole CSGO was running) all without losing state, and storing application state to disk.

Hello David, Nate, Josh, Marco, Carl, and Niccolò. How are you all feeling today?

Hey there KDE team! What is your favorite feature that is coming along with Plasma 6 (or even with the KDE Gear / KDE Framework updates)?

What is one KDE feature developed within the last few years that you think is extremely productive/helpful yet is rarely utilized/talked about.

is there any plans for more mobile friendly applications?

the only problem that i have currently with plasma mobile is the lack of mobile friendly applications :)

KDE Connect is something I keep my eye on and check in every once in a while: Is there a dedicated page tracking updates specifically to KDE Connect? I’m really very much looking forward to a time where it is feature compete with Android compared to Apple’s continuity platform. I would absolutely love to move to Android+Linux as my daily drivers, but I feel like I’m giving up on too much by leaving the Apple ecosystem.

Does Connect use BTLE?
Could you guys implement an auto tethering option between phone/PC?
How instant are notifications synced? Do notifications disappear on one side or the other when viewed on one or the other platform?
Maybe implement a “link to KDE” notification toggle to mirror the “link to windows” functionality of Android?

In your opinion, what is the most substantial change/addition slated for the megarelease?

With HDR making its debut on Plasma, what are the plans moving forward?

From what I have seen getting games to work in HDR currently requires the correct vulkan layers and a recent gamescope version?

As a side question, will there be an easy way to get HDR working with the Steam flatpak for the Plasma 6 launch?

Thanks for all the great work on kde! I was wondering if the KDE theme refresh, (brise) and icon (app and plasma icon) proposals are going to happen in plasma 6.1? Or is that not on the table? Also, are there plans to have KDE connect support making your phone a webcam?

Edit: grammar

KDE is easy to use and very powerful.

In your opinion, why do many people prefer GNOME over KDE? Do you agree with them? How are you planning to close the gap?

What’s the best or recommended way to test out Plasma 6 RC2?

And

What has been the hardest problem to solve moving to Qt6?

Firstly love the window tiling system. Have you thought about something similar to magnet which allows a window to fill 2 '/columns of the grid simultaneously?

There's been an undercurrent of discussion I've noticed (and tend to agree) that C++ is not the most friendly language for new/outside contributors, even the newer standard you use. Is there an effort to bring first class support/documentation for another higher level language as well? e.g dart/ruby/lua/python/javascript/C#/go (whatever is most feasible)

Are there any big things that you couldn’t squeeze in time for the mega release, but can’t wait to have them implemented in Plasma 6.1 later this year?

If it isn't too late, What are your personal favourite features from Plasma 6?

Thanks for the AUA and all the work on KDE, especially with plasma 6.

It's not really a question, more of a request, but is it possible you all could make the kwrite/kate situation less complicated? I don't mind having options, but from what I understand, you can only have them both installed (or none), not one or the other. Also, if I want Kwrite to be the default editor, I have to go into every supported mime type (file association) and switch the default (instead of just once for all of them).

My preference would be that there's only one text editor (to cause less confusion; maybe just have a toggle button to switch between basic and advanced modes), and to make it easier to change file associations for common file types (like text files, video files, music, images, etc.); even if it's technically a different file format, e.g. .mp4 vs .mkv for videos, I should only have to set the default app once.

In regards to theming, there's one thing that sticks like a sore thumb, and it's the fact that most if not all themes for Qt currently use the Kvantum engine ( github.com/tsujan/Kvantum ), which sadly is not well integrated with KDE in things as basic as supporting Plasma's color schemes and dynamic icons. Do you have any plans to collaborate directly with Kvantum, or with any other particular theming team other than Breeze's?

What is the plan for rolling the mega release out to Neon users?

Are there plans for updating Neon once the 22.04 lts is released?

Thanks

I haven't used KDE in a long time because I've been keeping things simple and just accepting most defaults on Pop!_OS.

What would be the most compelling reason, in your opinion, to make the effort to try out KDE?

@Bro666 With the transition from QT5 to 6 and Plasma 5.27's implementation of wp-fractional-scale-v1, will most KDE apps now be able to fractionally scale without using the upscale-downscale method? (Or in other words, how QT apps fractionally scale under X11)

Thanks for the AUA! Really excited about the Mega Release and even more for the future after!

My question is regarding Nate's original proposal for the KDE goals "Professionalise KDE" if I remember well. Now, I know that the goal was changed and the scope reduced to "Automatization and Systematization" but I truly believe the original proposal's spirit could have a huge impact on the whole ecosystem.

For example I remember the proposal contained the plan to hire a person working "full time" on actively finding fundings and grants and applying to them. We got the Mega Release fundraiser but for example on the forum I found https://discuss.kde.org/t/formalities-for-stf-funding/9916 and it looks like a waste of potential to not apply for grants because no one has the time to do so.

Is there anyone at KDE, maybe among the Board, who is still trying to make the "Professionalise KDE" happen?

P.S. I know you guys just want to reach the biggest amount of people but maybe we could start having the AUAs/AMAs and similar, only on Lemmy and a post on Reddit saying that the event will be hosted on Lemmy. This would make the Lemmy community the official one and could convince people to make the switch for the "exclusive content". It's not a critic, just want to see Lemmy prosper.

I'm someone that uses sway because I really like to keep my workflow as keyboard driven as possible. However, I do not necessarily need the minimalism of sway and sometimes miss the more polished experience of a full DE. Are there ways to configure Plasma to give me a sway-like keyboard-driven flow while still getting some of the other benefits of Plasma?

We were expecting to be done in an hour and we have past the 2-hour mark already! Time flies when you are having fun.

Thank you for all the questions and the welcoming and friendly atmosphere, but the devs must get back to making Plasma 6 great.

Please keep the conversation going and KDE contributors will continue to answer over the next days as time permits.

Thank you all!!

Is there a plan to allow KDE Discover to update flatpaks automatically?

There are already comments in the thread created a few hours ago: https://lemmy.kde.social/post/750016

Why not stick that?