This week’s update includes an eclectic collection of bugfixes and new features, some of them quite annoying or longstanding–such as being able to use Dolphin’s terminal panel on remote locations, set the scroll speed when using the Libinput driver (at least on Wayland), and connect to Samba shared on a workgroup with a space in the name. But wait, there’s more…
New Features
- When kio-fuse is installed, opening Dolphin’s terminal panel while browsing a remote location now works as expected (under the hood, it’s locally mounting the remote location and making the terminal panel cd to the mount’s local path) (Alexander Saoutkin, Dolphin 20.08.0)
- It’s now possible to configure the scrolling speed for mice and touchpads when using Wayland (Méven Car, Plasma 5.19.0)
- It’s now possible to perform Baloo file searches using files’ creation dates and photo exposure times (Stefan Brüns, Frameworks 5.70)
Bugfixes & Performance Improvements
- It’s now possible to connect to Samba shares on a workgroup with a space in its name (Harald Sitter, Dolphin 20.04.0)
- Error messages when adding a new printer are no longer truncated (Gastón Haro, print-manager 20.04.0)
- Gwenview no longer hangs for a bit when quit while viewing a folder with a huge number of images in it (Martin T. H. Sandsmark, Gwenview 20.08.0)
- Gwenview is now more performant when viewing and editing an image in a folder with a huge number of pictures in it (Martin T. H. Sandsmark, Gwenview 20.08.0)
- Pinned Icons-Only Task Manager entries no longer jump around when launched if any of the pinned apps come from config file entries that use the preferred:// URL schema (e.g. preferred://browser) (Marco Martin, Plasma 5.18.5)
- When using Plasma Browser Integration and a browser tab playing some media crashes (or in some circumstances, when it is simply closed), control of the media playback is now correctly released, reverting back too whatever had control before, if anything (Kai Uwe Broulik, available right now with the latest release of the Plasma Browser Integration plugin for your web browser)
- Hotplugging displays using a docking station on Wayland now works (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.19.0)
- Fixed a memory leak in the DrKonqi crash reporting app that could also cause another crash on Wayland (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.19.0)
- When using the Breeze theme, monochrome app icons in app titlebars now re-color themselves appropriately to ensure contrast no matter what the titlebar color is set to (David Redondo, Plasma 5.19.0):
- Exporting global keyboard shortcuts to a file now results in the file having the correct filename extension (Gastón Haro, Plasma 5.19.0)
- In the menu that lets you download new relevant apps, Vokoscreen has been replaced with VokoscreenNG, as the former is no longer developed and has been wholly replaced with the latter (Gastón Haro, Frameworks 5.70):
Every time I take a screenshot of this crazy menu structure, I think, “man, I really need to fix that out-of-control level of nesting soon”
User Interface Improvements
- Samba shares discovered in Dolphin’s server browser now display their pretty hostnames (Harald Sitter, Dolphin 20.04.0)
- Newly-arriving notifications are now sorted ascending, which means that you can keep reading the bottom-most notification when new ones come in, since they appear above it rather than pushing it up and appearing at the bottom of the stack (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.19.0)
- Network status notifications now replace older ones, so you never see a “Network disconnected” and “Network connected” notification on the screen at the same time (Nicolas Fella, Plasma 5.19.0)
- When an item from one of the “Get New [thing]” windows fails to install or uninstall, there’s now a user-visible error message so you can at least attempt to fix it yourself (Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen, Frameworks 5.70):
- KCacheGrind has a nice new icon (Noah Davis, Frameworks 5.70)
How You Can Help
In Plasma 5.19, we are making 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! Head over to the VDG channel to find out how you can get involved and coordinate work.
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 
Nice!
Regarding Samba: could you please take a look at wrong and misleading message “Unable to find any workgroups in your local network. This might be caused by an enabled firewall.” when navigating to “Network” -> “Shared Folders (SMB)” in Dolphin?
The above message has nothing to do with a firewall since remote folders are shown when entering a full path to the network share like “smb://192.168.0.1”. It is somehow related to samba protocol version if I recall it right, something about smb v1 is not secure and thus disabled, but that makes no sense since it’s a user decision whether he wants to use v1, v2 or v3, these settings are explicitly set in smb.conf and there’s no reason to additionally restrict that in Dolphin or KIO or whatever. Some routers (like ASUS ones) have no support for SMB v3, so users have no option to use a newer and more secure protocol for their home network shares.
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I saw this message a lot also.
But if the problem is with the samba version, I wonder can’t it be made like:
Try with v3, if if fails, try with v2, if it fails also, try with v1.
I would rather have a bit less secure (but it’s ok for me since it’s local network) than no access to shared stuff at all.
Also I would wish that I don’t have to click on Install Samba on every Kubuntu install.
I don’t understand why it’s not always there from the beginning.
Even though there’s a low probability, it’s possible that at one point not to have an internet connection, but you want to share something from one Kubuntu computer to another.
I guess this will not be possible since you haven’t thought to install Samba when the internet was working.
Windows 7 doesn’t have this problem, since sharing is built-in and always there to activate it if you want.
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You should check again with Dolphin 20.04.0, which is more tolerant of services using different samba versions! If it still doesn’t work, file a bug.
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On breeze evolution. The examples of dolphin and a settings panel are not consistent. They reverse the side panel main window colours. Personally I much prefer the way dolphin does it but don’t you think they should be the same?
Sorry if this is covered elsewhere.
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A lot of great and important improvements. I can’t wait for Samba improvements. I installed kio-fuse but have to wait for the newer Dolphin version.
As to Gwenview, I experienced the lag on huge image folders many times so it’s awesome that this will improve.
Other features and improvements look equally important.
Awesome!
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excellent work fixing these little papercuts, much appreciated! 🙂
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P.S. Hoping the fix for spaces in Samba workgroup names applies to Samba shared printers. That tripped me up a long time ago when setting up a Kubuntu on a network for a friend. I looked through the bug report and the Phabricator issue, but couldn’t tell if this bug fix would transitiviely be a fix for printers on workgroup names with spaces in them.
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Correction, it was a printer name that had a space in it, though it was still on a Samba shrae.
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I’m seeing an issue in the Emoji Picker that I first experienced in Kubuntu 19.10, now I’m testing the 20.04 beta and it keeps showing. Where can I report this to see if someone can fix it or if it’s already submitted?
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https://bugs.kde.org plasmashell | Emoji Picker
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Thank you. I submitted this bug. If anyone else also get it they can comment it. It was about selecting emojis with fractional scale activated.
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=420046
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Yes yes yeeeeees.
More interesting improvements, and Wayland has some of them, i’m really happy, thanks to you.
A really simple question Nate, how do you take a screenshot of Spectacle? Maybe you’re using a VM or do you simply use Flameshoot to take a screenshot of Spectacle? I tried to be able to capture Spectacle with the own Spectacle but that’s pretty annoying to me :(.
As always, thank you to everyone who makes possible this amazing software, improving it every day, Plasma 5.19 really seems is gonna be fantastic, even coming from 2 really nice releases, wow, i can’t wait to see the revamp of Breeze/Breeze Dark (i only use the latter, but hell yeah!!). You really rock and make KDE rock a lot too :).
I hope you’re all doing well in these strange and reclusion times. Take care everyone and be good.
A huge hug to everyone ^^.
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