This week in KDE: Double-click by default | Hacker News Reader

This week in KDE: Double-click by default

pointieststick.com

44 pointsLorenDB44 comments

The fractional resolution fixes - yes please. I run a 1440p and 2160p pair of displays, and on Wayland I cannot turn on fractional scaling for either of them due to the graphical artifacting. X - well, I can turn on fractional scaling, but it's global, not per display.

KDE's "zoom the desktop with a keystroke" is also really useful. I first saw it on a Tech Tangents stream, where he was streaming an entire desktop/screen, and simply zoomed a segment of it to show something and then reset the zoom. All without touching OBS or the Extron.

Right now I am running Fedora 38 with Gnome on Wayland, enabling experimental fractional scaling, and my two 4k screens are displaying wonderfully at 1.75x. The settings app allows you to do it per-screen, and it also works fine for me. Although I mostly have the same scaling in both displays since both are equal.

>Right now I am running Fedora 38 with Gnome on Wayland, enabling experimental fractional scaling, and my two 4k screens are displaying wonderfully at 1.75x.

Does that scaling work/look good across other apps, outside the Gnome/GTK4 ecosystem?

Just installed Kdenlive to test, and looks fine to me!

Does it also scale by the assigned factor or does it stay at 100% scale?

The UI elements have a comparable size to the rest of the apps. I wasn't able to pick any glitches.

thanks

A non written rule that most software follow is: if something changes when you hover over an item (usually meaning "select"), you only need one click to act on it. If nothing changes, you need to double click (because a single click will probably select). There are exceptions of course, but you'll realize that most software works like this, and those who don't are the ones users have more trouble adapting.

> The minimum screen brightness is now always 1, and the minimum keyboard brightness is now always 0, ensuring that the screen backlight never turns off completely at minimum brightness, while the keyboard backlight always does (me: Nate Graham and Natalie Clarius, link 1 and link 2)

Finally! I thought there was something wrong on my end. I also love how open KDE is and how almost any functionality in it can be automated.

I liked that your could turn off the brightness entirely :( (Though in Kubuntu it doesn't)

Not clear how you can even do that now. You can "sleep" the display but it'll turn back on when you hit any key

You can always set brightness to zero via the command line using any monitor ddc control tool you can find.

... but then I don't have a shortcut to turn it back on.. lol

the convenience is that most laptops have dedicated brightness keys

I think it'd still turn back on if you press brightness up, as before :)

And you can make a custom shortcut that runs a brightness to zero script as well, that should work!

Yes, being able to turn it off might be confusing for some people but it’s useful if you’re aware of it so there should be a setting

Make a little script, bind it to a hotkey. For me, I use Windows+S

  $ cat ~/bin/monitor-off.sh
  #!/bin/bash
  sleep .5
  xset dpms force off

Same little trick for when I lock the screen, (Settings -> Notifications -> Screen Saver -> Configure Events):

cat ~/bin/LOCKSCREEN-ACTIONS.sh #!/bin/bash ## Anything that is "slow" should be run in the background otherwise lock/unlock is slowed down

  #Mute audio on screen lock, only if not already muted:
  (
   if [[ "$(amixer get Master | awk '/Front Left:/ {print $NF}')" = "[on]" ]]; then
    amixer -q set Master mute
    touch "${HOME}/.audiomutedbylockscreen"
   fi
  ) &

  #Pause foobar2000 only if playing, and make a note.
  ( "${HOME}/bin/foobar2000-pauseonly.sh" && touch "${HOME}/.foopausedbylockscreen" ) &

  #Disable all mouses (to prevent movement waking monitor.)
  "${HOME}/bin/set-mice-status" disable

  #Force monitor to sleep.
  "${HOME}/bin/monitor-off.sh"

And finally, I have the inverse of that, which is called on screen unlock, called automatically on screen unlock (Settings -> Notifications -> Screen Saver -> Configure Events):

cat ~/bin/UNLOCKSCREEN-ACTIONS.sh #!/bin/bash

  #Unmute audio only if muted by lockscreen:
  (
   if [ -f "${HOME}/.audiomutedbylockscreen" ]; then
    amixer -q set Master unmute
    rm -f "${HOME}/.audiomutedbylockscreen"
   fi
  ) &

  #Enable all mouses.
  "${HOME}/bin/set-mice-status" enable &

  #Unpause foobar2000 only if paused by lockscreen. Remove note.
  (
   if [ -f "${HOME}/.foopausedbylockscreen" ]; then
    "${HOME}/bin/foobar2000-playonly.sh"
    rm -f "${HOME}/.foopausedbylockscreen"
   fi
  ) &

Oh cool I didn't know you could configure events. I made a script that just checks if kscreensaver is running but it always felt a bit duct tapeish. Thanks!

> I liked that your could turn off the brightness entirely :(

Looking at the change, it seems the dbus method[1] to set brightness explicitly to a value should continue to work. A script could be assigned to the lower brightness key that uses this DBus API.

Alternatively, the same DBus API also provides a signal for whenever brightness changes, and an autostart script could be written to monitor for the value 1 and immediately set it to 0.

1: https://invent.kde.org/plasma/powerdevil/-/blob/master/daemo...

Find the "every poll of users I’m aware of has shown that they prefer double-click by a 2-1 or higher margin" mentioned in-article comments interesting, especially when contrasted with all other comments expressing a single-click preference.

as someone who has been using kde neon exclusively for a few years now, i am very happy.

I have not done any customizations beyond the wallpaper of the day and dark mode but still, there is a tonne of stuff that can be changed.

I feel like the "welcome to kde" app should introduce users to the customizations they can do on the software, from themes to wallpapers to cursors to file open action and all the things.

my point is, i recently gave a kde neon to a sibling. they did double click and it felt weird and they said "WTH is happening. i dont want it"..

i was observing their action and i said "well you can change that behaviour. go to settings, touchpad, then double click......"

what i am getting at is, there should be a way to educate users that most if not all behavour can be changed and where to expect those things to be.

"point and shoot" became popular because of that reason only. point and shoot.

kde is like point and shoot but can be changed. users think it is point and shoot like gnome but dont know it can be changed.

one thing i would totally recommend for kde is bismuth https://github.com/Bismuth-Forge/bismuth/

it's tiling for kde and it works REALLY well.

It started to degrade as development has stopped and the latest few point releases of plasma started to have issues with it enabled.

One of these days I'll get serious about trying to configure KDE to actually look usable. Every time I try it (about once every 1.5 years) I keep getting struck by how everything is the wrong size or is spaced incorrectly relative to everything else.

Like the search field in the 4th screenshot in this article. Why are the magnifying glass and delete icons essentially flush with the edges of the field, while the search string is is an entire length of the icons away from the magnifying glass? It doesn't just look bad, it looks like a mistake. Even the title of the General pane is closer to the delete icon than the text the delete icon actually will delete.

That's a particularly egregious example, but there's stuff all over the place in KDE that bugs me. In the 2nd screenshot the Start button is aligned with... nothing else at all. And it makes the part of my brain that processes design hierarchy cringe.

The main thing I've learned from these comments is that apparently most people either don't have a right mouse button or don't know how to use it.

> Yes it’s true, by default in Plasma 6, you’ll single-click to select files and folders, and double-click to open them.

What was it before? I haven't used KDE since the Plasma debacle but I don't remember it getting something this basic wrong...

> getting something this basic wrong...

Despite the obvious vitriol of your message, I'd precise for the posterity that when KDE was created, this was not such a surprising thing to do as e.g. old Apple OS did so, and it was a commonly used option on other OSs.

I'm just happy KDE is changing old behaviors that are counterintuitive in the modern age.

Now as for the macOS cmd-tab behavior...

there is nothing "basic" about this. something that seems pretty obvious to you may not be natural to someone else.

i think the single-click navigation or opening of files was done to mimic how hyperlinks on the internet work. some people are wired that way.

on the other hand, some people have a completely different brain configuration: they think that a single-click should select whereas a double-click should open a file.

there are people who do not agree with both these options. maybe, they want everything to work via audio commands.

how do we decide what the default behavior should be? the answer is: leave it to the user.

> there is nothing "basic" about this

It's how both major desktop OSes have worked for literally decades. It works very well. Why be different?

Mimicking hyperlinks doesn't make sense because you never want to move hyperlinks around or rename them. There's rarely a reason to select a hyperlink.

So I don't think my mother has ever grokked the difference between single- and double-click.

I watched her double-click web links all day long while sitting at the desktop Windows Vista computer. I couldn't do anything to educate her on when to use single and when to use double, because that distinction is just lost on some people, you know?

So I would often send her YouTube links in email, and she always reported back "I couldn't watch this; the sound was horrible! Unlistenable!"

And years, yes years, later, she reported to me that she'd figured out what was messed up about her YouTube experience, because she had been consistently double-clicking every link in her email, and opening two browser tabs to the same content, and it didn't bother her unless it was autoplay video, which would offset the sound by several milliseconds and totally mess it up.

> the Plasma debacle

I'm not familiar with it. Can you elaborate?

> ... but I don't remember it getting something this basic wrong

1. It's only "wrong" because windows has been doing the double click way. In terms of accessibility, I'd argue double click is actually kinda bad, consider how people with joint issue may have trouble double clicking quick enough to register it. (Yes, you can adjust the speed, but this setting wouldn't even be needed if it's single click in the first place.) Imagine how annoying it would be if mobile device and <button/> all require double click/double tap, or even double-enter just to open a file.

2. Most of the Linux distro configured it into double click, anyway. Probably the reason why you don't remember it being a thing.

3. Steam Deck, on the other hand, only need single tap if you use touch screen.

Yes, I’ve been using single click for years including on windows because of rsi issues.

And I hate single click because I have a tendency to accidentally click, and for me double click is, for now, a trivial extra step.

Great thing about KDE (and others) is it's configurable.

I don't particularly care which is default though, but being used to Windows it's of course nice for me to have one less step to tweak.

However given it's easier for me to change than someone with disabilities, I wouldn't mind single click staying default.

>> the Plasma debacle

> I'm not familiar with it. Can you elaborate?

Plasma was introduced as the name for KDE's actual DE component (distinct from apps and frameworks) with KDE 4, a major version which was released too early in development and alienated many users due to bugs and missing features compared to KDE 3, hence the "debacle".

There was that, but if only that, it wouldn't have blown up like it did. They intentionally released it early so they could get more people testing it. They didn't label it as a test, and when called out, they had an unpleasant attitude about ungrateful users. There was also a (perceived) push to kill off KDE 3. For most of us, it wasn't important enough to get involved in a drama, so we went elsewhere and lived happily ever after.

Dunno what you mean by moved elsewhere and lived happily ever after. Gnome was going through its gnome 2 to gnome 3 nonsense at the same time

Maybe I should have said "moved elsewhere and didn't spend additional energy thinking about KDE 4".

Some went to distros with plans to continue supporting KDE 3, some went to XFCE, and some (not me) even thought Gnome 3 was nice. Recall as well that Gnome 2 was still around and supported, and then Mate kept it going. That's what I'm using as I type this.

Edit: BTW, the Trinity DE is still active, so you can still use KDE 3.

It was a long time ago so my memory may not quite be right, but basically KDE 3 was quite mature and powerful. The aesthetics were reasonable - no where near Gnome which looked really good back then, but still decent.

Then they released KDE 4 with "Plasma" which had a lot of half baked UI experiments that looked terrible and basically everyone hated. They really didn't listen to users at all, and just pushed through stuff that made no sense at all. They broke a lot of the desktop UI because they added the stupid goal of making it work on tablets too (they were the hot new stuff at the time), despite the very obvious fact that nobody was going to buy a KDE tablet. They even tried to sell one for a while!

It's a little like Gnome's mad decision to move menus to a hamburger, despite that making no sense and essentially everyone hating it.

Probably the thing that characterised the situation most was the "kidney bean". Something the internet seems to have wilfully forgotten (the only reference I can find to it is a comment on LxQT "remember the awful kidney bean?", but you can see it in this screenshot:

https://kde.org/announcements/4/4.1.0/

It's the button at the top right. I can't even remember what it was supposed to do, but it was always there, everyone hated it, you couldn't remove it, and they refused to budge. Of course it was eventually removed. Look at the terrible styling in that screenshot too. Compare it to GNOME:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME_2#/media/File:Gnome-2.18...

Essentially they took a system that people liked and changed a load of things in obviously terrible ways, and then refused to budge when people said they didn't like it.

At least KDE turned around and 5 is quite modern and nice. Whereas gnome is still barebones and still hides everything under hamburger menus which make no sense in desktops.

Probably: one click to select a file/folder, and one click on an already selected file/folder to open them? As opposed to windows, which doesn't open a file/folder if you single click on a selected icon.

Single-click to open is one of the few hills I am totally planning on dying on.

Why click double when you can just click once? As for selecting, just have files be selected on hover. Normally, I just right-click. Double click might have maybe made sense back in the days where clicking on things was expensive and you wanted to prevent miss-clicks but these days I don't see the point.

The weird thing is, that is doesn't even take much time to get used to one way or the other. On systems with double-click, I just need a few minutes to get used to it again and vice versa.

Since single-click is more ergonomic and more accessible (as some people have trouble double clicking), it should be the default. The whole double-click thing seems to be some sort of weird cargo cult to me but I am willing to hear counter points.

Open is rarely the action I want most often.

I use search/typing in a launcher to open documents and apps, or I’m using a command line.

Mostly organising things in directories or doing other admin or secondary tasks when I’m in a file explorer application.

I also tend to use list mode on the smallest zoom, and multi- and group-select items a lot, which works terribly with hover select.

Single click to select makes sense as selecting one or more files is the precursor to almost every operation.

With single click to open my main use case would get much harder and I’d randomly end up opening stuff I don’t want to at least some of the time. No thanks.

> As for selecting, just have files be selected on hover.

That sounds horrible. How do you do multi-(de)selection then?

I tried single-click for a while, but selecting gets awkward.

While I think OP's idea isn't great, Windows seems to have an acceptable solution here: you can continue to allow drag-selection, and when clicking while holding down Ctrl/Shift you add to a selection rather than opening. The first click for the drag will be on the background and not on an icon, so it can still start a selection. This is how it works on Windows when you enable one-click.

Fine. What I disagree with is the "select on hover" part, however. Moving a pointing device should not trigger any action by itself*. Make a checkbox appear next to every selectable item (as it's an option in both KDE Dolphin and Windows' Explorer) and we're good. Maybe long-clicking could be an option too, albeit less discoverable.

(*) What if I just want to get to another window: should I route around and think about avoiding triggerable elements? What if my hand slips and a bunch of items are selected as a result? Would a delay be needed? What about touchscreens? It seems a fundamentally bad idea, and a much worse accessibility problem than double-clicking.

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