MX-21 KDE/plasma beta 2 feedback thread

[Eadwine Rose]

I think it was MX 17 (don't hold me to that) that had the startup visual that transitioned from a black and white image to the full color wallpaper. First time I saw that I literally, actually, said "Wow" out loud. It reminded me of the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy's house landed. That's how you make a first impression.

Just an offhand idle comment. I know you guys have bigger fish to fry, but if impressions matter, I'd like to see you somehow tie all the different startup screens together in one coherent whole.

I remember that, indeed. I liked that too.

Wow, I am agreeing with Uncle Mark on something. Might be a thought to reimplement that cool thing we had then.

[asqwerth]

@uncle mark

Your observation is something the dev team have actually been discussing already, but no decision has been made yet.

However, some points for your information:

That B/W login to coloured desktop transition was used all the way to mx19 but it was for XFCE. I don't mind having something similar be done in MX21 xfce.

KDE's default display manager, sddm, allows sddm login themes to show a highly blurred version (ie like it's behind frosted glass) of a background. In beta2, the background used in the sddm theme is the default WP. So the transition is from blurred default WP in the login window, to the default WP in its full coloured glory on the desktop. That would in my opinion be a fair parallel of the previous transition in xfce.

Splash screen between login window to desktop - that is a plasma thing. XFCE has a splash screen option with is very rarely enabled by any distro, as far as I am aware, and MX has never used it. A neutral grey (plus dna/molecue structure graphic) splash theme was chosen to match the greyish shade of the sddm theme.

grub theme background and the plymouth splash background, yes, I agree with you that right now they don't really blend that well.

[davemx]

This is what I get when I click on the "Wastebin" (UK English) plasmoid from the panel. I don't know whether it works correctly in US English where it's called Trash.

The right click option to empty the bin works, and it can be accessed via Dolphin. I wonder whether this is because it's faulty or due to a problem with the translation. I suspect it may be a KDE error rather than an MX error though.

ksnip_20210915-152844.png

Rubbish!
I don't think it's translation. However, I cannot replicate it, I don't see that in Live environment did a fresh install and still don't see it. trash:/ is what it shows for me and it works.
Do you see a ~/.local/share/Trash folder? If not can you create and try again?

OK it may have something to do with how I've partitioned my hard drive to cope with having multiple linux systems sharing a big data partition incorporating all the homes and shared data. It looks as if anything I send to trash ends up in a folder /mnt/Data/.Trash-1000, which functions correctly, including via Dolphin, with the exception of this widget. But if I delete or rename ~/.local/share/Trash it instantly reappears. There must be contradictory settings somewhere. I set up a second desktop for my wife and she has a trash folder at /mnt/Data/.Trash-1002, and the widget doesn't work on her desktop either. I noticed also /mnt/Data/.Trash-0, presumably root, even though root's home directory is in the standard place. Anyhow, this doesn't appear to be a problem with the beta but with my weird setup.

But if anyone could point me in the direction of the relevant settings files, I would be grateful!

[uncle mark]

Thanks for the comments @asqwerth . Not surprised you guys are on top of this.

Just throwing this out...

Perhaps the amount of blurring or otherwise distorting the final wallpaper could be changed between screen backgrounds, from the grub screen being totally smeared/blurred/distorted and then gradually becoming less so until the default wallpaper finally is displayed.

[uncle mark]

Wow, I am agreeing with Uncle Mark on something.

That's a bad omen.

[TimothySimon]

Is there an option to pin trash to the desktop on MX 21 KDE Plasma Beta 2 ?
(I know that we can make a desktop file with Exec=dolphin trash:/ , but is there an easier GUI way ?)

I know this may be a foolish question, but I'm very new to KDE.
(I've been using GNOME/Mate/Cinnamon/XFCE for years. MX-21 Beta 2 was my first experience with KDE plasma.)

[junoluna]

@TimothySimon

you can just drag it from 'places' in dolphin onto the desktop .... or add a trashcan from widgets

[TimothySimon]

@TimothySimon

you can just drag it from 'places' in dolphin onto the desktop .... or add a trashcan from widgets

Thanks. It works.

[davemx]

@TimothySimon

you can just drag it from 'places' in dolphin onto the desktop .... or add a trashcan from widgets

Thanks. It works.

I might try this (dragging from places in Dolphin), see my previous posts on a problem with the Wastebin plasmoid. I tried reorganising the stuff on my Data partition and remounting it as /home, and started with a new partition for myself. I reinstalled MX21ß2KDE, and the plasmoid worked just fine, but as soon as I symlinked folders to my Pictures, Downloads etc., I got the same Malformed URL error. This didn't happen with MX19KDE, and it doesn't happen with another distro I have installed with KDE5.22 (though that iteration brings back the ghost window problem!).

I found that making a .desktop with Exec=dolphin --new-window trash:/ works properly, so there must be some sort of error in the Wastebin plasmoid.

EDIT: It doesn't work. I get the same "Malformed URL" with the link dragged from dolphin as I did from the plasmoid. No idea why!

FIXED IT!: OK — it had nothing to do with the symlinks. It was simply because I had dragged a copy of the Dolphin desktop file into my ~/.local/share/applications folder in order to add some right-click actions, and to change the exec line to add --new-window, to be dragged onto a panel. So now the system sees two dolphin desktop files and gets confused! So I changed the Name= entry in my local copy to File Manager and also changed the name of the desktop file to file-manager.desktop, and now everything works as it should.

By the way, in my other distro running KDE5.22, the Wastebin plasmoid works despite me having two dolphin desktop files. No idea why this is but problem is solved now.

[TimothySimon]

Under MX Dark theme (on MX KDE beta 2, from KDE setings -> Global Theme) , LibreOffice and nomacs (and probably many more apps) have poorly visibile icons (Black icons on a Grey background).

In nomacs, I could fix this by nomacs' Dark Theme (from nomacs Settings).

But, I couldn't fix it in LibreOffice.

I think the icons should be more visible by default.