This week in KDE: endless bugfixing

This Week in KDE 2 Minutes

One of the challenges of such a sprawling software catalog that allows such extensive customizability is, well, bugginess. More code and more options means more bugs. So the bugfixing is a never-ending challenge, and it’s what we focused on this week! Not only do we work on fixing bugs, but there’s also a lot of exciting work going on in the background to unify various codebases, use of more shared code, and adopt common frameworks, both for backends and user interfaces. It’s not very glamorous work, but you’ll see the impact in reduced bugginess going forward!

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

User Interface Improvements

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.

Published by Nate

Published

23 thoughts on “This week in KDE: endless bugfixing”

  1. I’m happy about GTK buttons following aurorae theme setting. Previously we had to tinker manually with config files to get the effect.

    As to:

    ‘[…] you’ll see the impact in reduced bugginess going forward!’

    I wouldn’t go far so much 😉 . Don’t promise you can’t deliver. However, thanks to your blog we now see that you care and that you are working hard to fix bugs. We need this kind of feedback to appreciate the software more and feel taken care of.
    I hope also that most of us realize, that you (KDE in general) fix regressions and obvious bugs, but those of the unknown etiology or without any clear solution often remain for years. Also, there are too many reports and not enough hands to work.

    Focusing and managing this development but also debugging process can improve situation and you guys are already doing it. Plasma releases are more stable than ever in the past and even if there is some load of bugs, you work super fast to remove them, faster than ever.

    So once again, thanks for your work and passion. This means a lot to us.

    Liked by 1 person

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  2. It’s great to see so many bugfixes, I think weeks like this – while they’re not as flashy – are even more important than adding significant features. Thanks for all the work. 🙂

    Among subtasks of Breeze Theme Evolution, there’s SpinBox Control, do you guys plan to upstream this change to Qt? This is quite an improvement compared to regular SpinBox in my opinion, it looks better and seems way easier to use for laptop users.

    https://phabricator.kde.org/T9460#183538

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  5. Love the direction this is heading in. Cant wait for the new composting pipeline in Kwin. I would just like to share an issue I have but no idea if it is a bug report how to report it.

    I have an HP x360 running an Intel i7 with UHD Graphics 620 (Whiskey Lake). I use it with the Dell Universal Dock D6000 with a monitor connected which is 4K resolution.

    I am using Sabayon linux with 5.4 kernel and Plasma 5.18.1 and Mesa 19.3.4. I have a weird issue when I first turn on the PC with the dock connected

    SDDM first loads up in 4K resolution just after turning the PC on.

    If I login to an X session, the display loads up in 4k but the taskbar, status bar etc is missing but desktop icons are present.

    If I reboot the PC then SDDM loads up in 1080p and on login as an X session, the desktop loads up normally.

    If I login in to a Wayland session it never displays a full 4k screen, the display only shows a 1080p top left quarter of the 4k desktop.

    If I check the display settings in all situations and it always shows both displays, the 4k external and 1080p internal, but as expected says the notebook screen is disabled as it should be.

    At least I know after first turning on just reboot and I can have a working desktop under X but it just seems weird. Anyway I just thought I would pass this on.

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    1. I think you better create bugs report for what you described (if they don’t already exist) so that also KWin devs can track and follow your issues. 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

  6. Very nice improvements, but I wish that a usability bug that annoys me for years would be fixed also:

    Sometimes I have I window on the left half of the screen like Ark to uncompress something.
    On the other half of the screen I can see the desktop and I right-click somewhere there and create a new folder to put the files that I will uncompress from Ark.
    Immediately as I create the new folder on the desktop it disappears because it’s moved on the left half of the screen behind Ark window instead of staying there where I right-clicked as I expected, like on Windows.
    So I have to move Ark’s windows to see the folder, drag it on the right side and move Ark’s window back.
    I really don’t like that the folders on desktop are not created exactly or close to where I right clicked or if I drag and drop them from somewhere.
    I don’t remember ever having this problem on Windows (Windows 7, I don’t know about the other versions).

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  8. Hello,

    There is a history file (/var/log/apt/history.log) where updates made with Apt are saved. With Discover, I think a “History tab” will be added, inspired by this history file and visually showing updates and downloads made by the user.

    In this way, if there is instability in the system, it is easier for the user to track which packages have been upgraded or when and which packages have been installed.

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    1. Discover works with more than just apt; is uses PackageKit to abstract away all the different packaging formats. Unfortunately, PackageKit does not provide this information. It would need to implement this first before Discover can use it and implement a history feature.

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  10. Hi,
    Thank you all for making KDE such a smooth experience.

    I would like to point out one specific bug, that annoys me since ages. So maybe I can attract someones attention here.

    Bug 397953 – KIO::highlightInFileManager does not respect default file manager setting when launched via FileManager1 DBus activation

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  11. If I’d like to fix Signal and KNotes having non-monochrome tray icons, is it as easy as making those icons and putting them in the appropriate folder in the breeze-icons repo, e.g. icons/apps/22?

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    1. Yes, provided the new icon is named correctly. The app determines what filename the icon has to be, so if you know that, you can give the icon the correct name and it should totally work.

      Needless to say, if you end up making monochrome icons for these apps, please submit them so the millions of Plasma users can benefit from your work! 🙂

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  12. I have a small wish, I think it is probably easy to add:
    Please bring back the spacer for window buttons.

    I would like to add buttons like “always on top”, but have them a bit separate from the other window buttons. KDE once had this, but somehow lost the support for it.

    I think it should have half a button width and you should be able to add it multiple times if you need more space.

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  13. Does anybody know if there is any Breeze icon set in colour? I don’t like monochromatic icons. I have a slight corneal issue nothing that affects my vision too much nor mu regular life, but it isn’t perfect, specially when I try to distinguish small icons and many of them with similar basic forms.
    I’m using Papyrus so far but I hate to need a 150 MB icon set when I really like the Breeze icons if not because they don’t like the human ability ti differentiate colours.
    Are you KDE guys and gals thought about making a coloured version, or would recommend any coloured icon set as similar to Breeze as possible? Papyrus is nice, but a bit too childish to my taste.

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    1. Not to my knowledge. The monochrome icons are by far the most numerous, so redoing them all in color would be an enormous amount of work. If you’ve already found an icon theme that’s more to your liking, I would recommend just using that. 150Mb isn’t that much space if it meets your needs. 🙂

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    2. Ok, thanks. I’ll keep using Papyrus. They are very cartoonish but also are clearly distinctive. Let’s hope this fashion of black/white icons pass soon ;P

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  14. A bugfix focused week work.

    It’s really important, it’s obviously not that exciting (in general) as to see new features, but it’s totally necessary too, great work as always.

    Thank you very much as every week for the great effort and work. We’re taking a step closer to Plasma 5.19 and to KDE Applications 20.04 (the latest is really close, about a month now), so my excitation is just growing as each week passes.

    A huge hug to everyone ^^.

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