This week in KDE: longstanding issues crushed

Automation & Systematization, This Week in Plasma 5 Minutes

This week the focus was on annoying longstanding issues, and a whole bunch of them are now history! If you’ve used KDE software for any significant amount of time, I bet you noticed and were annoyed by at least one of the issues mentioned below, and can now rejoice at their annihilation! This effort has dropped the number of 15-minute Plasma bugs to its lowest level ever–just 30. The Mega-Release will be shipped in under two weeks, and we want it to be as fabulous as possible!

Pre-Mega-Release

…But first, some bugfixes backported to Plasma 5.27!

Fixed a way that KWin could crash in the Plasma Wayland session (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.27.11. Link)

Files copied to the clipboard are now made available to sandboxed apps using the portal system, so you can paste them into those apps (Karol Kosek, Plasma 5.27.11. Link)

After opening your laptop’s lid, the brightness of its backlit keyboard is now correctly restored to the same value it had before the lid was closed (Werner Sembach, Plasma 5.27.11. 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)

UI improvements

When a panel popup is open, clicking on an empty area of the panel will now close it (David Edmundson, link)

When you try out a Global Menu and all your apps’ in-window menubars get hidden, if you later change your mind and remove the Global Menu, all of those apps’ in-window menubars now re-appear automatically instead of remaining hidden until manually shown again (David Edmundson, link)

When any of your physically connected screens are marked as disabled, opening System Settings’ Display & Monitor page now always shows an enabled screen when it opens, rather than sometime showing one of the disabled screens (David Edmundson, link)

Added Breeze icons for OpenVPN and Cisco VPN configuration files (Kai Uwe Broulik, 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!

Fixed several common random-seeming crashes in Plasma’s Activities backend code (Harald Sitter, link)

Fixed a significant annoyance that would, in most distros, cause several types of files to be opened in the wrong apps by default (e.g. images opened in Okular rather than Gwenview) until the first time the user changed any of the file associations (Harald Sitter, link)

Fixed a visual glitch in Gwenview that could cause image thumbnails to overlap when using a fractional scale factor (David Edmundson, link)

in Spectacle, drawing annotations with a touchscreen or a stylus no longer draws additional random-seeming straight lines in weird places (Marco Martin, link)

Shift+dragging windows to custom-tile them now works even if you’ve set your keyboard to do something exotic like emulate the Caps Lock key when pressing both Shift keys together (Xaver Hugl, link)

Fixed a case where the cursor failed to disappear as expected in certain WINE games (Vlad Zahorodnii, link)

Fixed a memory leak seen in Spectacle when recording the screen (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, link)

Other bug information of note:

Post-Mega-Release

Gwenview now has a minimal “Spotlight View” mode in which all the normal UI is hidden, and all you see is the image and the window titlebar (Ravi Saifullin, Gwenview 24.05. Link):

Before you ask, no this is not my paintjob! But I do plan to use it as inspiration 🙂

The warning on System Settings’ Proxy page no longer inaccurately warns you that Chromium-based browsers don’t respect it, which isn’t true anymore (Someone going by the pseudonym “Chaotic Abide”, kio-extras 25.04. Link)

Fixed the most common crash in Discover for Plasma 6.1, and we’re scoping out options for fixing it for 6.0 as well (Ivan Tkachenko, Plasma 6.1. Link)

System Settings’ Screen Locking page now has a clearer UI for selecting times (Kristen McWilliam, Plasma 6.1. Link):

  • Standard durations
  • Custom duration with selectable units

There’s now a KWin window rule you can use for controlling the status of Adaptive Sync for individual windows (Ravil Saifullin, Plasma 6.1. Link)

Performance & Technical

KWin now supports direct scan-out when run in a nested manner inside another compositor (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 6.1. Link)

Landed some major performance improvements for thumbnail generation in Gwenview and file listing in general (Arjen Hiemstra, Mega-Release 6. Link 1 and link 2)

Landed some major performance improvements for Spectacle’s Rectangular Region mode (Noah Davis, Spectacle 24.05. Link)

The spacings used throughout Plasma and Kirigami-based apps are no longer based on font sizes, and are now simply hardcoded to various static values, as they are in QtWidgets-based apps. This should slightly increase visual consistency everywhere, and make it possible over time to build UIs with more predictability in their spacings. This is more of a long-term thing, but it’s an exciting first step! (Noah Davis, Kirigami 6.0. 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 amazing 825 members, blown past our 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 final Qt6/KF6/Plasma 6 issues! Which issues? These issues. Plasma 6 is very close to a release and in a good state, but could still benefit from some final bug-fixing and polishing. And as I mentioned before, if you haven’t tried it out yet, please do!

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!

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Published by Nate

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17 thoughts on “This week in KDE: longstanding issues crushed”

    1. These are the only VPN configuration files that currently have a registered MIME type in shared-mme-info. There’s no “generic VPN” profile type.

      Adding those icons is mostly in preparation for being able to import them into Network Manager by opening the file in Dolphin (should land in Plasma 6.1 soon, too).

      Liked by 1 person

    2. It should support by Programm/factory and not at the Icontheme in generally,

      because if i look the iconthemes from 2000 and now be there manny icons more, also the “kick all in one pot” also there should exist a diffrent between “Real System Icons” and Programm icons.. making Icons is a good thing, but please, please to the right place.

      These Icons be Program/Factory releated Icons and should not be at a “Surface Manager” Icons

      … in my Opinion…

      in the 2nd thing.. these be not 2 diffrent icons, w.t.h. do it not be the same name, like application/vpn this can use in the both and more cases … because i want not make in further 20 Jears a icontheme, today be it more as 2000-3000 Icons if it make it right..

      There be also Icons where can spear and exist since more as 20 Jears under an other name, it need only to take a look in the Iconsearcher/selector (right-click on the link, search an other icon and look in to the different categories like aktion,places,apps and others..) there be icons under other name and straggling …

      becaue that i think and say about something.. because be comes amd makes every more and more icons without thinking about.. ..easy all in one pot and the other is anyway..

      if it’s already exist under an other name or not…..

      but thank you for the try in the best will..

      best and nice greetings 🙂

      Blacky

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  3. Nate, the link for the item “KWin now supports direct scan-out” is incorrect – it’s a copy of the link for the previous item.
    I would have really loved to know what’s going on with that change…

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  4. Plasma 6 is shaping out to be a solid release! Thank you so much KDE team for your hard work! ❤

    On a side note, the merge request link for “KWin now supports direct scan-out when run in a nested manner inside another compositor” doesn’t look correct.

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  5. “Gwenview now has a minimal “Spotlight View” mode in which all the normal UI is hidden, and all you see is the image and the window titlebar (Ravi Saifullin, Gwenview 24.05. Link):”

    So this is the first step toward native quick image preview in dolphin?

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  6. Wow, great stuff! The new mode in Gwenview will be nice to have.

    I particularly like the “The spacings used throughout Plasma and Kirigami-based apps are no longer based on font sizes” because it always bugged me that the two types of apps looked different.

    “Fixed a significant annoyance that would, in most distros, cause several types of files to be opened in the wrong apps by default” … that’s a 12 year old bug fixed right there, very good.

    Liked by 1 person

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  8. “to be as fabulous as possible!”

    so would be nice to have restore of session, but I suppose it is not possible in this release 😦

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    1. Yeah. A fake version of it was just merged for Plasma 6.1, though! Hopefully the real thing will be eventually integrated as well, but for that we need a push to get the relevant upstream Wayland protocol across the finish line.

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