This week some of the in-progress work on touch gestures was merged, and now the edge swipe gesture to trigger KWin’s Overview and Desktop Grid effects will follow your fingers, just like you’d expect!
Big thanks to Marco Martin for implementing this improvement, which will be in Plasma 5.25. More is in the pipeline too, including finger-following touchpad gestures for the Overview effect and virtual desktop Slide effect. Hopefully I’ll be able to announce them as finished next week. 🙂
15-Minute Bugs Resolved
Current number of bugs: 76, down from 79. Current list of bugs
When you have a vertical panel and a horizontal panel, the horizontal panel no longer overlaps and hides buttons on the edit mode toolbar for the vertical panel (Oleg Solovyov, Plasma 5.24.3; this actually went in two weeks ago but I didn’t notice it!)
Logging into Plasma no longer becomes slower the more images you’ve added to your wallpaper settings (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.25)
Dragging a panel from one screen edge to another no longer sometimes causes it to disturbingly get stuck in the middle of the screen (Fushan Wen, Plasma 5.25)
New Features
When sharing a folder using Samba, there is now a folder permission helper window to help you get the permissions right (Slava Aseev, kdenetwork-filesharing 22.08)
Bugfixes & Performance Improvements
KRunner-powered searches are now case-insensitive when matching text for System Settings pages, so you can find them more easily (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.24.4)
When running the Plasma Wayland session in a VM, clicking on something now causes the click to actually go to the correct place, rather than being slightly offset (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.24.4)
Applying various boot splash screens in System Settings now works (Harald Sitter, Plasma 5.24.4)
“Get New [thing]” dialogs once again work when you’re using your system in a language other than English (Alexander Lohnau, Frameworks 5.93)
Menus for text fields in QtQuick apps no longer show a separator as the first item or make space for invisible items (Gabriel Karlsson, Frameworks 5.93)
The arrows in shortcuts windows in QtWidgets-based apps are now high-dpi compatible (Someone going by the pseudonym “snooxx 💤” Frameworks 5.93)
User Interface Improvements
The menu items in Dolphin’s Back/Forward menu now show icons (Kai Uwe Broulik, Dolphin 22.08):
The bar that shows a disk’s usage level in Dolphin is now always visible, rather than only appearing on hover (Kai Uwe Broulik, Frameworks 5.93)
The Battery and Brightness applet’s power profiles slider now shows its two extreme states with icons, and indicates the current mode with text above the slider like other sliders do. This prevents text from ever getting cut off in languages that use very long words for “Power Save,” “Balanced,” and “Performance.” (Ivan Tkachenko and Manuel Jesús de la Fuente, Plasma 5.25):
Lists of recent documents now implement a FreeDesktop standard that governs this, which means they are now synced with GTK/GNOME apps. So for example you can open a file in Gwenview and it will appear as a recent document in the “Open File” dialog in GIMP! (Méven Car and Martin Tobias Holmedahl Sandsmark, Frameworks 5.93
…And everything else
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 more news from other KDE contributors.
How You Can Help
If you’re a developer, check out our 15-Minute Bug Initiative. Working on these issues makes a big difference quickly!
Otherwise, 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 
Nate, do you know, what’s blocking Valve from switching to the Wayland session on the Steam Deck?
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Nothing specifically KDE related, actually; mostly things like XWayland scaling, how arbitrary (i.e. non-KDE) apps on Wayland can capture global keyboard keys, and things like that. Stuff relating to design deficiencies or omissions in the Wayland protocol itself. We are attempting to work on solutions at the Wayland level, but it’s a challenge because it requires that all stakeholders agree on any given solution. Naturally, the biggest the problem or the proposed change, the harder this is.
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I have to admit being frustrated with some things that for some reason are not to my liking or feel like all of the development should be all focused on me personally and my laptop from 2012, yes I am that spolied, priviledged and dumb. These personality flaws are very apparent at times like these when I see someone using a touchscreen and wayland on something that is not a moldy potato, and I am just overwhelmed with the sweet sensation of dumb, with a hint of idiot. If and when the time comes that I am actually getting a modern computer, I am sure I will be very pleased with all the work done that has been “invisible” to me until that point. I thank you in advance.
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The login slowdown with a lot of wallpaper images should be relevant to a 10 year-old machine. 🙂
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With the latest nvidia drivers selecting wayland on the login still just gives a black screen for me. Frustrating to say the least
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Ok I must admit that from this point I has started to looking forward to the next major release.
Every time you guys implement something that I need or fix bugs that annoy me even if I had no idea about them before lol
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Good stuff! ❤ Can't wait to have a touch screen or KDE running on a tablet or laptop with touch screen :3
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If someone had told me back in the KDE 1 days (whoops dated myself there) or waaay back when with I was battling the X install on Yggdrasil LGX with kernel 0.99pl13 that Linux would be my primary desktop for gaming, writing, and everything else, I’d have laughed maniacally at them.
Though, that Dolphin forward/backward icon fix will be *amazing* for those of us who use dark themes and have to mouse around to figure out what button we are hovering over. I can’t say that I’m thrilled that it’s not appearing on Dolphin 22.08…August of ’22.
Nowadays, my biggest “issues” with Linux are systemd (Artix FTW!) and little nitpicks like the dolphin icons. KDE has come so far and is absolutely amazing!
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> “Get New [thing]” dialogs once again work when you’re using your system in a language other than English (Alexander Lohnau, Frameworks 5.93)
Wow! I could not even think that this thing is because of system language. Thanks, Alexander.
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This is one of those little things that I never realized make for such a smooth experience until I used it on a Mac. I’m very excited for any future work that’s done with this!
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Very cool stuff this week. From Samba to krunner with case sensitivity and not to mention GTK apps and recently viewed documents.
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I love it! Thanks to the community for fixing existing issues as that’s the only thing that bothers me right now. There are plenty of features, but seeing these subtle annoyances getting fixed is delightful!
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Great job as always … I wonder if Plasma plans to set login-systemd by default.
It seems to work fine and solves some shutdown issues, which caused me some headaches, but then I found out that Plasma can use login-systemd and that solved the problem.
A greeting.
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