Hello s. I’m newbie in KDE. Had been using version 5 for a year previously and recently installed EndeavourOS with Plasma 6 (using Wayland). It has become much better (HDR support, normal fractional scaling, also want to mention a convenient clipboard manager, settings indexation in Krunner, smooth and appealing window minimizing/maximizing animations and a Russian keyboard with Ukrainian and Belarusian letters, which allows me to have a fewer number of keyboard layouts at the same time and more easily switch between them). I can say KDE’s feature-rich, minimalistic (simplistic) and intuitive at the same time.
I have some problems, though some of them are not related to KDE, like:
- In hybrid mode after typing the password everything gets frozen, including pointer (for example, after closing and opening lid or just starting a new session). My workaround so far is using integrated graphics mode. AFAIU it’s related to incompatibility with Nvidia. Same problem remains with any distro I tried (e.g. Ubuntu) and with different laptops (primarily, Lenovo).
- Sound is much worse than in Windows as it’s from garage. Also it’s very quiet (12% in Windows is 35% here, 18% there is 50% here).
- I have notifications (with sound) set in browser and they not always come with sound. Sometimes it’s very cut-off, I only hear a little noise or just the last milliseconds of the notification or nothing at all. But sometimes they are ok with no changes beforehand. Using Pipewire as by default. It feels like sometimes it’s not enough time to start playing the notification sound (like there is a delay) and that’s why it’s sometimes either only the last part of it or nothing at all.
Feature request:
- Add an option to disable animations of “Thumbnail Grid” Task Switcher (and others) in the Task Switcher settings. Because when I alt+tab to not previous but some older task which I don’t remember where it is now in the grid, I need to see its thumbnail (or icon), but since there is an animation (grid enlarging), I need to wait until grid is fully seen and only then see where the app I want to switch to is. Yes, it’s just some milliseconds of time, but it’s not convenient to use it like this, task switcher is supposed to be fast so you can switch tasks instantly. Second reason why I need this option is because when I choose the task I want to switch to using its thumbnail and want to use it right away I still need to wait for the animation (grid decreasing) to end, but I don’t need this animation, I already chose the task and want to see it right away.
- Not very important. Add “Icons” Task Switcher. There is “Large Icons” one, but I want icons to be smaller, more space between and no text (task name) under them. Something similar to Ubuntu’s task switcher.
Small features request:
- Make Icons-only task manager be in the middle of the panel by default (but leave application launcher on the left).
- Disable “Shake cursor” by default. Feels odd.
- Make switching keyboard layouts with super + spaceby default (like in MW). Now it’s 3 keys, which is inconvenient for new users.
- Spectacle: “last-used capture mode” and “quit after manual save or copy” on by default. So that screenshoting becomes easy. Shift+super+s → choose area → copy → done (no need to close anything).
- Floating panel off by default. Don’t see any point why it’s better than regular. Design-wise it’s odd too.
- When calling the application launcher remove its icon highlighting (but sadly it breaks UI consistency).
- Overall, design is a little off (mostly gaps and rounding). Somewhere gaps are too little, somewhere too big (like, in calendar).
- The default application launcher is a little bloated. Doubt too many people use “Places”. Categories are a little off too. What’s really needed: all apps, search, favorites and power actions (shut down, hibernate, etc.). You can remove the left column (with categories and everything else), move hidden power actions to the freed up space in the bottom panel (where were Applications and Places tabs) and move Favorites and All Applications tabs to the new top panel. User icon is a little off too.
- Add a new “application” launcher with just power/log (shut down, hibernation, logout, etc.) options in a vertical list (because search is already available with Krunner and favorite apps can be pinned in the bottom panel).
- Remove window previews when hovering over tasks in the bottom panel by default. It’s redundant.
Bugs:
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Sometimes when I choose a clipboard entry to use and press ctrl+V in Kate it won’t be pasted, but in Firefox and other places will. And If, say, I paste it in Firefox address bar and copy it from there then it will be pasted in Kate. So, Kate somehow doesn’t always work good with the clipboard manager.
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It’s probably not really a bug but rather not polished behavior. So, if Bluetooth service is not started and I turn on the Bluetooth toggle in settings, the toggle will turn off by itself. If Bluetooth service is started then the toggle works fine. So there are only the following states of toggle+bluetooth system:
- Bluetooth service off, toogle doesn’t work
- Bluetooth service on, toggle works. But then what’s the purpose of this toggle if it doesn’t really do anything in background, it’s just a UI?
The ideal behavior is: I switch the toggle - Bluetooth service is alsao toggled (either started or stopped). So bluetooth UI toggle and bluetooth service correspond to each other. If switching the toggle requires typing a password in a special window, then it’s ok. It’s anyway better than typing it after having started bluetooth service via systemctl in terminal, because in this case this UI is redundant (it should not be able to switch if it doesn’t switch the bluetooth service state).
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Some notifications don’t have a timer. So they are there until you close them manually.
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In GTK apps, e.g. Bottles, the pointer becomes big and pixelated (like, 200% or 400%).