This has been exciting week in KDE! A lot of longstanding issues and requests have been resolved, such as discovering Windows Samba shares, automatic screen rotation (on Wayland only for now, X11 later), Krunner no longer being obscured by top panels on Wayland, Automatically-centered panel widgets–and a lot more too! Check it out:
New Features
- Dolphin now supports the WS-DISCOVERY protocol, which makes Samba shares from Windows visible once more! (Harald Sitter, Dolphin 20.04.0)
- You can now use the Alt + number keys to jump directly to any of the first 9 tabs in Konsole (Andrew Hou, Konsole 20.04.0)
- Screen rotation, both manual and automatic, now works on Wayland (Roman Gilg and Bhushan Shah, Plasma 5.19.0)
- Plasma panels can now use a new type of spacer that expands and contracts as needed to automatically center widgets in the panel (Marco Martin, Plasma 5.19.0):
- App reviews in Discover now tell you what version of the app was reviewed (Aleix Pol Gonzalez and me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.19.0):
Bugfixes & Performance Improvements
- Fixed a crash when logging in on Wayland (Daniel Vrátil, Plasma 5.18.2)
- The buttons to configure unconfigured Weather and Comic Strip widgets now work properly and have the correct icon (David Edmundson and me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.18.2)
- It’s once again possible to drag links into the Sticky Notes widget (Luca Pedrielli, Plasma 5.18.3)
- Disabling the Task Manager’s “audio is playing” indicator no longer also disables other auto-related functionality (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.18.3)
- KRunner is no longer covered up by a top panel on Wayland (Tranter Madi, Plasma 5.19.0)
- GTK3 windows are now able to be assigned to individual activities, rather than always appearing on all of them (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.19.0)
- Fixed scrolling on the details page of the new “Get New [Stuff]” windows (Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen, Frameworks 5.68)
User Interface Improvements
- The System Settings Displays page now shows the aspect ratio of each available screen resolution (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.19.0):
- The “Configure” button on notes widgets now disappears when not needed, just like the other buttons (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.19.0)
- The digital clock widget now has a visually pleasing right margin when located at the edge of a horizontal panel (Niccoló Venerandi, Plasma 5.19.0):
- Yakuake has a cool new icon (Mariusz Glebocki, Frameworks 5.68):
How You Can Help
In Plasma 5.19, we really want to make a push on our Breeze Theme Evolution work. It’s proceeding, but would go faster with your help! There are tons and tons of mockups in the linked task and its child tasks, and what we really need at this point is people willing to help implement them. QML skills are helpful, and C++ is also useful for the needed work on the Breeze theme itself. If this sounds interesting to you, don’t be shy, step right up!
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 
Fantastic work as always Nate et al.
Slightly off-topic, but may be of use to someone, I’ve had a problem after a couple of recent updated with ‘kded5’ requesting my password to open ‘kwallet’ shortly after the desktop boots, despite the fact that I login to the system with a password.
The following seems to have solved it:
-Open kwalletmanager (can’t remember if I had to install it)
-From the menu settings->configure wallet
-Change the contents of one of the settings then change it back immediately (without hitting ‘apply’)
-Now hit ‘apply’ (having made no changes)
-Hit ‘ok’ and exit the application
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Disregard that- seemed to work on the next reboot but not after. Anyone else can shed a light?
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Yeah after the update, my wifi wouldn’t connect unless I entered the kwallet password, very annoying. What worked for me was to create a blank password for kwallet. Now when I log in the wifi once again automatically connects.
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Thanks Guy. Strangely my system seems to have repaired itself. After my attempted fix the unwanted dialogue appeared once more and has now seemingly disappeared after a test of several powerons/reboots.
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Great news! I especially love the widget centering in the panel, (thanks Marc) and it’s nice to see some progress on Wayland!
If now only the panel overlapping issue (https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=336374) would be fixed I would actually be really happy about the state of the panels!
Thanks to all the contributors!
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You’re very welcome!
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Thank you Harald for the WS-Discovery Support!
@Nate: I guess the rotation is pretty important especially the new Linphone and people who use Krita tablets? 🙂 A big thanks to Roman!
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So happy with all the recent samba related improvements, yeah ! Thank you !
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Man KDE has come a long way since the early days.
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It would be nice if I could enable night color mode through the new plasma widget. But since I don’t have night color enabled by default, it will only show that night color is enabled but inhibited.
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A reasonable request. Keep an eye on https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=417848.
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Delightful the news as always, Plasma 5.19 promises really much with the features that have been already added, and with the ones that’ll be added in the near future, that’s for sure.
I love to see more Wayland improvements.
As always, huge thanks to everyone who makes all this amazing software possible. You really rock a lot :).
A huge hug to everyone involved ^^.
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Sorry but until you fix or replace that slow dog called Baloo, I will never touch KDE.
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Baloo has been seeing many improvements over the course of the last months: https://pointieststick.com/?s=Baloo
And if you don’t need it, you can always pause or completely disable it. 😉
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I really don’t get why people leave comments like this on a KDE updates article. Dude, if you have criticism, give it to the devs constructively. It’s good for you that you will ‘never touch KDE’ and we’re all so happy for you, but saying it like that makes you seem kind of annoying and a little pretentious.
Thanks to all the devs that make KDE great, and bro learn how to give constructive feedback, otherwise I really don’t see why you bother.
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>Krunner no longer being obscured by top panels on Wayland.
And Yakuake too!
Holy shit! At last! Thanks!
Now waiting for the following fix:
>Bug 385920 – [Wayland] With “resolution dependent” size, cursor is huge when hovering over Plasma desktop (https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=385920)
… and it may be possible to start working under Wayland (?) At last!
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Nice improvements, but anyone has time in the last year to fix this? https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=404990
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To be honest, I gave up on KMail. 😦 No drama with Thunderbird. I wish I didn’t have to say something like that, but… yeah. 😦
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