Recently, KDE They met, and among all the discussions, they made a few decisions. The one that most interests us in an article like this, which deals with new developments in the project's software, is that the LTS versions of Plasma will be discontinued. Instead, the regular versions will have five to six point releases. Today they published a new list of upcoming changes, and in it we see several that will arrive in Plasma 5.
These changes will be primarily—if not entirely—bug fixes. The new features will arrive with Plasma 6.4, a release that looks set to be significant. What follows is the list with news that they have advanced today.
New Features Coming to KDE
Framework 6.16
- The "New File" and "New Folder" dialogs, which can be invoked from Plasma, Dolphin, and other KDE applications, have received a visual overhaul. Additionally, the folder dialog allows you to choose a custom icon from within the dialog itself.
- File transfers in Plasma and KDE applications now inhibit suspend, so the transfer cannot be unexpectedly interrupted or canceled mid-transfer if the computer goes to sleep.
Changes to the interface
plasma 6.4
- On the Apps page of the Audio Volume widget, the name of the currently playing media will now be displayed, provided the app sets it correctly. This is especially useful for web browsers.
Audio widget
- On the Shortcuts page of System Preferences, the KWin and Plasma shortcuts are now displayed with more pleasant names.
- The Display & Monitor page of System Preferences now displays non-integer refresh rates, such as “59,94 Hz.”
- The Accessibility page of System Preferences now uses a better icon for the Screen Reader category.
- Windows that make a mistake and forget to add a title now no longer display text in the Overview, instead of a small empty bubble where there should be text.
- The Minimize All Windows widget no longer inappropriately masquerades as a Peek at Desktop widget while in edit mode.
Framework 6.16
- The technical infrastructure of how Kirigami draws icons in Plasma and QtQuick-based KDE applications has been revised, fixing several visual issues related to active highlighting not working correctly, especially with dark color schemes and image-based icons.
- Files in remote network locations accessed by their URL (not a manual local mount) from Plasma or any KDE application now display thumbnails better when they are really large, and should be more robust and reliable in general, less likely to cause the application displaying them to crash (Akseli Lahtinen and John Chadwick, link 1 and link 2).
Coming soon to your KDE distribution
As for bugs, this week KDE remains at 1 high priority and there are 20 remaining bugs of 15 minutes, the same as last week in both cases.
KDE Plasma 6.3.6 is expected to arrive on July 8, Plasma 6.4 on June 17, and Frameworks 6.16 on July 11.
Images and content: KDE blog.