Living on the Edge with KDE Project Neon

[claydoh]

I've been trying to figure out the difference between Plasma 5 and Neon.

Neon is a self-contained instance of Plasma that you can log into instead of KDE 4. Think of it being like installing another desktop and being able to log into that, the same as if you installed Xfce or Lxde. All of its KDE user/app settings and preferences are kept in its own directory, so it is easy and safe to try it out, without loosing or messing with your current KDE bits.


The plasma 5 iso you see installs Plasma 5 as the DE, it replaces (or rather supersedes) KDE4.
I an currently using this as my daily driver, as running Neon is not really edgy and actually seems to run smoother.

[verndog]

I just now got the latest Plasma 5 installed with nvidia drivers and it runs very well.

I forgot to use the autologin feature when I built it, and now lightdm.conf is nowhere to be found. I thinks its suppose to be at "/etc/lightdm". Its a nothing matter, because when the next ISO comes out I will zsync mine and then remember to select autologin.

Neon seems like a lot of ppa's and configurations to monkey around with. Plasma 5 was straight forward, albeit, its 14.10.

[GreyGeek]

After following neon5 as an option during login I found no significant changes created by the many upgrades over the last month or so. So, I removed it. I used Muon at first, but it told me that too many of the Neon 5 packages could "not be updates or removed" when I tried to purge them. So, I fired up the Synaptic package manger. I gave me no problems in purging all of the Neon 5 packages, and didn't remove any KDE plasma desktop packages.

I was surprised that some of the plasma packages which allow system tray icons could not place those icons in a neon system tray.

[geoaraujo]

I've removed it too. I'll wait some more until make the change.

[NoWorries]

I also have not noticed any significant changes, but I am patiently waiting for some to come and check for what I want after the 80+ updates are installed. What surprises me is that these updates come each day without a break, so someone is working very hard and long and I appreciate such dedication.

I do not use this system for serious work. I just checkout the progress. At least I no longer get screen tearing or a shimmering logout screen and the login screen is much more stable and userfriendly.

As I installed the system from the noen5 iso, my sources are:


So I do not think that I can revert back to trusty without neon.

[GreyGeek]

.... So I do not think that I can revert back to trusty without neon.

Perhaps you can. Plasma is "just another desktop". I'd wager that if you installed kubuntu-desktop that it would pull in the entire KDE Plasma desktop and give you that option during the login. Just add the specific apps you need afterwards, if they are not installed by the desktop.

[NoWorries]

Perhaps you can. Plasma is "just another desktop". I'd wager that if you installed kubuntu-desktop that it would pull in the entire KDE Plasma desktop and give you that option during the login. Just add the specific apps you need afterwards, if they are not installed by the desktop.

Thanks GG for the tip that I will only use if I choose to jump ship. I am currently enjoying the small evolutionary changes and hopefully it will end up being the survivor of the fittest.

[jcphil]

I can log into the Project Neon desktop just fine. But when I get there, it has almost none of the Breeze look. There is only the Breeze splash screen and the icons in the application menu. Everything else is my standard KDE4 look. Is there some way to get the Breeze wallpaper, window decorations and icons?

[NoWorries]

I am not sure if you are aware of these comments about breeze. My impression about the direction of Project Neon is that the desktop look is not currently a high priority, ie near enough is good enough.

For example, I currently have a DVD and after I get the familiar 80+ updates, I check to see if the Device Notifier for the DVD shows more than "Open with File Manager". It does not show a list of other applications to select that will deal with a DVD. My next action is to see if more widgets have been added as well as check the Clock widget to see the movement and scaling options. Then there is the System Settings which is currently limited in many areas which allow more control of the desktop behaviour.

Once again, it is just a case of patiently waiting for the developers to get all aspects to work reliably.

[GerardV]

Is there some way to get the Breeze wallpaper, window decorations and icons?

I have a few issues with that as wel
The icons for the folders in Dolphin are half Breeze and half Oxygen.
Ironically, the Breeze icons show perfectly in 14.04 and they look gorgeous. Never been a fan of the Oxygen theme.
Window decoration is fully Breeze.
If you installed Neon alongside 14.04, you will find the wallpapers in the /opt directory

[woodsmoke]

For some reason, I get a "pink hued" desktop every once in a while. It may be the CPU somehow, because it does it with two different video cards.

woodsmoke

[Teunis]

Pink eh?
Have you tried to correlate it with your diet of the day?

[NoWorries]

Pink eh?
Have you tried to correlate it with your diet of the day?

My colours are correct, so I must be on a good high fibre diet. Recently I noticed that Plasma 5 makes use of the GPU for offloading graphics processing. If there are compatibility problems with the driver for the GPU, this may cause problems with the rendering of graphics. The article that I found is here.The comment that I am referring to is:

Fully Hardware-Accelerated Graphics Stack

Search in Plasma

Plasma 5 completes the migration of the Plasma workspace to QtQuick. Qt 5's QtQuick 2 uses a hardware-accelerated OpenGL(ES) scenegraph to compose and render graphics on the screen. This allows offloading computationally expensive graphics rendering tasks onto the GPU which frees up resources on the system's main processing unit, is faster and more power-efficient.
Internal changes in the graphics compositor and underlying Frameworks prepare support for running on Wayland, which is planned for an upcoming release.

I hope I am not giving you a bum-steer by introducing this into the discussion and I hope the pink hue is soon fixed with the 80+ updates that come 7 days a week.

[woodsmoke]

No worries....no that is GOOD INTEL.....thanks...

Tenuis...you are just harshin' me here my man! lol

woodopentonewideassmoke

[Teunis]

In the mean time we've received a few new system icons, I like the clipboard one.
The KOrganiser one fails with an error report that certain Akonadi services are not running.