I Found the Lost Cat! Pisi Linux 2.0 Is now an Alpha 6

I realized two days ago that Pisi Linux 2.0 is on development and right now it reached the state of alpha 6.

I downloaded the test ISO and installed it on a virtual machine (no live DVD unfortunately).

What does it have?

See this video of the previous alpha (alpha 5), posted by Groni, one of the members of the team:

This is what the Pisi GRUB bootloader looks like:

And this is the log in screen.  Not very impressive, but I don't expect to be impressed at this stage anyway.
 

The first thing I noticed of Pisi Linux Alpha 6 is that it comes with Plasma 5.  To be honest, I don't like the flat look of Plasma 5.  Another aspect of the new KDE desktop that I don't like is the fact that they got rid of the possibility to set different wallpapers and plasmoids for each virtual desktop.


The good part is that some window themes and desktop themes like Ghost are still supported.  For those of us who are not happy looking how a desktop mimics a tablet or a phone, that theme is a life saver. In my opinion, the panel looks a lot better indeed if Ghost is set.

This is the log out screen.  Again, thanks to Ghost, Plasma it is not so painful to look at.

So far, my complaints are not directed to Pisi but to KDE.  But what about Pisi concretely?

I did notice that VLC fails to load.  Also, I realized that an old bug causing the system not to be fully localized when one chooses Spanish is still present...apparently.

Well, this is an alpha.  Expecting full functionality and polish at this level is asking too much, especially because Pisi has few developers. In this light, I am actually very pleased.  Pisi's developing team may lack members but not hard work and enthusiasm.

Hopefully, Pisi 2.0 will surprise all of us. I am very happy that Pisi is still in development.

Activity Pager: The Light at the End of Plasma 5.5's Tunnel?

Image taken from notmart.org

I learned here that Plasma 5.5 will come with a tiny plasmoid called Activity Pager.  It is designed to somehow imitate the pager for virtual desktops, but using Plasma's activities instead.

Could this be the answer for all KDE users who, like me, got discouraged by the lack of virtual desktop customization in the new version of KDE? 

I don't really know.  No matter what KDE developers say, activities and virtual desktops are not fully equivalent.  I've found activities way too complex for the functions I used -- and liked -- of virtual desktops. 

At least Activity Pager might be a way to minimize the friction of Plasma's lack of features.

Do You Like Different Wallpapers and Widgets on each Desktop? Plasma 5 Does NOT!

KDE 4 has evolved to Plasma 5 and people talk about the multiple improvements that Plasma 5 has brought: cleaner looks, increased stability, better organization...

With such great news, which KDE 4 user wouldn't want to move on to the new environment?

Those who view Bug 343246 as a relevant issue, of course.

This bug basically describes Plasma 5's inability to set different wallpapers on each virtual desktop.  The same goes for widgets.

In other words, if you liked to have a "work" desktop with, say, a calculator, a ruler, monitoring tools, and easily identifiable because of the serious, work-related image you set as its wallpaper...all that opposed to your "fun" desktop with a colorful wallpaper and little games, now you can't have that.

An easy "solution" is what KDE people know as "activities."

Of course, you may set different wallpapers for different activities.  The problem is that activities are linked to all virtual desktops.  That means that, if you have 4 virtual desktops with wallpaper A and create an activity with wallpaper B, you will have 4 more virtual desktops with that wallpaper.  Creating a new activity with wallpaper C will give you 4 more virtual desktops with that wallpaper...and the widgets you set on each activity will be present in all desktops of the same activity.

Not the best approach in that specific context, right?  KDE 4's flexibility worked better. But why did they take that feature away?

To reply to the person who filed the bug, someone said this:


"it was a very problematic feature that cause a lot of bugs. it was removed as an explicit choice (and due to architectural changes can't really get back) for this behavior, there are activities."

It's interesting that, while XFCE now added the choice of multiple wallpapers for each desktop, KDE, the champion of customization, took it away.

Fortunately, in spite of the flat look of Plasma 5, the desktop cube and the 3D effects are still there.  Hopefully, KDE devs won't take them away because the feature of hovering windows also has an old bug that they have not yet corrected:

A window that hovers over two different workspaces gets shown only partially.