These past 2 weeks in KDE: Wayland color management, the desktop cube returns, and optional shadows in Spectacle

Automation & Systematization, This Week in KDE 4 Minutes

Aaaaaand it’s a big one! I challenge anyone to read this week’s (well, these past two weeks’) report and not find something they’ve been wanting for a long time. 🙂

Plasma 6

(Includes all software to be released on the February 28th mega-release: Plasma, Gear-aligned apps, and Frameworks)

General info – Open issues: 109

Per-screen color management is now supported in the Plasma Wayland session for up to sRGB screens! You can assign ICC color profiles to each screen and apps will do the right thing. And colors picked using the Color Picker applet are now color-managed appropriately as well (Xaver Hugl, link 1, link 2, link 3, link 4, link 5, and link 6)

The Desktop Cube effect returns! It now lives in the kdeplasma-addons repo and you can trigger it with the Meta+C shortcut (Vlad Zahorodnii, link):

When Spectacle is run on Plasma 6, you can now take “Active Window” and “Window Under Cursor” screenshots that optionally omit window shadows! (Kristen McWilliam, link):

Discover has started to undergo many small UI improvements: a nicer background color for cards views; better visual alignment for cards on search and browse pages; smarter behavior in the sidebar while searching; more robust display of screenshots for apps and backends without thumbnails correctly specified; Flatpak apps with low-level PipeWire access are now correctly marked as having access to the audio system; and app sizes for Flatpak apps are now more concise and readable (Marco Martin, Arjen Hiemstra, Jonah Brüchert, and me: Nate Graham, link 1, link 2, link 3, link 4, link 5, and link 6)

On the subject of Discover, its Application Details page has gotten a new rewritten screenshot viewer, which is vastly better than the old one in every way and fixes multiple bugs (Ivan Tkachenko, link):

The Overview effect now has an option to only perform a KRunner-powered search when searching, rather than also filtering windows based on the search text (Dashon Wells, link)

When you have fingerprint or smartcard authentication set up, you can now use that method on the lock screen, OR your password, rather than only being able to use your password after failing at the other auth method several times. This is only for the lock screen right now and not also the Polkit authentication dialog, but that’s being explored as well (Janet Blackquill, link 1 and link 2)

The headers of settings dialogs in QtWidgets-based apps are now styled to look the same as System Settings and other Kirigami-based apps (Waqar Ahmed, link):

KFontView now works as expected on Wayland (Kai Use Broulik, link)

System Settings’ Shortcuts page has been modernized a bit to avoid the “chunky footer” style used in Plasma 5 (Mike Noe, link):

More than doubled the speed of KRunner’s Recent Documents runner, among other various improvements (Alexander Lohnau, link)

The infinite scrollable calendar in the Digital Clock widget is now vastly more responsive (Fushan Wen, link)

Type-ahead find in Dolphin now causes the matching file to be centered in the window when using Details view (Amol Godbole, link)

In Elisa, playlist items now play on a single-click rather than a double-click, and when you try to play a song that has since been deleted or renamed, you’re warned of this appropriately (me: Nate Graham, link 1 and link 2)

The “Get New [thing]” dialog now has an appropriate minimum size (Oliver Beard, link)

Other Significant Bugfixes

(This is a curated list of e.g. HI and VHI priority bugs, Wayland showstoppers, major regressions, etc.)

Fixed a case in the Plasma Wayland session where logging in would cause KWin to immediately crash and throw you back to the login screen (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.27.9. Link)

Fixed the most common crash in Plasma that could manifest when closing notifications, by backporting a Qt patch that fixes it, since it’s already fixed in Plasma 6 (Marco Martin and David Edmundson, the latest release of the KDE Qt 5 Patch Collection, link)

Fixed a semi-common crash in Discover when installing Flatpak apps (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.27.9. Link)

Various KWin-provided global shortcuts that were always intended to be on by default–such as for switching virtual desktops–now are (Joshua Goins, Plasma 5.27.9. Link)

Fixed a race condition that caused the “Show in Activities” menu item in the window menu to only sometimes be visible (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.27.9. Link)

Fixed an irritating screen flicker that would show up when using touchpad gestures to switch virtual desktops with animations globally disabled (Quinten Kock, Plasma 5.27.9. Link)

Fixed the most common crash in System Monitor that could sometimes cause it to blow up when quitting or switching pages (Arjen Hiemstra, Plasma 6.0. Link)

Fixed a case where file associations could be inherited in the wrong order, causing certain document types to open in the wrong apps under certain circumstances (David Redondo, Plasma 6.0. Link)

Fixed an issue that could cause complex display arrangements involving daisy-chained DisplayPort screens to be arranged randomly after wakeup, reboot, or hotplug (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 6.0. Link)

In the Plasma Wayland session, using a stylus to interact with System Settings’ Tablet page no longer makes the rest of System Settings unresponsive to stylus input (Aki Sakurai, Plasma 6.0. Link)

Other bug-related information of interest:

For Developers

You can now easily build a whole Plasma desktop session plus associated apps like System Settings and Discover by running kdesrc-build workspace (Nicolas Fella, link)

When setting up kdesrc-build, it now defaults to building everything against Qt6 (Thiago Sueto and Mariua Pa, link 1 and link 2)

Automation & Systematization

Added some autotests for the Kirigami NavigationTabBar and NavigationTabButton components (Ivan Tkachenko, link)

…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

We’re hosting our Plasma 6 fundraiser right now and need your help! If you like the work we’re doing, spreading the wealth is a great way to share the love. 🙂

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 bug-fixing and polishing to get it into a releasable state by February.

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!

Published by Nate

Published

34 thoughts on “These past 2 weeks in KDE: Wayland color management, the desktop cube returns, and optional shadows in Spectacle”

  2. Nate:

    I’m likely asking the wrong person but I have a request.

    On the planet.kde.org website, very few people have a “read more” type cut and as an example, your post today is a three page scroll to get to the next story. KDAB posts are even longer.

    My request: would it be possible to have the aggregator that pulls in all the planet stories automatically cut them after say, six lines and then have a “read more” or “see the original post” type link?

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    2. It’s something that would need to be changed in the code for planet.kde.org, or else every blog that writes long content would need to be convinced to opt into doing this themselves. Personally I’m not convinced it’s worth it.

      Liked by 1 person

  3. ohwww.. how fad.. now can i my mouse again right corner and the Cube pop up again.. and it’s possible to slide around in a natural feeling to an other Desk .. jeah.. i am bigfad happy about !
    a bigfad thank you to the develiper and you Nate ! This supports also the Tablets why it should also direct installed by the Distributions like Fedora and Debian to have this nice to have 🙂 *airjump*
    ohh good.. niicc’hheee..
    Apropos Discover, one Picture say’s more as 1000 Word’s,… Nice !
    Autification.. keep in Mind to be possible for using a Card or Fingerprint, to be using by Factory and could take thad to use without Technical understanding over network to autntificate at a Webside, Server and so on.. this could catching by Bad Guy’s.. and prevent it to use the Desktop login for Factorys like Papple and Bitchysoft so american Fasilitys to prefent The Users to hold the Aliases in Front and make impossible to recompile the Realname over a Desktoplogin to make forgot to use at moment the realname.. it should make ever over the app directly, aware/ conscious.. !

    Tip: check out the DPI Scaling under XOrg and Wayland, check out the Frame on top,
    older Windowframes/Windowdeco to not right Scaling in Wayland, check out the Windows Classic from Pixelocdguy to make it maybe possible for scaling support also for the older windowsframeontop themes..
    i have change a lil bit the FrameTheme a bit for working correcty in a hidpi, but the picture in the theme should scaled correctly in the sitze maybe also css % declarations in the desktop to use it in Scale % so 10px, top and so on to hold the dpiscale also..

    to be in a community.. nope, my bad english and it feel mostly agressive if i post in a community.. because i had hold me mostly in the background, like in MDK, ftp experience and direct connect to developer to speak free.. so, give i mostly info’s direct at hand.. and it’s well…

    best regards to the KDE/Plasma Dev’s *#greet*
    Blacky

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  5. When Spectacle is run on Plasma 6, you can now take “Active Window” and “Window Under Cursor” screenshots that optionally omit window shadows!

    Nice, will this have a Spectacle settings and CLI component?

    The “Get New [thing]” dialog now has an appropriate minimum size

    Is there really no other name for it than “Get New [thing]”?

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    1. this needs a BrainStorm:

      Customizations Store
      Extras Store
      GetAnythingYouWantNewAndFree
      GeniesMagicLamp (but with unlimited whishes)
      MusksForgottenChest
      Ali Express (wait…this one is taken already)

      Liked by 1 person

  8. Are there any plans to implement something that KDE used to have i.e. loading programs don’t stealing of the focus when when you are happily typing away?

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    1. That already exists on X11. On Wayland the situation is a bit more complicated, but it’s slowly being worked on.

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    1. Global Menu works. Kvantum, I dunno, but that’s up to the Kvantum developer to ensure, since it’s a 3rd-party project

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  10. Wohooo! Thank you so much for the color profiling feature! I have one question in this regard: Does kwin (with this MR) support just sRGB or any wide garmut display with e.g. AdobeRGB?

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  12. Great work as usual! Slowly pushing towards HDR support, looks like. Do we think 6.0 is going to launch with true HDR playback enabled for one of the video players?

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  13. Great improvements and additions everywhere! Love the return of the Desktop Cube effect (which i read about “in advance” on invent.kde.org :P), per-screen colour management under Wayland (which is important for my laptop as the default ICC profile is not the best), improvements to authentication, the Digital Clock applet and type-ahead find in Dolphin. Thank you to all developers!

    The settings dialog in QtWidgets applications is a KDE-specific view: KPageView, so it affects only Qt applications using KDE’s libraries. Apart from that, this harmonization is a good thing, as it also makes this view nicer and less noisy.

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  14. I challenge anyone to read this week’s (well, these past two weeks’) report and not find something they’ve been wanting for a long time.

    I am still waiting for a colour tint on window’s headers 😀

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  15. Wow, impressive list of improvements! However since a number of applications are moving buttons to the top, is there a plan for a global setting to enable the button look (i.e. with a background and borders) for those buttons, so that they appear clickable at a glance? I remember iOS implementing a similar setting when they moved all flat.

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  16. Hi nate:

    I would like to ask what exactly is going on with Modifier Only shortcuts on KDE.

    Why exactly is the Application launcher button set to Alt+F1 and yet it somehow launches with Super.
    Why is it seemingly impossible to change the behaviour of the Super key or any other Modifier Key on KDE to for example just open Krunner(say for example someone is trying re create a Tiling window manager like setup).

    Recently had the displeasure for example of modifying my layout a little bit and ended up not being able being able to set the Application launcher back to using Super.

    To fix this mess i created I ended up needing to remove my kwinrc file so that it would be regenerated.

    I do not know if this is the best place to talk about but thanks regardless.

    Also nice Progress on Plasma 6.

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  17. Actually yes, I was really waiting for some of these! Excellent work! Tried to build Plasma 6 to provide some feedback some days ago, but all I got is a black screen.
    I’ll try again.
    Thanks for your hard work!

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    1. Both are ported to Qt6. Gwenview’s port has landed in its master branch, and this should be happening for Dolphin soon.

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  19. Hi,

    i have tested it 🙂

    but there should also a possible to use a simple background wallpaper , like it was, because some “sphere 3D hughework what ever” is a depended to peoples who be in able to make 3D pictures and blocks easy using user out where want have only a rigid background with a normal png ..
    the Sphere 3d is maby a nice idea, but complicate fo create a sphere.. .. i am as example, want only a wallpaper.. and i have a couples wallpapers for the old cube, and it would nice if i have a possible for use also my old backgrounds again.. and not only spheres3D..
    So would it be very nice if i be in able for use my old background-pictures again as flat and easy background like it was.. and the cube zoom in the background, so the feeling as zoom into the background picture, maby a 3rd possibility for use a flat png as background, like it was 🙂
    As example be there a couples background-Pictures for the cube before:
    https://www.blackysgate.de/files/folder-root/Cubebackground

    but so far, 3D cube, niiice 🙂 i have test it in VBox.. and it works !! also in VBox ! coooollll !

    so as a lil feedback..

    best regards
    Blacky

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