I wrote about all the porting work done recently for Plasma in yesterday’s Plasma 6 update. That work consumed a lot of time due to a big push to get it all done, so this week there isn’t as much feature work and UI polishing to report. Nevertheless, some good fixes and improvements made it in, especially for KWin and Dolphin!
Plasma 6
General info – Open issues: 82
Copying and pasting files to the desktop that won’t fit there because there’s not enough space now shows a notification explaining the problem (Thenujan Sandramohan, link)
In the Plasma Wayland session, cursors now look better when using fractional scale factors (Vlad Zahorodnii, link)
User Interface Improvements
Gwenview now transitions between images more smoothly, or, if it can’t do so because the system is under heavy load, it doesn’t animate the transition at all (Felix Ernst, Gwenview 23.08. Link)
Dolphin’s location bar can additionally now be focused using the Alt+D shortcut (Amol Godbole, Dolphin 23.12. Link)
Ctrl+Scrolling to zoom in Dolphin now goes in the expected direction on Wayland (Amol Godbole, Dolphin 23.12. Link)
In Dolphin, you can now press-and-hold with a touchscreen to enter selection mode for already-selected files or folders too (Steffen Hartlieb, Dolphin 23.12. Link)
Significant Bugfixes
(This is a curated list of e.g. HI and VHI priority bugs, Wayland showstoppers, major regressions, etc.)
When searching in the Kickoff Application Launcher, the initially selected item is now always the first one, not the one that happened to be under the mouse pointer (Fushan Wen, Plasma 5.27.7. Link)
Fixed another way that KWin could crash in the Plasma Wayland session when clicking on a window decoration tooltip (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.27.8. Link)
In the Plasma Wayland session, alt+tabbing through windows no longer goes in reverse when Caps Lock is on (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.27.8. Link)
Fixed a bug that could cause Night Color to not properly deactivate after waking the computer up from sleep at a time when it would otherwise have already turned off automatically (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.27.8. Link)
In the volume and brightness OSDs, the text “100%” no longer inappropriately wraps across two lines in some languages (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.27.8. Link)
Fixed a bug that could cause some items to be silently skipped when copying a very large number of files (Harald Sitter, Frameworks 5.109. Link)
Other bug-related information of interest:
- 6 Very high priority Plasma bugs (up from 5 last week). Current list of bugs
- 58 15-minute Plasma bugs (down from 62 last week). Current list of bugs
- 113 KDE bugs of all kinds fixed this week. Full list of bugs
Automation & Systematization
Monochrome icons for the Breeze Dark icon theme are now automatically generated at build-time from the light ones, saving a huge amount of manual work! (Noah Davis, Frameworks 6.0. Link 1 and link 2)
…And everything else
This blog only covers the tip of the iceberg! 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, work on Qt6/KF6/Plasma 6 issues! Plasma 6 is usable for daily driving now, but still in need of bugfixing and polishing to get it into a releaseable state by the end of the year.
Otherwise, visit https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved to discover other 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!
And finally, KDE can’t work without financial support, so consider making a donation today! This stuff ain’t cheap and KDE e.V. has ambitious hiring goals. We can’t meet them without your generous donations!
Adventures in Linux and KDE 
Nate:
Plasma 6 really is shaping up to be an amazing release!
Is there work to fix up/polish the PIM suite?
And a tangent if I may: Was there a changelog or release announcement with the fixes that were resolved in the push of 5.27.7.1?
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The PIM suite isn’t a part of Plasma, so it’s a bit out of scope for Plasma 6.
However there is a lot of exciting work on that front anyway. The awesome new Kalendar is gaining email functionality as well and being renamed to Merkuro. This is quite new, but developing rapidly.
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Nice changes!! I’m wishing to taste Plasma 6
BTW, there’s 2 things I’d like to see:
– A shortcut for create file (I think something was done time ago)
– In the desktop, right click, it doesn’t appear the shortcut to create folder but it does in Dolphin
Aside, when I try to use Wayland and scale to 150% in my laptop the screen doesn’t look sharp, is it known if it could be fixed for the release of Plasma 6?
Great work Nate, greetings!
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For the desktop, make sure in the desktop settings you are set to “folder view”. You will be able to create a folder via right click. (On existing 5e builds).
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Shawn sorry, I think I expressed it wrong. I meant that I didn’t see the text indicating the shortcut for create a folder in the desktop menu (in Dolphin it’s visible)
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No, we are talking about the same thing. Right click on desktop and go into the desktop settings (or whatever is called. I’m on my offing right now). You are probably set to “desktop” view. Change it to “folder” view and it should work.
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You’re right Shawn, we were talking about the same thing 😅
but I happen to have it in folder view (instead of desktop). I think it’s just a little bug, unless someone is getting the F10 over the create folder option
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It is a little bug; I can confirm that F10 on the desktop works, but the shortcut isn’t shown in the menu there as it is in Dolphin.
I’m not aware of a bug report tracking this, though. Can you submit one?
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Sure Nate, I leave here the one I just created:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=473045
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Sorry to bother you again, and thank you so much!
> But honestly, in my opinion, protests and boycotts just don’t work.
This is the straight answer I’ve been craving! I know it might seem silly to you that I needed that, but seriously, thank you!
But there’s still one thing that’s bugging me.
Lately, KDE has been very vocal about privacy, even going so far as to vow to fight for it on the KDE for Activists page.
So, here’s what I don’t get: with mandatory backdoors likely coming soon (e.g. the last chance to amend the UK Online Safety Bill is September 6th, and previous concerns have been ignored), why no official statement yet? Even just a simple acknowledgement? It just doesn’t make sense to me.
And it’s not just KDE; with all the silence and downplaying (such as saying it’ll be possible to use an alternative client to avoid scanning, even though it’s obvious they’ll impose hardcore DRM and forbid any talk about non-backdoored messengers or jailbreaks) I honestly can’t think of any other explanation except for a worldwide blackmail campaign.
I really hope you can understand why I’m feeling so hopeless. Can you help me make sense of this?
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I think we’re going in circles. The obvious answer is because nobody in KDE cares enough to organize action around those specific threats.
It doesn’t mean that nobody in KDE cares about privacy in general or within the context of KDE’s own software, just that nobody in KDE seems to care about about those *specific external threats* to organize KDE’s own limited resources to confront them.
Again, the one thing you have that everyone else lacks is the passion to do so. So I will once again repeat my advice that *you* do the work or organizing that resistance, using either your own resources or those of an organization you’re a respected member of.
You aren’t going to convince anyone in KDE to fight your battles for you, sorry. That’s lazy. You want the results, you do the work.
I get that it’s inconceivable to you that other people wouldn’t be as frightened of these threats as you are, but that’s simply the way is it.The idea that everyone who’s silent on the matter has been bribed or blackmailed is ludicrous paranoia. It’s as I said earlier: there is only so much time in the day and energy to care about things. People are complex, hold different viewpoints, and place value on different things.
I believe I have now answered all of your questions, so I would request that you stop bombarding this blog with un-actionable “we’re all doomed” comments, please. It’s disrupting other people because my spam filter has started to notice that I delete all those posts and, and now it sometimes flags other people’s legitimate comments as spam.
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