I just tested Neon's ISO in hopes of Screencasting it but couldn't and will explain why later. I warn you, the results have not been exactly encouraging, but something can be seen about what the next one will bring us KDE SC with its PlasmaNext.
Accessing Plasma Next
I was surprised to see that when booting from a USB memory, what loaded me was a Ubuntu with KDE (not even Kubuntu), but in a short time the Session Manager loaded. In the screenshots it looks something wrong, because I could not have a large resolution in the virtual machine. In fact, I had to disable acceleration in 3D.
It can be said that the appearance of the Session manager (which I assume is KDM) is very pretty, just like the KSplash. And I must admit that the desktop loaded me quite quickly. But after loading came some problems.
From the outset it shows that at least with my graphics Intel 4000, the composer is not quite polished and the hardware acceleration is faulty. When I opened the new menu, I drew strange black stripes, but then they disappeared. From the menu I can say that it is very nice, but impractical, since it no longer includes the application search engine and I hope this will be corrected immediately.
Regarding the topics, this ISO includes part of the new artwork called Breeze, especially two themes for Plasma Next (one of light colors and others of dark colors) and the usual Oxygen which as a novelty, brings monochrome icons. They are somewhat ugly, but I hope they improve later. Click on the images to see the differences.
Both the size of the fonts in the bar and in the menu seem excessive to me, even in larger resolutions. The same for the calendar, which is now more flat and pretty.
One element to take into account in terms of its care is the notification area that now integrates with the system tray. In my tests there are several things that failed, for example, when we open the connected USB devices or the network status, always when closing it the notification dialog was activated, being quite annoying to have to close it again.
When opening VLC, a multimedia icon was left in the tray that I had no way to close it. I guess it's actually like Ubuntu, that it launches the player and allows us to switch between the items in our playlist. And with no sound, I never saw the volume icon anywhere.
For its part, the only graphic element that is not yet integrated into the rest is the Clipboard, which when clicking on it is still ugly as it used to be and to close it, you have to click on otherwise it stays bothering at the bottom. But the rest of the items look stylish.
When adding a Plasmoid, the list no longer appears on the bottom bar, but it appears vertically on one side of the screen. I don't know if it's a bug or if they plan to leave it that way, but I don't particularly like it.
The theme for the cursor is part of the new Artwork from Plasma Next and I think it could improve a lot. Until this minute it is somewhat childish and some of its states (for example, loading) do not convince me.
In the System Preferences there are not all the options that we normally find in KDE, and although it is too early to judge yet, I liked how the sections looked more, and even the Desktop Effects options.
And although I have not tested the full functionalities of SnowyI feel like I'm going to miss the old man a little Locker once they remove it from KDE SC. Something that I did like about the new launcher is that when we launch (worth the redundancy) an application, for example Kate, it also shows us the last files that we open in it.
Conclusions
These are roughly the new things I saw in this first beta. I didn't find the KDE (Oxygen Font) font anywhere, so it only remains to follow up on each release. I'm not really disappointed at all, although I think that by early July this version of KDE will not be finished yet, it seems to me that a lot of things have been improved and there is still much to see.
On the part of the project Neon I don't have much to add. The ISO comes with few applications and although it includes voko screen to do Screencast, I could not get audio, so it was almost all in vain.
Those giant letters reminded me a bit of Windows 8.
· The cursor, personally, I liked.
· I can't quite understand the relationship between Milou, Baloo, Sprinter and Krunner.
PS: elav posting at almost midnight WTF?
it's called schedule post, bro xD
Not really. At that time I was at duty on duty 😀
I like it, it looks good
the display manager will not be lightdm?
the icons you are right are somewhat simplistic, calendars are beautiful
quite nice and under the hood what news does it bring? something magic?
One of the things I like the most about KDE is the evolution of the project, making controversial decisions with a firm hand (I mean the move from KDE3 to KDE4) if necessary. Plasma Next from what you tell in the article is one more example of this evolution. In fact I am seriously considering retiring my aging Xfce 4.10 and moving to KDE.
And to finish a slightly off-topic question: what distribution with KDE do you recommend (and which is not Kubuntu)?
ArchLinux, Manjaro, KaOS, Debian, openSUSE, Chakra .. in that order.
Thank you very much, I will take a look at them via pendrive to see how they are.
You should explain this list, because putting archlinux and debian in the same list shows inconsistency.
Or the last of the last is sought, even if it is sacrificing stability (Arch).
Or the maximum stability is sought even if it is sacrificing the present time. (Debian).
Debian is not so stable nor arch linux so unstable. Probably the stable packages are those related to the web server, because the debian lxde whezzy has many bugs in applications like gpicviw xarchiver lxmusic…. I calculate that the wheezy kde also froze with a couple of screwed bugs, I have had to change many applications for others and even compile new versions, I simply gave Jessie update ...
Distro focused on KDE CHakra and Kaos.
Here I go on to comment -in addition to reading, which I have been doing for a while- about the KDE distro I use: Bridge Linux. Arch-based and rolling-release distro. And as I comment I would like to see a review on Bridge to see if someone else is encouraged to try it.
regards
Sounds good improvements to me. As always, it is too early to make a judgment. I've heard people complaining about the artwork… Anyway, I don't think this first beta is the place to judge that.
But for now it seems that they are doing a great job in terms of functionalities and technological advances.
Although I have never seen KDE as an environment for me, since its main advantage is for me its biggest flaw: the integration between its components and the fact that it comes with a whole set of software necessary to have a complete experience It seems to me that they are making Plasma Next a desktop with a great future in the GNU / Linux community.
Sometimes I wish Cinnamon took a bit of the KDE direction in certain respects ...
The new KDE5 will be much more modular, as will the apps that use its framework as they migrate.
Hopefully in a while you will be able to install applications made for KDE with minimal extra library requirements.
I have a question, when this is ready and is included in the repos, I will automatically do a "sudo pacman -Syu" will update all my kde ????
You are right. So it should be.
I understand, thank you very much.
Excellent, thanks for keeping us up to date, I will follow these posts closely.
1- There are many bugs in that iso, but I don't know if because of the beta nature of the software or because of the work of the Neon project, which always disappoints me.
2- I understand that now SDDM will be used instead of KDM.
3- The menu application finder is there, just start typing.
4- I don't know if I understood correctly, but apparently the correct size of the font in the bar will have to do with a suitable configuration: http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=285&t=120885
5- The panel of plasmoids will be vertical.
6- Now comes Sprinter instead of Krunner and it should have the same functions, at least in the medium term.
Greetings.
The plasmoids thing will not be so nice but I find it more comfortable to read being a smart guy
Well as I said in the previous article, KDE 5 will come with great changes and they are already showing ...
For being a graphic development in the hands of "a team of designers" it doesn't impress me at all. My KDE 4.13 with Caledonia outperforms the designs of this new Plasma Next… It's my opinion.
The changes are not only aesthetic, but they go much further. As for the code itself, Plasma Next will change the way you look at KDE.
It looks good, I already want to test it on arch: 3
The more I look at the general design of the interface, the more outdated I see it ... well, it's a problem for many distros, they are far from being avant-garde; pity.
I am quite liking the new style. You can tell the KDE design team is doing a good job. the side panel for plasmoids looks better to me like this. nowadays with screens wild screen is more practical. the only thing I don't like is the oxygen theme of the windows. I hope they change it or create a Breeze theme for the windows because I think it will suit you very very very well. who knows. i'm very happy with gnome but i may go back to kde for 5.1 🙂
Elav I've been eager for a while to have the Plasma Next wallpaper, do you share it?
3se wallpaper reminds me of Ubuntu 14.04 which is very similar to gnome 3.12. which also looks a lot like the fedora 19
Elements increasingly simple and slightly minimalist .. the gnome wave is coming! attentive!
Hopefully it's fast and when copying something I don't have to stop doing what I'm doing and wait for the copy to finish.