Nice. That was kind of unexpected, but it makes sense, now, why Valve would choose KDE for the Steam Deck (which has a touchscreen).
this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2025
92 points (95.1% liked)
Linux
50350 readers
1196 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
it makes sense, now, why Valve would choose KDE for the Steam Deck (which has a touchscreen).
I like my Steam Deck but I must be honest here: Desktop Mode, which is Plasma 5 and not the latest 6.x release, is trash on that touch screen. It just a shrunken regular desktop. You can use some environment variables to affect a few QtQuick applications but the results are mixed. There are KDE applications what are designed for mobile but don't even consider the possibility of anything but portrait screen orientation. SteamOS doesn't ship with a proper Maliit keyboard, it's just Steam's built-in one which never pops up automatically outside of Steam and Steam games.
Plasma 5 on that tiny screen isn't enjoyable at all. It kinda, sorta works but I'm happy the touch pads exist.
Cool but I'm still waiting for Plasma to have actual tiling built in. Dragging windows with your fingers is just extremely clunky. Also having a "note taking mode" where your note taking app becomes transparent and stacks on top of some other app (YT, pdf viewer) would be nice but that should probably be a feature of the note taking app, not Plasma.
Gnome has a small brother Phosh, which has a bit better touch support, but it was developed for phones. I remember played with that on an x86 tablet years ago and it worked a bit better than Gnome, I don't know how its development going on nowadays.
Gnome got some funding from German Ministry of Education Prototype fund for its mobile ux in 2022, so it's a bit unexpected that it's still in this state: https://logs.gnome.org/shell-dev/2022/09/09/gnome-shell-on-mobile-an-update/
I know mobile and general touch ux is not the same but they are closely related.
Phosh has come a long way under the development that pinephone and librem phones sparked. But so has Plasma Mobile. I don't think either of them are great for larger formats yet, they are built more for the phone format. But they are both leaps and bounds ahead of even a few years ago.
as much as I like plasma mobile and want it to succeed it's pretty janky in its current state imo
Phosh kicks ass
Depends on your own use case but I’ve been using BlissOS (https://blissos.org/) on an old HP Elite X2. As Bliss is essentially just Android-x86, it’s fairly polished; only thing that I haven’t figured out is configuring the hardware volume buttons.
As Bliss is essentially just Android-x86
Thanks no, i have work to do on this thing.
I have Fedora KDE Plasma Mobile Spin on a ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 3. I kinda like it. Initially rotation wasn't working but once fixed it was cool.
Had also tried KDE Neon but don't recall why I went back to Fedora.
Got a 502 error
Same. Can’t find the video in the ‘vidiverse’ on peertube.tv either.
I have a minisforum V3 and have been running KDE on it and its ok, I still cant get rotation working and yeah the lack of an onscreen keyboard is a real problem. But otherwise its more than usable.
I'm running PopOS (with GNOME+Cosmic) on my Yoga 6, works without any issues so far
I've been using Fedora GNOME on a tablet I take into the shop with me, and it's...not wonderful.
I like to remote desktop from my iPad to a Linux host and GNOME is the most bearable DE by far still not great!).
Meh, was hoping for some news on the touch keyboard front but it's still pretty meh.
They are working on a new touch keyboard: https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-keyboard
But yeah, no idea when it'll be ready.
Yeah, I could only find one that works on kde plasma with Wayland, but it doesn't even have a tab key. Does anyone know how hard it is to make/modify one?
I've tried KDE Plasma Mobile on an old Surface Pro and it seemed to work better than Gnome