This week we released the Plasma 5.24 beta, so go check it out and file bug reports! We spent most of the week preparing for it and fixing bugs, which we’ll continue to do for the next month in preparation for the final release.
New Features
The Disks & Devices applet now offers you the option to open Partition Manager with the specified partition (me: Nate Graham, Partition Manager 22.04):
You can now configure which apps handle geo:// and tel:// links (Volker Krause and Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.24):
Bugfixes & Performance Improvements
Gwenview no longer sometimes crashes when you zoom out on an image while in full screen mode (Nicolas Fella, Gwenview 21.12.2)
Elisa no longer sometimes crashes when trying to enqueue files (Yerrey Dev, Elisa 21.12.2)
The overwrite dialog shown when extracting files using Ark that have the same name as other files already there no longer always misleadingly says, “The files are identical” (Albert Astals Cid, Ark 22.04)
Taking a screenshot with Spectacle using the terminal flags (e.g. spectacle -bc) no longer causes two notifications to be shown (Antonio Prcela, Spectacle 22.04)
The System Settings Printers page no longer displays long printer names in an ugly pixelated way when using a high DPI scale factor (Kai Uwe Broulik, print-manager 22.04)
In the Plasma Wayland session, fixed a case where KWin could randomly crash (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.24)
In the Plasma Wayland session, the System Settings Font Management is now available (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.24)
Turning off a monitor no longer sometimes causes your panels to disappear (Marco Martin, Plasma 5.24)
Fixed various graphical glitches with multi-monitor setups (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 524)
Close buttons on tabs no longer inappropriately always have circles around their “X” symbol (Luke Horwell, Plasma 5.24)
Initials text in the System Settings Users page no longer sometimes overflow (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.24)
Downloading “Get New <stuff>” items with dependencies once again works (Alexander Lohnau, Frameworks 5.91, though distros should be backporting the fix ASAP for 5.90)
In the Plasma Wayland session, Help Center should no longer sometimes randomly crash when moving the cursor or hovering over links (Christoph Cullmann, Frameworks 5.91)
In the Plasma Wayland session, opening and closing the Widget Explorer sidebar no longer rearranges your windows (David Edmundson, Frameworks 5.91)
System Settings pages with “Get new <stuff>” buttons now use less memory (Alexander Lohnau, Frameworks 5.91)
User Interface Improvements
You can now find System Settings and Info Center pages by searching for their keywords in KRunner-powered searches in KRunner, Kickoff, the Overview effect, etc. (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.24)
Plasma Folder View now always shows tooltips for items whose titles are elided, just like Dolphin does (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.24):
You can now middle-click on the Bluetooth applet to turn Bluetooth on or off (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.25)
Search fields in Kirigami-using apps now have a little magnifying glass in them, and it even has an animated disappearance effect when you focus the search field (Carl Schwan, Frameworks 5.91):
The Places Panel (including in Dolphin!) now has a little Eject button in it next to ejectable/unmountable disks (Kai Uwe Broulik, Frameworks 5.91):
KHamburgerMenu menus now have a simpler design for the bottom items: there is now a “More” item at the very end that shows you all the rest of the menu items, and the “Help” item is right above it, and both have proper icons (Mufeed Ali, Frameworks 5.91):
Bottom navigation bars now use the new selection style (Felipe Kinoshita, Frameworks 5.91):
…And everything else
Keep in mind that this blog only covers the tip of the iceberg! Tons of KDE apps whose development I don’t have time to follow aren’t represented here, and I also don’t mention backend refactoring, improved test coverage, and other changes that are generally not user-facing. If you’re hungry for more, check out https://planet.kde.org/, where you can find blog posts by other KDE contributors detailing the work they’re doing.
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.
Adventures in Linux and KDE 
Awesome work as ever! Looking at the KHamburger menu in Dolphin as it now, I’m looking forward to the new frameworks version… but I had a random thought. Why is the verb ‘Configure’ repeated so much from the Khamburger menu, to the popout when you click/hover on ‘Configure’? There is ‘Configure Language’, ‘Configure Keyboard Shortcuts’, ‘Configure Toolbars’, and ‘Configure Dolphin’. What do you think? Could the menu work as well with ‘Configure’ excised from the popout?
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Stuff like that is pretty easy to change. Wanna have a go at it?
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Something simple that I miss in Dolphin is an option to expand and hide.
I think that if the arrow were positioned forward, on the right edge of the sidebar, it would be better.
Something difficult to implement Nate?
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It was quite difficult in the past, but the code unification work that was just done to make Dolphin use the Places panel code from KIO should make it substantially easier.
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Small req, somehow anyways.
Since the hamburger menu is being mentioned.
This goes for any drop down menu, I think it’s really a qt issue, qt4 had the prob too.
The menu’s almost always expand to the right, when when there’s no room for it to.
If you have the menu open, and it expands right off screen, if you hover on another sub menu then back to that one, it’ll correct it’s self.
This happens in a similar way with the kickoff menu too, legacy one.
Say you got a tree of 5 sub menu’s, sometimes it’ll know to expand left, but it’s sub menu’s will always expand right.
Making a zigzag pattern.
Firefox recently updated it’s gtk menu setup, if you have a bookmark sub menu tree button.
It’ll totally draw off screen with no ability to fix it.
The slightly older variation, either v78 or v68, I forget right now.
Was slightly better but still had the same prob.
Anyways it’s pretty noticeable on hamburger menu’s, like qbittorrent for ex when full screened.
And editors.
Disabling the hamburger menu is an option, per app.
Ie, UBUNTU_MENUPROXY=””, for gtk3.
Or for qt, KDE_NO_GLOBAL_MENU=”kcalc” kcalc, for ex, I’m not exactly sure of the exact syntax but that works.
(It took me years to find that last env variable oddly enough lol)
As for gtk2 apps.
GTK_MODULES=”/Programs/libappmenu-gtk-module.so” netactview
I just moved the lib to a new location, then load it per app. (fails on spacefm sub menus for ex last time I checked, who cares…)
In windows it’ll expand menu’s to the middle of the screen then back.
In linux, kde-qt, it’ll expand 1 submenu then back, maybe 2 at best if you’re lucky.
I think in gnome-gtk3, it was a tiny bit better but not by much, it’s been a long time since I messed with it though.
It’s probably some simple mod to fix in qt but I don’t know.
It’s just one of my main gripes.
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Small papercut:
When renaming a file, typing deletes the extension by default. This should not happen unless you select the extension as well ( see Windows functionality).
This soon gets confusing for beginners
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As an admin type, I prefer it that way.
The alt is pretty annoying.
I could see it being the opposite for the opposite minded.
Maybe it could be a cfg option though.
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I prefer it this way too, as power user.
But, lately I let my wife use the PC.
And I take notes of all the “problems” she has.
This is very confusing for the average user.
I would say an option in dolphin would be amazing 😀
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Let’s be honest. With KDE 3.0, 3.2, 3.5, 4.2 and so on the year is the Linux desktop was propagated and did never came.
Let’s be honest to ourselves, it will never ever come unless Microsoft decides to use KDE as DE in Windows.
Why optimize the DE for an group of people that doesn’t use it and name the everyday life for the main user group cumbersome?
The year of the Linux desktop never came, will never come, please stop optimizing for that non existing user group
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Where? This works as expected for me in both Dolphin and Folder View (the thing that has your desktop icons).
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“The Disks & Devices applet now offers you the option to open Partition Manager with the specified partition”
Yay! I was wondering how to make this task doable and here it is. Very simple too.
“You can now configure which apps handle geo:// and tel:// links”
That’s kinda cool.
“The Places Panel (including in Dolphin!) now has a little Eject button in it next to ejectable/unmountable disks”
Wonderful! Sometimes it’s the little things that make a big difference when I’m teaching newbies how to use Kubuntu.
“KHamburgerMenu menus now have a simpler design for the bottom items”
Looks great to me! Can’t wait to use it 🙂
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Disabling bluetooth via applet does not power down USB dongle, wich is annoying as it’s LED is blinking in the night. To disable adapter you have to uncheck it manually in blutooth settings, but that only works if you have bluetooth ON in applet, which is very confusing.
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Nate, let me also bring you attention to bug:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=448652
thanks
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Is it just me or the close button on windows requires two clicks? I’ve noticed this with every window decoration I’ve tried, including the default Breeze.
Haven’t checked if its already reported as a bug.
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Okay, here’s when it happens:
– Open any window/app
– Click on something that will open a child/modal window
– Close the child/modal window
– The main window now requires two clicks to close!
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