Most KDE contributors are still recovering from their holiday vacations, but nevertheless the first of my 2020 predictions has been fulfilled: KIO now makes remote locations available to non-KDE apps using FUSE mounts! This brings us to full feature parity with GNOME’s GVFS system and makes it painless to interact with files in remote locations using apps like LibreOffice, Blender, and VLC. Full support will be shipped to users with the Dolphin 20.04 release.
More New Features
- There are now thumbnail previews for cursor files (Kai Uwe Broulik, Dolphin 20.04.0):
- Plasma’s amazing notification system gained support for apps to let you reply to messages inline (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.18.0):
Bugfixes & Performance Improvements
- The context menu in the System Settings Network Connections page no longer sometimes appears in the wrong place when clicked (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.17.5)
- The Alt-tilde shortcut to switch between the current app’s open windows now works on Wayland when Num Lock mode is active (Roman Gilg, Plasma 5.18.0)
- The System Settings Icons page now correctly highlights the current icon theme when it was installed and activated using Discover, and deleting an icon theme no longer resets the view’s currently-selected icon theme (Benjamin Port, Plasma 5.18.0)
- System Settings no longer shows the dreaded “ambiguous shortcut” dialog when you hit Ctrl+F; the shortcut now works to focus the search field (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.18.0)
- KDE’s GTK theming now respects the GTK2_RC_FILES environment variable (Mikhail Zolotukhin, Plasma 5.18.0)
- File dialogs opened by applications that only supports local files (e.g. Firefox when using the openSUSE patches to show the KDE file dialog) now shows disks and removable media devices in their Places panels (Kai Uwe Broulik, Frameworks 5.66)
- Dolphin no longer crashes when you rename the trash can (Elvis Angelaccio, Frameworks 5.66)
User Interface Improvements
- Elisa’s playlist now shows the full album and artist names in the header area instead of eliding after one line (me: Nate Graham, Elisa 20.04.0):
- In Elisa, you can now play different songs in the playlist using the keyboard (me: Nate Graham, Elisa 20.04.0)
- When using plasma-browser-integration, files downloaded using your web browser show up as recent documents in Dolphin, the file dialogs, and the application launcher menu (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.18.0)
- Discover now presents app and addon reviews more elegantly (KDE VDG and me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.18.0):
- Audacity project files and Apple Wallet files now have nice Breeze icons (Kai Uwe Broulik and Carson Black, Frameworks 5.66)
How You Can Help
If you’ve got artistic talent, rev up your digital paintbrushes and try your hand at getting your work seen by millions of Plasma LTS users for years to come in our wallpaper competition: https://community.kde.org/KDE_Visual_Design_Group/Plasma_5.18_Wallpaper_Competition!
More generally, have a look at https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved and find out more ways to help 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!
Finally, consider making a tax-deductible donation to the KDE e.V. foundation.
Adventures in Linux and KDE 
Damn that looks good!
LikeLiked by 2 people
the KDE project is the gift that just keeps on giving. The regularity of all these fantastic fixes and improvements from the community is astonishing
LikeLiked by 2 people
Is the FUSE mounts support something Dolphin-specific? What does one need to do to support them, for example, in Krusader?
LikeLiked by 1 person
It’s actually not specific to Dolphin at all, I was just using Dolphin as an example. Any file app that uses KIO to open a network resource in a non-KDE app will trigger a new behavior in KIO to secretly mount the location in /run/user/[pid]/kiofuse/ and pass the path to the mount to the non-KDE app instead of the raw network path. It works in Dolphin, Krusader, Konqueror, or any other file manager that uses KIO.
LikeLiked by 2 people
s/[pid]/[uid]/
LikeLike
Er yes, oops.
LikeLike
> Any file app that uses KIO to open a network resource in a non-KDE app
How does KIO determine that the other app is a non-KDE app?
LikeLike
Fantastic news, another great week for the KDE Software, thanks to the amazing KDE Community :).
Those 2020 predictions (the almost sure ones) are starting to give us happiness.
I’m keeping an eye on a relatively new distro, Clear Linux, by Intel. It’s RR, comes by default at the GUI image with GNOME, but at their repos they’ve got KDE software (all the basic, included Latte Dock, KDE Applications, KDE Frameworks and KDE Plasma, of course). I wouldn’t even consider a distro which hasn’t got KDE software on their official repos.
I can’t wait to see more improvements for Plasma 5.18 LTS and the rest of my beloved KDE Software.
Thank you very much as always to everyone who makes all this terrific software possible.
A huge hug to everyone ^^.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Wow the reply within the chat notification is awesome. By looking at the screenshot I assuming that it is notification via KDE Connect? If so will that work from most chat notification via KDE Connect?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, KDE Connect is expected to be the first user of this new feature!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m waiting for that as well. Without it there was no real SMS support in KDE Connect. Still, they are way behind projects like Pushbullet which allow us to browse all SMSes from the phone, replay seamlessly, start new conversation, look through contacts from the phone that we can add to the SMS, etc. This is something I expect so current SMS feature in KDE connect is not making any impression for me. Otherwise, KDE Connect is awesome but not in SMS department ;P.
LikeLike
”KIO now makes remote locations available to non-KDE apps using FUSE mounts!”
Wow, awesome to see such an important improvement just at the beginning of the year. 2019 was already amazing for KDE overall but with this speed it seems like 2020 will be even better. 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh believe me, it will. 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you very much, excellent improvements. Especially FUSE thing.
KDE needs a little bit focus on crash fixes though for 5.18 LTS release.
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=350140
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=413003
Those two are the most common ones for me on 5.17 series.
LikeLike
I never knew that you can rename the trash can…
I always hated the name which makes me imagine waste, garbage.
I prefer the more ellegant way of how Windows calls it “Recycle Bin”.
Also I think it’s more correct since sometimes you take files back from it. The 3 arrows on it also make sense.
Plus, kids and people should learn very well that recycling should be the standard everywhere and not the consume and dump behaviour.
Anyway, I like the KIO improvements.
I hope that now I can play my movies with VLC from other computers in the network.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yeah, morally recycling is the way to go. The dir could be called Deleted Files (which is dry and technical, but a bit more intuitive than Trash or even Recycle Bin). The trashcan symbol on the other hand, will be here to stay, because of the symbolism. If it has an unusual icon, people won’t know what it does. The 3 arrows can be nice, maybe both… A gray trashcan symbol with red or green tri-arrow circle instead of vertical bars. White stuff peeking out at the top if it has anything in it. Symbolic icon could be only the can, or only the arrows, and red in color.
We also need an animation when a file is trashed. The user needs to know where it went. I suggest that the trash wiggles, becomes highlighted with gray or grows and retracts for a second or two, indicating that the file landed there. When perma-deleting a file, this shouldn’t happen, to include that it went nowhere. It is small animations like this that make any software feel responsible and intuitive.
Nate, is there a Phabricator page for small animations like this, and things like password fields wiggling on incorrect password instead of the red warning message, consistently across the desktop from SDDM to admin prompts and router settings login dialogs (GNOME added this recently)?
There could be also expalantive animations in settings, for example a symbolic desktop turning yellower in Night Color, or a symbolic gif of the selected alt-tab effect (or a video demo), etc…
I believe that animations explain things better than words, and they are also international by default, without anyone translating them (flipping them horizontally would work in a rigt-to-left environment).
LikeLike
Not to my knowledge. Personally I’m very much in factor of more animations, as long as they’re subtle and tasteful and used to communicate status changes that the user might otherwise miss. We can’t go overboard or else people will hate them and disable all animations using the global animation speed slider.
Please feel free to open a Phab task and mark it as a subtask of https://phabricator.kde.org/T10891.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Subtask added.
LikeLike
Just learned a new thing, about Alt-~, very neat.
LikeLike
Damn that looks good! Awesome
LikeLiked by 1 person