Couple Questions for Plasma 6 beta testers

brent

I'm excited as *&%$ at this stage of Solus' growth. And while nothing will rip me away from Budgie, I am making a partition on another HDD when the Plasma 6 becomes official.

I have to assume 99% of you are coming from X11 and that's what my questions are basically about.

1) Compared to X11 what are Wayland's strengths, as you see it? Or do you notice no differences?

2) What are Wayland's limitations, if any, that you've noticed compared from where you came from?

3) Biggest love about it right now? Biggest gripe?

I'm genuinely curious about Wayland. Thanks for any insights.
edit/punct.

Harvey

brent 1) Compared to X11 what are Wayland's strengths, as you see it? Or do you notice no differences?

It feels snappier and I haven't noticed any Wayland specific issues. Also helps that Wayland is being actively developed while X11 is on life support and has trouble even filling their board.
https://www.phoronix.com/news/X.Org-Board-More-People-2023
https://www.phoronix.com/news/X.Org-Board-2024-Needs-More

brent 2) What are Wayland's limitations, if any, that you've noticed compared from where you came from?

I haven't noticed any.

brent 3) Biggest love about it right now? Biggest gripe?

Wayland

😍 It works well for me. I don't really have any issues.

👿 For nvidia users it is still a bit of shit show. But that is getting better and its nvidias fault they have sucked under Wayland for years. They dragged their feet for a decade and tried to go with EGLStreams instead of GBM which is what AMD and Intel were supporting. Now nvidia is supporting GBM, what a waste of time...

Plasma 6

😍 For my usage Plasma 5 was always miles ahead of Gnome / Budgie / Mate / XFCE and Plasma 6 is no different. Using other DE's either feels like being handcuffed or fighting the DE to make it work the way I want it.

For me Plasma 6 doesn't really offer me anything new that I care about over Plasma 5. I don't think there is anything they could add to make me care, DE updates are boring and so they should be. I want it to function the way I want, be snappy and stable and that has been my experience.

👿 Dumb default changes. Hey lets have a floating panel by default... Why? Explain to me what benefit that gives to anyone?

🦗 🦗 🦗 🦗

Yeah thought so. Just more change for the sake of change where they add blank space so it takes up more room while offering literally no benefit. Ooo so modern! I hate these stupid UI design decisions that happen in every project these days.

😍 Plasma being Plasma of course there is an option to turn that stupid shit off.

👿 The fact that their breeze-dark theme by definition is not dark, its light grey ffs.
😍 You can just add a new colour pallet to it so its actually dark.

BuzzPCSOS

X11 on my laptop gave a faster entry to the desktop at initial bootup.
There were some graphics niggles due to issues with intel HD graphics driver. This was easy to patch on x11 but I could not find out how to do this on Wayland. Recent software updates have fixed this issue so patching is no longer required.
My Plasma install is fairly stock so no great challenge for Wayland. Everything I use seems to work fine with Wayland.

brent

wow, these POV's are diverse.
Interesting.
@Harvey Josh said Wayland was coming to Budgie someday, is this still the case? Also thanks for the great reply. Everything has its quirks, it was just an iteration of P5.

Scooter Every word you said I just replaced with xfce-beta in my head and it stll read the same🙂. Minor instability and paper cuts. It's pleasant but sometimes I get tripped up pretty good.

BuzzPCSOS weird about your intel driver. mine is nvidia graphics but I'm happy with nouveau."no great challenge" is good.

It's too much DE for me personally, but I am really curious about Wayland, which is evidently the future. I will wait the the Solus release.

Scooter

I have tried various Plasma 6/Wayland distros on rather unremarkable hardware, i5 6600/GTX 950, with and without the Nvidia proprietary driver. KaOS, Garuda, Neon, and maybe 1-2 others. In every instance I realized that KDE needs to focus on stability and paper cuts.

And I’m a fan of KDE, for 20 years.

Which is why I’m back to Solus Budgie. If I want to try Wayland, Gnome 45+ works far, far better than Plasma at this point.

Harvey

brent Josh said Wayland was coming to Budgie someday, is this still the case?

Yes. But adding Wayland support is not a simple task, it will take some time.
https://buddiesofbudgie.org/blog/wayland
https://buddiesofbudgie.org/blog/state-of-the-budgie-2023

brent wow, these POV's are diverse.

Opinions tend to be diverse. Ultimately other peoples opinions are worthless. It all boils down to what works for you. If you are really happy with Budgie and don't hate that your stuck on X11 for now or that it doesn't have proper multi-monitor support or have other niggling issues, I don't see the point in trying Plasma.

I only have other editions in a VM for testing purposes because I contribute to Solus and it helps with troubleshooting. If I was not contributing I wouldn't care about other DE's at all because what I use fits my needs perfectly.

I also forgot to point out that running a OS off a HDD will always be a poor experience, SSD or don't bother IMO.

brent

Harvey I also forgot to point out that running a OS off a HDD will always be a poor experience, SSD or don't bother IMO.

a whole other can of worms. I'm inclined to agree with you on my needs--P6 was never going to be a daily driver. But I am a tinkerer and Solus is marketing it to the tinkerers🙂

WetGeek

Harvey I only have other editions in a VM for testing purposes because I contribute to Solus and it helps with troubleshooting. If I was not contributing I wouldn't care about other DE's at all because what I use fits my needs perfectly.

It's incredible how much our opinions align. I also contribute to Solus, and maintain a fleet of Solus VMs in order to help others in the forum when I can. Solus Plasma has fit my needs perfectly ever since I realized that Budgie arbitrarily limited me to just 8 virtual desktops, whereas my workflow required several more. The better fractional scaling doesn't hurt a bit, either.

When I install a new Plasma system, it takes me 3 or 4 minutes with the System Settings to arrange the DE to my needs, otherwise, I use it very nearly as it installs. I don't understand the "too many options" comments, either.

Axios

I look for stability and usability at this point in time each update seems to be better and better
after initial issues I had with budgie.
But at this point in time I use Solus for basic computing web,office,storage,Playing music stuff like that and
have had no problems lately at all. (Complicated stuff video editing recording still setup with winders)
I am sure plasma will head in that direction to along with XFCE just takes time.
As I said before with the help of our great Solus community that we have seem to have built Bugs will be squashed
and great new surprises await.
If it works Use it..

Note: I dunno just a little partial myself to the Solus community. (And I like reading peoples opinion on stuff)
I dont step the middle of the fray anymore kinda like I did using mate for so long while budgie was getting
ironed out it worked for me and I used it.
Oh I think navidia is the biggest bug in the house right now from an outsiders view

brent

Axios But at this point in time I use Solus for basic computing web,office,storage,Playing music stuff like that and
have had no problems lately at all. (Complicated stuff video editing recording still setup with winders)
I am sure plasma will head in that direction to along with XFCE just takes time.

all of this ^^^. if it ain't broke?

Axios Note: I dunno just a little partial myself to the Solus community. (And I like reading peoples opinion on stuff)
I dont step the middle of the fray anymore kinda like I did using mate for so long while budgie was getting
ironed out it worked for me and I used it.

when budgie became unusable we both ran to Mate. Me for one week! you had some adapting to do ha ha! I'm glad you made it back to budgie it was worth the wait. stability is the key. Maybe I should just wait for Budgie Wayland?

Axios

brent Dont get me wrong I luv checking out software just problem got so many things going
on right now for last few years that I just want stuff to work. (I take that with grain of salt with software and
really at this point with Solus I really dont worry about it anymore)
I think when your older you get slower or things get faster...lol
Would say if ya dont need wayland wait before you commit

Personally I Think maybe plasma 6 is more my liking from what little I have seen of it.

brent

Axios pretty much all of that. I am not going backwards in time despite my best efforts and Solus is cranking out the good stuff I feel like a kid in the candy store.

thanks for reminding me though. Budgie, day in and day out, is very productive and very pain-free and I still love it.
As far as Plasma6, at least to a newcomer, is be careful what you wish for. I have it pretty good where I am at.

it's just, like you, I came out of the womb with a screwdriver and socket set and a curiosity like a cat...

BuzzPCSOS

My first taste of Solus was Plasma after reading a review on Ghacks, when I committed to Linux I ran Solus Budgie for a few years because I liked the balance between performance and (stock) features.
Over time I created a note of things that I had changed to make it more to my liking, I noticed that my notes were slowly turning into a book.
Solus Plasma got installed on my test machine and I quickly realised that most of my Budgie modifications were not needed anymore. The control panel puts all of the basic adjustments that need doing in one place. USB devices get handled in a more friendly way. I found much of the (stock) operating system was more intuitive, especially as a previously long term Windows user.
With Win10 approaching the end of support, Solus Plasma is the OS that I suggest for friends and family who want to keep their existing PC.