This week in KDE: so many bugfixes

This Week in KDE 3 Minutes

Though Plasma 5.20 was overall a very smooth release, we spent a lot of time fixing some of the bugs we missed, as well as some older ones in Frameworks and apps too. It may not be very sexy, but bugs are what drive users crazy, and we want them fixed! So, fix them we did. 🙂 Maybe not all of them, but some of them–as many as we could. And we’ll keep on doing it too!

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

Connecting to another device using fish:// URLs now works when the target device doesn’t have Perl installed (Alexander Akulich, Dolphin 20.08.3

Right-clicking on the same link in Konsole multiple times no longer results in some of the context menu’s items being duplicated (Carlos Alves, Konsole 20.08.3)

Fast scrolling in Okular by holding down the shift key while scrolling now works again (me: Nate Graham, Okular 1.11.3)

Okular once again correctly changes the cursor back to a grabby hand after clicking on a link inside a document (David Hurka, Okular 1.11.3)

Ark can now extract archives into folders with tabs in their names (Jan Paul Batrina, Ark 20.12)

In a Plasma Wayland session, the ALt+Tab Task Switcher is no longer mis-rendered as a big black box after you switch from one visual style to another (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.20.1)

Plasma no longer spikes the CPU when a task inside a grouped Task Manager task changes its title very frequently (Hoang Vu, Plasma 5.20.1)

Fixed multiple crashes and freezes in System Settings relating to using or switching away from the Activities page (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.20.2)

Tilde expansion in KRunner now works again (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.20.2)

The screen chooser OSD no longer has a broken layout with awkward empty space on the right side (Carson Black, Plasma 5.21)

Fixed a common crash when installing or updating themes using Discover or one of the Get New [Thing] windows (Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen, Frameworks 5.76)

The file opensave dialogs once again correctly handle file names which include the “#” character (Ahmad Samir, Frameworks 5.76)

Kirigami-based apps now correctly lay out their sidebars on the right when using reversed/RTL mode (Marco Martin, Frameworks 5.76)

Fixed a memory leak in Kate and other KTextEditor-based apps (Milian Wolff, Frameworks 5.76)

Screenshots taken in a Plasma Wayland session are now correctly copied to the clipboard when desired (David Edmundson, Qt 5.15.2)

User Interface Improvements

When Dolphin is is launched showing any previously-viewed locations that are no longer available, now those views display your home folder instead of an error message (me: Nate Graham, Dolphin 20.12)

When any of Dolphin’s open tabs or views are displaying a location inside a just-removed disk, they immediately switch to displaying your home folder instead of the now-inaccessible location (me: Nate Graham, Dolphin 20.12)

The Kickoff Application Launcher now shows all the same search that KRunner shows, and the list of enabled plugins the KRunner page in System Settings now affects both of them (which means that we should probably change it back to its old name “Plasma Search” as its current name “KRunner” is no longer strictly accurate) (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.21)

On the desktop, the rubberband/selection marquee/”drag a box effect”/whatever you happen to call it now fades out smoothly instead of just disappearing abruptly (Carson Black, Plasma 5.21):

The Places panel in Dolphin, the file dialogs, and various other places now include entries for your Music, Pictures, and Videos folders by default (Claudius Ellsel, Frameworks 5.76)

How You Can Help

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

38 thoughts on “This week in KDE: so many bugfixes”

  1. Hi Nate, this is great work. I have a question though, is it normal that the Windows key doesn’t open the application menu anymore ?

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  2. Bug fixes are always welcome! I also like that there are now default folders for multimedia folders.

    Nate, one really annoying bug is this one:
    https://bugs.kde.org/419728
    > kwin_wayland crashes when external monitor is disconnected from hdmi port (…)

    Can you confirm this bug and/or give one of the Kwin devs a poke to look into it? If it weren’t for that I would more often try the Wayland session, but I unfortunately often need to plug an external monitor into my laptop. 😦

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    1. Yikes, that’s not ideal. Because kwin_wayland is crashing, your session gets killed and you get booted back to to the login screen, right?

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    1. That’s a question for the Kubuntu people, not the KDE people–or rather because there’s some overlap, it’s a question for the Kubuntu people while they’re wearing their Kubuntu hats. 🙂

      That said, the answer is that newer Plasma requires a newer version of Qt than what Kubuntu 20.04 offers.

      In general, if you want the latest and greatest version of KDE software, a LTS versions isn’t for you. You might consider upgrading to Kubuntu 20.110 instead of sticking with the 20.04 LTS version, or else switching to KDE Neon, openSUSE Tumbleweed, or Fedora. LTS versions are for people who want to keep it boring and samey, not people to find the latest thing exciting. 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

    2. As they wrote:

      Enterprise wants STABLE software release.
      Software on which you can rely on and that is easy to provide support for.

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    3. As it’s written in :

      Packages are frozen for the release and not updated subsequently for a number of reasons. If new releases were brought in post-release, then the new version…
      – might bring new bugs, thereby regressing functionality that was present at the time of the release
      – needs manpower to package, test, and upload
      – needs its own set of security updates
      – would need updated translations for its UI
      – would need updated documentation (and translations)
      – makes technical support more challenging
      – might annoy users who have gotten used to the features in the old version
      – may require newer dependencies which could break other apps if they were changed in the repository
      – may break other packages that depend on this one
      – may break user scripts, templates, tools, etc. created for the old version

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  4. Some options I would really like to see in Dolphin:

    Interesting resources for Dolphin

    1 – Option to expand and collapse categories
    2 – Disk drive storage graph bar
    3 – And the last one that I find most interesting, especially for people who have a small screen like me, option to display only category icons in the navigation sidebar, not only has the advantage of saving space on the screen, but leaves the interface visually cleaner and more pleasant!

    Dolphin definitely needs a makeover in its look / layout …

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    2. Don’t say that Nate, you’re going to kill me with anxiety!
      I bet the most interesting and useful of these, the compact sidebar display mode is not one of them, unfortunately 😦
      But one day, who knows, hope is the last to die!
      Congratulations on the excellent work Nate, here on the blog and on KDE!!!

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    3. Indeed, that’s not one of them, sorry. 🙂 But it’s a good idea. And if we ever port the UI to Kirigami (Which I very much hope), we’ll get that feature more or less for free.

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    4. Nate, changing the subject a little.
      These mockup are not my own, but I would like to sketch some mockup for Dolphin, I’m not an expert in Inkscape, something I tried to do and I couldn’t, I didn’t find any material on the internet, it’s like applying the blur effect on a background, as in the image example, in the menu.
      Could you point me to a material that teaches you how to do this in Inkscape?
      If you could send me a SVG model that you use for Dolphin, it would be a great starting point 😉

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    5. I don’t know how to do it in Inkscape, sorry. In fact I don’t use Inkscape for mockups at all; I mostly use GIMP with a very crude process that is probably not worth emulating. 🙂

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    6. I saw the video you put in the image description of the Index File Manager, I didn’t know it, I would like to install it and test it, but I don’t know how to do it, I’m a standard user, with limited knowledge, could you help me with this @ Thomas, @Nate or any other good soul?
      I use KDE Neon, thanks.

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  5. Nice work! I love KDE community & team so hard, you all are just wonderful!

    One more thing: the “making a tax-deductible donation” link is not working for me, it shows a “File not found” text when clicked.

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  9. Time without comments, but always reading.
    Once again, a BIG “thank you” for your work. Improvements in dolphin are welcomed, and the ideas proposed above look great.
    Glad to hear some of them are on your scope.

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  10. My compliments. However, since also intel developers have just stated that Xorg is going deprecated since 2 years ago, and Wayland is the future, I suggest your team to develop a parallel release of PLASMA completely free from X11 so to verify what works and what doesn’t work for the next future. the advantage to develop a platform based only on Wayland is to avoid problems about Xwayland matching both Wayland and X11 which forces to manage many several compositors, frameworks and so on. So, a pure Wayland PLASMA is the way to go, in order to be ready.

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    2. My suggestion is to develop a prototype of PLASMA without Xorg for the next Linux graphical evolution, so to avoid delays. On the other hand, the integration of the two graphical stack is the worst way which causes the increase in complexity. A good operating system such as a good desktop environment needs to be simplified the most.

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    3. KWin’s codebase largely separates X11 and Wayland code, so I’m afraid your speculation is not terribly accurate. 🙂

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  12. Hi, sorry for nitpicking but this particular change went under my radar:
    Remove special handling for minimized windows (https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kwin/-/merge_requests/165)

    I actually have a use case for the old behaviour (should/colud I comment on the MR?), as I want my minimized windows to stay out of the way so when I Alt+Tab they don’t show up immediately.

    I also always used this hidden functionality to keep a certain window minimized (usually a media player) and out of the Alt+Tab way but easily reachable via Shift+Alt+Tab.

    So, this change is annoying my muscle memory very, very much 🙂

    Is there a chance to, not revert because I see the point of the change, but at least make this optional?

    Thanks in advance!

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