KDE improves support for flatpak packages in a Discover that now better explains what it does.

  • KDE publishes new weekly update.
  • Discover is improved with flatpak packages and better reports on what it does.
  • Many bugs fixed, but not the most important ones.
Pablinux

4 minutes

Discover KDE in the future

This week's note in KDE It arrived before GNOME's this time. Nate Graham usually releases it in the early morning hours wherever a server resides, while GNOME releases them on Friday night in the same area. This time they arrived roughly at the same time, but KDE overtook GNOME by a long shot. We don't know if this will be the case from now on, but I thought it was a good anecdote to start this article.

Now, fully into the new features, KDE continues to work on adding features and improving much of what we already have on hand. Many of these improvements are related to bug fixes, a section we no longer include in this type of article. Therefore, anyone interested in learning more should visit the original article, which we'll link to at the end of this post.

New Features Coming to KDE

plasma 6.5.0

  • The “Flatpak Permissions” page in System Preferences has been transformed into a more general “Application Permissions” page, allowing you to configure settings related to the XDG portal system, such as taking screenshots, accepting remote control requests, and more.

System preferences

  • Support for the XDG Wallpaper Portal has been implemented, allowing applications that use portals to request changes to the desktop and lock screen background.

KDE interface improvements

plasma 6.5.0

  • The focus-stealing prevention settings on the Window Behavior page of System Preferences now work consistently on Wayland. At one extreme, “Extreme” requires a valid activation token for every focus request. At the other extreme, “None” ignores them entirely, allowing any activated window to immediately take focus. The default is “Low,” which should result in fewer failed activations, preventing applications from continually abusing and stealing focus.
  • The Day/Night Cycle page of System Preferences (where the Night Light schedule settings have been moved) now allows you to enter times in AM/PM format, if that is what the rest of the system displays and uses.

Nightlight page in KDE System Preferences

  • You no longer need to manually create a remote desktop account for remote desktop purposes; your existing user account now works as expected, and you only need to provide its credentials to the client application.
  • Discover is now more explicit about what it's doing while fetching updates (header image), so it doesn't feel blocked and you can identify which source is being slow and holding up the process.
  • Improved keyboard navigation in the Kicker app launcher widget when no apps are marked as favorites.
  • The monospace font selected on the Fonts page of System Preferences now syncs with GTK applications.
  • The Tablet page of System Preferences now displays a warning if you try to use it to configure a tablet that is being managed by a custom driver in user space, as these can conflict and produce strange results.

Framework 6.18

  • Visual improvements have been made to how toolbars load in several applications that use Kirigami and in System Preferences pages.

Performance and technical in KDE

plasma 6.5.0

  • Added support for Underlays, which promises to improve efficiency on GPUs that support it.
  • KWin's blurring effect has been made per view, which looks better when screen sharing.

Coming soon to your KDE distribution

Regarding bugs, the four high-priority bugs and the 4 25-minute bugs we saw last week have remained unchanged. It hasn't been a very productive week in this regard, as the overall list of fixed bugs has remained at just four.

KDE Plasma 6.4.5 is expected to arrive on September 9th and Frameworks 6.18 on September 12th.

Vía: KDE blog.