This week in KDE: A little bit of everything

This Week in KDE 2 Minutes

A lot of exciting things are happening behind the scenes these days, but in terms of what landed this week, we focused on bugfixing–including a few nice high DPI fixes–and also got a few nice Dolphin and Konsole features.

New Features

Dolphin now has a new “Copy Location” menu item (Yann Holme-Nielsen, Dolphin 20.08.0):

…And so does Konsole! (Tomaz Canabrava, Konsole 20.08):

Konsole’s split view headers can now be optionally disabled, and the thickness of the separator can be optionally increased (Tomaz Canabrava, Konsole 20.08.0):

Bugfixes & performance Improvements

Various non-default Task Switchers now have the right size when using a high DPI scale factor (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.18.6 and beyond)

Fixed various system tray items’ context menus popping up in the wrong location (Konrad Materka, Plasma 5.18.6 and beyond)

When using a wallpaper package with multiple sizes (e.g. the default Plasma wallpaper), the correct size is now displayed when using a high DPI scale factor or changing screen resolutions (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.19.3)

The plasma start-up sound is no longer cut off when starting up the computer (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.19.3)

The new System Monitor widgets now always have the correct text color when using a Plasma theme with a different color scheme from the Application color scheme (Marco Martin, Plasma 5.19.3)

System Settings no longer crashes when you open the Applications page without any file managers installed (Alex Merry, Plasma 5.19.3)

Krunner is now faster to open so the text that you type winds up in KRunner rather than in the app below it (David Redondo, Plasma 5.20)

When changing the default browser, the “default browser” entry visible in Kickoff and the Task Manager by default now automatically updates too (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.20)

Dolphin can once again execute script files with spaces in the filename or path (David Faure, Frameworks 5.72)

Close buttons in Kirigami sheets are no longer subtly pixelated some of the time (Nicolas Fella, Kirigami 5.72)

Several Breeze icons which had subtle pixel mis-alignments that could make them appear blurry no longer suffer from this issue (Maksym Hazevych, Frameworks 5.72)

When using Qt scaling in Plasma by setting the PLASMA_USE_QT_SCALING=1 environment variable, windows now minimize to the correct locations in the Task Manager (Marco Martin, Frameworks 5.72)

User Interface Improvements

The System Settings Screen Locking page has been rewritten in QML, which fixes all of the open bugs (David Redondo, Plasma 5.20):

The Keyboard Layout System Tray item now always uses a monochrome icon, to better match the style (Nicolas Fella, Plasma 5.20):

How You Can Help

Have a look at https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved to discover 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

22 thoughts on “This week in KDE: A little bit of everything”

  1. I appreciate all the HiDPI fixes! I wish I could use Wayland full time because its HiDPI support in Plasma is even better with all applications except for Steam (weird that it works under X11 correctly, though). Even the old janky Java apps are scaled properly! Not sure if it was reported already but under Wayland after coming from sleep or turning off the screen everything is blown our of proportion. I’m using 200% scaling on a 27″ 4K monitor.

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    1. Can you file a bug report to KWin | generic – wayland? A video illustrating the issue would also be super helpful. Thanks!

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  3. As every week, really nice improvements. KRunner improving its performance, System Settings seeing progress on its migration process to QML and the blogpost that David wrote a few days ago, man, that hyped me so much. KSysGuard looked pretty nice on that mockup/development version, whatever that was, it looked really nice and promising.

    As always, a HUGE thank you to everyone who make possible this wonderful software, day after day, commit after commit, line of code after line of code, you’re really doing something that really matters :). A special and extra thank you to you Nate, always giving us such wonderful posts week after week, you really rock KDE and specifically here on this blog, you Nate :D. Thank you for your great work, great efforts, this is something terrific.

    Always, hoping from the bottom of my heart you’re everyone fine and healthy, you and your beloved ones, families, friends, etc.

    Receive a huge, sincere, fresh & virtual hug everyone ^^.

    Liked by 2 people

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  4. No offense Nate, but you’re ignoring the elephant in the room… Here you are, getting excited about the addition of some tiny little features, all while the US government has been planning for months to ban strong encryption…

    Look it up: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/new-earn-it-bill-still-threatens-encryption-and-free-speech

    Think Nate! The vast majority of computer tech is developed in the US. If the bill passes, that will most likely be it. The end of all hope. A cyberpunk dystopia. A secular equivalent to eternal damnation.

    As the leader of one of the largest FOSS project it’s your duty to everything you can to oppose this! Spread the word! Make Richard Stallman proud of you! Like, for example:

    – Blog about it, for God’s sake!
    – Add **very visible** warning bars at the top of every KDE website (including Krita’s and Kdenlive’s).
    – Release emergency updates to Krita, Kdenlive, and Plasma which would show nag dialogs on every startup explaining the bill and its implications.
    – Tell other popular FOSS projects, especially ones that are widely used such as LibreOffice and OBS to follow the suit.

    And yes, I’m seriously suggesting adding nag dialogs to FOSS software. Because our existence as a species of free beings is in jeopardy. Make no mistake, they don’t give a damn about protecting the children, all they want is to control and exploit us for all we’re worth before eventually either replacing us with machines outright, or taking our free will away via cyborg implants or bioengineering.

    Their true intent is to make organized resistance impossible: as automation and biotechnology both advance, all of the above will inevitably become obvious to everyone, and they don’t want us to stand any chance of preventing our destruction.

    So let’s not get so excited about the future until we are sure there **is** any future to speak of.

    Liked by 1 person

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    1. There’s a lot to unpack here, but the long and short of it is that I’m not overly concerned about this bill becoming law. The Senate is a largely non-functional body right now, and even if it passes in the Senate, it’s DOA in the House. Scary bills are introduced every year. You can go insane following them all, but almost none ever become law–especially not right now, when the legislative branch of the American government is on the verge of functional collapse.

      The EFF is right to alert its members to contact their lawmakers, but I don’t think it’s time to ring the apocalypse bell just yet.

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    2. > Scary bills are introduced every year.

      Name me a bill that’s as bad or worse.

      > but almost none ever become law

      And evidently you, together with the rest of the FOSS community, are willing to bet the future of humankind on this “almost” and not even spread the word… The mere fact that this bill was even considered is reason enough to hit the panic button, and yet all FOSS projects seem to go about their usual business as if nothing’s wrong and we aren’t at real risk of losing whatever privacy we have left…

      You know what, I’m starting to think that there truly is no hope.

      Maybe we should all adopt a new moral code to cope with this harsh reality: corporations are people, and humans aren’t. As long as they bring profit to corporations, poverty, hate, slavery, and war are all morally good, because corporations are the only ones who matter. I call this moral code “radical defeatism”.

      PRAISE BE CORPORATIONS!
      WHOOP WHOOP!

      Liked by 1 person

    3. Again, this isn’t a politics blog. I know that FOSS is inherently political, and I am fully supportive of those political aims. But in this blog, I prefer to focus on the technical side. Thanks for understanding.

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    4. > I prefer to focus on the technical side. Thanks for understanding.

      I understand, but don’t you think that a bill that will **END ALL HOPE** if it passes kinda deserves an exception?

      Go on then, Stallman’s followers. Stay silent and watch the alt-right and anti-vaxxers discredit privacy, free speech, and bodily autonomy in the minds of general population. Unlike you, the crazies use every avenue available to them to spread their drivel. Keep digging your own grave.

      Case in the point: https://i.redd.it/wf94gz8e9t851.jpg

      See, Nate? Anti-vaxxers oppose many of the same things the Stallman’s movement does – mass surveillance, tracking implants, automated “justice”. These people have the right mindset – so speak up and try to recruit them before the crazies do!

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    1. I’m no great fan of the president (to put it mildly), but let’s keep the subject on KDE. Thanks.

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  6. > The Keyboard Layout System Tray item now always uses a monochrome icon, to better match the style (Nicolas Fella, Plasma 5.20):

    Will there ever be a working keyboard indicator under Wayland? Wayland session today is almost impossible to use.

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  7. I’m very happy to hear about the copy location.
    Thank you very much Yann Holme-Nielsen!
    I have spent too much time in the past to copy the path from Dophin and then start rename to copy the name and cancel rename as I wanted just to copy the name string.
    Finally this is way easier now.
    Too bad Kubuntu 20.04 refuses to update KDE Plasma, KDE neon is still based on older Ubuntu base and Kubuntu 20.10 is not installable because the installer crashes.

    Anyway thank you very much to all KDE developers

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  9. Since you are currently working a lot on KCM modules, I would like to point out, that with recent changes there are some regressions in localization / mixed formats (e.g., settings english LANG and some other time format LC_TIME):

    https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=403580 Formats only offers invalid locales for LC_*
    https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=423995 Plasma 5.19.3 overwrites systemwide locale settings despite “no change” is selected in kcm_formats

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