Mageia-6

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Mageia-6

Postby aussiejohn » Nov 4th, '17, 05:42

I am glad so many of our Mageia users are doing a rave over Mageia 6 because I cannot join them. It seems that the builders have decided to remove a lot of the customising capabilities we have been used to over the past years.
This means I cannot set-up my desktops ( yes multiple) with different backgrounds either as single photos or slide shows. I cannot any longer have different widgets on the different desktops either.
The widget menu is pointedly ugly. Despite my having installed many applications they are nowhere around to be seen in the Main menu.

I suspect that the builders of Ver.6 have reconstructed it for a particular type of user instead of the universal being it used to be.
Until I see some move back to customising capability again, I will have to stick with 5.1 till its death and then think about moving on to a different Linux OS which I will be sad about considering I have been using Mandrake right through the various iterations to the present time.
If anyone can suggest solutions to what I presently see as obstacles then please let me know.
Cheers. John
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Re: Mageia-6

Postby benmc » Nov 4th, '17, 08:30

From your comments, it sounds like you are 'not' using Plasma-5 on Mageia6.
Pasma-5 is as supplied by KDE, warts and all, with minimal customisation by Mageia.
The size and scope of the Plasma-5 desktop, and its rate of change, was one of the reasons for the long delay for Mageia 6.
Be aware that Mageia has provided KDE(4) DE since Mageia 1, and Mandriva since at least 2009, so you have had a few years for your memory to acquire some muscle memory.

There are plenty of other DE available from the repos, each with varying amounts of customisability.
Try them out
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Re: Mageia-6

Postby jkerr82508 » Nov 4th, '17, 11:09

The decision to prefer the use of multiple activities rather than multiple desktops was made by KDE developers and not by Mageia:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=343246
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=341143

Which applications that you have installed are absent from the main menu?

Jim
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Re: Mageia-6

Postby bittwister » Nov 5th, '17, 00:43

aussiejohn wrote:I am glad so many of our Mageia users are doing a rave over Mageia 6 because I cannot join them. It seems that the builders have decided to remove a lot of the customising capabilities we have been used to over the past years.

And made it slower to get to work after login.
This means I cannot set-up my desktops ( yes multiple) with different backgrounds either as single photos or slide shows.

Very true. I run with 8 and had used different backgrounds to tell me which desktop I was running on.
I cannot any longer have different widgets on the different desktops either.
The widget menu is pointedly ugly. Despite my having installed many applications they are nowhere around to be seen in the Main menu.

I am not going to be able to help you being able to have different widgets on different desktops. I was not able to place my 43 desktop shortcuts to go exactly where I wanted them. I also got tired of the icons changing on every release.
If anyone can suggest solutions to what I presently see as obstacles then please let me know.


My solution was to abandon the Plasma/kde Desktop Environment (DE) for the Xfce Desktop Environment. Solved the different icon change problem by creating my own copy of desired Icons an setting those in the $HOME/Desktop/* files.

I now have a Xfce desktop environment which looks, feels, and performs like KDE did on Mageia 3.
I installed geany to replace the Plasma/kde editor kwrite. I also have slide show running on each desktop.

I did go back to my Plasma 5 install and installed the Xfce DE just to make my whole setup consistent.
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Re: Mageia-6

Postby aussiejohn » Nov 5th, '17, 12:22

Thank you to the three of you, benmc, jkerr and bittwister who responded. I have started experimenting with Enlightenment after trying Xfce initially which I found to be very awkward.
Enlightenment seems to be reasonably flexible and so far I have managed a setup of 10 desktops each with their own individual photo backgrounds.
I have found my various apps can be setup on different desktops and left in place and all are present in the menu. So good so far. I will try setting up widgets too later if that is possible and seeing if slideshow background can be done as well.

I found all the discussion about this KDE problem goes back to many years ago. It appears that the programmers leading the continued development have no regard for users requests, suggestions or views and have actually said so in not so many words.
They will decide what flexibility KDE should have and that is next to none for users using the excuse that reoccurring bugs are too hard to spend their time on. I believe that argument is false because I have been using these features in KDE for years right up to the present with Mageia-5.1 and have never had a problem with these features. Always using KDE instead of Gnome since first using mandrake.

Think about it, how did we ever cope and manage before all these "activities" apps ?. Short answer, very well indeed.
I will keep you all posted as to how I progress with this issue.

Cheers. John.
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Re: Mageia-6

Postby onlyhuman » Dec 7th, '17, 14:12

Glad you have tried using enlightenment John, it has its problems like any other desktop.
but can be a good experience if you get it set up how you like it,
I currently have a e 0.22.1 and efl-1.20.6 build which also can access the desktop using wayland.
Hope you continue to enjoy using enlightenment.
(Be nice if there was a dedicated enlightenment desktop section on the forum, hopefully that may change if enough e users would like that.) :)
Best wishes ,
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Re: Mageia-6

Postby zeebra » Jan 10th, '18, 19:06

aussiejohn wrote:I am glad so many of our Mageia users are doing a rave over Mageia 6 because I cannot join them. It seems that the builders have decided to remove a lot of the customising capabilities we have been used to over the past years.
This means I cannot set-up my desktops ( yes multiple) with different backgrounds either as single photos or slide shows. I cannot any longer have different widgets on the different desktops either.
The widget menu is pointedly ugly. Despite my having installed many applications they are nowhere around to be seen in the Main menu.

I suspect that the builders of Ver.6 have reconstructed it for a particular type of user instead of the universal being it used to be.
Until I see some move back to customising capability again, I will have to stick with 5.1 till its death and then think about moving on to a different Linux OS which I will be sad about considering I have been using Mandrake right through the various iterations to the present time.
If anyone can suggest solutions to what I presently see as obstacles then please let me know.
Cheers. John


KDE5 or "plasma workframes5" is so far a big problem compared to KDE4. KDE was more function rich, but the new KDE environment is also built to incorporate Weyland graphics and is built around a new kwin version. They could have put in more work with plasma workframes 5, yes, please... It should have been at least as good as 4 or exceeding 4. But, let's give them some more time? What is it now, KDE version 5 is already 5.3?

In any case, we need to report these ISSUES to KDE directly. We need to make suggestions for improvements on KDE forums, and bringing back old favourite functions and settings. A seemeless switch between Weyland and X would be a bonus. Kwin is based on X and soon Weyland, while Plasma is based on QT. Jolla proved that Weyland and QT works just excellent.

The amount of functions in Weyland is minimal, and perhaps also contribute to reduce the already popular and known functions on X. This is not really acceptable unless we get a more functional Weyland version.

Another advantages is composite graphics directly on Weyland and working with that instead of old rigid X structures and additions and plugins and scripts. X is an excellent addition inside Weyland, an old proven technology that can be used for many different things on Weyland.

Imagine the lightness of a TV with just Weyland on, swapping between different X windows with a single function and layer on. Easy peacy.
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Re: Mageia-6

Postby Gelsenbury » Jan 16th, '18, 02:07

It reminds me of the switch from KDE 3 to KDE 4. I'm sure all of these are upstream issues. And by the time Plasma 5 is fully featured, there will be a decision to re-invent the whole code base again...

I'm being sarcastic, of course. I must say that Plasma 5 is more reliable and more fully equipped than KDE 4.0 was. Yes, some customisation isn't available and may never be again. But the only thing that really bothers me so far is the poor integration with applications from other desktop environments. Between Plasma 5, GTK2, GTK3, and KDE 4 (I use Clementine and KMyMoney), there's a cacophony of different widgets, scroll bars, and so on. Some of this can be configured in the system settings, but not all. It's a cosmetic and low-priority issue, but the look and feel do matter to desktop users.

Otherwise, I'm finding Mageia 6 up-to-date and reliable so far. Some issues with choppy sound were fixed by the most recent updates, and any remaining problems are ones that I already had in Mageia 5.1.

I share your feelings about Breeze. From Crystal to Oxygen to Breeze has been a journey downhill all the way in my opinion. When I use a desktop or laptop computer (rather than a phone or tablet), it's nice to have a bit of colour and texture. They say that recessions change fashions...
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Re: Mageia-6

Postby filip » Jan 16th, '18, 10:04

For those that would still like to use multiple desktops with different background in Plasma 5:
You can install Vallpaper, a Plasma 5 widget.

But I also jumped ship. From KDE to XFCE after about a decade and a half. Simply to much regressions and beta quality.
For now I'm very happy with XFCE and it's nice learning curve. I managed to set it up close to KDE3 configuration.
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