This was my personal list of ‘things that I should look into’ before I decided to make it a blog post because I realized that most of this is just impossible to fix for me as I am now and that, while willing, I can’t afford to spend time fixing the others due to circumstances.

If any issues here don’t have an open bug report already, I will be making them in time or you could help by reporting them in my stead. Also let me know if you know any workarounds or fixes for any of the issues mentioned below.

Major issues

Kwallet is still a thing and ksecretservice is not

ksecretservice will probably never be a reality and so, we’re stuck with KWallet, which only works with KDE apps.

What does GNOME do: They provide gnome-keyring.

What do distros do: Fedora KDE works around this by simply shipping gnome-keyring along with KWallet. It works so no one sees how bad it is…

What I use: I use KeePassXC, with a limited scope, for all my secretservice needs while on KDE but then I still have to keep KWallet around for the KDE apps anyway, which kinda defeats the purpose.

What’s being done: Most KDE Applications are now trying to use QtKeychain instead of the KWallet API. This allows it to be more cross-platform and can use any keychain the user decides on. What this means for a user like me is that if a PAM module gets made for KeePassXC, using a database with the user password for credentials storage becomes a viable solution. That said, there will still be no official KDE keyring solution.

No good input method integration

KDE does have kimpanel for input method integration but no distro I know of ships with it pre-configured with any IM like IBUS. GNOME took the route of directly integrating IBUS, which I think is great for Indic languages especially. KDE could choose FCITX or whatever else, it doesn’t matter. But I think supporting one and shipping it is important. Then, there would be meaning in writing an engine for said IM. It’s probably one of the biggest reasons why GNOME is the preferred environment in most Indian experiments with Linux (like the IT@School distro of Kerala).

What does GNOME do: Direct integration with ibus.

What do distros do: Nothing AFAIK.

What I use: ibus with kimpanel and libvarnam-ibus for Malayalam input.

What’s being done: There are open tasks on KDE’s Phabricator instance and discussion has happened before, but I haven’t seen any decisions being made. In general, FCITX5 being integrated as the default seems to be widely preferred.

Auto-login with Plasma, SDDM and sd-encrypt

See: Auto-login with Plasma, SDDM and sd-encrypt. I’ve described the issue and shown a workaround in the linked post.

What does GNOME do: GDM has a PAM module that just works.

What do distros do: Nothing AFAIK.

What I do: See linked post.

What’s being done: It has been brought up before, but is not seen as being worth the trouble of implementation.

The privacy-breaching screen wake up

If you sleep while under heavy load and try to wake up again later, there is a delay before the lockscreen appearing, allowing anyone to see all the contents of your display until the lockscreen shows up.

What does GNOME do: Maybe owing to its single process architecture, it doesn’t have this issue.

What do distros do: Nothing AFAIK.

What I do: Nothing.

What’s being done: Nothing AFAIK.

First search with krunner just hangs for a while, keeping the entirety of Plasma unusable until it loads (which can be a while if your hard disk is slow).

What does GNOME do: The GNOME equivalent would be the Overview search, which doesn’t have this issue.

What do distros do: Nothing AFAIK.

What I do: Nothing.

What’s being done: Lots of optimization work has gone into KRunner lately. Unfortunately, none of them have had a sizable impact for me.

Touchpad gestures

There are no touchpad gestures anywhere in KDE or Plasma. Kirigami apps for example could use some touchpad gestures. On Wayland, there are touchpad gestures on Plasma (or KWin, but not the apps), but they are not one-to-one and are not configurable. I also find it confusing that people want configurable one-to-one gestures… Like… how would that even be possible? Maybe just number of fingers could be configurable I guess? I just want one-to-one gestures if possible and also some meaningful in-app gestures.

What does GNOME do: GNOME has non-configurable one-to-one gestures that work really well.

What do distros do: Nothing.

What I do: Nothing.

What’s being done: Implementation work is ongoing.

UI delays

There is a bit of a delay between clicking “restart” and the popup of the leave menu. There is also sometimes a delay between clicking the popup button on the system tray icon and the popup actually appearing.

What does GNOME do: Again, the single process architecture is probably what prevents this and several other issues.

What do distros do: Nothing.

What I do: Nothing.

What’s being done: Performance optimizations happen seem to land every day, which should improve the situation in the long run, but fully fixing it would be impossible.

Minor issues

  • Crashing KWin, crashing compositing, using a fullscreen application that disables compositing, etc will make Firefox unusable and stuck at the last frame before any of the above.
  • The color sync between titlebar and menu/toolbar is off when switching active window.
  • OSDs are not always instant. They might take time to appear.
  • No way to enable window titlebar drag from empty space in panel. So I end up having to use my less-preferred bottom panel setup. (Yes, Latte can do it, but the feature doesn’t work well with Wayland and Latte is very memory and CPU-heavy for me.)
  • When only one device is connected, KDE Connect’s applet shows a list with a single list item and lots of empty space. It could instead be used to present more information about the only connected device. Additionally, in this case, dragging a file into the icon should be enough to send a file, rather than having to open the popup and then drag it into the list item.
  • Calindori should be able to add events from “Add Events” button in calendar.
  • Scrolling isn’t smooth in “Add Widgets” sidebar.

PIM issues

  • ~Akonadi has several processes, using up around 300 MBs or more RAM. This is understandable if it worked well. For example, adding a Google account in System Settings is not enough for KMail or KOrganizer to work.~ Akonadi does still use some resources but after setting it up from KOrganizer, it will work fine. I do still wish the Online Accounts were unified somehow though.
  • The entire PIM stack is very “not pretty” and could really use a facelift. Lately, Carl Schwan has been doing some amazing work on this and all the dialogs are looking much more usable now but there’s still ~some~ lots of work to be done.

There are more of course but these have been the most noticeable issues for me. I will keep it updated with more issues or maybe strike off a few as they are solved, hopefully.