Hi,
I have installed the new Kubuntu 15.04 which comes with Plasma 5. I know 15.04 is still an alpha so it has things which don't work yet. But that's not what I want to write about.

When using the KDE menu I see a complete new look which irritates me like nothing has irritated me before in my life, with the exception of the time when Gnome decided to kill Gnome 2 and to continue with Gnome 3. The time for me to skip to the other side and start using KDE, which I loved since then. It looks great, it works perfectly, until ..... now.
Now KDE is doing what Gnome did a couple of years ago: kill their own product.

The menu has buttons, for shutdown, reboot, etc, which are drawn by a 2-year old, all in one color. Still the general message is that now you can find your way around KDE much easier and faster. ?
How can these silly lines make something easier and faster to use than nicely colored buttons: red for shutdown, yellow for reboot, blue for log-off, green for switch user.

Dolphin has changed completely, no fun to use it anymore because of the way it looks, I gues other programs have had the same treatment but I haven't used them yet. I needed to get rid of my frustration and so I started typing.

I tried to get some new themes from the net but that didn't work: connection to the server failed. No idea if that is caused by KDE or that Kubuntu is not ready for it yet. I do need other themes to be able to work with this new Plasma 5 or I am forced to leave the KDE camp, something I really don't want to do since, as I said I love it very much, and find something else which suits my needs more.

What do others think of the new look, do you really like it or is it just something you think you need to except because it is there?

DeMus wrote:When using the KDE menu I see a complete new look which irritates me like nothing has irritated me before in my life, with the exception of the time when Gnome decided to kill Gnome 2 and to continue with Gnome 3. The time for me to skip to the other side and start using KDE, which I loved since then. It looks great, it works perfectly, until ..... now.
Now KDE is doing what Gnome did a couple of years ago: kill their own product.

The menu has buttons, for shutdown, reboot, etc, which are drawn by a 2-year old, all in one color. Still the general message is that now you can find your way around KDE much easier and faster. ?
How can these silly lines make something easier and faster to use than nicely colored buttons: red for shutdown, yellow for reboot, blue for log-off, green for switch user.

It is just an icon theme.
Run systemsettings and change it.

I don't see how this is "killing" the product and forces you to change to a different DE...

Dolphin has changed completely, no fun to use it anymore because of the way it looks, I gues other programs have had the same treatment but I haven't used them yet. I needed to get rid of my frustration and so I started typing.

Dolphin hasn't changed at all AFAICT.
What exactly do you mean with "Dolphin has changed completely", except for the icon theme/widget style (which is of course global to all applications but can be configured)?

I tried to get some new themes from the net but that didn't work: connection to the server failed. No idea if that is caused by KDE or that Kubuntu is not ready for it yet. I do need other themes to be able to work with this new Plasma 5 or I am forced to leave the KDE camp, something I really don't want to do since, as I said I love it very much, and find something else which suits my needs more.

No idea about Kubuntu 15.04, but the (KDE4) oxygen icon theme is available as package here in openSUSE and it works with Plasma5 just fine.
So maybe search for oxygen in your package manager and install oxygen-icon-theme (or similar). You might want oxygen5-style as well if available, then Plasma5 doesn't look much different to KDE4.

Btw, "Get new themes" in systemsettings5 works just fine here, so your connection problem might be Kubuntu specific.
Is it just that function that cannot connect or is the network not working at all?

What do others think of the new look, do you really like it or is it just something you think you need to except because it is there?

Well, actually I'm still undecided about this.
On the one hand I do think it looks good, but on the other hand I personally find it a bit too simplicistic.

I am getting too old for changes I guess. When I like something, and I like KDE 4.x, then I don't like to see it change. Especially when the first impression is this childish theme which I really, from the bottom of my heart, hate. I hope to be able to get a new them soon, no idea why the connection to that (those) server(s) is (are) broken.

What else is new in KDE 5? Why 5, why not 4.x+1? There must be more spectacular changes in order to start a whole new series, right. What is it? What do I have to do to see those changes/ Until now, and I am using it for 3 days now, I see no other changes than ... Well, you know.

Sorry to sound so negative, but this is what I feel right now.

DeMus wrote:What else is new in KDE 5? Why 5, why not 4.x+1?

Because it uses/needs Qt5 instead of Qt4, for a start.

And KDE Frameworks 5 is completely restructured as well, they are separate (smaller) libraries now instead of one huge Framework as KDE Libraries 4 was.

Plasma 5 has been completely redesigned underneath.

The applications have not really been changed upto now, those are mainly straight ports to KF5 (most of them have not even been released yet), with some new features here and there.

And as it is such a disaster to you, don't you think that calling it 4.x+1 would have been a huge mistake? That implies an incremental update, not a radical change.

But again, as far as I understand you, it's basically the icon theme you don't like.
So change it, or switch back to KDE4, it's your decision. KDE4's Plasma is still supported for at least half a year. Although I don't know whether it will still be available for the Kubuntu 15.04...

Generally speaking the new theme (breeze) is much more attractive. I'm loving it. Finally the fonts look good on a default install, too. The logout/restart/shutdown buttons in the application menu could use tooltips though.

We still have all the oxygen (Plasma 4) themes, there's even an entire settings page that configures everything at once.

I needed to get rid of my frustration and so I started typing.

That's not the most ideal reason to just **** on other people's hard work, I don't know what you hope to achieve but if it was meant to be encouragement you missed somewhat.

Um, when it crashes all the time, and locks up your computer so you have to do the ctrl-alt-backspace ... yeah, it kinda kills the product. I can deal with aesthetics, and even (cringe) the lack of a compliant system tray, but locking up and crashing is a non starter. I've switched to LxQT. Yeah, this is 2015... they should have figured this out by now.

wolfi323 wrote:

DeMus wrote:When using the KDE menu I see a complete new look which irritates me like nothing has irritated me before in my life, with the exception of the time when Gnome decided to kill Gnome 2 and to continue with Gnome 3. The time for me to skip to the other side and start using KDE, which I loved since then. It looks great, it works perfectly, until ..... now.
Now KDE is doing what Gnome did a couple of years ago: kill their own product.

The menu has buttons, for shutdown, reboot, etc, which are drawn by a 2-year old, all in one color. Still the general message is that now you can find your way around KDE much easier and faster. ?
How can these silly lines make something easier and faster to use than nicely colored buttons: red for shutdown, yellow for reboot, blue for log-off, green for switch user.

It is just an icon theme.
Run systemsettings and change it.

I don't see how this is "killing" the product and forces you to change to a different DE...

Dolphin has changed completely, no fun to use it anymore because of the way it looks, I gues other programs have had the same treatment but I haven't used them yet. I needed to get rid of my frustration and so I started typing.

Dolphin hasn't changed at all AFAICT.
What exactly do you mean with "Dolphin has changed completely", except for the icon theme/widget style (which is of course global to all applications but can be configured)?

I tried to get some new themes from the net but that didn't work: connection to the server failed. No idea if that is caused by KDE or that Kubuntu is not ready for it yet. I do need other themes to be able to work with this new Plasma 5 or I am forced to leave the KDE camp, something I really don't want to do since, as I said I love it very much, and find something else which suits my needs more.

No idea about Kubuntu 15.04, but the (KDE4) oxygen icon theme is available as package here in openSUSE and it works with Plasma5 just fine.
So maybe search for oxygen in your package manager and install oxygen-icon-theme (or similar). You might want oxygen5-style as well if available, then Plasma5 doesn't look much different to KDE4.

Btw, "Get new themes" in systemsettings5 works just fine here, so your connection problem might be Kubuntu specific.
Is it just that function that cannot connect or is the network not working at all?

What do others think of the new look, do you really like it or is it just something you think you need to except because it is there?

Well, actually I'm still undecided about this.
On the one hand I do think it looks good, but on the other hand I personally find it a bit too simplicistic.

emrecio wrote:Um, when it crashes all the time, and locks up your computer so you have to do the ctrl-alt-backspace ... yeah, it kinda kills the product.

Have you filed bug reports?
Are you sure that your graphics driver is working correctly? (there is a known problem with intel, switching to "UXA" acceleration should help)

I don't see such problems here...

I can deal with aesthetics, and even (cringe) the lack of a compliant system tray

The "lack of a compliant system tray" is nonsense.
There is a system tray, compliant to the new SNI spec from 2009.

Old XEmbed system tray icons are not supported any more, that's true, but they won't work anyway with Wayland. So it's rather the applications that are "not compliant"...

Anyway, a "solution" has been created by david_edmundson, and will apparently be part of Plasma 5.5:
http://blog.davidedmundson.co.uk/blog/xembed_back