The metaphor of a home make-over crossed my mind today, and I think it implies a few ideas that connect to Plasma Next quite well.
Plasma Next is a new iteration of the Plasma workspaces. This is the first time, that KDE’s workspace is released independently from its underlying libraries and the applications accompanying it. It is built upon KDE Frameworks 5 and Qt5. “Plasma Next” is our name for the development version of Plasma, the final product will not be called “Next”. The planned release does not include the applications that are shipped today as part of the KDE Software Compilation. Applications, just like the Frameworks follow a different release schedule. Of course it’s entirely possible to run KDE SC 4 Applications on a Plasma Next desktop, and vice versa.
We have now settled on a release schedule for Plasma Next, which plans for the first stable release in June. It’s a good time to talk about what’s to expect in this first release. I think we’ve got some pretty exciting improved technology in the works. As our new baby shapes up, let’s take a look at what’s old and what’s new in more detail.
Frameworks 5
Plasma Next bases on KDE Frameworks 5, which is a modularized version of the venerable KDE development platform, kdelibs and friends, so to say. This results in a reduced footprint in terms of dependencies. The Plasma libraries and runtime components are one of those Frameworks itself, providing the tools to build applications and workspaces. Plasma has been one of the early adopters of Frameworks 5, mainly for the reason that we had to do some development in parallel. While building on an unstable base wasn’t always easy, it certainly has its benefits: We could check the viability of the Frameworks goals, and catch regressions early on. A good test harness only goes so far, actually building a real world application with the libraries makes sure they’re stable and functioning. These days, the issues are gone, KDE Frameworks has stabilised enough that applications can be ported quite easily.
With the move to Frameworks 5 come some architectural changes that allow us to cut out some “runtime fat”, we can get rid of some separate processes with the new architecture, which results in a leaner system for the user.
QtQuick for the UI
Plasma Next wallpaper selection
The transition to QtQuick reaches a very significant milestone in Plasma Next: the whole UI is written in QML. This concludes a transition process which we’ve started in Plasma 4.x, as a side-effect it solves a whole class of long-standing quality and maintenance problem in the code, it means a higher quality for many users. The transition to QtQuick-based UI has been fairly smooth so far, so we are not jumping onto something entirely new here, which means that we have been able to port much of the existing and matured functionality from Plasma 4.x over to Plasma Next. Our QML APIs have not changed radically, so porting existing code written in QML to Plasma Next is not a huge amount of work. For add-ons written in other languages (UIs written in C++, Python and other languages are currently not supported, this is a conscious design decision, and unless there are QML bindings for these languages (which seems like a weird idea), this is unlikely to be supported in the future. Instead we’ve improved and matured the QML API to a level where it’s very easy to create almost anything you can dream of in QML.
New Graphics Stack
Plasma’s graphical stack reaches a new state-of-the-art this year. We are now able to fully offload the rendering of the UI into threads, and other processes, making the UI responsive by default. We also offload visual effects almost entirely onto the graphics card. This means that it’s faster, so you get better framerates out of it, it frees up CPU time for the user and it’s also more energy-efficient, so saves some battery life.
In case the system falls back to software rendering, we can now centrally disable animations, so even on systems that paint slowly, or we can reduce repaints drastically to give a snappy feel. This means that the visual effects in the UI degrade gracefully with available graphics features on the system. For the vast majority of users, this isn’t an issue anyway, their systems run a fully hardware-accelerated desktop with complete ease. On these systems we can improve the user experience by using the graphics card’s capability — and not only that: The transition to QtQuick 2, which is part of Qt5 means that all the work at UI level can be offloaded onto the GPU as well.
Another hot topic these days is Wayland readiness. This is currently work in progress, Martin Gräßlin’s blog shows some impressive progress on running KDE applications on Wayland. This is one of many important milestones. The most complex case is running a full Wayland session with Plasma and KDE applications, and we are not there yet. Wayland support is continuously improved.
Polished Interaction
Let’s try a dark theme
Next to these architectural changes, we’ve also put some work into the actual UI visuals and interaction. We are in the process of establishing a Visual Design Group in KDE. Which already participates in the development of Plasma Next. The first results of this will be visible this summer, and the group is currently hashing out plans for the future. There is some serious design love appearing. You can follow the progress of it on the wheeldesign blog.
One of my favourite new features that has recently landed is Marco’s work on contrast behind translucent dialogs, which hugely improves readability in many cases, and make “the old Plasma” almost look bland in comparison. We’ve cleaned up quite a lot of workflows, not by making them any different, but by removing visual noise in between. The idea is to polish common elements to feel fresh and like an upgrade to users, but not entirely different. In the UI, known behavioral patterns are kept in place, with more pronounced core functions, and less fuzz around them. We’re aiming at keeping all the functionality and adaptability in place. To the user, the migration to Plasma Next should feel like an upgrade, not something completely new, but trusted after a bigger step in its evolution, yet recognizably true to its values.
We want to achieve this by concentrating on the core values, on what makes us good, and what users love us for. But we also do not want to pass the opportunity to fix what nags us and our users. Improvements in details mean that we listen to our users, a large portion of which do not want to be the subject of UI experiments, but who require a reliable system that supports and improves the personal workflows they have almost brought to perfection.
Of course, all of these workflows rely on many details behaving as they do, and these things are different for everyone. A small difference in behavior, or a missing seemingly minor feature might make or break any given workflow, there is no guarantee to be made, just a promise of best effort.
Many, but not all parts are co-installable, and it will be possible to use KDE SC 4 applications in a Plasma Next environment, and vice versa.
Beyond Devices
Plasma Next runs on top of a device-independent shell. The whole UI is structured into logical blocks that can be exchanged at runtime, this allows for dynamic switching the user interface to suit a different form factor. A target device will typically have the plasma-shell (and runtime bits) installed, and one or more device-specific shells. We are now readying the first of these “workspace user experiences”, Plasma Desktop. Others, such as the tablet-oriented Plasma Active UX will join in subsequent releases.
When will it be good enough for me?
While no .0 will ever be perfect, I expect that Plasma Next.0 will feel very much like an evolutionary step to the user, and certainly miles away compared to the impact of Plasma in KDE 4.0. For those that still remember the transition from KDE 2.2 to KDE 3.0, this seems rather comparable. While KDE 2 was almost a complete rewrite of KDE 1, the 2 to 3 transition was much less radical and far-reaching. We saw the same pattern between KDE 3 and 4, which again was quite radical, especially in and kdelibs and even more so for the workspace — Plasma which was completely new in 4.0.
In the first stable release of Plasma Next we want to provide a stable and fully functional core desktop. We concentrate on making the most important default functionality available, and are polishing this first and foremost. I expect that most users can be just happy with this first release, but as I said, there’s no guarantee, and maybe you’re missing something. For those that want to make the switch later, we have of course our long-term maintained current Plasma stable, so there’s no rush.
This concentration on the core also means that not every single feature will be available immediately. We are, however aiming at feature parity, so in most cases, a missing feature in .0 will be brought back in a later release. The kdeplasma-addons module, which contains additional functionality will likely not be ported by summer.
Ultimately, the way to make a good Plasma Next happen is to lend us a hand and take part. Even better, you don’t have to wait with this until summer. Take the plunge, build KDE Frameworks 5 and Plasma Next, try it and help us completing the core functionality and to fix bugs. That is exactly what we will be doing in the next months leading up to the release this summer, and we hope the experience will be delightful one for our users.