This week we’ve got quite a bit of everything! Mega-release UI improvements and bug-fixes, new features for post-mega-release software, more bugfixes for KF5 software, performance improvements, better internal documentation, and impactful ecosystem improvements. Let’s dive in!

Post-Mega-Release

KCalc now shows you the equation you just entered, in addition to the calculated result (Gabriel Barrantes, KCalc 24.05, link):

Spectacle now scans QR codes in screenshots and offers you the opportunity to open their links (Dinesh Manajipet, Spectacle 24.05. Link)

The Weather widget now shows weather alerts for U.S. locations using the NOAA Weather backend (Ismael Asensio, Plasma 6.1. Link)

System Settings’ Drawing Tablet page can now be used to configure pen or tablet buttons to act as modifier keys rather than trigger actions (Tino Lorenz, Plasma 6.1. Link)

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

UI improvements

It’s no longer possible to drag an app or window from the Task Manager onto another part of its panel, accidentally creating a launcher widget out of it (Niccolò Venerandi, link)

Scrolling over the volume sliders in the Audio Volume widget and System Settings page now scrolls by increments of the user-configured volume step, rather than either changing the volume by 1% per scroll tick or doing nothing (Yifan Zhu, link 1 and link 2)

In the Plasma Wayland session, you can now mirror two screens on System Settings’ Display Configuration page using a visible combobox, not just by the hidden method of dragging one screen on top of another one in the visualization area (Yifan Zhu, link)

Bug fixes

Important note: I don’t mention fixes for bugs that were never released to users; it’s just too much for me (it would probably be too much for you to read as well), and most people never encountered them in the first place. Because we’re in the middle of a big Plasma dev cycle, there are a lot of these bugs! So big thanks to everyone who’s made it a priority to fix them!

The critically important Wobbly Windows effect once again works while using the Zoom effect to zoom in on something. Never stop wobbling! (Vlad Zahorodnii, link)

On System Settings’ Cursors page, the preview of available cursor sizes is now sized correctly when using a scale factor above 100% (Yifan Zhu, link 1 and link 2)

Changing the name, icon, command etc for an app marked as a favorite in Kickoff now updates the item immediately, rather than any such changes only taking effect after restarting Plasma (Marco Martin, link)

Fixed a bug that could cause panels in “Auto-Hide” or the new “Dodge Windows” mode to inappropriately un-hide and become stuck in an un-hidden state when the screen configuration changed in certain ways (Yifan Zhu, link)

Fixed multiple issues causing keyboard shortcuts using numberpad number keys to not register correctly in both the X11 and Wayland sessions (Nicolas Fella and Eugene Popov, link 1, link 2, link 3, and link 4)

It’s no longer possible to somewhat awkwardly open the “Alternatives” popup for a widget multiple times (Niccolò Venerandi, link)

Other bug information of note:

• 4 Very high priority Plasma bugs (up from 3 last week, though two are likely the same thing and in need of investigation and triaging). Current list of bugs
• 34 15-minute Plasma bugs (down from 35 last week). Current list of bugs
• 150 KDE bugs of all kinds fixed over last week. Full list of bugs

Performance & Technical

Improved the performance of certain config-lookup code used commonly through KDE software by 35-40% (Friedrich Kossebau, link)

Improved performance and GUI responsiveness of the System Settings app by a little bit everywhere (David Edmundson, link)

Improved Discover’s launch time a bit (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, link 1 and link 2)

Improved compatibility between NVIDIA GPUs and the way KWin handles screencasting, screen sharing, and generating thumbnails for windows (Xaver Hugl, link)

Fixes for KF5

KF5 software continues to get a few fixes:

The feature in Discover to delete the config data of a no-longer-installed Flatpak app once again works (Ivan Tkachenko, Plasma 5.27.10.1. Link)

Fixed a crash in Dolphin when using kio-admin to do privilege escalation (Harald Sitter, Frameworks 5.115. Link)

Automation & Systematization

Wrote a tutorial about using PyQt to produce KDE software using Python rather than C++ (Thiago Sueto, Helio Loureiro, and Dimitris Kardarakos link)

Work not in KDE that affects KDE

KDE contributors also made two notable contributions to the world outside of KDE this week, which will positively affect not just KDE, but others as well:

There’s now a standard cross-desktop “prefers high contrast” setting that lives in the settings portal. Expect to see support for this showing up in KDE software soon! (Dominic Hayes, link)

Chromium- and Electron-based apps gained support for the cursor-shape-v1 Wayland protocol, allowing them to show standard cursor shapes and sizes in the Plasma Wayland session (Ilya Bizyaev, 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

Thanks to you, our Plasma 6 fundraiser has been a crazy success! I originally thought the goal of 500 new KDE e.V. supporting members was over-optimistic, but you’ve all proven me happily wrong. We’re now up to an incredible 695 members, unlocked both stretch goals, and 1000 members by launch time seems like it might even be feasible. Thank you everyone for the confidence you’ve shown in us; we’ll try not to screw it up! 🙂 For those who haven’t donated to become members yet, spreading the wealth via this fundraiser 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 some final bug-fixing and polishing to get it into a solid 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!

We’re in the home stretch now!

Plasma and Gear apps have branched, which means anything committed to master and not backported is going into the next release after the mega-release next month. For Plasma, the next one is 6.1, and for Gear apps, it’s 24.05. Quite a few new features and UI improvements are starting to accumulate there! Here are a few:

Dolphin now periodically auto-saves its open windows and tabs, so you don’t lose state if the app crashes or the system is restarted unexpectedly (Amol Godbole, Dolphin 24.05. Link)

In Dolphin, you can now configure whether backup and trash files are shown when hidden files are made visible (Méven Car, Dolphin 24.05. Link)

In Dolphin, you can now pop out a split view pane into its own new window (Loren Burkholder, Dolphin 24.05. Link)

Fixed an issue in Dolphin that could cause it to freeze when you use it to duplicate the same file multiple times (Eugene Popov, Dolphin 24.05. Link)

Okular now supports displaying popup menus in certain kinds of PDF documents that include them (Alexis Murzeau, Okular 24.05. Link)

Spectacle now lets you use more placeholders for screenshot and screen recording filenames (Noah Davis, Spectacle 24.05. Link 1 and link 2)

The Networks system tray popup can now tell you a network’s channel in addition to its frequency (Kai Uwe Broulik, link)

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: 237

UI improvements

Plasma’s global Edit Mode toolbar now has an “Add Panel” button that lets you add panels. With this located there, the desktop context menu has now lost its “Add Widgets” and “Add Panels” menu items since the functionality is fully available in the global Edit Mode. This makes the menu smaller and less overwhelming by default. Of course, if you want those menu items back, you can just re-add them. 🙂 (Akseli Lahtinen and me: Nate Graham, link 1, link 2, and link 3):

In the portal-based “Choose a screen/window to record” dialog, items are now chosen with a single-click, unless the dialog is in multi-select mode, in which case a double-click will choose one (because a single-click only selects it). Also, in multi-select mode, the items have little checkboxes in the corner so you know that you can select more than one (Yifan Zhu and me: Nate Graham, link 1, and link 2):

Bug fixes

Important note: I don’t mention fixes for bugs that were never released to users; it’s just too much for me (it would probably be too much for you to read as well), and most people never encountered them in the first place. Because we’re in the middle of a big Plasma dev cycle, there are a lot of these bugs! So big thanks to everyone who’s made it a priority to fix them!

Powerdevil no longer fails to start at login when using the ddcutil-2.0.0 library and certain DDC-compatible monitors (David Edmundson, link). Note that we also have reports of new issues for people using ddcutil-2.1.0, but those are different and need separate investigation, which is ongoing.

Did some more work to ensure that visual glitches in QtQuick apps are minimized when using a fractional scale factor. There’s still more work to do for text and window outlines/shadows, but you should no longer see weird tearing-related glitches in buttons and icons (Arjen Hiemstra and Marco Martin, link)

Made KWin more robust when restoring settings for multi-screen arrangements when any of the screens are missing their EDIDs (Stefan Hoffmeister, link)

When using a weather provider that gives forecasts longer than 7 days (like EnvCan), the right edge of the Weather widget’s forecast never gets cut off when viewed in the System Tray (Ismael Asensio, link)

Your Plasma panels will no longer flicker oddly when certain full-screen games do something rather odd by repeatedly switching their windows between full-screen and maximized states (Xaver Hugl, link)

The “Window Type” window rule–which did not work on Wayland–has been replaced with a new “Window Layer” rule which works better for the purposes people typically use it for (Vlad Zahorodnii, link)

Other bug information of note:

• 3 Very high priority Plasma bugs (down from 4 last week). Current list of bugs
• 35 15-minute Plasma bugs (down from 37 last week). Current list of bugs
• 127 KDE bugs of all kinds fixed over last week. Full list of bugs

Performance & Technical

Improved the speed of various config file lookups used very commonly throughout KDE software by 13-16% (Friedrich Kossebau, link)

Fixes for KF5

We’ve also got a few nice fixes for KF5 software this week!

Fixed an issue when moving or copying large number of files that could cause some of them to get skipped (and potentially lost) after skipping duplicated folders (Eugene Popov, Frameworks 5.115. Link)

Fixed an issue that caused folders inside network shares/mounts to be non-expandable in Details view (Alessandro Astone, Frameworks 5.115. 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

Thanks to you, our Plasma 6 fundraiser has been a crazy success! I originally thought the goal of 500 new KDE e.V. supporting members was over-optimistic, but you’ve all proven me happily wrong. We’re now up to an incredible 665 members and unlocked both stretch goals! It’s pretty humbling. Thank you everyone for the confidence you’ve shown in us; we’ll try not to screw it up! 🙂 For those who haven’t donated to become members yet, spreading the wealth via this fundraiser 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 some final bug-fixing and polishing to get it into a solid 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!