New Plasma 6 Default Icon Theme Looks

Seems kinda inconsistent. I'm seeing thin lines, thicc lines, flat, 3d, colored and monochrome all together

The icons don't all speak the same language, true. Some are way more elaborate and detailed than others, which just makes them look off.
Maybe the library could be a single book instead of an entire bookshelf, for example?
- There's another icon called "folder-book"
Jesus, it's so inconsistent. I suppose that may be beneficial when looking at all of your folders at a bird's eye view but my knee jerk reaction isn't the most positive.

That looks… really inconsistent

Why is the mac icon black while the rest aren't?
Why are the games/downloads icons offset while the rest aren't?
Why are some icons really minimalistic and some really detailed?
Why do the colored folders have a line while the rest don't?
Why are java/android/deb/blender colored while the rest aren't?
And why is the black folder blue lol

IIRC they refined the Breeze icons over a LONG period of time to get them to the current state - I'm sure the same will be true here.

These are definitely an improvement over the current icons but while some of the design rules are evident, i think a bit of refining is in order.

The games and download folders both need a complete redesign as the ignore the design rules that the other folders use, and why are the symbols on each folder white except for the Mac folder?

Finally designers are realizing it's not 2013 anymore and nobody liked the Win8 designed-in-powerpoint style.

...

I'll be sticking with papirus.

not papyrus, I hope
- Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
  not papyrus, I hope
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

They are... certainly icons. I can't get any more excited than that I'm afraid

- There are even light and dark wallpapers with transparent version to build your own!

This feels like a step back from what we currently have.

I've seen better designs. But I've also seen worse designs. This is pretty meh.

And I was gonna try out KDE anyway.

- Isn't KDE spearheding HDR support for Wayland? And doing a bunch more objectively good/usefull projects like the xwayland video bridge?

- default KDE*
  but then I don't understand who uses KDE and doesn't kustomize it
- At least to me, KDE feels fairly modern

Ooh, it really reminds me of newaita reborn which is one of my favorite icon themes. I'm glad they're making it a little less minimal

Now KDE needs to implement a consistent design language for its apps, clean up its settings, and have better defaults. Not asking KDE to copy Gnome, just that it needs a lot more work to be palletable to someone using it for the first time.

TODO since KDE 3...

Looks good to me

I actually quite like the current breeze style with the sharper edges, it sets it apart from other designs.

My opinion, if possible, just use the Papirus icons by default. It does such a great job of being consistent while giving apps their own look.

I'm not the most knowledgeable on this subject, but I'm curious to learn more.

Why do various toolkits have major releases that seem to reset the features of the last one?

GTK 3 seems like GTK 2 but slower to me, and before the transition was even complete GTK 4 showed up, which just seems like GTK 3 but a bit different. Qt 5 works really well and is efficient on resources, so why are we switching to Qt 6? It seems like reinventing the desktop over and over again.

I understand updates for the kernel for compatibility, small to medium updates to all software for bug fixes and new features, and major updates to toolkits when there are big problems with the current release (X vs Wayland for example). Or if the current release was unreliable and bloated, which I heard was what happened with Qt 4 and why they switched to 5. But I also heard Qt 3 was really stable and lightweight, so why did they switch away from it?

Usually there's big new features that accomodate more modern hardware better. As an example, Qt6 revamps support for Wayland, HDR, and scaling. Even these things on their own don't seem like much, but if you go back to KDE 5 in 10 years time you'll definitely feel like something is plain/dated (or completely not working if you're on new hardware)
- Thank you for the explanation! What specifically does Qt 6 do that Qt 5 can't do?
Gtk 3->4 made a lot of internal changes, and at least some were related to making wayland work. Wayland "worked" in gtk3, however it was very much an afterthought, and half the toolkit was useless under wayland. Other changes are usually required for changes related to rendering, gtk4 had vulcan rendering which may require some breaking changes. Another thing is just general breaking changes that are good, sometimes you realise some decision was bad, and a new major release is just a way to make these.
From the end users perspective nothing much changes, it maybe looks a bit different, but not much besides that. But a vulcan renderer and being fully wayland compatible are major improvements that also improve the user experience, even if you don't notice directly.
- Interesting. I'm guessing the changes were too big to just be added incrementally in updates to GTK 3?

Great criticism overall. Yes, it'll be improved.

I liked old look more. Would prefer to add even more preinstalled icons instead.

Why is everything a folder? What does a debian or android folder do?

Yes, everything will be a folder in plasma 6, including applications, don't worry, you I'll love the new Firefox folder. Its the natural progression of things, don't try to stop it.
- Everything's previously a file, now everything is a folder
It's deb, not Debian, so I'd assume it's the icon for .deb files (which are browsable archives).
It folds Debian to prevent Debian prions
Debían no idea... But I guess android could be android studio folders or similar stuff?