Not blaming KDE here, I can see the challenge.
Probably the solution is KDE OS! Let wait and see.
I have AMD 9900X, but with that amount of source Iām not sure, building Qt fully takes me 8mins, and thatās a small subset of KDE.
Do you know if the process works if I isolate the build to distrobox instance and login/run it from within it?
ccache is an option but thatāll be gigs of cache.
I definitely want to help, hence creating an account.
Do you know if such OS will be kept current with fundermental packages, e.g. Linux, Mesa, GCC ā¦ etc?
Having a reference current/rolling distro is something Iām willing to try, unlike neonās out of date base/Ubuntu.
You donāt need to build Qt, I just use my distroās qt, same for the dependencies that kde-builder doesnāt handle.
I have all of Plasma built (workspace component so including apps assigned to Plasma like Discover), plus Dolphin, Kate, Konsole, and a few others. Itās less than 100gb total, including ccache, all the binaries and build directories etc, plus a few months of old logs I could clean out sometime. This is an almost 10 year old Thinkpad, so compilation speed isnāt great, but with ccache itās ok, sometimes I just need to let it run for a bit (and the initial build is a bit annoying, that one took a while esp. for things like kwin).
I canāt speak to distrobox, I donāt have any experience with it. Thereās some instructions on the wiki though. Personally I donāt see a reason unless your distro packages are too old, but I might be missing something - Iām just not a container-minded person.
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Yes bro, thatās the point of basing it on Arch (amongst other reasons too) and it will be working the way SteamOS does (atomic image-based A/B updates with rollback functionality). You can read design details here: KDE Linux - KDE Community Wiki
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But not on the beta branch. Iām talking about the beta.
TouchƩ.
The issue with Plasma 6.3. is rather a sign that Plasma releasing independently from distro release schedules is not an optimal scenario! Again we come back to the discussion surrounding releasing 3x a year vs 2x a year and align with release targets of the major distros, specifically Fedora and Ubuntu like GNOME does. The underlying distro matters as much as the Plasma release, so KDE OS makes sense!
Take the example of Fedora, Plasma 6.1 Beta aligned perfectly with Fedora 40 Beta, while Plasma 6.2. Beta aligned perfectly with Fedora 41 Beta. This time Plasma 6.3. released ahead of the beta testing stage of Fedora 42, so a lot less users were compelled to beta test Plasma 6.3. because they were happily using the latest stable Fedora 41 as thereās no beta for Fedora 42 yet, and like me couldnāt be bothered to install KDE Neon or whatever just to test Plasma 6.3. But how many people actually installed Plasma 6.3. Beta on top of Fedora 41 stable? Almost no one!!
Many people like me try Fedora Beta as soon as itās out because itās usually already in great shape and allows to get our hands on the newer kernel and hardware support sooner. Having the beta periods of Fedora and KDE overlapping was actually one of the most beneficial factors to smooth Plasma releases without major issues in Fedora 40 and Fedora 41. And letās not forget KDE bugs are considered release blockers on Fedora! This bug with GCC compiler would very likely have been caught and fixed in a beta stage of Fedora! Itās no surprise to me that this time around the Plasma release was not as smooth.
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Thank you so much for bringing attention to this. I would love to see this feature tested and talked about, it did not even get considered for the 6.3 beta.
The bikeshed debate on the visual presentation of the option constitutes the bulk of the discussion on that page, but hey, at least theyāre considering allowing one measly row to honor a userās choice. Hopefully this feature will make 6.4 for everyone else, but iām kinda done pumping the bellows upstream.
As it were, Iāve had several discussions on the Matrix channels with the Kwin maintainers regarding this and other missing Overview features relative to the Desktop Grid that it replaced: They explicitly do not want the Overview effect to provide as many granular features and options to the user as the old Present Windows+Desktop Grid UX previously did, opting instead to try and assume the workflow of āmost usersā.
I disagree for several reasons and it makes me very concerned for how āpolishedā theyāre willing to make other effects I use, but at this point iām just working on a full Overview fork in my spare time. Not getting very far with it because of how much it links from other parts of Kwin that have to be included in the script, and itās not very fun to go back to. Fun to write the actual feature but not to port!
Youāre referring to the Overviewās Desktop Bar right, where it left-aligns when using several rows of virtual desktops and would normally top-align otherwise?
Thatās definitely a case that weād want feedback for, and I know it would also be useful as a manual choice on itās own (Desktop Bar left-aligned, top-aligned, etc).
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By the way, yes this is absolutely true, not just on Fedora. Itās feasible to do builds inside systemd-nspawn (or other) containers, and even run sessions from the container builds in real time by means of bind mounting the build directories.
Definitely worth the time setting up, one command and the whole project is refreshed and ready to test, with the host system un-touched.
You can do that today with Fedora Kinoite: Rebase to a version with the beta release, test, and when done, rollback.
We did not do a KDE Plasma Beta over stable Fedora build of Kinoite this time but we used to and I should start doing that again. It sounds lake it even less risky to test as you could daily drive it as only the KDE stack would be āunstableā.
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Indeed openSUSE doesnāt have a beta preview version, at least AFAIK.
Though now Iām curious: does KDE actually have release candidate / beta branches? How does Fedora and Arch get their RC/beta versions, are those just snapshots?
I didnāt expect the first bug I filed to be such a doozy, but glad the root cause was quickly discovered!
I did just get a SATA-pluggable bay for one of my boxes, and have spare SSDs to install on. Should be easier to test betas and add debugging on physical hardware attached to devices I use, but not be one I absolutely rely on for regular work.
Thank you for making me (and others I assume) aware of what the situation is, to be honest I had never expected that, nor imagined it! I havenāt followed the discussion at all, because I was maybe naive thinking āitās just a matter of timeā, but for surely everything sounds completely absurd now! What is the problem of presenting the virtual desktops in an order way saner and less problematic (in my case having 6-8 useless, tiny Virtual Desktops with even tinier windows inside of them in a row! -even with 4 if you have some windows open you canāt recognize which is which-), especially when you have done everything so well and well-thought, covering all cases.
KDE is full of options and things and bells and whistles but the problem is the so much improved-now Grid View? Iām frankly speechless and extremely dissapointed tbh. Instead of being proud that some member picked this up and improved it, instead of embracing it, actively supporting it, cheering up for it and thanking for it, this was simply left to rot. I guess what matters with the new ādirectionā is not useful features but how the close button of notifications should look like instead, if the rounded corners should be 3px, 5px or 8px, or if the Breeze Theme should be 10% or 20% or 25% darker. Until I see that in 6.4, Iām out, disgusted by this new direction and contempt.
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This discussion was in the Kwin Matrix room for reference, iād voice feedback there 
My big thing was that the Overview was initially intended to fully replace the old Grid+Window effects, and at first it was missing many features just to ship the new effect. Some were ported back (like hiding minimized windows, but thereās such reluctance now to add options back in. Disappointing thorn of an issue where the rest of KDE Plasma really does shine.
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Or you could just boot normally, switch to another tty with alt + function keys, fix the issue (, logout of the broken session if you have autologin set up), move to the tty that shows your display manager and login.
Hi!
Iām using Tumbleweed and I would like to help with beta testing, but i also need my pc to resume working if something happen with the beta.
Is there some way to easily switch between stable and beta without restoring previuos snapshot?
Hi! Iām not familiar with specifics of Tumbleweed and beta software, but in general, the perfect state would be creating a dedicated OS installation on a separate hard drive, just for testing. That way, you get the safety of not installing anything over top of your existing system, and the testing accuracy of using your real, ābare metalā hardware.
If thatās not an option, a virtual machine can get you the relative safety, although it wonāt as accurately reflect performance with your hardware. Dual-booting on a single drive is also an option, although partitioning always freaks me out 
I would caution that, as far as I remember and understand it, the default configuration for snapshots in Tumbleweed covers system software, but not your own home directory files - so it seems like thereād be some risk in relying on a snapper rollback if you need to recover from a beta issue.
Does Fedora offers KDE beta branches? I could not find anything about it.
From the beta announcement page, click on āDownload live images with Plasmaā - in the āShips the latest KDE release including Beta and Release Candidateā section, Fedora Rawhide is listed there with a link to download ISOs.
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The only way I know is by using Krypton, which is 4 repositories. I named the four kdeu-something, where kdeu stands for kde-unstable, so I can force-upgrade to it with sudo zypper dup --from kdeu-apps --from kdeu-extra --from kdeu-kf6 --from kdeu-qt6 --force-resolution --replacefiles (possibly just a sudo zypper dup may suffice), and to revert back to Tumbleweed I can force-downgrade to it with sudo zypper dup --from oss --force-resolution --allow-vendor-change --allow-downgrade (as I renamed the default repoās alias to oss). I have an old but similar explanation in My current Plasma Wayland from git :: rabbiticTranslator.
I used Krypton for a whole year like so on my main machine, switching back between the two occasionally. The only trick is you absolutely need to clear your ~/.cache after updates on Krypton. It still doesnāt change the fact that Krypton is everything from KDE built directly from git master (and therefore possibly more dangerous than a beta), but itās definitely something you can do.
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