Finally. Single click to open a file/directory is the first feature that I disable on a fresh system.
Why though? It should increase the life expectancy of your mice and touchpads because it results in fewer clicks and the mechanical parts thereby don't wear out so much.
Because no other OS or DE that I use does that and it's not convenient to jump from one to another. As of the wear, I think it's marginal. My main file manager is mc anyway.
The number of times I've accidentally opened files I didn't want to with single click is obscene.
The mouse wheel dies before anything else
boo this man
Personally, I disable it first thing after installing and I think it's easier this way for those who come from Windows. Those who still prefer the single click, can easily enable it again. Not a big deal.
More like for anybody coming from Windows, Mac or 90% of other DEs
My parents found single-click behavior less confusing. It's how everything works on their phones and in web browsers.
Yeah. I also found it massively helpful to tell grandparents to just click on things. Instead of 3 times a day teaching them about the differences between everything and if they want a single left click, a double-click or a right click. And that a double right-click wouldn't do anything useful at all.
Fun times :-D
My dad (early 60s) double-clicks web links as if they were folders. I stopped groaning ages ago lol
Plasma 6 is really shaping up to be quite a nice overhaul of the system.
These are awesome changes. Thank goodness I have one less thing to change on any given install.
I recently switched to KDE and got sooo confused by this not being default. Good they're making the change, small but important.
Noooo I've been using Plasma for over 7 years now and single click became default for me. I'll change it back anyways but still seems like a pointless change to me.
I'll change it back anyways
You don't need to, this is only few new installations
Isn't it nice to have options? I'm a double-click enjoyer, but honestly... I've been thinking about giving single-click a chance. Just to spice things up.
Living life on the edge, what a stud 😎
How are you even supposed to select files and folders in single-click? The tiny little + box that's very easy to miss?
That or holding ctrl. Or dragging and selecting with a box.
I usually drag a selection. It kind of rare that I want to select a single file and just select it and not go ahead and simultaneously open a context menu with the right mouse button.
There is a + over the top left corner of the icon that you can click for selection without opening. Pretty easy to use if you get the hang of it.
edit: Or you just click the right mouse button over the file you want to select.
Guess enough Windows users are coming over and they're getting confused/frustrated by the old mouse click behavior.
Is this an historical thing? I was really confused when I started using KDE.
I don't believe so. In KDE3 it was double click IIRC then it changed with the single click during the web mania UI when people suddenly wanted the big unification for everything: phones, fridges, tablets, supercomputers.
Like a lot of other people mention, this is the first thing I flip in plasma too. A mouse with a pointer is just different from a tactile interface.
I personally don't remember it being that way but it's been a long time since I've used KDE. Like, Mandrake was still a thing when I last used it.
In 2004, Microsoft was granted a patent on using a double-click on "limited resource computing devices". As a result of this, some observers fear that any U.S. company which uses double-clicking may have to change their product not to use the technology, pay licensing fees to Microsoft, or give Microsoft access to intellectual property.
Partially, sure, but there's also a lot of KDE devs that are really convinced that it's objectively superior and wanted the default to convince more people to use it.
Honestly, if that is the case, kudos to them. No DE should work against the user, and that doesn't mean the DE is dumbed down.
I get why they're doing it, so it's not a big deal for me as long as I can still use single click to open folders.
That being said, double click always seemed like a weird "hack" to use what is essentially the main function of the left click, no? As in, the primary thing I want to do when left clicking something is to go to that thing. Go to that folder, go to that link and go to (open) that application. "Selecting" is not the main action I use so I've always felt weird when "selecting" gets what is essentially the main function of the mouse, the left click.
Big mistake in my opinion. Coming from Windows, it took me only one day to get comfortable with single click and now I don't want to miss it anymore.
I reckon they looked at their telemetry and chose the setting most people have which has the side effect of being more familiar to Windows refugees.
Telemetry wasn't a factor iirc. The biggest reasons for this change were that
openSUSE defaults to single click. It's among the first things I change on a new install!
Luckily, openSUSE still has the default single click setting, and I am very thankful for that! (just my opinion, I would not have a problem with simply changing the setting should the default become different, don't get me wrong, I just like it better this way)
I mean, their telemetry is opt in and in most distros you don't even get asked if you want to help them with it. If anything, most people aren't even aware that Telemetry exists, if they haven't looked at the specific section in the settings menu.
I didn't say it was a large sample size, but it's all they have to base it on. Of course I could be completely wrong and the telemetry had nothing to do with it. But then, what's the point of the telemetry?
The sad truth is that telemetry is only unbiased when it is on by default and not opt-in (Not that I advocate for that). Don't know where I read it, but last month I saw an article about how Gnomes opt-in telemetry data showed that Fedora is the number one distro for Gnome users and Ubuntu was somewhere between 3rd or 4th place. That's obviously not true, but it was true for the people who activated the telemetry.
But back to the topic. As long as the KDE devs give me the choice to keep single click selection, I don't really care what the default is. A lot of people will never learn about it and miss out in my opinion, but whatever 🤷.
Oh Noooooooo! Why change a sane default? It is like.... we (the developed world) also don't change back to measuring distances with our arms and legs just to cater for american people and just because there are a lot of them... Or our body weight in stones.
What's next? Changing LibreOffice's file format every few years and make it impossible to gather sane log data and fix your issues yourself, so that it feels more like 'home' for the windows users?
Why bother so much with a default that can be easily changed? It's not like they deleted single click...
LESS GO, I finally don't have to change that setting every time I use KDE
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
That's cool, but is it still possible to easily switch off the screen? For laptops, that's useful from time to time, when you don't want to close the lid and lock it, but you're waiting for a long running operation or just listening to music, and want to save battery power.
I think the best way would be that when long pressing the brightness lowering key, it stops lowering it at 1% as with this change, but pressing it once more would make it 0.
Also, I wasn't able to keep up with recent changes. Does anyone know if it's possible now to customize the rounded corners of windows and panels?
Laptops usually have a dedicated key to turn off the screen, no?
You mean the external display toggle? Because otherwise, no.
The unfortunate reality is that development testing prioritises the default settings. How long until bugs start appearing for those of us who prefer the single click current default.
That's a weird take. Default caters for majority users in most cases, so ofc they would be prioritised as it should be.
The current default single click will no longer be default. Development testing tends to focus on the default settings. That means there is a higher risk of a bug slipping through to the users who choose to continue using single click. The situation is unfortunate for those who prefer single click. Not sure why that is a weird take?
Because double-clicking has worked fine for decades despite not being the default. You should relax.
Because you think you should be given priority when you know you're in the minority that's why. Was trying to be subtle about it but ig it didn't come through. I do know how QA works and ik it should be focused for majority first from features to bug fixes. This little change isn't gonna make a big difference anyway given how minor it is so I don't see why this is so much of a concern.
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