Those of you upgrading to Plasma 6.4.1 (released yesterday) may notice a more substantive change than the type we typically make in bug-fix releases: The “highlight window” effect for Task Manager thumbnails is now off by default. This is the effect that makes other windows fade out when you hover over a window’s thumbnail. Why … Continue reading A slight UX change in Plasma 6.4.1 →...
X11 is in the news again, so I thought it would make sense to be clear about the Plasma team’s plans for X11 support going forward. Current status: Plasma’s X11 session continues to be maintained. Specifically, that means: This is actually not too bad; there are relatively few open and fixable X11-specific bugs (0.76% of … Continue reading About Plasma’s X11 session →...
I was recently interviewed by Jonathan Bennett of the FLOSS Weekly show! If you aren’t totally sick of my ugly mug yet, you can hear me talk about some of my favorite topics: KDE on hardware, onboarding people to Plasma, the importance of preserving readiness, and how difficult it is to actually install and uninstall … Continue reading Interview on FLOSS Weekly →...
With the release of the Lenovo Legion Go S gaming handheld, we’ve now got a real apples-to-apples comparison of how Windows 11 fares against Linux (specifically, SteamOS with KDE Plasma) on the same 1st-party supported OEM hardware in a gaming context. And the results are pretty devastating for Windows in terms of performance and battery … Continue reading SteamOS destroys Windows →...
A few days ago I returned home from a wonderful Plasma sprint in Graz, Austria. Between COVID-19 and there being no Plasma sprint last year in favor of the Goals mega-sprint, this was actually only my my third in-person Plasma sprint! So I was very excited to attend. There’s much to talk about! Sprints are … Continue reading Notes from the Graz Plasma sprint →...
It looks like Brodie Robertson hasn’t gotten sick of me yet, because we sat down again recently, this time on the subject of Techpaladin! We go over a lot of stuff I wrote in the announcement blog post last month, plus more detail and other topics too. This ends up being a pretty nerdy talk … Continue reading Interview about Techpaladin and life →...
As a former Apple guy, it pains me a bit to say this, but I’m coming to believe that the whole “It Just Works” thing is a temporary illusion. Oh, it can be achieved! But the real trick lies in keeping it. This came to mind while I was watching a video about one of … Continue reading Tools that Just Work™ …until they don’t →...
This is for everyone upgrading to Plasma 6.3.4, which was released yesterday. I suspect that some of you will notice something slightly wrong with notifications; the top padding is off, causing text to look not vertically centered most of the time. This is my fault. The recent bug-fixes I made to notification spacings and paddings … Continue reading If your notifications look kind of stupid in Plasma 6.3.4, it’s my fault →...
It’s been several years since I announced Plasma’s 15-minute bug initiative, and you can see the weekly numbers in every week’s “This Week in Plasma” post. Today I thought I’d share a high-level recap of where we’re at as of the first quarter of 2025. In short: really good. We dipped below 20 bugs for … Continue reading 2025 15-Minute Bug Initiative update →...
Today I’m going to talk about something a bit different. Maybe very different! After six years at Blue Systems GmbH, I’ve had the privilege of working daily with some of the finest and most ethical engineers I’ve ever known; lots of people whose names you probably recognize, because they’re some of the biggest contributors to … Continue reading Personal and professional updates — announcing Techpaladin Software →...