Top all-time · #2649
David Edmundson
Personal blog · blog.davidedmundson.co.uksystemsprogramming
David Edmundson's personal blog at blog.davidedmundson.co.uk covers systems and programming. Since 2014, 32 different Hacker News readers have linked it 40 times, most often “A Roadmap for a Modern Plasma Login Manager”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-08-25, and you can follow it by feed.
Most-linked posts?
- A Roadmap for a Modern Plasma Login Manager3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-03-26
- Fixing Wayland: Xwayland screen casting3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-03-22
- Bringing modern process management to the desktop3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-07-01
- Trusting Content on the KDE Store2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-03-20
- Adding Home Automation to KDE2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-01-03
- QtWayland 6.6 Brings Robustness Through Compositor Handoffs2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-09-11
- How does systemd relate to Plasma?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-07-05
- Running PlasmaShell with Vulkan2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-09-21
What Hacker News says?
Regarding your point 5: Application developers embrace systemd (and thereby reject portability to some extent) because it makes it easier for them to not do infrastructure work. A description of that phenomenon in KDE can be read here: http://blog.davidedmundson.co.uk/blog/systemd-and-plasma
Comment linking /blog/systemd-and-plasma
on “BSD vs. Linux (2005)”Submitted Trusting Content on the KDE Store as a story · 49 points
HN discussionThat's a workaround, not a a fix and might break applications which legitimately need more time to stop! A proper fix is to integrate startup and shutdown of all applications with systemd. That's something not properly supported everywhere yet. For example for KDE that's currently in the works: https://blog.davidedmundson.co.uk/blog/plasma-and-the-system...
Comment linking /blog/plasma-and-the-systemd-startup/
on “The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?”Submitted Adding Home Automation to KDE as a story · 6 points
HN discussionI am really curious but do not have the time to check this myself: is the vscode telemetry part of the open core bit? The reason I ask this is because I agree with your points and I usually allow telemetry for FOSS programs (for example [1]). If the telemetry code is open and people can verify that there isn't any identifiable data that is being collected, I don't see any issue with leaving it on in vscode too. [1]…
Comment linking /blog/what-we-can-learn-from-plasma-telemetry/
on “I’m switching from VS Code to VS Codium”Submitted Bringing modern process management to the desktop as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThe prefered input methods for Plasma is Fcitx5 but the situation is not perfect yet. But with Wayland, this opens a few new possibilities: http://blog.davidedmundson.co.uk/blog/new-ideas-using-waylan...
Comment linking /blog/new-ideas-using-wayland-input-methods/
on “KDE Plasma 6.0, and KDE Gear 24.02 released”Submitted How does systemd relate to Plasma? as a story · 5 points
HN discussionKDE 4 months ago acknowledged that the login manager needed serious work. The roadmap includes remote login. https://blog.davidedmundson.co.uk/blog/a-roadmap-for-a-moder... The GNOME Remote Desktop offering seems fine but yeah, the specific use case you have of wanting to be able to login does require an additional system wide login step which is a little unusual. LightDM and others work similarly; it's basically a…
Comment linking /blog/a-roadmap-for-a-modern-plasma-login-manager/
on “Windows 11 is a minefield of micro-aggressions in the shipping lane of progress”Submitted Preparing for KDE Plasma's Last X11-Supported Release as a story · 4 points
HN discussionKde's new Plasma Login Manager / Plasma Login (backend/frontend) have been coming along nicely (replacing sddm), and include remote login support. Just announced this past spring but very active. https://blog.davidedmundson.co.uk/blog/a-roadmap-for-a-moder...
Comment linking /blog/a-roadmap-for-a-modern-plasma-login-manager/
on “GNOME 50 completes the migration to Wayland, dropping X11 backend code”Submitted A Roadmap for a Modern Plasma Login Manager as a story · 4 points
HN discussion> So what was the screenshot feature of X11? In case I wasn't clear enough, there was never a screenshot feature . Any X11 client could read any pixel written by any other X11 client. > Have all the best or most popular apps been updated to ensure no disruption? I am not familiar with DE-agnostic "screenshot apps" for Linux, they always seemed more common on other OSes, and I've always used the DE-specific apps (whi…
Comment linking /blog/xwaylandvideobridge/
on “KDE going all-in on a Wayland future”Submitted A Roadmap for a Modern Plasma Login Manager as a story · 4 points
HN discussionHere's a C++/Qt one by KDE hacker David Edmundson: https://blog.davidedmundson.co.uk/blog/introducing-qtvarlink...
Comment linking /blog/introducing-qtvarlink/
on “Vali, a C library for Varlink”Submitted Running PlasmaShell with Vulkan as a story · 4 points
HN discussionGlobal themes and widgets created by 3rd party developers for Plasma can and will run arbitrary code, That's how the do what they do. You are encouraged to exercise extreme caution when using these products. Global themes do not only change the look of Plasma, but also the behavior. To do this they run code, and this code can be faulty, as in the case mentioned above. The code was not malicious, by the way, just wro…
Comment linking /blog/kde-store-content/
on “Hacked – Installed a global KDE Plasma theme – it erased all my drives”Submitted Setting up distributed compilations with sccache as a story · 3 points
HN discussionits the same "problem" that was fixed on QT? https://blog.davidedmundson.co.uk/blog/qt6_wayland_robustnes... or it's other issue?
Comment linking /blog/qt6_wayland_robustness/
on “Wayland Proxy Load Balancer”Submitted I measured KDE's commit stats and the results surprised me as a story · 3 points
HN discussionBy the way - David refused to publish the source for the image he showed, aka "nobody uses x11 anymore". This reminds me of the systemd folks - they also don't allow for discussions yet alone cite anything related to their claims. They just claim. If the earth is flat, they don't need evidence. Their word must be enough. It is this image: http://blog.davidedmundson.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/... David claims "…
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/2026/06/graph-1024x683.png
on “Preparing for KDE Plasma's Last X11-Supported Release”Submitted Plasma and the Systemd Startup as a story · 3 points
HN discussionDavid is the definition of old-school KDE developer. Do you know how far back his commits go? I remember his name from my first rodeos with KDE when I was a teenager. He was blogging about KDE in 2009 FFS: https://blog.davidedmundson.co.uk/blog/2009/09/
Comment linking /blog/2009/09/
on “Preparing for KDE Plasma's Last X11-Supported Release”Submitted Running KDE Plasma Desktop with Vulkan as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThere is a project to fix this. https://blog.davidedmundson.co.uk/blog/xwaylandvideobridge/ https://invent.kde.org/system/xwaylandvideobridge
Comment linking /blog/xwaylandvideobridge/
on “KDE Plasma 6.0 Is Enabling Wayland by Default”Submitted What we can learn from Plasma telemetry as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Bringing modern process management to the desktop as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Metrics in KDE – Are they useful? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted QtWayland 6.6 Brings Robustness Through Compositor Handoffs as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Fixing Wayland: Xwayland screen casting as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
