F40 Change Proposal: KDE Plasma 6 (System Wide)

[Aoife Moloney]

Wiki  https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/KDE_Plasma_6

This is a proposed Change for Fedora Linux.
This document represents a proposed Change. As part of the Changes
process, proposals are publicly announced in order to receive
community feedback. This proposal will only be implemented if approved
by the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee.



== Summary ==
KDE Plasma 6 is successor to KDE Plasma 5 created by the KDE
Community. It is based on Qt 6 and KDE Frameworks 6 and brings many
changes and improvements over previous versions. For Fedora Linux, the
transition to KDE Plasma 6 will also include dropping support for the
X11 session entirely, leaving only Plasma Wayland as the sole offered
desktop mode.

== Owner ==
* Name: [[User:Ngompa|Neal Gompa]], [[User:Marcdeop|Marc Deop]],
[[User:Justinz|Justin Zobel]], [[User:Siosm|Timothy Ravier]],
[[User:Tdawson|Troy Dawson]], [[User:Jgrulich|Jan Grulich]]
* Email: ngompa13(a)gmail.com, marcdeop(a)fedoraproject.org,
justin.zobel(a)gmail.com, travier(a)redhat.com, tdawson(a)redhat.com,
jgrulich(a)redhat.com


== Detailed Description ==
KDE Plasma 6 is a new major version of the user experience environment
from the KDE community. It includes both desktop and mobile
environments. While there are some user experience improvements over
KDE Plasma 5, the majority of the work is under the hood. Notably, the
whole stack is now built on Qt 6. Qt 6 brings significant upgrades to
QML and Qt Quick as well as support for Vulkan (in addition to OpenGL
and OpenGL ES support introduced in Qt 5).

[https://pointieststick.com/2023/09/06/september-plasma-6-update/ KDE
Plasma 6.0 is expected to release in early February 2024]. The
frameworks (KDE Frameworks), shells (Plasma Desktop and Plasma
Mobile), and applications (KDE Gear)
[https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-devel/2023-September/002008.html
are all expected to be ported to Qt 6 as part of the KDE Plasma 6
release]. However, some applications may not make it in time and will
be updated later.

This upgrade is also notable that for Fedora Linux (and Fedora Extra
Packages for Enterprise Linux 10, once that materializes), KDE Plasma
will '''not''' offer an X11 session. Fedora KDE has been fully
Wayland
by default from login ([[Changes/WaylandByDefaultForSDDM|since Fedora
Linux 38]]) to desktop ([[Changes/WaylandByDefaultForPlasma|since
Fedora Linux 34]]), and the SIG is confident in the quality and
development around the Plasma Wayland experience to stand fully behind
it.

== Feedback ==

==== Why drop the X11 session? ====

Three reasons for this removal:

*
[https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/9/...
The Xorg server is deprecated since RHEL 9.0] and will be dropped in
"a future major RHEL release".
* Graphics fallback modes are Wayland-friendly now with
[[Changes/ReplaceFbdevDrivers|SimpleDRM enabled since Fedora Linux
36]].
* NVIDIA drivers (since v495~v515) support GBM for Wayland instead of
EGLStreams. Wayland is fully supported on current NVIDIA drivers.

This will drastically reduce our support burden and give us the
ability to focus on quality for the KDE Plasma stack and continue our
feature-forward nature. The Fedora KDE SIG will maintain a single code
stream for all supported distribution targets (Fedora Linux 40+,
Fedora Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 10+).

This also does not mean that X11 applications will not work in Plasma
6, as we will still support Xwayland for running X11 applications on
Plasma Wayland.

==== Could we keep Plasma 5 for X11? ====

No. The KDE Plasma stack is fairly large and comprehensive. The SIG
does not have the resources to maintain the KDE Plasma 5 stack beyond
the lifetime of upstream's focus. It would also be fairly complex to
do so, requiring a lot of downstream patching to resolve the conflicts
between Plasma 5 and Plasma 6. The intent upstream is that KDE Plasma
5 will be EOL shortly after the release of KDE Plasma 6, so it would
be very difficult to support ourselves.

==== Will Plasma 6 be available for older Fedora and EPEL releases? ====

No. This major version upgrade is not getting backported. Some
portions (KDE Frameworks and KDE Gear) may get backported as part of
regular upgrades if Qt 5-based versions are not maintained upstream,
but the Plasma Desktop and Plasma Mobile software will not. Notably,
KDE Plasma 5 for older Fedora Linux releases (and Fedora Extra
Packages for Enterprise Linux 9) are on Plasma 5.27 and will stay
there.

== Benefit to Fedora ==
KDE Plasma is a very popular platform used as the basis for the Fedora
KDE Spin, Fedora Kinoite, and the flagship Fedora Asahi Remix
experiences. By bringing KDE Plasma 6 into Fedora, we demonstrate our
leadership and commitment to bring the latest and greatest
technologies from the KDE community to the world.

== Scope ==
* Proposal owners:
** Import Plasma 6 stack into F40/Rawhide (tracked as
[https://pagure.io/fedora-kde/SIG/issue/383
pagureio#fedora-kde/SIG#383])
*** Ensure <code>kwin-x11</code> is obsoleted by
<code>kwin-wayland</code>
*** Ensure <code>plasma-workspace-x11</code> is obsoleted by
<code>plasma-workspace-wayland</code>
** Modify select KDE Frameworks 5 packages to be co-installable with
KDE Frameworks 6
[https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Plasma_6#Coinstallability per
upstream guidance].
** Enable tracking the Plasma 6 stack in ELN for branching to EPEL 10
once CentOS Stream 10 is available.

* Other developers:
** Optional: Packagers with software that can choose to build against
either Qt 5 or Qt 6 should make the switch to Qt 6. Community
maintenance of Qt 5 will be drastically reduced once KDE Plasma 6 is
released.

* Release engineering: [https://pagure.io/releng/issue/11669 #11669]

* Policies and guidelines: N/A (not needed for this Change)

* Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)

* Alignment with Community Initiatives: N/A

== Upgrade/compatibility impact ==
Fedora Linux users using Plasma X11 upgrading to Plasma 6 will find
themselves switched to Plasma Wayland automatically as the X11 session
will no longer be available. The KDE SIG strives to ensure the upgrade
path is smooth for all users. Configuration files will be migrated
automatically after first login to Plasma 6.

== How To Test ==

A COPR with pre-release versions of Plasma 6 will be available from
the KDE SIG in the near future. At the moment, we have a
[https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/g/kdesig/kde-nightly-qt6/ KDE
Plasma 6 nightly COPR] containing snapshot builds in various states.
It is strongly advised that testing is done in a non-production
environment using a Fedora spin that doesn't include and use KDE
Frameworks at all (such as [https://fedoraproject.org/spins/budgie/
the Fedora Budgie Spin]) as the packages are unstable and are not
co-installable with any Qt5+KF5 based environment at all.

Once packages are integrated into Rawhide, users should grab
[https://openqa.fedoraproject.org/nightlies.html nightly composes] of
the Fedora KDE Spin and Fedora Kinoite to try it out.

== User Experience ==
The user experience provided by KDE Plasma 6 will not be significantly
different from what users expect from KDE Plasma 5. The main change
will be the removal of the X11 session, as everyone will be
transitioned to the Wayland experience.

== Dependencies ==
Plasma 6 depends most notably on Qt 6 and KDE Frameworks 6 packages.
Qt 6 is already available in Fedora Linux, and KDE Frameworks 6 is in
the process of being imported.

== Contingency Plan ==
* Contingency mechanism: KDE SIG will roll back the Plasma Desktop and
Plasma Mobile packages to KDE Plasma 5. Doing so will require epoch
bumps across the stack.
* Contingency deadline: Beta freeze
* Blocks release? Yes

== Documentation ==
There is not yet upstream release notes for Plasma 6.0, as it is not
released yet.
* [https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Plasma_6 Developer documentation
tracking progress on Plasma 6.0]

== Release Notes ==
Fedora Linux now ships KDE Plasma 6.0, a new major version of the KDE
user experience from the KDE community. As part of this change, KDE
Plasma on Fedora Linux runs on the Wayland display technology. X11
applications are still supported on KDE Plasma.



-- 
Aoife Moloney

Product Owner

Community Platform Engineering Team

Red Hat EMEA

Communications House

Cork Road

Waterford
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[Aoife Moloney]

The discussion thread to provide feedback for this change proposal can be found here
https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/f40-change-proposal-kde-plasma-6-s...
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[Steven A. Falco]

On 9/13/23 11:53 AM, Aoife Moloney wrote:
>  Wiki  https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/KDE_Plasma_6 
>  == Summary ==
>  KDE Plasma 6 is successor to KDE Plasma 5 created by the KDE
>  Community. It is based on Qt 6 and KDE Frameworks 6 and brings many
>  changes and improvements over previous versions. For Fedora Linux, the
>  transition to KDE Plasma 6 will also include dropping support for the
>  X11 session entirely, leaving only Plasma Wayland as the sole offered
>  desktop mode. 
I'm more than a bit concerned about dropping X11.  I am the packager for KiCad on
Fedora.  The upstream KiCad team has stated [1] that they won't support Wayland issues
unless they can be recreated on X11, meaning that I'll be left with no way to support
the Fedora KiCad packages.

For convenience, here is the relevant part of the KiCad position:

      It is known that KiCad does not work well under Wayland. There are a number of known
issues with wxWidgets and Wayland. See the wxWidgets bug tracker for details [2].  KiCad
requests the XWayland compatibility layer when starting, however this is an emulation mode
and issues arising while using this mode need to be recreated under X11 before they will
be addressed.  At the moment, Wayland has no support for cursor warping, which means that
the KiCad features of centering the cursor when zooming, and continuously panning the
canvas, are broken on Wayland systems.

     Steve

[1] https://www.kicad.org/help/known-system-related-issues/
[2] https://github.com/wxWidgets/wxWidgets/labels/Wayland

[Neal Gompa]

On Wed, Sep 13, 2023 at 12:12 PM Steven A. Falco <stevenfalco(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  On 9/13/23 11:53 AM, Aoife Moloney wrote:
>  > Wiki  https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/KDE_Plasma_6
>
>  > == Summary ==
>  > KDE Plasma 6 is successor to KDE Plasma 5 created by the KDE
>  > Community. It is based on Qt 6 and KDE Frameworks 6 and brings many
>  > changes and improvements over previous versions. For Fedora Linux, the
>  > transition to KDE Plasma 6 will also include dropping support for the
>  > X11 session entirely, leaving only Plasma Wayland as the sole offered
>  > desktop mode.
>
>  I'm more than a bit concerned about dropping X11.  I am the packager for KiCad on
> Fedora.  The upstream KiCad team has stated [1] that they won't support Wayland issues
> unless they can be recreated on X11, meaning that I'll be left with no way to support
> the Fedora KiCad packages.
>
>  For convenience, here is the relevant part of the KiCad position:
>
>        It is known that KiCad does not work well under Wayland. There are a number of
> known issues with wxWidgets and Wayland. See the wxWidgets bug tracker for details [2]. 
> KiCad requests the XWayland compatibility layer when starting, however this is an
> emulation mode and issues arising while using this mode need to be recreated under X11
> before they will be addressed.  At the moment, Wayland has no support for cursor warping,
> which means that the KiCad features of centering the cursor when zooming, and continuously
> panning the canvas, are broken on Wayland systems.
>  
It looks like the cursor warping is supported in all major compositors
with the cursor-constraints protocol:
https://wayland.app/protocols/pointer-constraints-unstable-v1

Beyond that, I think it's probably a good idea to get a bug filed with
KDE upstream to get this tracked and figured out with the wxWidgets
folks. Of all the folks involved in the Wayland protocols development,
they are by far the easiest to work with.

There's also a Matrix room about KDE Wayland stuff if you would like
to talk to developers directly about these things:
https://matrix.to/#/#kde-wayland-goal:kde.org




--
真実はいつも一つ！/ Always, there's only one truth!

[Marcin Juszkiewicz]

W dniu 13.09.2023 o 17:53, Aoife Moloney pisze:

>  == Summary ==
>  KDE Plasma 6 is successor to KDE Plasma 5 created by the KDE
>  Community. It is based on Qt 6 and KDE Frameworks 6 and brings many
>  changes and improvements over previous versions. For Fedora Linux, the
>  transition to KDE Plasma 6 will also include dropping support for the
>  X11 session entirely, leaving only Plasma Wayland as the sole offered
>  desktop mode. 
Which leaves us with "Numpad shortcuts don't work in wayland sessions" 
bug in KDE/Wayland:

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=453423

Someone in KDE decided to treat KEY_KP1 ("1" on numpad part of pc105 
keyboard) in same way as KEY_1 ("1" on alphanumeric part of pc105 
keyboard). Which breaks several setups where people use shortcuts with 
numpad keys (for me it is Meta+KP[1-9] to organize windows).


This bug is one of reasons I am still on KDE/X11 rather than KDE/Wayland.

Other reasons are:

1. Zoom meeting app which is unable to share Wayland windows
2. RSIBreak app is unable to track activity

[Mattia Verga]

Il 15/09/23 11:25, Marcin Juszkiewicz ha scritto:
>  W dniu 13.09.2023 o 17:53, Aoife Moloney pisze:
>
> > == Summary ==
> > KDE Plasma 6 is successor to KDE Plasma 5 created by the KDE
> > Community. It is based on Qt 6 and KDE Frameworks 6 and brings many
> > changes and improvements over previous versions. For Fedora Linux, the
> > transition to KDE Plasma 6 will also include dropping support for the
> > X11 session entirely, leaving only Plasma Wayland as the sole offered
> > desktop mode.
>  Which leaves us with "Numpad shortcuts don't work in wayland sessions"
>  bug in KDE/Wayland:
>
>  https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=453423
>
>  Someone in KDE decided to treat KEY_KP1 ("1" on numpad part of pc105
>  keyboard) in same way as KEY_1 ("1" on alphanumeric part of pc105
>  keyboard). Which breaks several setups where people use shortcuts with
>  numpad keys (for me it is Meta+KP[1-9] to organize windows).
>
>
>  This bug is one of reasons I am still on KDE/X11 rather than KDE/Wayland.
>  
Interesting, see also what I reported about the decimal separator from 
the numpad not honouring the locale setting:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2215739
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=449706
https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=143540

So the whole numpad in kde-wayland doesn't work as expected. 
Unfortunately, it doesn't seem anyone cares because "can be worked 
around by using the other key". Hopefully, when everyone will be forced 
to Wayland and start reporting broken things, someone will look at that.

Mattia

[Ondrej Mosnáček]

On Wed, Sep 13, 2023 at 5:54 PM Aoife Moloney <amoloney(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:
>  == Summary ==
>  KDE Plasma 6 is successor to KDE Plasma 5 created by the KDE
>  Community. It is based on Qt 6 and KDE Frameworks 6 and brings many
>  changes and improvements over previous versions. For Fedora Linux, the
>  transition to KDE Plasma 6 will also include dropping support for the
>  X11 session entirely, leaving only Plasma Wayland as the sole offered
>  desktop mode. 
For me, the biggest blocker for switching to Wayland is the lack of
session restore support (https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=436318).
I have a bunch of text editor and file browser windows permanently
open across several activities and losing the layout after every
reboot would be a big productivity killer for me.

This is even listed right at the top of the showstoppers list on the KDE wiki:
https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Wayland_Showstoppers

Please don't remove X11 support until this is fixed (implemented) :(

[Maxwell G]

On Wed Sep 13, 2023 at 16:53 +0100, Aoife Moloney wrote:
>  This upgrade is also notable that for Fedora Linux (and Fedora Extra
>  Packages for Enterprise Linux 10, once that materializes), KDE Plasma
>  will '''not''' offer an X11 session. Fedora KDE has been fully
> Wayland
>  by default from login ([[Changes/WaylandByDefaultForSDDM|since Fedora
>  Linux 38]]) to desktop ([[Changes/WaylandByDefaultForPlasma|since
>  Fedora Linux 34]]), and the SIG is confident in the quality and
>  development around the Plasma Wayland experience to stand fully behind
>  it.
>
>  == Feedback ==
>
>  ==== Why drop the X11 session? ====
>
>  Three reasons for this removal:
>
>  *
> [https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/9/...
>  The Xorg server is deprecated since RHEL 9.0] and will be dropped in
>  "a future major RHEL release".
>  * Graphics fallback modes are Wayland-friendly now with
>  [[Changes/ReplaceFbdevDrivers|SimpleDRM enabled since Fedora Linux
>  36]].
>  * NVIDIA drivers (since v495~v515) support GBM for Wayland instead of
>  EGLStreams. Wayland is fully supported on current NVIDIA drivers.
>
>  This will drastically reduce our support burden and give us the
>  ability to focus on quality for the KDE Plasma stack and continue our
>  feature-forward nature. The Fedora KDE SIG will maintain a single code
>  stream for all supported distribution targets (Fedora Linux 40+,
>  Fedora Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 10+).
>
>  This also does not mean that X11 applications will not work in Plasma
>  6, as we will still support Xwayland for running X11 applications on
>  Plasma Wayland. 
My laptop with NVIDIA Optimus graphics cannot connect to an external
monitor unless I log in to the X11 session. This is a known problem [1].
Please don't throw out the baby with the bath water.
Making Wayland the default and even removing X11 from the default
installation is one thing, but entirely removing it does not make sense
to me.
Some people still have niche usecases that do not work with Wayland.
We can iterate on the Wayland session without breaking users.

Also, I do not like that this is tied together to the Plasma 6 change.
Nobody is actually talking about the subject of the change, KDE Plasma
6; most of the conversation is about dropping X11 which was tacked on to
this Change.
It would be better as a separate Change with a separate discussion, IMO.

[1] https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Wayland_Showstoppers

-- 
Best,


Maxwell G (@gotmax23)
Pronouns: He/They

[Kevin Kofler]

Maxwell G wrote:
>  Also, I do not like that this is tied together to the Plasma 6
> change.
>  Nobody is actually talking about the subject of the change, KDE Plasma
>  6; most of the conversation is about dropping X11 which was tacked on to
>  this Change.
>  It would be better as a separate Change with a separate discussion, IMO. 
+1

This looks to me a lot like a typical political maneuver, sneaking an 
undesirable change into an otherwise desirable larger one in an attempt to 
get the undesirable part through with less resistance.

        Kevin Kofler

[Maxwell G]

On Tue Sep 26, 2023 at 13:07 +0200, Kevin Kofler via devel wrote:
>  Maxwell G wrote:
>  > Also, I do not like that this is tied together to the Plasma 6 change.
>  > Nobody is actually talking about the subject of the change, KDE Plasma
>  > 6; most of the conversation is about dropping X11 which was tacked on to
>  > this Change.
>  > It would be better as a separate Change with a separate discussion, IMO.
>
>  +1
>
>  This looks to me a lot like a typical political maneuver, sneaking an 
>  undesirable change into an otherwise desirable larger one in an attempt to 
>  get the undesirable part through with less resistance. 
I am not suggesting that there is malicious intent here. Even if I do not
agree with it, the Change owners did justify their reasoning for doing
this.

-- 
Maxwell G (@gotmax23)
Pronouns: He/They

[Neal Gompa]

On Tue, Sep 26, 2023 at 12:06 PM Maxwell G <maxwell(a)gtmx.me&gt; wrote:
>  On Tue Sep 26, 2023 at 13:07 +0200, Kevin Kofler via devel wrote:
>  > Maxwell G wrote:
>  > > Also, I do not like that this is tied together to the Plasma 6 change.
>  > > Nobody is actually talking about the subject of the change, KDE Plasma
>  > > 6; most of the conversation is about dropping X11 which was tacked on to
>  > > this Change.
>  > > It would be better as a separate Change with a separate discussion, IMO.
>  >
>  > +1
>  >
>  > This looks to me a lot like a typical political maneuver, sneaking an
>  > undesirable change into an otherwise desirable larger one in an attempt to
>  > get the undesirable part through with less resistance.
>
>  I am not suggesting that there is malicious intent here. Even if I do not
>  agree with it, the Change owners did justify their reasoning for doing
>  this.
>  
Indeed. And I added further detail to the Change document about why
we're doing it now instead of later[1].

To summarize: there's no such thing as a "good" time to do it, and the
SIG feels that doing it at the Plasma 6.0 major version upgrade allows
us to reset expectations, as users are used to major versions being
significantly different than their predecessors. Otherwise, we have to
do it sometime later in the middle of the Plasma 6.x lifetime, which
was much less appealing.

The discussion on this thread has been mostly quite helpful, and has
allowed me to provide feedback to KDE developers on prioritizing
things for Plasma 6 development[2].


[1]:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/KDE_Plasma_6#Why_drop_the_X11_sess...
[2]: https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-devel/2023-September/002047.html




--
真実はいつも一つ！/ Always, there's only one truth!

[Kevin Kofler]

Neal Gompa wrote:
>  To summarize: there's no such thing as a "good" time to
> do it, and the
>  SIG feels that doing it at the Plasma 6.0 major version upgrade allows
>  us to reset expectations, as users are used to major versions being
>  significantly different than their predecessors. Otherwise, we have to
>  do it sometime later in the middle of the Plasma 6.x lifetime, which
>  was much less appealing. 
I doubt Wayland will be a fully functional replacement for X11 even by the 
time Plasma 7 will be released. Surely not in the 6.x lifetime.

>  The discussion on this thread has been mostly quite helpful, and has
>  allowed me to provide feedback to KDE developers on prioritizing
>  things for Plasma 6 development[2]. 
Unfortunately, you are only cherry-picking individual issues people have 
found with Wayland (and it is very unlikely they will all be addressed in 
time for F40, as some are quite fundamental and/or require several separate 
codebases to be updated in lockstep) and completely ignoring the general 
opposition to dropping X11 to begin with.

        Kevin Kofler