We continue chewing through bugs this week, and now I’m mentioning the “very high priority” Plasma bugs in addition to the “15 minute bugs” which are slightly lower priority. Plasma developers reading along are encouraged to prioritize the very high priority bugs. 🙂
Very high priority Plasma Bugs Resolved
Current number of bugs: 26, down from 29. 3 resolved:
System Monitor widgets no longer reset various settings to their default values after the system is restarted (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.25.5)
It’s once again possible to select windows on other screens using the Present Windows and Overview effects (Marco Martin, Plasma 5.26)
Application Launcher widgets that you activate by pressing the Meta key no longer require that the Alt+F1 shortcut to be set, which should dramatically reduce instances where you press the Meta key and nothing happens. Also, now when you have more than one launcher that wants to open with the Meta key, it will open on whatever screen is considered active by KWin (David Redondo, Plasma 5.26)
15-Minute Plasma Bugs Resolved
Current number of bugs: 50, down from 51. 1 added and 2 resolved:
Kickoff no longer strangely pre-selects search results list items that aren’t the first ones after previously having selected the item in that position using the cursor the last time you searched for something (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.25.5)
Hovering the cursor over an item in Kickoff no longer repeatedly re-selects it if you use the keyboard to select something else (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.25.5)
New Features
You can now configure a keyboard shortcut to activate Present Windows showing only the windows from the current app that are on the current desktop (Arjen Hiemstra, Plasma 5.26)
User Interface Improvements
It’s now much easier to initially set up a folder for sharing with Samba, because the wizard now gives you detailed and actionable error messages (me: Nate Graham, kdenetwork-filesharing 22.12):
Wallpapers in the slideshow wallpaper grid are no longer selectable, since this isn’t a state that makes sense for them (Jin Liu, Plasma 5.25.4)
The Timer Plasma widget has received a big overhaul that fixes most of the open bugs and improves the UI to add a clickable start/stop button (Fushan Wen, Plasma 5.26):
Searching for widgets in the Widget Explorer now also matches their keywords, providing another way to find what you’re looking for (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.26)
Menu shortcuts are now displayed in a subdued gray color, visually de-emphasizing them compared to the menu items’ text (Jan Blackquill, Plasma 5.26):
The Breeze icon theme now includes icons for Windows DLLs (Alexander Wilms, Frameworks 5.97)
Other Bugfixes & Performance Improvements
In Okular, it’s no longer possible to drag pop-up notes off the screen (Nikola Nikolic, Okular 22.12)
The first time KRunner is opened, it no longer oddly slides up from nowhere; now it always slides down from whatever’s above it as expected (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.24.7)
In the Plasma Wayland session, monitors no longer sometimes lose their names and become unable to be set as the primary one (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.24.7)
The Breeze style once again respects the “Small Icons” size you can set in System Settings (Alexander Kernozhitsky, Plasma 5.25.5)
The KScreen screen handling service is now more lenient about detecting screens as unique, which should fix various weird screen-and-desktop-layout-related problems caused by hotplugging screens and docks where both the screen ID and connector ID change during the hotplug (Harald Sitter, Plasma 5.26)
Setting the language in System Settings now updates the standard FreeDesktop org.freedesktop.Accounts.User.Language value which is used by Flatpak apps and lots of 3rd-party apps in general, so they should now use your preferred language as well (Han Young, Plasma 5.26)
…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 
Ah. So the pig snout icon is a timer widget. 🤣
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LOL, now I can’t unsee it…
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I’m so happy to see everything related to Kscreen in particular and screens management in general. I think this has been one of the weakest points of Plasma until recently and still needs to be focused on to eliminate all bugs annoying lots of people. Thanks for your efforts on a bug-squashing routine!
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Yeah, there are efforts afoot to re-engineer how Plasma handles screens in particular. All of the issues relating to panels moving, wallpapers being lost, desktops reversing positions etc. are all Plasma bugs, not KScreen bugs. And it turns out this is most likely because Plasma is using volatile and unreliable data to map screens to desktops. It just kind of can’t be made to work right, no matter how much bugfixing you do; the basic design is simply flawed. Alternatives are currently being explored, with the somewhat optimistic goal of having a new system for Plasma 5.26. But it might get pushed into 5.27. But it’s on the radar screen!
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> with the somewhat optimistic goal of having a new system for Plasma 5.26.
I cross my fingers very much that it happens this year!! These issues are super annoying in everyday use and a real bad advertisement when these bugs show up in situations where you use your shiny Plasma device in front of non-linux users. 😛
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Seriously!
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I’m happy to read there is a refactor coming for that. I recently started using the proprietary nvidia driver again on my laptop with 2 screens and I started having the reverse desktop situation: my desktops are correctly shown, however, the tasks panel on the left screen shows the tasks of the right screen and right tasks panel just none. also, desktop icons/widgets may end up switched. I tried resetting my config files for widgets/kscreenrc/etc but it didn’t help. I figured it must be some race condition or “volatile unreliable data” as you put it, as it happens just random: when i kill the xserver/logout and relogin, there is a good chance it is fixed. I also noticed that rearranging the screens through “rightclick on desktop->configure display settings”, apply, and put it back in original order, fixes the problem!
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Hi Nate, as always : THANK YOU SO MUCH for your invaluable contributions !!!
I have an OT question because I couldn’t find the answer and don’t want to pollute the bugtracker 🙂
I’m still struggling to use my Android phones (MTP protocol) with KDE. Cannot see the SD of the phone, transfers are being interrupted constantly etc.
Sending through bluetooth is extremely slow and through KDE connect it’s fast but fails when sending multiple files.
So we have to use cloud services to sync pictures, gasp 🙂 My friends using Gnome-based distros do not seem to have those issues.
Cheers & thank you again so much 🙂
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This sounds as a distro-specific issue. I used to have similar problems in Manjaro and I ended up with using KDE Connect for sending and recieving files which works very well.
I think you should take a look at udev rules provided by your distribution.
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I’m using KDE Neon…
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Install go-mtpfs
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Could the Samba wizard offer to fix the errors for you e.g. create the missing folder (possibly with password popup if required)?
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That’d be very helpful for non-technical experienced users like my parents. 😀
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Yes, one of the errors already has such a “fix this error” button, and the other ones will get them as well.
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Thank god some of the annoying bugs were fixed. Especially kickoff search was pissing me off for a while now and Meta launch was just always ridiculous.
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Have you ever thought about switching KDE neon from Ubuntu to openSUSE Tumbleweed or Fedora?
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Not my call, as I’m not involved with Neon in any way. I think the Ubuntu base holds neon back to a certain extent, but being rebased on openSUSE Tumbleweed or Fedora would beg the question: why not just use the base distro? Both of those distros are quite good about shipping updates to users quickly. Rebasing on Arch would make more sense IMO, as the idea behind Neon is more distinct from the basic DIY Arch experience.
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Oh yes, Neon based on Arch – sounds amazing!
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KDE is getting there. Great job devs! Still, the list is long until we have full usability, so we don`t have to use the terminal to do stuff 😀
BTW, any news on the status of root operations in Dolphin? It was added then removed again, sadly. Is it still worked? Regards,
Loren
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It’s back again in a different draft form: https://apachelog.wordpress.com/2022/08/04/kio-admin/
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Thank you for the reply! That’s great news! Just noticed Nemo from Linux Mint has the same aproach 😀 Can’t wait until is fully integrated in Dolphin!
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I really appreciate the extra work for the side cases where complex technologies like Samba setup don’t go as expected. I’ve faced this as a technical user and then wondered how a non-techy person would’ve been able to work it out.
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