This week in KDE: changing the wallpaper from within System Settings

Automation & Systematization, This Week in KDE 4 Minutes

Plasma 6 beta 1 has been released! And so far the feedback has been very positive. A few final features snuck in before we started on the mega bugfixing marathon, which began this week! Please do continue to test the beta and report bugs. Other useful activities include fixing bugs and donating to the Plasma 6 fundraiser. 🙂

KDE 6 Mega-Release

(Includes all software to be released on the February 28th mega-release: Plasma 6, Frameworks 6, and apps from Gear 24.02)

General info – Open issues: 164

New features

You can now set the wallpaper for any of your screens from a page in System Settings! (Méven Car, link):

Discover now features a “Newly Published & Recently Updated” section on the main page when using Flatpak or Snap as your default apps backend, which makes the Linux app ecosystem feel more alive! Work is pending to also show this section when using distro packages for your default source, provided the distro actually ships relatively frequent updates to apps and not ancient years-old software all on the same date, which would make the section useless (Ivan Tkachenko, link):

The Night Light page in System Settings now shows you a graphical representation of the active and inactive periods as well as the transition times (Ismael Asensio, link):

Implemented a “Shake to find your cursor” KWin effect, similar to the one in macOS. Note that it’s off by default for now, so you’ll need to manually turn it on in System Settings’ Desktop Effects page if you want to use it (Vlad Zahorodnii, link)

Ark now offers a new “Extract here and delete archive” option for its context menu plugin! As part of the process of making this possible, we decided to remove infrequently-used items in the menu in favor of keeping the “Extract here, autodetect subfolder” option, which was the most useful one and has now been renamed to “Extract here” for clarity (Severin von Wnuck, link):

User Interface improvements

Auto-Hide panels now respect the user-configurable delay setting that currently affects other screen edge effects, so you can configure whether they will un-hide immediately upon being touched, or wait an amount of time of your choosing (Bharadwaj Raju, link)

The glow effect that appears when your pointer gets close to a screen edge or corner that will do something when touched now respects the system’s accent color (Ivan Tkachenko, link)

The Morphing Popups effect now animates with the standard easing curve, which feels more consistent and nicer and also makes it feel faster (Timothy Bautista, link)

KRunner and other KRunner-based searches like the one in Overview now have proper visual click feedback when you click on a search result (Kai Uwe Broulik, link)

Tool views and sidebar tabs in Kate can now be dragged-and-dropped to other locations (Waqar Ahmed, link 1 and link 2)

Hitting the Escape key in Spectacle while in Rectangular Region mode now takes you back to the main window instead of quitting the app (Noah Davis, link)

Bug fixes

Fixed the most common crash in Dolphin which could happen when copying a large number of files to another location, closing Dolphin’s window, and then interacting with the overwrite/skip dialog (Akseli Lahtinen, link)

Fixed another common crash in Dolphin that could happen after entering edit mode and then changing the Application Style (Akseli Lahtinen, link)

In the Plasma Wayland session, sub-menus from Kicker no longer go underneath a bottom panel, and windows marked “Keep above other windows” no longer also go above panel popups (David Edmundson, link 1 and link 2)

Fixed various visual glitches with the bouncy app launch feedback effect on Wayland when using a scale factor higher than 100% (Vlad Zahorodnii, link 1, link 2, and link 3)

Window titles that contain a hyphen character no longer get mangled when displayed in Task Manager preview popups (Niccolò Venerandi, link)

Fixed OSDs on the lock screen looking pointlessly different from OSDs shown everywhere else (Bharadwaj Raju, link)

When you have multiple Battery widgets, the “Manually block sleep and screen locking” switch is now synced between all of them (Natalie Clarius, link)

Technical

Added support for hardware cursors on NVIDIA GPUs (Doğukan Korkmaztürk, link)

System Settings’ Firewall page has been fully ported to Qt6 (Guillaume Frognier and David Redondo, link)

KDE Connect’s Plasma widget has been fully ported to be compatible with Plasma 6 (Prajna Sariputra, link)

Automation & Systematization

Added an autotest to make sure that files and folders added to the desktop actually show up immediately (Fushan Wen, link)

Added an autotest to make sure that accent colors can be correctly extracted from wallpapers (Fushan Wen, link)

Added an autotest to make sure that Global Theme layouts can be correctly applied (Fushan Wen, 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! Thanks to you we’re now at 83% of our goal of 500 new KDE e.V. supporting members now! I think we might actually make it! 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! Which issues? These issues. Plasma 6 is very 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

31 thoughts on “This week in KDE: changing the wallpaper from within System Settings”

  1. > Ark now offers an “Extract here and delete archive” option for its context menu plugin

    Thank you! Thank you so much. This is very, VERY useful for me. I deal with a lot of archive files and this really would save time.

    On a separate note, has there been any movement on making Dolphin and other KDE apps looks better on other platforms? Dolphin, in particular, I would love to use on my Win11 VM as my main file browser if it looks nicer and automatically scaled on Win11 (as oppose to requiring manual env var).

    Like

    Reply

    2. @aleks I often forgot which ones I already have extracted since they’re often pretty big files, haha. Being able to just click, forget about it, and when I return it’s already extracted AND moved is convenient.

      Like

  2. So what’s the new name of “Extract here, autodetect subfolder” now?
    Just “Extract here” or did it got merged with the new optiion into “Extract here and delete archive”?

    I read the paragraph 10 times but I can’t figure it out…

    Thank you.

    Like

    Reply

    1. Yeah, I wrote this confusingly. I’ve rephrased it now; hopefully that helps. To be clear: the “Extract here, autodetect subfolder” option has been renamed to just “Extract here”.

      Like

    2. @ Nate.. the short “extract here” make a bit confused.. because looks like “extract here the whole files” maybe is a word more , more better like Extract here (SubFolder) for fully understand or (Autoselect Directory Name) .. too short is maby sometimes unsupoptimal.. the real short can be “EhfaD” *g* The “Autodedect Subfolder” was maybe not so wrong…
      best

      Like

    3. Yeah, ‘let’s take perfectly clear name for the option and just add more confusion because we can. And call it improvement after that’.

      Like

    4. Maybe an “Extract to new folder” or “Extract to it’s folder” would do better…

      (i too am terrified of extracting something and getting all my files spread in the main folder i’m at……………… i get chills just remembering it…)

      Like

  4. for the 4th point of extraction with no subdir in the compressed packet
    for hold the Directory clean and all copmressed of the files in a Folder,
    so a Subfolder as 4th point :
    Extract => Extract to SubDir (Name of the Packet)

    A other Idea for supporting the Users in Plasma :
    maybe a translater integrated in Plasma/KDE like QTranslater
    who was a time active in orginal developement and now supported by private, neutral russian community …
    of Qtranslater active could be the left “ctrl” a mouse-hook translate KB-key (VBox the right ctrl), Qtranslater pop up with a small icon by selecting+pressing ctrl/strg and give a mousehook for open a translating window, if this included in Plasma/KDE help it this for more internationalisation in the web and a better understanding.. ( http://forum.ru-board.com/topic.cgi?forum=5&topic=50987&start=600#lt )
    Screenshoot’s : https://www.blackysgate.de/files/folder-root/QTranslater/

    best regards
    Blacky

    Like

    Reply

    1. maybe as plugin, if anyone want it installed ? imho not as standart included thing 😉
      best

      and Nate …
      and pleeease, remove the advertising for the newsletter at post the comment, the most have it as newsletter via mail.. and i wana have it in my rss and all reply’s is anounced as mail what’s okey.. maby a button on top for register as newsletter, more not.. all other disturbs only ….

      best

      Like

  6. … whant remove because the compressed packed should behind moved to a store.. right…
    Delete … should be ever the last thing to do.. and maby a bit unlucky choiced as example \*giggle* ;))))
    best…

    Like

    Reply

  8. “Auto-Hide panels now respect the user-configurable delay setting that currently affects other screen edge effects, so you can configure whether they will un-hide immediately upon being touched, or wait an amount of time of your choosing”

    OMG OMG OMG IT’S HAPPENING

    I can’t believe there is a finally way to not make the auto-hide immediately appear upon brisking on the edge of the screen!!!

    I have been waiting for this for literal YEARS and it might make auto-hide panels a thing for me FINALLY

    Thank you SO MUCH Bharadwaj Raju and the entire team involved!!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  9. *like/thumpsup*
    there’s drool running down someone’s face \*giggle* (makes me also happy as Ext.User) .. finally happenings that the KDE becomes that, what’s the Users want and not ever cutting out, making slim and remove.. and the newest techniks .. bahh, now is there a good leader what’s let makes, what’s have really sense ! .. Nate–> *THUMPS UP*

    best regards
    Blacky

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  10. Good to see some crash fixes on dolphin, for me my biggest issue with dolphin is still how it handles drives / directories where the underlying filesystem is not responsive / accesable, for example a bad usb drive or a sshfs mount that times out. Ideally only that directory should present you with some loading indication, but right now dolphin just freezes for some time. That being said its a open bug so there is that.

    Like

    Reply

  11. “Implemented a “Shake to find your cursor” KWin effect, similar to the one in macOS. Note that it’s off by default for now, so you’ll need to manually turn it on in System Settings’ Desktop Effects page if you want to use it”

    That’s great! A friend was just asking me about this very feature and we both realized that it didn’t exist in System Settings. Though as I was showing him what is available, I realized that he may never have found it because even though it deals with the cursor, it’s buried in Desktop Effects, which is fine for extensions, but for basic features, it seems that the more natural place for this particular feature is in the cursor KCM. And if there is a checkbox there for “Shake to find your cursor”, it’d just be an alias to the effect in Desktop Effects.

    Also great to hear about the UI clean up for “Extract here”, I use that all the time!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  12. Thanks as always for the updates Nate!

    As someone who’s not very well keyed into the development that’s gone into Plasma 6, is there any guidance on how to go about porting QML forward from Plasma 5? Particularly as it relates to theme packages you may find on GHNS/KDE store.

    As more folks start to get into Plasma 6 with the beta release, I’d love to proactively start contributing porting efforts to the more popular theme packages (e.g. Sweet).

    Like

    Reply

  13. I’m thinking of trying to work on some of the bugs in my time off. Is there some kind of kanboard where we can keep track of who’s working on what so I don’t start working on a bug someone else is already working?

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. I find that if there isn’t already a merge request open on KDE Invent, or the bug has ASSIGNED status with someone deliberately on it (also check Invent for issues), it’s unlikely to run into major conflicts or simultaneous efforts. I wouldn’t worry about it that much. Just make sure you set up your development environment before picking bugs, so you can start fixing right after deciding what to fix.

      Liked by 1 person

  14. Catching up on some news, and wanted to drop a line. These are some really great stuff. Especially the Discover and Night Light stuff. Thanks.

    Like

    Reply

Leave a comment