KDE: a lot of bugs. Looking for users who use KDE

[StanleyQubrick]

@Max123

Are there any active KDE users here?
I wonder whether KDE is ready to use in Qubes and there are people who use it regularly.

If such people are here, could you give me some hints on how to fix these problems, especially the keyboard layout switching?

Hi! Yes, I think there are many of us, because it’s rich in functionality, and it used to be the default in Qubes OS (and I’ve not seen a good argument why it shouldn’t be the default again). There’s this long thread all about KDE where all bugs you mentioned are discussed:

KDE - changing the way you use Qubes

I think KDE is a great match for Qubes, and makes the whole user experience better. KDE has a simple menu editor, that helps you to focus on the important things - grouping qubes, ordering shortcuts, and so on. There are simple tools to control (and master) many windows from multiple qubes, and to quickly get to the window you want. You can also use Activities - a way of making each desktop a separate workspace, with its own wallpaper, widgets and launchers. You can force windows from pa…

You can find mentions elsewhere in the forum too, but perhaps the thread is easier to search through.

In that thread I posted something related to the first and the third bug you mention: KDE - changing the way you use Qubes - #204 by StanleyQubrick
Later I found that neither Fcitx5 nor ibus work as well and smooth as I thought they would (limitations on when global hotkeys can be detected) so I configured a different thing instead. So for the 3 bugs you mentioned:

1. Keyboard layout switching: Depending on which features you prefer, there are a few ways to solve this (there are tradeoffs). I’d recommend one method where you can configure a different global hotkey for each keyboard layout - it works reliably and without looking for visual feedback from a tray icon or whatever. You don’t get a tray icon at all (or maybe someone can suggest a separate program just for that) but you just press the desired keyboard combination at any time and you can just start typing in the corresponding layout. In this method the layout is controlled by setxkbmap (which is already installed in templates) and in the template you install the package sxhkd for configuring hotkeys (you can do without it, but you get very limited options for hotkeys from just setxkbmap) and you create and put one config file (~/.config/sxhkd/sxhkdrc) in each qube or template where you would like to be able to switch layouts. If you choose this method, let me know if you need instructions for this.
   The other method that I think would still be preferred by some is Fcitx5, as I mentioned in that thread. It has a working system tray icon and other features, but it doesn’t behave well if you want to change layouts quickly, independently of the user interface of various software. You need to click a text field (and only text fields! No drop-down menus, for example ) where you’re going to type before you can switch layouts, which, as far as I understand it, is a case of bad design (affecting much of Linux, not only Qubes) leading to more and more idiotic things. But if that quirk and chore doesn’t bother you, I guess it’s fine.
2. I think you may have bumped into the issue of the KDE Plasma+Wayland session being the new default in KDE, while being completely unsupported and broken on Qubes OS (not opening some windows). When logging in, you need to make sure you select Plasma/X11 session, rather than Plasma/Wayland or XFCE, and then this choice gets remembered. Also, logging out of your KDE Plasma session and logging back in unfortunately leads to multiple issues, so I’d reboot Qubes OS before logging into KDE Plasma/X11 again.
3. The network tray icon and any other system tray icons based on Gtk3 are known to appear as white squares on KDE on Qubes OS. If you end up with more than one or two such icons after you install software maybe my suggestions and script from the other thread can help somewhat.
   For the qui tool icons that are black on transparent background I can suggest changing the theme so that the system tray is not that dark, or searching for general KDE Plasma solutions or workarounds for this situation of black icons in dark themes.