Everyone kept hammering on the bugs this week. As a result, the number of open Plasma 6 issues decreased, and so did the number of older high and very high priority Plasma issues! I’m feeling really good about this release. Daily driving it is already a pleasure. I think it might be a winner. 🙂

KDE 6 Mega-Release

(Includes all software to be released on the February 28th mega-release: Plasma 6, Frameworks 6, and apps from Gear 24.02)

General info – Open issues: 199

UI improvements

The “Advanced Power Settings” page in System settings has now been folded up into a sub-page of the “Energy Settings” page (Jakob Petsovits, link):

Made a variety of improvements to the way device batteries are shown on Info Center’s “Energy” page: more device types are now identified correctly, and their device models are now shown so you can more easily distinguish batteries from different devices of the same type (Shubham Arora, link 1, link 2, link 3, link 4)

When you try to connect to a Wi-Fi network but enter the wrong password, you’re now informed of this immediately instead of having to wait a while to learn why it didn’t connect successfully (David Redondo, link)

The Breeze-themed Telegram icon has been updated to better match Telegram’s own branding (Onur Ankut, link):

The Breeze cursor theme now includes more pre-generated sizes, making its cursors look better at various scale factors and in more apps and toolkits that don’t yet conform to the cursor-shape-v1 Wayland protocol (Jin Liu, link)

Ark’s integrated viewer window now remembers its window size the next time you open it (Ilya Pominov, link)

In Spectacle’s Rectangular Region mode, you can now hold down the Shift key to see the magnifier while moving the box using arrow keys (Noah Davis, link)

Bug fixes

Important note: I don’t mention fixes for bugs that were never released to users; it’s just too much for me (it would probably be too much for you to read as well), and most people never encountered them in the first place. Because we’re in the middle of a big Plasma dev cycle, there are a lot of these bugs! So big thanks to everyone who’s made it a priority to fix them!

KWin can no longer crash when told by an app to open window with an invalid size (Xaver Hugl, link)

Editing an app’s .desktop file in such a manner that the file’s Exec= value ends up containing an equals sign no longer causes the properties dialog to crash the next time you use it to edit the same file (Harald Sitter, link)

Fixed a common random Plasma crash (David Redondo, link)

You can no longer crash KMenuEdit by creating a new entry, immediately deleting it, and then clicking “Save” (Harald Sitter, link)

In the Plasma Wayland session, the power and session actions once again work after KWin has crashed (David Edmundson, link)

Fixed several visual glitches related to missing pixels when using multiple screens with any of them having a fractional scale factor (Yifan Zhu, link 1 and link 2)

When using Dolphin’s Details mode to view a folder tree, expanding a folder no longer orders the items incorrectly when the parent view was sorted by size (Akseli Lahtinen, link)

Changes to the cursor size now take effect in Plasma immediately, without needing to restart plasmashell (Vlad Zahorodnii and others, link)

Using the “Cut” command on files and folders in Dolphin once again causes them to become visually desaturated (Jin Liu, link)

GTK4 apps now use the current KWin-provided window closing animation, instead of just disappearing immediately (Vlad Zahorodnii, link)

When using Elisa in mobile mode, its playlist sidebar can once again be closed (Kevin Kofler, link)

The Plasma-themed spinbox UI element now works properly with a wider variety of 3rd-party styling–hopefully all of them! (Marco Martin, link)

Other bug information of note:

• 3 Very high priority Plasma bugs (down from 5 as last week). Current list of bugs
• 34 15-minute Plasma bugs (down from 41 as last week). Current list of bugs
• 175 KDE bugs of all kinds fixed this week. Full list of bugs

Performance & Technical

The Overview effect is now much faster to launch and has smoother animations; this work is now largely done and it represents a major improvement! (Vlad Zahorodnii, Marco Martin, and Arjen Hiemstra, link 1 and link 2)

…And Everything Else

This blog only covers the tip of the iceberg! If you’re hungry for more, check out https://planet.kde.org, where you can find more news from other KDE contributors.

How You Can Help

We’re hosting our Plasma 6 fundraiser right now and need your help! Thanks to you we’re now at 91% of our goal of 500 new KDE e.V. members! That’s really close to 95%, which is close to 100%! So I think we might actually make it… if you like the work we’re doing, spreading the wealth is a great way to share the love. 🙂

If you’re a developer, work on Qt6/KF6/Plasma 6 issues! Which issues? These issues. Plasma 6 is very usable for daily driving now, but still in need of bug-fixing and polishing to get it into a releasable state by February.

Otherwise, visit https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved to discover other ways to be part of a project that really matters. Each contributor makes a huge difference in KDE; you are not a number or a cog in a machine! You don’t have to already be a programmer, either. I wasn’t when I got started. Try it, you’ll like it! We don’t bite!

The bug-fixing marathon continued this week, alongside an avalanche of new bug reports! It appears people are indeed testing the Plasma 6 beta release, which is great! Fortunately most of the bugs being reported are minor. Keep it up, everyone! And don’t forget about the Plasma 6 fundraiser; we’re getting really close!

KDE 6 Mega-Release

(Includes all software to be released on the February 28th mega-release: Plasma 6, Frameworks 6, and apps from Gear 24.02)

General info – Open issues: 205

New features

When using automatic bug reporting, the system notification telling you that a crash report has been automatically reported now also gives you the opportunity to send along a message to tell developers what you were doing or help them understand the context surrounding the crash (Harald Sitter, link)

Bug fixes

Important note: I don’t mention fixes for bugs that were never released to users; it’s just too much for me (it would probably be too much for you to read as well), and most people never saw those bugs in the first place. Because we’re in the middle of a big Plasma dev cycle, there are a lot of these bugs! So big thanks to everyone who’s made it a priority to fix them!

Fixed a case where Dolphin could crash when undoing a mass-rename job (Akseli Lahtinen, link)

Partition Manager no longer lets you set sector alignment to zero (Andrius Štikonas, link)

Switching your language to European Portuguese now works properly (Harald Sitter, link)

System Settings’ Recent Files page now supports non-default settings highlighting (Méven Car, link)

System Settings Energy Saving page now also supports non-default settings highlighting (Jakob Petsovits, link)

On System Settings’ Screen Edges page, the “Remain active when windows are fullscreen” checkbox now correctly highlights when in a non-default state (me: Nate Graham, link)

Scrolling on sliders throughout Plasma now scrolls in the expected direction when using inverted/”natural” scrolling (Ismael Asensio, link)

When taking a screenshot in Spectacle with the “automatically copy to clipboard” setting, the system notification that tells you about this can now be successfully be clicked to open the image in the default image viewer (Noah Davis, link)

The “Add More Timezones” Digital Clock widget popup is no longer sometimes too narrow to read the available timezones (me: Nate Graham, link)

Fixed several window positioning issues when using the “Minimize Overlapping” placement mode with a fractional scale factor in the Plasma Wayland Session (Yifan Zhu, link)

Other bug information of note:

• 5 Very high priority Plasma bugs (same as last week). Current list of bugs
• 41 15-minute Plasma bugs (same as last week). Current list of bugs
• 176 KDE bugs of all kinds fixed this week. Full list of bugs

Performance & Technical

Added support for “DMA-Fence deadlines”, which should improve performance and responsiveness on systems with Intel integrated GPUs in the Plasma Wayland session (Xaver Hugl, link)

Did a lot of performance work for the KWin Overview effect; it’s now much smoother, and work is ongoing to make it open faster, too (Vlad Zahorodnii and Marco Martin, link 1, link 2, link 3, link 4, link 5, link 6, link 7)

The Night Color transition no longer wrecks performance when using certain AMD GPUs (Xaver Hugl, link)

Ported the Accounts page in System Settings to work with Qt 6 (Nicolas Fella, link)

Automation & Systematization

Added a test to ensure that the animation speed setting works as expected (Fushan Wen, link)

Added a test to ensure that extracting the accent color from the wallpaper works as expected (Fushan Wen, link)

Added a test to ensure that the Media Controller widget’s time slider works as expected (Fushan Wen, link)

Added a GUI test to ensure that Info Center’s “About This System” page shows data properly (Alexander Wilms, link)

…And Everything Else

This blog only covers the tip of the iceberg! If you’re hungry for more, check out https://planet.kde.org, where you can find more news from other KDE contributors.

How You Can Help

We’re hosting our Plasma 6 fundraiser right now and need your help! Thanks to you we’re now at 88% of our goal of 500 new KDE e.V. members! That’s really close to 90%, which is close to 95%, which is close to 100%! So I think we might actually make it… if you like the work we’re doing, spreading the wealth is a great way to share the love. 🙂

If you’re a developer, work on Qt6/KF6/Plasma 6 issues! Which issues? These issues. Plasma 6 is very usable for daily driving now, but still in need of bug-fixing and polishing to get it into a releasable state by February.

Otherwise, visit https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved to discover other ways to be part of a project that really matters. Each contributor makes a huge difference in KDE; you are not a number or a cog in a machine! You don’t have to already be a programmer, either. I wasn’t when I got started. Try it, you’ll like it! We don’t bite!

Plasma 6 beta 1 has been released! And so far the feedback has been very positive. A few final features snuck in before we started on the mega bugfixing marathon, which began this week! Please do continue to test the beta and report bugs. Other useful activities include fixing bugs and donating to the Plasma 6 fundraiser. 🙂

KDE 6 Mega-Release

(Includes all software to be released on the February 28th mega-release: Plasma 6, Frameworks 6, and apps from Gear 24.02)

General info – Open issues: 164

New features

You can now set the wallpaper for any of your screens from a page in System Settings! (Méven Car, link):

Discover now features a “Newly Published & Recently Updated” section on the main page when using Flatpak or Snap as your default apps backend, which makes the Linux app ecosystem feel more alive! Work is pending to also show this section when using distro packages for your default source, provided the distro actually ships relatively frequent updates to apps and not ancient years-old software all on the same date, which would make the section useless (Ivan Tkachenko, link):

The Night Light page in System Settings now shows you a graphical representation of the active and inactive periods as well as the transition times (Ismael Asensio, link):

Implemented a “Shake to find your cursor” KWin effect, similar to the one in macOS. Note that it’s off by default for now, so you’ll need to manually turn it on in System Settings’ Desktop Effects page if you want to use it (Vlad Zahorodnii, link)

Ark now offers a new “Extract here and delete archive” option for its context menu plugin! As part of the process of making this possible, we decided to remove infrequently-used items in the menu in favor of keeping the “Extract here, autodetect subfolder” option, which was the most useful one and has now been renamed to “Extract here” for clarity (Severin von Wnuck, link):

User Interface improvements

Auto-Hide panels now respect the user-configurable delay setting that currently affects other screen edge effects, so you can configure whether they will un-hide immediately upon being touched, or wait an amount of time of your choosing (Bharadwaj Raju, link)

The glow effect that appears when your pointer gets close to a screen edge or corner that will do something when touched now respects the system’s accent color (Ivan Tkachenko, link)

The Morphing Popups effect now animates with the standard easing curve, which feels more consistent and nicer and also makes it feel faster (Timothy Bautista, link)

KRunner and other KRunner-based searches like the one in Overview now have proper visual click feedback when you click on a search result (Kai Uwe Broulik, link)

Tool views and sidebar tabs in Kate can now be dragged-and-dropped to other locations (Waqar Ahmed, link 1 and link 2)

Hitting the Escape key in Spectacle while in Rectangular Region mode now takes you back to the main window instead of quitting the app (Noah Davis, link)

Bug fixes

Fixed the most common crash in Dolphin which could happen when copying a large number of files to another location, closing Dolphin’s window, and then interacting with the overwrite/skip dialog (Akseli Lahtinen, link)

Fixed another common crash in Dolphin that could happen after entering edit mode and then changing the Application Style (Akseli Lahtinen, link)

In the Plasma Wayland session, sub-menus from Kicker no longer go underneath a bottom panel, and windows marked “Keep above other windows” no longer also go above panel popups (David Edmundson, link 1 and link 2)

Fixed various visual glitches with the bouncy app launch feedback effect on Wayland when using a scale factor higher than 100% (Vlad Zahorodnii, link 1, link 2, and link 3)

Window titles that contain a hyphen character no longer get mangled when displayed in Task Manager preview popups (Niccolò Venerandi, link)

Fixed OSDs on the lock screen looking pointlessly different from OSDs shown everywhere else (Bharadwaj Raju, link)

When you have multiple Battery widgets, the “Manually block sleep and screen locking” switch is now synced between all of them (Natalie Clarius, link)

• 5 Very high priority Plasma bugs (1 more than last week). Current list of bugs
• 41 15-minute Plasma bugs (1 more than last week). Current list of bugs
• 180 (!) KDE bugs of all kinds fixed this week. Full list of bugs

Technical

Added support for hardware cursors on NVIDIA GPUs (Doğukan Korkmaztürk, link)

System Settings’ Firewall page has been fully ported to Qt6 (Guillaume Frognier and David Redondo, link)

KDE Connect’s Plasma widget has been fully ported to be compatible with Plasma 6 (Prajna Sariputra, link)

Automation & Systematization

Added an autotest to make sure that files and folders added to the desktop actually show up immediately (Fushan Wen, link)

Added an autotest to make sure that accent colors can be correctly extracted from wallpapers (Fushan Wen, link)

Added an autotest to make sure that Global Theme layouts can be correctly applied (Fushan Wen, link)

…And Everything Else

This blog only covers the tip of the iceberg! If you’re hungry for more, check out https://planet.kde.org, where you can find more news from other KDE contributors.

How You Can Help

We’re hosting our Plasma 6 fundraiser right now and need your help! Thanks to you we’re at 83% right of our goal of 500 members now! I think we might actually make it! If you like the work we’re doing, spreading the wealth is a great way to share the love. 🙂

If you’re a developer, work on Qt6/KF6/Plasma 6 issues! Which issues? These issues. Plasma 6 is very usable for daily driving now, but still in need of bug-fixing and polishing to get it into a releasable state by February.

Otherwise, visit https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved to discover other ways to be part of a project that really matters. Each contributor makes a huge difference in KDE; you are not a number or a cog in a machine! You don’t have to already be a programmer, either. I wasn’t when I got started. Try it, you’ll like it! We don’t bite!

Yep you read that right, we’ve decided to throw the lever and go Wayland by default! The three remaining showstoppers are in the process of being fixed and we expect them to be done soon–certainly before the final release of Plasma 6. So we wanted to make the change early to gather as much feedback as possible.

But that’s not all, of course. This was another big week! Read on to see the rest:

Plasma 6

(Includes all software to be released on the February 28th mega-release: Plasma 6, Frameworks 6, and apps from Gear 24.02)

General info – Open issues: 118

The Breeze app style has gotten the visual overhaul you’ve all dreamed of: no more frames within frames! Instead Breeze-themed apps adopt the clean design of modern Kirigami apps, with views separated from one another with single-pixel lines! (Carl Schwan, link 1, link 2, link 3, link 4, link 5, link 6, link 7, link 8, link 9, and link 10):

In the Plasma Wayland session, there’s now preliminary support for playing HDR-capable games when using an HDR-capable screen! (Xaver Hugl, link)

Spectacle has gained support for rectangular region screen recording! (Noah Davis, link)

System Settings’ Printers page has gotten a major overhaul and now includes the features internally that it used to direct you to external apps for. The result is much nicer and more integrated, without a cascading soup of dialog windows (Mike Noe, link):

The Plasma Panel settings have been redesigned again, and this time everything is in one dialog; no more nested sub-menus! This work fixed 14 open bug reports (Niccolò Venerandi and Marco Martin, link 1 and link 2):

Ark is now significantly faster to compress files using xz and zstd compression, as they are now multi-threaded (Zhangzhi Hu, link)

When you run Flatpak apps, they’ll no longer prompt you to approve or deny “background activity”; the whole concept of this has been removed as it was kinda sus and not useful at all (David Edmundson, link)

There’s now a simple setting to disable notification sounds systemwide, for those of you who don’t like them (Ismael Asensio, link 1, link 2, and link 3):

Improved Plasma’s start time rather significantly–up to a few whole seconds (Harald Sitter, link)

The double-click speed setting returns, and now lives on System Settings’ General Behavior page. Before you ask why it’s not on the mouse Page, it’s because it affects touchpads too and that has its own page, and duplicating the setting on both pages seemed messy and ugly (Nicolas Fella, link)

Syncing your Plasma settings to SDDM now also syncs your desired NumLock state on boot (Chandradeep Dey, link)

In QtWidgets-based apps, you can open the context menu for the selected thing with the Shift+F10 shortcut (Felix Ernst, link 1 and link 2)

You can now open System Monitor with the Meta+Escape shortcut (Arjen Hiemstra, link)

Significant Bugfixes

(This is a curated list of e.g. HI and VHI priority bugs, Wayland showstoppers, major regressions, etc.)

Fixed a wide variety of multi-screen issues related to screens sometimes not turning on at the right times or becoming visually frozen until going to another VT and back (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 6.0. Link)

Fixed a bug that could cause desktop icon positions to be mis-remembered, especially if the system has ever had multiple screens connected (Harald Sitter, Plasma 5.27.10. Link)

Fixed a bug that could cause Night Color to start transitioning to night mode at inappropriate times when using a certain combination of settings (Sanjay Swain, Plasma 5.27.10. Link)

Just in case you have a window that fails to set a minimum size, KWin no longer lets you resize it to a width of zero pixels, whereupon it would become invisible and impossible to find (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 6.0. Link)

In the “Get new [thing]” dialogs, items’ full descriptions are now visible, instead of getting cut off at some point (Ismael Asensio, Plasma 6.0. Link)

Other bug-related information of interest:

• 4 Very high priority Plasma bugs (up from 3 last week). Current list of bugs
• 47 15-minute Plasma bugs (down from 52 last week). Current list of bugs
• 146 KDE bugs of all kinds fixed this week. Full list of bugs

Automation & Systematization

Added a GUI test to make sure that Panel Edit Mode can be entered (Fushan Wen, link)

Added some GUI tests for functionality of the wallpaper chooser dialog (Fushan Wen, link)

Added some GUI tests for KRunner’s plugins and their presence in the relevant System Settings page (Fushan Wen, link)

…And Everything Else

This blog only covers the tip of the iceberg! If you’re hungry for more, check out https://planet.kde.org, where you can find more news from other KDE contributors.

How You Can Help

We’re hosting our Plasma 6 fundraiser right now and need your help! Thanks to you we’re past the 60% mark, but we’re not there yet! So if you like the work we’re doing, spreading the wealth is a great way to share the love. 🙂

If you’re a developer, work on Qt6/KF6/Plasma 6 issues! Which issues? These issues. Plasma 6 is usable for daily driving now, but still in need of bug-fixing and polishing to get it into a releasable state by February.

Otherwise, visit https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved to discover other ways to be part of a project that really matters. Each contributor makes a huge difference in KDE; you are not a number or a cog in a machine! You don’t have to already be a programmer, either. I wasn’t when I got started. Try it, you’ll like it! We don’t bite!