this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2026
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A PHP Dev Just Solved a 20+ Year-Old KDE Plasma Problem No One Else Would (itsfoss.com)
submitted 4 days ago by Powderhorn@beehaw.org to c/foss@beehaw.org
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Back in 2005, a bug report was filed by Kjetil Kjernsmo, then running KDE 3.3.2 on Debian Stable. He wanted the ability to have each connected screen show a different virtual desktop independently, rather than having all displays switch as one unit.

Over the years, over 15 duplicate reports piled onto the original as more people ran into the same wall. And that's not a surprise, because multi-monitor setups have become increasingly common.

The technical reason why this issue stayed open this long comes down to X11. Implementing it there would have required violating the EWMH specification, which has no concept of multiple virtual desktops being active at the same time.

The KWin maintainer Martin Flöser had said as much in 2013, effectively ruling it out for the entire KDE 4.x series. The only realistic path was through Wayland, and that path needed someone willing to actually walk it.

Someone finally did. The feature has now landed in KWin's master branch and is set for a Plasma 6.7 introduction.

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[–] OwOarchist@pawb.social 64 points 4 days ago (2 children)

People are calling this a 'problem' and a 'bug' ... but it's neither. It was just a missing feature.

[–] Atherel@lemmy.dbzer0.com 27 points 4 days ago (1 children)

A missing feature that wasn't possible under X and can be implemented now under Wayland. So it had nothing to do with KDE itself.

[–] FiskFisk33@startrek.website 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I dont understand that part. This has been a thing in i3 since forever

[–] Atherel@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

From the bug report in 2013:

It is not possible to implement this feature without violating the EWMH specification (it doesn't consider that there are more than one active virtual desktops at the same time, it might cause windows to misbehave). Because of that there is no chance that this can be implemented on the base of X11

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=107302#c29

[–] FiskFisk33@startrek.website 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

yeah, yet, its a feature in i3

[–] Atherel@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 day ago

Maybe they just ignored the specs? I read that as it's technically possible but you shouldn't do it.

[–] what@beehaw.org 13 points 4 days ago

Improvement is a good word for improvement