KDE He assured that the Mega-Launch of 6 was smooth, that it mostly went well, but not everyone seems to agree. It does seem like it was better than expected considering it was a huge jump, but many projects prefer to take their time and wait for more maintenance updates to be released before implementing it. That wait will be worth it, since KDE is fixing many bugs and making at least Plasma 6 more reliable.
At the same time, the project that started as Kool Desktop Environment is also adding new features. Or recovering them, since the first of them is that Spectacle recovers the cropping tool. Let's go with the what's new this week in KDE.
New Features Coming to KDE
- Spectacle brings back a Snipping tool, this time built in-house rather than coming from a third-party annotation library. This also fixes a related bug (Noah Davis, Spectacle 24.05. Header Capture).
- For laptops with RGB backlit keyboards, Plasma has gained the ability to keep the backlight color in sync with the active accent color. And custom color support is also on the way (Natalie Clarius, Plasma 6.1).
- The new automatic crash reporting now gives the option to always let it download debug symbols in the background to improve the crash reports it generates (Harald Sitter, Plasma 6.1).
- It is now possible to make an unused mouse button simulate the pressing of a modifier key (David Redondo, Plasma 6.).
- Although Snaps are supposed to auto-update, Discover has gained the ability to allow you to update them manually (Kevin Ottens, Plasma 6.).
Improvements in the user's interface
- Dolphin now displays a visible error message when you use a keyboard shortcut to trigger an action that cannot be performed in the current context, such as cutting a file in a read-only folder (Jin Liu, Dolphin 24.05):
- In Elisa, you can now switch between list and grid views as appropriate (Jack Hill, Elisa 24.05):
- In Elisa, you can now search for albums on the Tracks page (Karl Hoffman, Elisa 24.05).
- Multiple wallpapers can now be selected in Plasma's "add new wallpaper" dialog (Sahil Arora, Plasma 6.0.4).
- Changed Breeze radio buttons and checkboxes to use the “Button” color like most interactive UI elements, which not only improves visual consistency but also fixes an issue visual in QtQuick-based software where these UI elements were sometimes the wrong color (Akseli Lahtinen, Frameworks 6.1 and Plasma 6.1).
- The list headers in Kickoff now use the standard list header style seen in QtQuick-based KDE applications, which also made it necessary to create a version of that component suitable for Plasma, so expect to see it in more places as well (Nate Graham, Plasma 6.1):
- The Plasma Digital Clock widget's holiday list selector no longer hides long text, but wraps it around it, as there is plenty of room to display it in the already scrollable long list (Ivan Tkachenko, Plasma 6.1).
Correction of minor bugs
- Okular no longer asks for a password to open encrypted PDF documents where the encryption is not actually applied to the simple act of opening them (Nicolas Fella, sponsored by TU Dresden, Okular 24.02.2).
- Fixed a set of related crashes in Plasma that appear to have been a subtle side effect of the recent fix to make Kickoff favorites grid apps disappear immediately when uninstalled (Fushan Wen, Plasma 6.0.4).
- Fixed another case where Plasma could crash when connecting a new display (Fushan Wen, Plasma 6.0.4).
- Fixed a rare Plasma crash that could occur when clicking on certain icons in the System Tray (Fushan Wen, Plasma 6.0.4).
- Fixed a case where Spectacle could crash after finishing a screen recording when using certain GPU hardware (Fabian Vogt, Plasma 6.0.4).
- Fixed a bug that prevented logging out within 60 seconds of logging in when using the system-enabled Plasma startup process (Harald Sitter, Plasma 6.0.4).
- Fixed an issue where two-finger tapping on the touchpad in Task Manager would not open a context menu with certain, say, “less than premium” touchpad hardware (Fushan Wen, Plasma 6.0.4 ).
- Contributed to code hardening for four additional bugs detected by KDE's automatic bug reporting system (Fushan Wen, Plasma 6.0.4).
- Fixed incorrect localization of date information in the tooltips of several clock widgets (Albert Astals Cid, Plasma 6.0.4).
- Fixed several additional strange issues with mouse cursors in games in Wayland (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 6.1).
- Fixed some visual glitches that could occur in Wayland when resizing certain types of windows that were opened in a maximized state (Ser Freeman, Plasma 6.1).
This week a total of 145 bugs have been fixed.
Performance and technical
- Spectacle now takes screenshots faster when used outside of Plasma and KWin on X11 (Konstantin Kharlamov, Spectacle 24.02.2).
- By default, Partition Manager now mounts volumes (other than / and /home) with the nofail flag so that they do not block booting when they are unavailable for some reason (Thomas Bertels, Partition Manager 24.05).
- Fixed a memory leak in the Plasma Networks widget (Fushan Wen, Plasma 6.0.4).
- Custom QML layouts for lock screens are no longer honored in Global Themes as it is too security sensitive (Marco Martin, Plasma 6.1).
- The Dialog Parent effect (the one that makes windows dark when a child dialog window is open) now works in Wayland (Carlos Garnacho and David Redondo, Plasma 6.1 with Qt 6.8).
- There has been a major code quality review of the Plasma Digital Clock and Calendar widgets, which has fixed a lot of weaknesses, warnings and some minor bugs, with more to come (Ivan Tkachenko, Plasma 6.1).
When will this all come to KDE?
plasma 6.0.4 will it arrive on Monday? April 15, and Plasma 6.1 will follow in June, on the 18th. Frameworks 6.1 will arrive on April 5 and KDE Gear 24.02.2 is scheduled for the 11th of the same month. In August we should return to the usual numbering/scheduling of a new major update in April-August-December.
To enjoy all this as soon as possible we have to add the repository backports of KDE, use an operating system with special repositories like Kde neon or any distribution whose development model is Rolling Release.
Images and content: pointieststick.com.