For KDE Plasma 6, the KDE team intends to remove a number of old features and bits of code that haven’t been touched in ages or simply don’t make sense to keep around. Most of it is truly stuff few will use, but there’s some interesting ones in there that might make some users a little sad.
First, they intend to remove the icon view from the settings application, leaving only the sidebar view that’s been the default for a while now. This one bugs me, because I only use the icon view – it’s what I use on every other platform, too. The sidebar view might be more modern, but I find it difficult to find anything in there. The reasoning behind its removal is that the code has simply not been touch in a while, and features like search highlighting aren’t even available in icon view.
Second, they’re removing Unsplash integration, which kind of sucks. The reason? AI.
This one is quite sad, as no one wanted to remove it. Alas, we had to because Unsplash changed their terms of service to preclude Plasma’s usage of it, as a way of fighting automated data scrapers for AI training models. With a heavy heart, we removed it. So the next time anyone asks you what AI can do for humanity, now you have a concrete answer: prevent Plasma 6 from shipping an Unsplash Picture of the Day wallpaper plugin. Thanks, AI!
Third, and I love this one, they’re finally fixing the weird issue where the selected Plasma style would overwrite some of the icons from the system-wide icon theme. This feature originally served the purpose of allowing monochrome icons to be set in Plasma, but this is simply no longer needed and only leads to confusion.
There’s a lot more that’s being cleaned up and removed, so take a peek at the list to see if your favourite obscure feature is getting cut. Of course, as Nate Graham notes, if you wish for some of these features to stay – you can pick up the code and work on it.
I didn’t even know icon view in the settings applet still existed. I looked at it, and good god is it hideous. I guess it’s a holdover from that time when the received wisdom was you had to be like Windows in every respect or users would find your desktop way too confusing, as if that was what was holding back mass Linux adoption.
Can’t say I’m at all sad they’re axing that particular feature.
I like kcontrol’s way of doing it a lot better than systemsettings.
Or, we had to remove it because it was working…
Funny, we have come a full circle, but it’s squared.
Anyone remember kde3 settings? I’ll help: https://www.securitronlinux.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Other-Linux-3.x-kernel-2017-03-01-11-56-40.png
This looks a lot like the “new” sidebar view. I’d argue the sidebar view has worse usability than the tree.