Because that’s clearly the most important thing this week, right!?
Anyway, Plasma 5.25 is going to be released in a few days, and it’ll be huge! Accordingly, feature work for 5.26 is starting to land alongside bugfixing for 5.25.
15-Minute Bugs Resolved
Current number of bugs: 64, down from 65. 2 found to already be fixed (thanks to whoever fixed them!) and 1 added.
New Features
Plasma now supports wallpapers with different images displayed when using a light color scheme vs a dark color scheme! Expect future Plasma releases to ship both light and dark versions of our wallpapers (Fushan Wen, Plasma 5.26):
User Interface Improvements
Ark now checks to make sure that there will be sufficient free space in the place when you’re trying to un-archive something before it starts (Tomaz Canabrava, Ark 22.08)
When you search in KRunner, Kickoff, Overview, or any other KRunner-powered search field, any System Settings pages that match are no longer displayed so far down in the list (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.25):
You can now drag windows between screens in the Overview and Present Windows effects (Marco Martin, Plasma 5.25)
Scrolling over the Media Controller widget’s icon now changes the volume of the app playing media in steps of 5%, not 3%, so now it matches the default step size when changing the whole system volume. Also like the system volume, the step size is configurable! (Oliver Beard, Plasma 5.26)
Breeze-styled buttons no longer have a gradient on them when not being hovered by the cursor, which effectively makes them look a little bit lighter and stand out more from the page background (Someone who wishes to remain anonymous, Plasma 5.26):
The common “Keyboard Shortcuts” dialog you’ll see in many apps and System Settings no longer shows you empty “Global Shortcuts” columns when the app doesn’t set any global shortcuts, or empty “Local shortcuts” columns when it only sets global shortcuts (Ahmad Samir, Frameworks 5.95):
The tickmarks and digits on the Analog Clock now respect your accent color (Ismael Asensio, Frameworks 5.95):
…And in addition, the entire Analog Clock’s face also respects your color scheme too! (Ismael Asensio, Frameworks 5.96):
The animated transition when the wallpaper changes from one image to another now respects the global animation duration setting (Fushan Wen, Plasma 5.26)
Throughout QtQuick-based software, views where one thing transition into another thing now respect the global animation duration setting (Fushan Wen, Frameworks 5.96)
Bugfixes & Performance Improvements
Thumbnail previews for a folder’s contents are once again generated as expected, rather than only after you have navigated to the folder (Martin T. H. Sandsmark, Dolphin 22.08)
Automount is once again disabled by default as expected (Ismael Asensio, Plasma 5.25)
SDDM login screen themes downloaded using the “Get New [thing]” downloader window now appear in the System Settings Login Screen page immediately, rather than only after it is closed and re-opened (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.24.6)
Automatic Touch Mode detection now ignores fake input devices, so it can no longer become blocked when an app that creates any such fake input devices is running (Alexander Volkov, Plasma 5.24.6)
Repeatedly mounting and unmounting a disk no longer sometimes causes its list of actions in the “Disks & Devices” widget to become ever longer and accumulate blank entries (Ivan Tkachenko, Plasma 5.25)
It’s no longer possible to undo deleting text in Plasma’s Password input fields, which increases security a bit (Derek Christ, Frameworks 5.95 and Plasma 5.26)
When you use the “Go Up” action in Dolphin, the folder you just came from is once again highlighted (Jan Blackquill, Frameworks 5.95)
The shortcut dialog once again shows you accurate information about shortcut conflicts (Ahmad Samir, Frameworks 5.96)
…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 
Great polishing a bit of everything this week. Thanks KDE !
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Another awesome post!
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Awesome as always! Can’t wait to see the new Plasma version!
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Any news on qt6 release? will it be the 5.26 ?
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Plasma 6 will be the version that used Qt 6. There is no timeline for it, but realistically I would expect it in the next 1-2 years.
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Thank you for your input!
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Dude you got some great stuff in this week’s post. All seem to be going towards the industry trends in KDE’s own way. Love it.
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Thank you for the kind words!
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Hey, Nate. Is there any news on sddm and native wayland support? It feels like sddm development stalled. Currently it blocks from making x11-free system.
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I think SDDM is an independent project, outside of KDE umbrella
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Yeah and they HEAVILY rely on it, they even buried their own KDM. Still KDE-devs are silent like there’s no problem at all.
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Reading such a list takes its time because there are a lot of improvements! Thanks!
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Greetings. Kde is getting closer and closer to be simple enough to be used by non-power users!
Just a quick one!
Would it be possible for KDE to ask you to automatically install “kdenetwork-filesharing, samba etc” when you need to share a folde?
I know it’s up to the distro to have them installed, but a new user might be confused.
Regards
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can we remove the “Community Design” writing from the clock? it looks silly and amateurish.
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Huh. I never thought that it looked “silly and amateurish”, but I guess those are subjective values.
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One thing I would like to have in KDE is the ability for KDE Connect to read the fingerprint on my phone and use it to log in. And something that I would like to have is the possibility of sharing the screen with another device wirelessly, such as with a tablet or a TV. I think it would be quite useful.
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I thought 5.25 would ship with new folder icons =( …
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“When you search in KRunner, Kickoff, Overview, or any other KRunner-powered search field, any System Settings pages that match are no longer displayed so far down in the list (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.25)”
I still see KCM entries way down the list in my fully uptodate Slackware64 -current
Is this not working for somebody else or is it just me?
Or does this feature depend on a particular theme (my krunner looks a bit different than the screenshot)?
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