Are you over 18 and want to see adult content?
More Annotations
A complete backup of www.thebirdwrites.com/2020/2/25/21152432/new-orleans-pelicans-los-angeles-lakers-gamethread-zion-williamson
Are you over 18 and want to see adult content?
A complete backup of www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/51623065
Are you over 18 and want to see adult content?
Favourite Annotations
A complete backup of industriemeister.info
Are you over 18 and want to see adult content?
A complete backup of pracawkrakowie.com.pl
Are you over 18 and want to see adult content?
A complete backup of novumadviesgroep.nl
Are you over 18 and want to see adult content?
A complete backup of sycamoresprings.com
Are you over 18 and want to see adult content?
Text
window (me:
THIS WEEK IN KDE: ALL THE THINGS HIGHLIGHTS FROM 2020 Highlights from 2020. Nate This Week in KDE, World Domination December 31, 2020. December 31, 2020. 7 Minutes. 2020 was not an amazing year for most of us, but it sure was for KDE and people who use KDE software! Despite the inability to travel and meet for sprints, conferences, and Akademy in person, we kept busy.THIS WEEK IN KDE
This week I have another exciting new UI element to present: KCommandBar!You might have gotten the impression by my fawning over KHamburgerMenu that we care more about casual or novice users today not so! KCommandBar is an expert-focused UI element implementing a HUD-style popup that aggregates all of the actions in a KDE app’s full menu structure, so that you can quickly THIS WEEK IN KDE: ALL THE THINGS! THIS WEEK IN KDE: CONTINUOUS BUG MASSACRE PSA: TRY TURNING ON WEBRENDERER IN FIREFOX PSA: try turning on WebRenderer in Firefox. This is a new rendering backend for Firefox that’s not yet on by default. Presumably there are some edge cases where it makes things worse or causes some instability, but so far I have not experienced anything bad. On the contrary, without it, I and some other people get terrible flickeringin
FLATPAK SUPPORT IN DISCOVER People often ask about the state of Flatpak in Discover, so today I'm going to write about that. Thew good news is that Discover's Flatpak support is very good and getting better all the time. It's fully production ready and we encourage you to use it! To GUEST POST: IMPROVEMENTS TO THE LOCK, LOGIN, AND LOGOUT Wow, this really looks amazing. Talking about the Login Screen and all that, i always thought it would be fantastic and rare that being KDE software it is not yet available, to be much more configurable the SDDM screen (the clock that appears there, the date, etc), but in general, terrific improvements, i really feel like this is a huge step ahead, in terms of revamp, renewal, etc. ADVENTURES IN LINUX AND KDE Bugfixes & Performance Improvements. Adding a new radio station in Elisa now works again (Jerome Guidon, Elisa 21.04.2). Spectacle’s image annotator module is now correctly translated when using a non-English language (Alexander Volkov, Spectacle 21.08). Konsole now lets you set your default shell the one with fewer than 3 letters, such as sh (Adriaan de Groot, Konsole 21.08) NATE – ADVENTURES IN LINUX AND KDE The Notifications applet’s “Clear all notifications” action has been moved out of the hamburger menu to make it more accessible, and the applet’s “Configure” button now opens the System Settings Notifications page rather than a mostly empty applet configurationwindow (me:
THIS WEEK IN KDE: ALL THE THINGS HIGHLIGHTS FROM 2020 Highlights from 2020. Nate This Week in KDE, World Domination December 31, 2020. December 31, 2020. 7 Minutes. 2020 was not an amazing year for most of us, but it sure was for KDE and people who use KDE software! Despite the inability to travel and meet for sprints, conferences, and Akademy in person, we kept busy.THIS WEEK IN KDE
This week I have another exciting new UI element to present: KCommandBar!You might have gotten the impression by my fawning over KHamburgerMenu that we care more about casual or novice users today not so! KCommandBar is an expert-focused UI element implementing a HUD-style popup that aggregates all of the actions in a KDE app’s full menu structure, so that you can quickly THIS WEEK IN KDE: ALL THE THINGS! THIS WEEK IN KDE: CONTINUOUS BUG MASSACRE PSA: TRY TURNING ON WEBRENDERER IN FIREFOX PSA: try turning on WebRenderer in Firefox. This is a new rendering backend for Firefox that’s not yet on by default. Presumably there are some edge cases where it makes things worse or causes some instability, but so far I have not experienced anything bad. On the contrary, without it, I and some other people get terrible flickeringin
FLATPAK SUPPORT IN DISCOVER People often ask about the state of Flatpak in Discover, so today I'm going to write about that. Thew good news is that Discover's Flatpak support is very good and getting better all the time. It's fully production ready and we encourage you to use it! To GUEST POST: IMPROVEMENTS TO THE LOCK, LOGIN, AND LOGOUT Wow, this really looks amazing. Talking about the Login Screen and all that, i always thought it would be fantastic and rare that being KDE software it is not yet available, to be much more configurable the SDDM screen (the clock that appears there, the date, etc), but in general, terrific improvements, i really feel like this is a huge step ahead, in terms of revamp, renewal, etc. 2021 ROADMAP MID-YEAR UPDATE Production-ready Plasma Wayland session: ON TRACK. In part due to it being an official KDE goal, a truly enormous, herculean amount of work has gone into making the Plasma Wayland session usable, to the point where the Fedora KDE spin has decided to enable it by default in Fedora 34, which ships Plasma 5.21. This is quite a vote ofconfidence!
THIS WEEK IN KDE
This week I have another exciting new UI element to present: KCommandBar!You might have gotten the impression by my fawning over KHamburgerMenu that we care more about casual or novice users today not so! KCommandBar is an expert-focused UI element implementing a HUD-style popup that aggregates all of the actions in a KDE app’s full menu structure, so that you can quickly OUR STUFF IS REALLY PRETTY GOOD Our stuff is really pretty good. Nate The KDE Community, World Domination April 30, 2021 1 Minute. Today is my birthday, and I’ve reached the phase of life where I don’t need or want presents anymore–just a bit of time spent with some of the people who are 1 YEAR UPDATE ON THE THINKPAD X1 YOGA LAPTOP 1 year update on the ThinkPad X1 Yoga laptop. Nate Linux Hardware May 20, 2021 3 Minutes. Last year I replaced my old laptop with a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga, and I wrote a preliminary review of it. This laptop is my only computer, used for both work and play. I’ve had it for a year, gotten used to some of my initial annoyances, and discovered THIS WEEK IN KDE: UI IMPROVEMENTS ABOUND Plasma 5.22 is just around the corner, and we put the finishing touches on some UI improvements to it, as well as our apps! Check it out: New Features You can now limit the update interval of System Monitor graphs (Arjen Hiemstra, Plasma 5.22) Bugfixes & Performance Improvements Fixed an obscure way that Konsole could THIS WEEK IN KDE: ALL THE THINGS! This week we did a little bit of everything, and there should be things that make all kinds of people happy. So let's just jump right in! New Features Okular now lets you digitally sign documents! Note that this feature makes use of a digital signature, not a picture of LENOVO THINKPAD X1 YOGA: 6 MONTH IMPRESSIONS Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga: 6 month impressions. Nate Linux Hardware December 1, 2020 4 Minutes. I’ve now had my Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga laptop for about 6 months, so I thought I’d provide a quick update about how it’s going to use this laptop every day with openSUSE Tumbleweed running KDE Plasma. Let’s explore what’s changed sincethen:
THIS WEEK IN KDE: FIXING UP PLASMA 5.20 Nate This Week in KDE September 25, 2020. October 3, 2020. 4 Minutes. We spent a lot of this week polishing up Plasma 5.20 and fixing bugs you’ve all found in the release. Thanks very much too all the people who have been testing it and reporting bugs! It’s very helpful. As a reminder, you can find distros shipping the beta here: https THE STRUCTURE OF KDE, OR HOW ANARCHY SOMETIMES WORKS The structure of KDE, or how anarchy sometimes works. KDE is a funny beast. In a lot of ways, it’s an anarchic society that actually works! Engineers and designers work on KDE software and websites, but none of them are paid by KDE itself. Most are volunteers but some (myself included) are paid by 3rd-party companies.DECEMBER 2017
Fix commonly-complained-about visual design and UX issues. In the past month, KDE contributors (myself included) have implemented the following important improvements–many of them commonly wished for: Improved the default size of the Clock widget’s text ( KDE Bug 375969) Worked with the VLC devs to make VLC 3.0 work out of the boxfor
ADVENTURES IN LINUX AND KDE Bugfixes & Performance Improvements. Adding a new radio station in Elisa now works again (Jerome Guidon, Elisa 21.04.2). Spectacle’s image annotator module is now correctly translated when using a non-English language (Alexander Volkov, Spectacle 21.08). Konsole now lets you set your default shell the one with fewer than 3 letters, such as sh (Adriaan de Groot, Konsole 21.08) NATE – ADVENTURES IN LINUX AND KDE The Notifications applet’s “Clear all notifications” action has been moved out of the hamburger menu to make it more accessible, and the applet’s “Configure” button now opens the System Settings Notifications page rather than a mostly empty applet configurationwindow (me:
THIS WEEK IN KDE: ALL THE THINGS HIGHLIGHTS FROM 2020 Highlights from 2020. Nate This Week in KDE, World Domination December 31, 2020. December 31, 2020. 7 Minutes. 2020 was not an amazing year for most of us, but it sure was for KDE and people who use KDE software! Despite the inability to travel and meet for sprints, conferences, and Akademy in person, we kept busy.THIS WEEK IN KDE
This week I have another exciting new UI element to present: KCommandBar!You might have gotten the impression by my fawning over KHamburgerMenu that we care more about casual or novice users today not so! KCommandBar is an expert-focused UI element implementing a HUD-style popup that aggregates all of the actions in a KDE app’s full menu structure, so that you can quickly THIS WEEK IN KDE: ALL THE THINGS! THIS WEEK IN KDE: CONTINUOUS BUG MASSACRE PSA: TRY TURNING ON WEBRENDERER IN FIREFOX PSA: try turning on WebRenderer in Firefox. This is a new rendering backend for Firefox that’s not yet on by default. Presumably there are some edge cases where it makes things worse or causes some instability, but so far I have not experienced anything bad. On the contrary, without it, I and some other people get terrible flickeringin
FLATPAK SUPPORT IN DISCOVER People often ask about the state of Flatpak in Discover, so today I'm going to write about that. Thew good news is that Discover's Flatpak support is very good and getting better all the time. It's fully production ready and we encourage you to use it! To GUEST POST: IMPROVEMENTS TO THE LOCK, LOGIN, AND LOGOUT Wow, this really looks amazing. Talking about the Login Screen and all that, i always thought it would be fantastic and rare that being KDE software it is not yet available, to be much more configurable the SDDM screen (the clock that appears there, the date, etc), but in general, terrific improvements, i really feel like this is a huge step ahead, in terms of revamp, renewal, etc. ADVENTURES IN LINUX AND KDE Bugfixes & Performance Improvements. Adding a new radio station in Elisa now works again (Jerome Guidon, Elisa 21.04.2). Spectacle’s image annotator module is now correctly translated when using a non-English language (Alexander Volkov, Spectacle 21.08). Konsole now lets you set your default shell the one with fewer than 3 letters, such as sh (Adriaan de Groot, Konsole 21.08) NATE – ADVENTURES IN LINUX AND KDE The Notifications applet’s “Clear all notifications” action has been moved out of the hamburger menu to make it more accessible, and the applet’s “Configure” button now opens the System Settings Notifications page rather than a mostly empty applet configurationwindow (me:
THIS WEEK IN KDE: ALL THE THINGS HIGHLIGHTS FROM 2020 Highlights from 2020. Nate This Week in KDE, World Domination December 31, 2020. December 31, 2020. 7 Minutes. 2020 was not an amazing year for most of us, but it sure was for KDE and people who use KDE software! Despite the inability to travel and meet for sprints, conferences, and Akademy in person, we kept busy.THIS WEEK IN KDE
This week I have another exciting new UI element to present: KCommandBar!You might have gotten the impression by my fawning over KHamburgerMenu that we care more about casual or novice users today not so! KCommandBar is an expert-focused UI element implementing a HUD-style popup that aggregates all of the actions in a KDE app’s full menu structure, so that you can quickly THIS WEEK IN KDE: ALL THE THINGS! THIS WEEK IN KDE: CONTINUOUS BUG MASSACRE PSA: TRY TURNING ON WEBRENDERER IN FIREFOX PSA: try turning on WebRenderer in Firefox. This is a new rendering backend for Firefox that’s not yet on by default. Presumably there are some edge cases where it makes things worse or causes some instability, but so far I have not experienced anything bad. On the contrary, without it, I and some other people get terrible flickeringin
FLATPAK SUPPORT IN DISCOVER People often ask about the state of Flatpak in Discover, so today I'm going to write about that. Thew good news is that Discover's Flatpak support is very good and getting better all the time. It's fully production ready and we encourage you to use it! To GUEST POST: IMPROVEMENTS TO THE LOCK, LOGIN, AND LOGOUT Wow, this really looks amazing. Talking about the Login Screen and all that, i always thought it would be fantastic and rare that being KDE software it is not yet available, to be much more configurable the SDDM screen (the clock that appears there, the date, etc), but in general, terrific improvements, i really feel like this is a huge step ahead, in terms of revamp, renewal, etc. 2021 ROADMAP MID-YEAR UPDATE Production-ready Plasma Wayland session: ON TRACK. In part due to it being an official KDE goal, a truly enormous, herculean amount of work has gone into making the Plasma Wayland session usable, to the point where the Fedora KDE spin has decided to enable it by default in Fedora 34, which ships Plasma 5.21. This is quite a vote ofconfidence!
THIS WEEK IN KDE
This week I have another exciting new UI element to present: KCommandBar!You might have gotten the impression by my fawning over KHamburgerMenu that we care more about casual or novice users today not so! KCommandBar is an expert-focused UI element implementing a HUD-style popup that aggregates all of the actions in a KDE app’s full menu structure, so that you can quickly OUR STUFF IS REALLY PRETTY GOOD Our stuff is really pretty good. Nate The KDE Community, World Domination April 30, 2021 1 Minute. Today is my birthday, and I’ve reached the phase of life where I don’t need or want presents anymore–just a bit of time spent with some of the people who are 1 YEAR UPDATE ON THE THINKPAD X1 YOGA LAPTOP 1 year update on the ThinkPad X1 Yoga laptop. Nate Linux Hardware May 20, 2021 3 Minutes. Last year I replaced my old laptop with a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga, and I wrote a preliminary review of it. This laptop is my only computer, used for both work and play. I’ve had it for a year, gotten used to some of my initial annoyances, and discovered THIS WEEK IN KDE: UI IMPROVEMENTS ABOUND Plasma 5.22 is just around the corner, and we put the finishing touches on some UI improvements to it, as well as our apps! Check it out: New Features You can now limit the update interval of System Monitor graphs (Arjen Hiemstra, Plasma 5.22) Bugfixes & Performance Improvements Fixed an obscure way that Konsole could THIS WEEK IN KDE: ALL THE THINGS! This week we did a little bit of everything, and there should be things that make all kinds of people happy. So let's just jump right in! New Features Okular now lets you digitally sign documents! Note that this feature makes use of a digital signature, not a picture of LENOVO THINKPAD X1 YOGA: 6 MONTH IMPRESSIONS Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga: 6 month impressions. Nate Linux Hardware December 1, 2020 4 Minutes. I’ve now had my Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga laptop for about 6 months, so I thought I’d provide a quick update about how it’s going to use this laptop every day with openSUSE Tumbleweed running KDE Plasma. Let’s explore what’s changed sincethen:
THIS WEEK IN KDE: FIXING UP PLASMA 5.20 Nate This Week in KDE September 25, 2020. October 3, 2020. 4 Minutes. We spent a lot of this week polishing up Plasma 5.20 and fixing bugs you’ve all found in the release. Thanks very much too all the people who have been testing it and reporting bugs! It’s very helpful. As a reminder, you can find distros shipping the beta here: https THE STRUCTURE OF KDE, OR HOW ANARCHY SOMETIMES WORKS The structure of KDE, or how anarchy sometimes works. KDE is a funny beast. In a lot of ways, it’s an anarchic society that actually works! Engineers and designers work on KDE software and websites, but none of them are paid by KDE itself. Most are volunteers but some (myself included) are paid by 3rd-party companies.DECEMBER 2017
Fix commonly-complained-about visual design and UX issues. In the past month, KDE contributors (myself included) have implemented the following important improvements–many of them commonly wished for: Improved the default size of the Clock widget’s text ( KDE Bug 375969) Worked with the VLC devs to make VLC 3.0 work out of the boxfor
ADVENTURES IN LINUX AND KDE Bugfixes & Performance Improvements. Adding a new radio station in Elisa now works again (Jerome Guidon, Elisa 21.04.2). Spectacle’s image annotator module is now correctly translated when using a non-English language (Alexander Volkov, Spectacle 21.08). Konsole now lets you set your default shell the one with fewer than 3 letters, such as sh (Adriaan de Groot, Konsole 21.08) NATE – ADVENTURES IN LINUX AND KDE Discover’s “Installed” view is now case-insensitive for searching (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.22). The System Tray’s arrow uses to show the pop-up with hidden applets in it no longer appears when using the “Show all entries” setting (Konrad Materka, Plasma 5.22). The new Plasma System Monitor app now lets you search for multiple search terms separated with commas, just like the HIGHLIGHTS FROM 2020 Roadmap items. From last year’s proposed roadmap, we got FUSE mounts, improved Samba share discovery, automatic screen rotation, and Breeze Evolution visual overhaul work starting to land!. We did not get PolKit privilege escalation, new photo wallpapers, per-screen scale factors on X11, or inertial scrolling in Plasma and QML apps, or power/session actions on the lock screen. THIS WEEK IN KDE: ALL THE THINGSTHIS WEEK IN KDE
This week I have another exciting new UI element to present: KCommandBar!You might have gotten the impression by my fawning over KHamburgerMenu that we care more about casual or novice users today not so! KCommandBar is an expert-focused UI element implementing a HUD-style popup that aggregates all of the actions in a KDE app’s full menu structure, so that you can quickly THIS WEEK IN KDE: ALL THE THINGS! THIS WEEK IN KDE: CONTINUOUS BUG MASSACRE THIS WEEK IN KDE: OKULAR, KONSOLE, PLASMA, AND WAYLANDSEE MORE ONPOINTIESTSTICK.COM
PSA: TRY TURNING ON WEBRENDERER IN FIREFOX This is a new rendering backend for Firefox that’s not yet on by default. Presumably there are some edge cases where it makes things worse or causes some instability, but so far I have not experienced anything bad.On the contrary, without it, I and some other people get terrible flickering in Firefox on Wayland.With it enabled, not only is the flickering gone, but scrolling performance FLATPAK SUPPORT IN DISCOVER People often ask about the state of Flatpak in Discover, so today I'm going to write about that. Thew good news is that Discover's Flatpak support is very good and getting better all the time. It's fully production ready and we encourage you to use it! To ADVENTURES IN LINUX AND KDE Bugfixes & Performance Improvements. Adding a new radio station in Elisa now works again (Jerome Guidon, Elisa 21.04.2). Spectacle’s image annotator module is now correctly translated when using a non-English language (Alexander Volkov, Spectacle 21.08). Konsole now lets you set your default shell the one with fewer than 3 letters, such as sh (Adriaan de Groot, Konsole 21.08) NATE – ADVENTURES IN LINUX AND KDE Discover’s “Installed” view is now case-insensitive for searching (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.22). The System Tray’s arrow uses to show the pop-up with hidden applets in it no longer appears when using the “Show all entries” setting (Konrad Materka, Plasma 5.22). The new Plasma System Monitor app now lets you search for multiple search terms separated with commas, just like the HIGHLIGHTS FROM 2020 Roadmap items. From last year’s proposed roadmap, we got FUSE mounts, improved Samba share discovery, automatic screen rotation, and Breeze Evolution visual overhaul work starting to land!. We did not get PolKit privilege escalation, new photo wallpapers, per-screen scale factors on X11, or inertial scrolling in Plasma and QML apps, or power/session actions on the lock screen. THIS WEEK IN KDE: ALL THE THINGSTHIS WEEK IN KDE
This week I have another exciting new UI element to present: KCommandBar!You might have gotten the impression by my fawning over KHamburgerMenu that we care more about casual or novice users today not so! KCommandBar is an expert-focused UI element implementing a HUD-style popup that aggregates all of the actions in a KDE app’s full menu structure, so that you can quickly THIS WEEK IN KDE: ALL THE THINGS! THIS WEEK IN KDE: CONTINUOUS BUG MASSACRE THIS WEEK IN KDE: OKULAR, KONSOLE, PLASMA, AND WAYLANDSEE MORE ONPOINTIESTSTICK.COM
PSA: TRY TURNING ON WEBRENDERER IN FIREFOX This is a new rendering backend for Firefox that’s not yet on by default. Presumably there are some edge cases where it makes things worse or causes some instability, but so far I have not experienced anything bad.On the contrary, without it, I and some other people get terrible flickering in Firefox on Wayland.With it enabled, not only is the flickering gone, but scrolling performance FLATPAK SUPPORT IN DISCOVER People often ask about the state of Flatpak in Discover, so today I'm going to write about that. Thew good news is that Discover's Flatpak support is very good and getting better all the time. It's fully production ready and we encourage you to use it! To 2021 ROADMAP MID-YEAR UPDATE It's time to check where we are on the items I mentioned for my 2021 roadmap: Polkit-in-KIO: ON TRACK This work is proceeding and is currently in the final stages of QA. I expect it to finally be merged sometime this year! Power/session actions in the lock screen: AT RISK No new work done. MayTHIS WEEK IN KDE
This week I have another exciting new UI element to present: KCommandBar!You might have gotten the impression by my fawning over KHamburgerMenu that we care more about casual or novice users today not so! KCommandBar is an expert-focused UI element implementing a HUD-style popup that aggregates all of the actions in a KDE app’s full menu structure, so that you can quickly OUR STUFF IS REALLY PRETTY GOOD Today is my birthday, and I've reached the phase of life where I don't need or want presents anymore--just a bit of time spent with some of the people who are important to me. And maybe some Chinese food. :) But today I got a nice present anyway: a glowing review of Plasma fromIgor
THIS WEEK IN KDE: UI IMPROVEMENTS ABOUND Plasma 5.22 is just around the corner, and we put the finishing touches on some UI improvements to it, as well as our apps! Check it out: New Features You can now limit the update interval of System Monitor graphs (Arjen Hiemstra, Plasma 5.22) Bugfixes & Performance Improvements Fixed an obscure way that Konsole could 1 YEAR UPDATE ON THE THINKPAD X1 YOGA LAPTOP Last year I replaced my old laptop with a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga, and I wrote a preliminary review of it. This laptop is my only computer, used for both work and play. I've had it for a year, gotten used to some of my initial annoyances, and discovered a few new ones. So I THIS WEEK IN KDE: ALL THE THINGS! This week we did a little bit of everything, and there should be things that make all kinds of people happy. So let's just jump right in! New Features Okular now lets you digitally sign documents! Note that this feature makes use of a digital signature, not a picture of THE STRUCTURE OF KDE, OR HOW ANARCHY SOMETIMES WORKS KDE is a funny beast. In a lot of ways, it's an anarchic society that actually works! Engineers and designers work on KDE software and websites, but none of them are paid by KDE itself. Most are volunteers but some (myself included) are paid by 3rd-party companies. Thesepeople work
LENOVO THINKPAD X1 YOGA: 6 MONTH IMPRESSIONS I’ve now had my Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga laptop for about 6 months, so I thought I’d provide a quick update about how it’s going to use this laptop every day with openSUSE Tumbleweed running KDE Plasma. Let’s explore what’s changed since then: Keyboard. Initially, I complained about some aspects of the keyboard layout, but I’ve gotten used to the Home/End/PageUp/PageDown THIS WEEK IN KDE: FIXING UP PLASMA 5.20 We spent a lot of this week polishing up Plasma 5.20 and fixing bugs you’ve all found in the release. Thanks very much too all the people who have been testing it and reporting bugs! It’DECEMBER 2017
1 post published by Nate during December 2017. Adventures in Linux and KDE. Below is a brief look at recent changes in the KDE projects Iwork on and follow!
Skip to content
ADVENTURES IN LINUX AND KDEMenu
* Get involved
* Develop for KDE
* File a bug
* Submit a patch
* Contact me
LENOVO THINKPAD X1 YOGA: IMPRESSIONS, BUGS, WORKAROUNDS, AND THOUGHTSABOUT THE FUTURE
My new laptop
arrived last week and I’ve been using it since then! Here are my impressions so far of the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga (gen 4), and how it compares to my old laptop, a 2016 HP Spectre x360:HARDWARE SIDE
CASE AND PORTS
Top-notch quality. The laptop feels lightweight given its size, and it is very rigid. I had worried that the dark aluminum case would show fingerprints, but it’s not a problem. Port selection is generous: 2 USB-C+Thunderbolt+charging ports, 2 USB-A ports, an HDMI port, and a combo audio jack. Perfectly sufficient for my purposes, and better than the laptop it replaced! I do wish the USB-C ports were more snug, though. USB-C cables tend to wiggle around when plugged in. Also it would be nice if the lid could be opened with one hand, but that’s a very minor nitpick. Overall it is solidly better than my old laptop.SCREEN
The Thinkpad X1 Yoga’s 4K screen is UNBELIEVABLE. Color reproduction is excellent, there is no significant ghosting, and brightness goes high enough to use it outdoors without limitation. I turn the brightness down to 50% when using it indoors. It’s by far the best screen I’ve ever had the pleasure of using, and a huge upgrade overmy old laptop!
KEYBOARD
The keyboard feel is perfect; typing on it is a dream! And its black keys contrast perfectly with the white backlighting to produce a good low-light typing experience too. However the layout of the keys presents a few annoyances that I’m having to get used to: * Left Fn and Ctrl keys are reversed compared to every other PC laptop keyboard. This can be changed in the BIOS, but then the labels don’t match the functionality, which is somehow even more confusing. * The PrintScreen key is located between the right Alt and Ctrl keys, and I find myself constantly pressing it when I mean to press the right Alt key, especially to hit Alt+Left to go back in Dolphin or Firefox. Seems like a weird place to put it. * The Home and End Keys are located up at the top of the keyboard, away from the arrow keys. I find myself wishing they were in a column at the right side of the keyboard as on my old laptop, where they were easier to press without changing the positioning of my right hand which often hovers around the arrows. * There are no dedicated media playback keys. This is not a major issue as I have mapped Alt+Ctrl left/right/space to those functions in Plasma’s shortcuts KCM. Still, I do miss the dedicated keys. * Toggling the keyboard backlight is done with Fn+Space, rather than a dedicated key. Also the multi-level brightness feature seems kind of superfluous. Simple on/off modes would be better IMO. Not really a bigdeal though.
Overall, compared to my old HP Spectre x360 laptop, I would say I prefer the typing feel and black key color of the Lenovo’s keyboard, but prefer the key layout of the HP’s keyboard.TOUCHPAD
The touchpad is perfect. It’s just the right size: not too big, and not too small. The glass-covered surface makes it a pleasure to use. With the Libinput driver, thumb and palm rejection are perfect, enabling my favorite way of using a touchpad: with my right thumb lazily resting at the bottom as if there were a physical button there. I click with the thumb and use the rest of my fingers to move the cursor or perform scrolling gestures. This is how I got used to using Mac touchpads back when I was an Apple user and the Lenovo’s hardware is good enough to replicate that. It’s not quite Mac quality, but I’d say the experience is 90% there. It’s really, really good, and a huge upgrade from my old laptop whose trackpad was a bit worse in almost every way.SPEAKERS
The speakers sounded great in Windows during my initial test so I know that the hardware is quite capable. However, on Linux the sound is not so good, and more work is needed on the driver side. So at the moment, the speakers are a disappointment and a regression compared to my old laptop, but hopefully improved audio drivers will make them better inthe future.
CAMERA
The camera is horrible, which is an unwelcome surprise for this very expensive computer. Its resolution is a very low 720p, and there is noticeable lag/latency, which makes video conferencing annoying for other people as my mouth does not match my words. This is a significant regression compared to my old laptop, which had a 1080p camera with no appreciable lag. I didn’t test the camera in Windows before installing openSUSE Tumbleweed, so I don’t know if the lag is a hardware limitation or a driver bug.SOFTWARE SIDE
On the software side, things have not been as good. Installing openSUSE Tumbleweed was not too big of a hassle, given that I’ve done this a number of times before. I had to disable secure boot, which entailed a trip to the BIOS and bricking Windows. After installation, a number of local workarounds were required to make things function, in particular the audio, which still does not seem to be working properly. Just check out the relevant ArchWiki pages
!
That’s a lot of stuff that you need to fix manually. After the OS was installed, I started to run into other issues:SPEAKERS AND SOUND
Initially, the speakers were not detected at all. The relevant ArchWiki page
was very helpful here: installing the sof-firmware package fixed that, but then the audio quality was horrible. Compiling PulseAudio from source to get version 14 (which is not released yet) made it better, but still not as good as it was on Windows. I have filed a bug on PulseAudio as it seems like more work is needed: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pulseaudio/pulseaudio/-/issues/914 Also, there are pointless devices corresponding to the three HDMI/DisplayPort audio outputs, which should not be shown unless they’re actually in use. This affects both the Plasma audio applet as well as the Pavucontrol app: It’s not totally clear to me whose fault this is, so I filed a bugon PulseAudio
and also one on plasma-pa. We may be able to
improve the display in Plasma at least, and I’m working on a mergerequest.
POWER MANAGEMENT
Battery life is poor. This laptop has a 51 watt-hour battery (up from 42 Wh on my previous laptop), but draws between 8 and 10 watts at idle. When actually _using_ the machine, I’m only getting about 4 hours of battery life! Reviewers said that it got at least 7 hours in Windows, so this is pretty terrible. powertop reports that the display backlight uses 10 watts of power at full brightness, 5 watts when at its lowest level, and 4 watts when turned off entirely! And the bottom of the case is always warm, so perhaps the CPU is also not idling enough. So I suspect that there are some performance and power management bugs somewhere, as this level of power consumption does not seem expected, even with the 4K screen. On the plus side, at least the laptop charges very quickly with the included 65W charger. I have not filed any bugs on this particular set of issues yet as I’m not suite sure where to start.TOUCHSCREEN
Out of the box, the touchscreen did not work properly on X11 with Plasma, KDE apps, and other Qt apps–but it did work with GNOME and Electron apps! After filing a bug report on Qt, I discovered that
switching to the libinput driver fixes the issue! To do this, you can uninstall the xf86-input-wacom package (which will also remove the Wacom page in System Settings, which may be undesirable if you’re using it) or alternatively you can apply the following patch to /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/70-wacom.conf: diff -rubd /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/70-wacom.conf.orig /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/70-wacom.conf --- /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/70-wacom.conf.orig 2020-06-08 08:08:01.576986784 -0600 +++ /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/70-wacom.conf 2020-06-08 08:07:04.624218429 -0600 @@ -19,7 +19,7 @@ MatchUSBID "056a:*" MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*" MatchIsTouchscreen "true" - Driver "wacom" + Driver "libinput"EndSection
Section "InputClass" @@ -43,7 +43,7 @@ MatchProduct "Wacom|WACOM|PTK-540WL|ISD-V4" MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*" MatchIsTouchscreen "true" - Driver "wacom" + Driver "libinput"EndSection
Section "InputClass" Ubuntu has already made a similar change to their packaging and I filed a bug report for openSUSE as well: https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1172669. Next up, touch scrolling did not work in Firefox. I already knew how to fix this, and I’ll teach you too: * Add MOZ_USE_XINPUT2=1 to the /etc/environment file. This turns on touchscreen scrolling and enables pixel-by-pixel touchpad scrolling. * Doing the above triggers a nasty bug that breaks scrolling when a notification appears , but you can work around that as follows: Open System Settings > Window Management > Window Behavior > Uncheck “Click raises activewindow”.
Obviously we should just fix the KWin bug that makes this workaround necessary. We eventually will! After this, touch input works well, especially for GTK apps. We have a lot of work to do to make our own KDE apps work as well with a touchscreen as GTK apps do on average.BROKEN FLATPAK APPS
I briefly encountered an issue where none of my Flatpak apps wouldlaunch:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
$ flatpak run com.discordapp.Discord Gtk-Message: 07:05:34.667: Failed to load module "unity-gtk-module" Gtk-Message: 07:05:34.667: Failed to load module "canberra-gtk-module" No protocol specified (Discord:4): Gtk-WARNING **: 07:05:34.667: cannot open display: :99.0 No data could be read (host died?)Quitting Zygote...
This utterly bizarre issue turned out to have been caused by me setting the computer’s hostname incorrectly, using sudo hostnameclose, I think.
CONCLUSION AND THE FUTURE I wish I could say that it’s been a pleasant, trouble-free experience and that I’m loving my new computer. In truth, getting the ThinkPad X1 Yoga to function well enough to comfortably write this post took several frustrating days of poring over documentation, filing bug reports, tweaking config files, and altering kernel parameters. On top of that, it’s still not quite there yet and is worse than my old laptop in several ways despite costing twice as much money. The high DPI scaling issues are our fault in KDE, and we need to do better, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The problems run throughout the entire software stack. Simply put, THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE IN 2020. We need to up our game of partnering with hardware makers to ship FOSS operating systems by default. Everything I’m going through with this computer is the kind of problem that should be caught by paid Linux QA teams so that it can be fixed before the hardware is released to customers. I CONTINUE TO BELIEVE THAT WE WILL GET NOWHERE UNTIL MORE HARDWARE COMES WITH A LINUX-BASED OS PRE-INSTALLED. People shouldn’t have to deal with this kind of nonsense! My wife has been happily using KDE Neon on her laptop for two years, but I had to do the initial installation. Normal people want their computers to just work, not endlessly fiddle around with settings to make things functional that should have been so out of the box in the first place. Part of me wishes I had instead gone with the SlimBook Pro X 15 or the System76 Lemur Pro , which were strong contenders in my search. The SlimBook laptop can even be pre-installed with Plasma-bearing operating systems like KDE Neon and Kubuntu, and I’m sure the System76 folks would have done likewise had I asked nicely enough. Everything would have worked perfectly out of the box, because SlimBook and System76 have QA teams paid to do what I’ve been doing myself for the ThinkPad X1 Yoga. Alas those laptops didn’t have some of what I was looking for in the hardware department (principally touchscreens and higher quality speakers), but perhaps I was underestimating the importance of integration into a cohesive product. It certainly stands in stark relief right now. I’m sure things will get better over time. Kernel fixes will accumulate, and the bug reports I’ve filed will start to get fixed. I may even fix some of them myself. But this state of affairs is simply not acceptable if we ever want to grow our audience beyond the ranks of tech nerds. No normal person spends over than a thousand dollars on a laptop for real productive purposes that will have to become an extended science experiment before it works properly. We need more hardware sold with our software pre-installed, period. That’s the next frontier, and I strongly believe that we need to make it our end goal for everything we do.Nate Linux
Hardware , World
Domination 40
Comments
June 8, 2020
10 Minutes
THIS WEEK IN KDE: OKULAR, KONSOLE, PLASMA, AND WAYLAND It’s early in the Plasma 5.20 development cycle and some very nice new features landed this week! Various KDE apps–in particular Okular and Konsole–also got new features. It’s a feature-palooza! Yes, yes, I know what some of you are thinking: “Why are you writing new features while there’s still so much buggy stuff?” In this case, one of the answers is that new features can often solve bugs. For example the Okular work you’ll read about below resulted in a dozen bug reports getting closed! Sometimes you really can have your cake and eat it, too. And of course the Wayland work continuesas well…
NEW FEATURES
Okular’s annotations toolbar has been completely re-done and is now much more discoverable and easier to use! This
improvement has been in development for over a year and I’d like to call attention to Simone Gaiarin for his tremendous work here! (Simone Gaiarin, Okular 1.11.0):*
*
Konsole now shows you a thumbnail preview for image files that you hover your cursor over by default(Tomaz
Canabrava, Konsole 20.08.0): Middle-click paste now works on Wayland! (David Edmundson,
Plasma 5.20.0)
Changing the screen brightness now smoothly animates the transition rather than jumping from one brightness level to another(Kai Uwe
Broulik, Plasma 5.20.0) It’s now possible to adjust the balance of individual elements ofyour speakers
(Kai Uwe
Broulik, Plasma 5.20): File choosers displayed by Flatpak apps now implement the ‘choices’ element of the filechooser spec and can therefore be given custom views from the app itself (Michael Weghorn, Plasma 5.20.0) The Web Browser widget now has a user-configurable zoom setting (Sora Steenvoort, Plasma 5.20.0): The touchpad cursor speed setting can now be configured on a much more granular basis if desired (Giusy Margarita, Plasma 5.20.0): BUGFIXES & PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS Dolphin now shows progress notifications for duplicated files when the duplication takes more than a moment(me: Nate Graham,
Dolphin 20.04.2)
When using an alternative input method, Konsole now shows the input method window right below the cursor, where it’s supposed to be(Fuminobu Takeyama,
Konsole 20.08.0)
Spectacle no longer gets killed when the notification displayed for the last screenshot disappears (Méven Car, Spectacle20.08.0)
KRunner’s window now appears in the right place when using a toppanel on Wayland
(Benjamin Port, Plasma 5.20) Folder previews no longer allow the embedded thumbnails to overflow out of the view when they’re very very tall or very very wide (Méven Car, Dolphin20.08.0)
Dolphin’s free space bar is now correctly sized no matter your fontsettings
(Ahmad Samir, Dolphin 20.08.0) Yakuake no longer unconditionally switches terminals when Shift+Tab is pressed, unless you actually set that as a keyboard shortcut (Maximillian Schiller,Yakuake 20.08.0)
USER INTERFACE IMPROVEMENTS Okular’s main window has received a visual overhaul, resulting in a new default toolbar layout and hiding the page bar at the bottom of the window by default(me: Nate
Graham, Okular 1.11.0): The Properties actions/menu items in Okularand
Gwenview
are now triggerable using the standard Alt+Return keyboard shortcut, just like in Dolphin (me: Nate Graham, Okular 1.11.0 and Gwenview20.08.0)
Okular now makes it easier to see all of the page sizes in a document with more than one page size(me:
Nate Graham, Okular 1.11.0): It’s now possible to explicitly set the size of System Tray icons (Konrad Materka, Plasma5.20):
KRunner’s recent documents feature now uses the same data store as everything else with a “recent documents” feature, making its results more consistent and relevant (Méven Car, Plasma 5.20) The overwrite dialog now makes it clear when the to-be-overwritten file has a file size that differs by less than a kilobyte (Méven Car, Frameworks5.71)
HOW YOU CAN HELP
Have a look at https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved to discover ways to help be part of a project that really matters. Each contributor makes a huge difference in KDE; you are not a number or a cog in a machine! You don’t have to already be a programmer, either. I wasn’t when I got started. Try it, you’ll like it! We don’tbite!
Finally, consider making a tax-deductible donationto the KDE e.V.
foundation .
Nate This Week in
KDE 40
Comments
June 5, 2020
3 Minutes
THIS WEEK IN KDE: ALL ABOUT THE APPS This week we landed a lot of nice improvements for KDE’s apps, which I’ve highlighted below! Of course we didn’t forget about Plasma,so have a look-see:
NEW FEATURES
Dolphin now lets you mount ISO images using a new menu item in the context menu (Kwon-Young Choi, Dolphin 20.08.0): Konsole now lets you monitor a tab for the active process to complete (Will Westrop, Konsole20.08.0):
BUGFIXES & PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS Improved search speed/performance in Okular’s sidebar (Ahmad Samir, Okular1.10.2)
Fixed a very common Yakuake crash (Maximilian Schiller,20.04.2)
Fixed a common crash in Konsole when right-clicking and using Qt 5.15 (Ahmad Samir, Konsole20.04.2)
Gwenview’s touch gestures now work properly when using displayscaling
(Steffen Hartlieb, Gwenview 20.08.0) Notes widgets placed in a panel now display the pop-up note if clicked on when all windows are hidden or minimized (Marco Martin, Plasma5.19.0)
Clicking on the settings button for a notification now opens the Notification settings page with that particular app focused and visible (Benjamin Port,Plasma 5.19.0)
KRunner once again shows Firefox bookmarks(Alexander Lohnau,
Plasma 5.19.0)
KRunner now does a better job of handling file paths beginning with atilde
(Méven Car, Plasma 5.20) When using Dolphin to view the desktop using the special desktop:/ URL, the amount of free space is now correctly displayed in the status bar (Ahmad Samir, Plasma5.20.0)
Dates displayed in the file overwrite confirmation dialog now respect the date formatting of your current locale (Méven Car, Frameworks5.71)
Deleting files from a Samba share no longer displays a notification with an inaccurate number of deleted files(Kai Uwe Broulik,
Frameworks 5.71)
USER INTERFACE IMPROVEMENTS Okular’s sidebar user interface has been overhauled, with
the result that it now takes up less horizontal space, is easier to show and hide quickly, has a more consistent appearance overall, and fixes many bugs (me: Nate Graham, Okular 1.11.0):Video Player
https://i.imgur.com/sEj2oQg.mp4 Media error: Format(s) not supported or source(s) not found Download File: https://i.imgur.com/sEj2oQg.mp4?_=100:00
00:00
00:00
Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume. The default gesture for moving windows has been changed to Meta+click, to avoid conflicting with apps like Krita, Inkscape, and Blender which use Alt+click for their own usages . Tell all your friends and spread this information far and wide so people aren’t surprised! If you hate the new one and don’t use Krita, Blender, Inkscape, or another app which uses Alt+Click for something, you can of course change it back to Alt+click (Noah Davis, Plasma 5.20) When dragging files from Dolphin (or elsewhere) onto the desktop, the files now end up at the location where you dragged them, rather than at the end of the last row (Radek Husek, Plasma5.20)
The battery charge level icons displayed by the Battery And Brightness applet now reflect the current charge status more accurately (Daniel Roschka, Frameworks 5.71): The standalone KRunner widget now closes the pop-up if you hit the Escape key while the text field is empty(Alexander
Lohnau, Plasma 5.20) When using an ultrawide screen wider than 21:9, the default horizontal panel now no longer spans the entire screen width, but rather remains at the size it _would_ be on a 21:9 screen, horizontally centered.
Also in this mode, notification pop-ups that are configured to appear close to the Notifications System Tray applet will pop up close to it rather than way far away in a corner of the screen (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.20.0): The new OSDs now show a percentage label for brightness and volume (me: Nate Graham, Plasma5.20):
HOW YOU CAN HELP
Have a look at https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved to discover ways to help be part of a project that really matters. Each contributor makes a huge difference in KDE; you are not a number or a cog in a machine! You don’t have to already be a programmer, either. I wasn’t when I got started. Try it, you’ll like it! We don’tbite!
Finally, consider making a tax-deductible donationto the KDE e.V.
foundation .
Nate This Week in
KDE 43
Comments
May 29, 2020
3 Minutes
LAPTOP UPDATE
Thanks to the KDE community, I’ve finally chosen and ordered a new laptop: a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga. People heavily recommended the X1 Carbon, which is essentially the same computer except less touch-focused. That led me to the Yoga which seems to fit the bill perfectly: in addition to the necessary touchscreen, according to reviews it has otherwise excellent screen characteristics, a perfect keyboard, great speakers, and a great trackpad. I also like the look and probable durability of the aluminum case. Though it’s not a Ryzen 4000-series laptop, CPU performance is still three times better than my current laptop, so I’m not complaining. Mine arrives in three weeks. Thanks again everyone!Nate Usability &
Productivity
17
Comments
May
26, 2020 1
Minute
THIS WEEK IN KDE: WE HAVE MIGRATED TO GITLAB! After years of using Phabricator, KDE has officially begun the migration to GitLab ! So far we are using it for patch review, and developer task tracking will be migrated soon. We are still using Bugzilla for bugs and feature requests as migrating those functions to GitLab is a significant project in and of itself! Already the KDE community is enjoying GitLab’s smoother workflow; why not take advantage of this and submit a merge request?
But that’s not all: big changes for Plasma 5.20 have started to land too. It promises to be a very significant release! Check it out:NEW FEATURES
* When you right-click on an underlined file in Konsole, the context menu now displays the standard “Open with” menu so you can open the file in a non-default GUI app(Tomaz
Canabrava, Konsole 20.08.0): Pardon the visual glitch in the menu; I’ve been trying out 125% scaling lately and it’s still not perfect * The Free Space Notifier has been re-implemented as a critical notification, so it’s now less likely to be missed . Also, it now monitors the root filesystem if you have your home directory on a separate partition (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma5.20.0):
* The System Settings Users page has been rewritten from scratch, which fixes most of the open bugs with the old one (Carson Black, Plasma 5.20.0): BUGFIXES & PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS * When a document opened in Okular’s Presentation View is re-loaded on disk, it no longer repeatedly shows notifications about wanting to be opened in presentation view (Arshad Husain, Okular1.11.0)
* Discover no longer always opens on login when session restoration is in use (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.18.6) * The “Apply” button in the System Settings Night Color page is now always active at the correct times (David Edmundson, Plasma5.19.0)
* The emoji picker window now starts searching as soon as you start typing (me: Nate Graham and Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.19.0) * Fixed a crash unplugging screens on Wayland(Méven Car,
Plasma 5.20.0)
* The Global Menu applet now has the correct hover behavior: you can slide the mouse over to the next menu to close the current one and open that other one (Carson Black, Plasma 5.20.0) * When using a low-end system with only software rendering available, desktop files and folders now have an outline under their label so that they’re always visible (Bruno Gonçalves, Plasma 5.20.0): (This is just a fallback; shadows are still used when hardware rendering is available) * System Settings no longer crashes when opening external apps listed in the sidebar, such as openSUSE’s YaST (David Faure, Frameworks5.71)
* The “Get New ” windows no longer shows error messagestwice (Dan Leinir
Turthra Jensen, Frameworks 5.71) USER INTERFACE IMPROVEMENTS * Dolphin’s elision behavior has been refined; it no longer middle-elides long file and folder labels, but rather elides on the right, and always keeps the file extension (if present) visible after the ellipses (Méven Car, Dolphin20.04.2)
* After taking into consideration user feedback last week about Konsole’s colorized tabs feature, the appearance was adjusted for greater usability and aesthetics (Gustavo Carneiro, Konsole 20.08.0): * When Discover is loading more results, the “Still looking” label is now positioned properly, and both of the
placeholder-style messages that include spinning busy indicators are now consistent in appearance (Aleix Pol Gonzales and me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.19.0 and 5.20.0):Video Player
https://i.imgur.com/fpMkTkh.mp4 Media error: Format(s) not supported or source(s) not found Download File: https://i.imgur.com/fpMkTkh.mp4?_=200:00
00:00
00:00
Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume. * Feedback OSDs for things like volume and brightness changes are now more compact so they don’t obscure the main view so much (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.20.0): * The Battery and Brightness applet now has a more comprehensible user interface for displaying apps which are preventing lock and sleep, and allowing the user to override this (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.20.0):Video Player
https://i.imgur.com/WNKtebM.mp4 Media error: Format(s) not supported or source(s) not found Download File: https://i.imgur.com/WNKtebM.mp4?_=300:00
00:00
00:00
Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume. * Menu titles/section headers now look the part (me: Nate Graham,Plasma 5.20.0):
* Breeze style tabs are now two pixels taller, making them consistent with the height of buttons and text fields(Noah Davis,
Plasma 5.20.0)
* You’re now warned if you try to create a file with a space at the beginning or end (me: Nate Graham, Frameworks 5.71): * The mouse icon has been re-done and is now distinguishable against both light and dark backgrounds (Chris Escargot and Noah Davis, Frameworks 5.71): * SpinBoxes in Plasma can now have their values modified by scrolling over them or clicking/tapping-and-dragging on the number (note: this only affects SpinBoxes in Plasma, not in apps; scrolling is already implemented there and click/tap-and-drag-manipulation will be coming later) (me: Nate Graham, Frameworks 5.71)HOW YOU CAN HELP
KDE Software is made by people just like you, often on their free time! If you know a KDE developer, send them a kind note. Developers like to put on a logical face but they need love and care too, especially during trying times like these. More generally, have a look at https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved to discover ways to help be part of a project that really matters. Each contributor makes a huge difference in KDE; you are not a number or a cog in a machine! You don’t have to already be a programmer, either. I wasn’t when I got started. Try it, you’ll like it! Wedon’t bite!
Finally, consider making a tax-deductible donationto the KDE e.V.
foundation .
Nate This Week in
KDE 30
Comments
May 23, 2020May 24, 20204 Minutes
“WHY DON’T YOU JUST FIX ALREADY?” The title of this post is a somewhat common gripe among users. Its obvious answer is that RESOURCES ARE LIMITED AND PEOPLE WERE WORKINGON OTHER THINGS.
Duh! Not very helpful. We need to dig deeper and find the implicit question, which is “Why wasn’t prioritized over other things?” This is a more accurate and useful question, so we can arrive at a more accurate and useful answer: because OTHER THINGS WERE DEEMED EITHER MORE IMPORTANT OR MORE FEASIBLE TO FIX BY THE PEOPLE DOING THEWORK.
Why would other things be deemed more important? For bugs, it’s because they affect everyone and are trivially reproducible. The ones that get overlooked tend to be more exotic issues that are not easily reproducible, or only affect niche use cases or hardware. Put bluntly, it’s appropriate that such issues are de-prioritized; it should be obvious that issues which affect everyone and are trivially reproducible are more important to fix. Let’s step back a moment: in my experience, this is exactly the same as in closed-source software companies. Every piece of closed-source software has multi-generational bugs, baffling mis-features, and things that make you wonder, “jeez, why didn’t they fix this years ago?” Anybody who uses Windows, macOS, Android, or iOS can rattle off half a dozen examples instantly. So it’s not like FOSS is especially bad here. Still, it’s still not a very satisfying answer if you have an exotic use case or hardware that exposes you to an annoying issue. However, it leads to one of the beautiful advantages of open-source: you can actually dig into the code and fix the issue yourself, then submit the fix! If you lack those kinds of technical skills, you can learn them, or maybe cajole a technically savvy friend into doing it. Or you can sponsor a developer to fix it, paying them directly. You can write a polite blog post about the issue to draw attention it. Youhave options.
These are all options you don’t have in the closed-source world, where your only option is to live with the issue until it happens to come to the attention of an executive, manager, or other decision maker who experiences it, or when user feedback indicates that it’s not as exotic as originally believed. However this is totally random; you have no control over the process. Also, once this happens, engineers are pulled off other tasks and asked to fix the issue. So while it does eventually get fixed, no new engineers are ever hired specifically to fix little issues, so as a result the pace of development for everything else slows down a tiny bit. The open-source world has a real advantage here, in my opinion. There are many more ways for users to get involved in fixing the problemsthat affect them.
So what a great time it is to fix some of the little annoying issues you’ve been living with forever! If you’re strapped for ideas, you can find some lists of bugs here. We make
it really easy to compile KDE code from source, so you can get hacking. Check out https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved/development So what are you waiting for? GET TO DA CODE!Nate Usability &
Productivity
38
Comments
May 18, 2020May 18, 20202 Minutes
HELP ME CHOOSE A NEW LAPTOP I’ve been doing all my development work on a late 2016 HP Spectre x360 for the past few years. Though a fantastic machine overall, it’s starting to fall apart: the screen backlight has partially burned out, the battery barely holds a charge anymore, and the trackpad sends a double or triple click when I press down on it. This thing has been worked hard and dragged all over the country and the world, so it feels like the time is coming for a replacement. So I did what a typical OCD nerd does for a major purchase: I made a spreadsheet with all reasonable options and gave myself terribleanalysis paralysis!
For my research, I found two resources in particular to be invaluable: notebookcheck.com for its exhaustive long-form technical reviews, and Lisa Gade’s MobileTechReview YouTube channel for focusing on each machine’s overall user experience. After nearly a month, I made my decision: the LATE 2019 DELL XPS 13 with a 6-core CPU which I figured would really speed up my code compile times, and the rest of the laptop seemed super high quality. Unfortunately, after it arrived I found that I did not like the feel of the keyboard: the key activation force was quite mushy, and the travel was low. But even worse, the display suffered from unbelievably terrible ghosting–which I had been warned about in reviews, but foolishly ignored–and it emitted an awful coil whine when in use. I sent it back. What a nuisance! So I moved on to the second laptop in my list: the EARLY 2020 HP ENVY 13. I ignored reviews complaining about the trackpad surface not having a glass coating, which again was stupid: I didn’t like the feel at all of the rough plastic texture. But the rest of the laptop was solid, and the trackpad surface wasn’t a fatal flaw as these tend to smooth out over time in my experience. I decided to keep it. Not having yet wiped the disk to install openSUSE Tumbleweed(my current
OS of choice), I performed the initial set of Windows updates just in case there were any firmware updates. It completed and I rebooted… and then the laptop became a brick! It was stuck in a half-on-half-off state, with the power LED illuminated, but no activity. The laptop could neither be turned on, nor fully powered down. I returned thatone too.
So now I’m kind of feeling stuck. Out of two well-researched laptops, I’ve gotten two lemons, and I’m feeling like it’s time to reach out to the wider KDE community for assistance. I need your help to find a good laptop!WHAT I’D LIKE
This will be my one and only computer, used for both work/KDE development and also my personal stuff, so like Mary Poppins, I need for it to be practically perfect in every way (that’s not too muchto ask, is it!?):
First, it needs perfect or near-perfect Linux compatibility; there’s no point in buying great hardware if it doesn’t work with yoursoftware.
Next, the built-in input and output devices that I’m going to actually use the computer with must be perfect: * PERFECT KEYBOARD: durable; firm key activation force; at least 1.3mm of travel, preferably more; firm bottoming-out feel; not too noisy; black keycaps that are not too large, with white lettering and backlighting; dedicated Home, End, PageUp, and PageDown keys for faster text editing; ideally dedicated media play/pause, forwards, and backwards keys. The keyboard is very important as I’m typing allday.
* PERFECT SCREEN: 400+ nits of brightness; good refresh rates/no visible ghosting; close to 100% sRGB coverage; good color reproduction; must have touch functionality (I need to be able to test for touch friendliness with my and other people’s patches); 16:10 or taller aspect ratio preferred; full HD resolution is preferred, but 4K is acceptable. Size-wise, I like 13.3″ – 14″ screen sizes, but would consider a 15-incher if the case isn’t so big that it impedes portability in a backpack (more on that later). * PERFECT TRACKPAD: smooth, ideally glass-covered surface; aspect ratio matches that of the screen; button is durable and will last a long time; uses Microsoft Precision drivers on Windows (sign of good-quality hardware). * EXCELLENT SPEAKERS: Reasonably loud, forward/upward firing, preferably four, ideally with some woofers for at least a bit of base. Next, it needs to be powerful. I want 16 GB of RAM with excellent multi-core CPU performance to improve my code compilation times. This means good thermal management too, so that that performance can be maintained and the machine doesn’t damage its battery or other internal components with excessive heat, which I suspect happened withmy current machine.
Also, I need for it to NOT have an NVIDIA GPU. I have no graphical needs beyond what an integrated GPU can accomplish, and don’t want to deal with Plasma-on-NVIDIA drama. Sorry, NVIDIA. The machine needs to have a solid and durable metal case, as I will be traveling domestically and internationally with it multiple times a year (once the world beats COVID-19, that is). For similar reasons, it should be reasonably lightweight and get very good practical battery life. Extreme thinness is not required, but excessive thickness would be nice to avoid, as I like to travel to Europe for work events and conferences with only a backpack and no checked or hand luggage. An excessively thick laptop takes up space needed for socks and underwear (unless I’m going to Germany, in which case I wash them in my hotel room and dry them on the towel warmer! TMI… sorry-not-sorry!). Finally, I want the laptop to not look stupid. No bling-bling effects, no gaudy blue and gold two-tone color effects, no flashing multicolored lights, no fake (or real) wood, no trying to look like an expensive watch or a traffic accident, no sharp chiseled edges–none of that attention-getting crap! Just a basic boring matte silver or gray metal case. Ideally it will not be a fingerprint magnet. Within reason, price is not a practical consideration as this is a business expense for me and I am comfortable spending big bucks on something that provides my livelihood which I expect to keep forseveral years.
So given these conditions, what do people recommend? Help me, KDE community, you’re my only hope!Nate Linux
Hardware 84
Comments
May 17, 2020May 17, 20204
Minutes
POSTS NAVIGATION
Older posts
Search for:
FOLLOW VIA EMAIL
Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. Join 371 other followersFollow
FOLLOW VIA RSS
* RSS - Posts
POPULAR POSTS
*
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga: impressions, bugs, workarounds, and thoughtsabout the future
*
This week in KDE: Okular, Konsole, Plasma, and Wayland*
KDE roadmap for 2020*
This week in KDE: Plasma 5.19 beta and more*
This week in KDE: Get new clipped subsurface Dolphin folder sizesCATEGORIES
* Discover
* Linux Hardware
* New Contributor Friendliness* This Week in KDE
* Uncategorized
* Usability & Productivity * User Interface Design* World Domination
ARCHIVES
* June 2020
* May 2020
* April 2020
* March 2020
* February 2020
* January 2020
* December 2019
* November 2019
* October 2019
* September 2019
* August 2019
* July 2019
* June 2019
* May 2019
* April 2019
* March 2019
* February 2019
* January 2019
* December 2018
* November 2018
* October 2018
* September 2018
* August 2018
* July 2018
* June 2018
* May 2018
* April 2018
* March 2018
* February 2018
* January 2018
* December 2017
TIP JAR
LIBERAPAY:
PAYPAL:
Blog at WordPress.com. Adventures in Linux and KDE Blog at WordPress.com.Post to
Cancel
* Follow
*
* Adventures in Linux and KDE* Customize
* Follow
* Sign up
* Log in
* Report this content * Manage subscriptions* Collapse this bar
Details
Copyright © 2024 ArchiveBay.com. All rights reserved. Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | DMCA | 2021 | Feedback | Advertising | RSS 2.0