Elisa keeps improving as a music player, and other changes that KDE works on

This year, VideoLan will release VLC 4.0. It will be an important update, and where it will be most noticeable will be in its design. That and that, in addition to internal improvements, the music library will take a huge leap in quality, which is why, when it arrives, I think I will opt for the famous player also to listen to music. Nowadays, most of the time I use Elisa, the kde player newer that improves a lot with each new version.

This week, Nate Graham has titled his weekly article on new features that will come to KDE «Elisa grows», and personally I do not quite like the word game, precisely because one of the improvements that she comments is that the player will be better on mobile devices, so, technically, «shrink ». In any case, the player will improve, and then you have the list of changes that have been mentioned this week, among which there is one more related to Elisa.

What's new coming to the KDE desktop

• Elisa now has a complete interface for mobiles, so it looks good on Plasma Mobile and Android (in the second case, it must be compiled).
• Many improvements to the Plasma System Monitor, which will replace KSysGuard in Plasma 5.22. Right now it is optional and, at least in Manjaro, the new version cannot be used if we uninstall the old one.
• Kate now includes a function that lets us jump back to the previous cursor position (Kate 21.04).

Bug fixes and performance improvements

• Konsole no longer crashes if you close a tab and then immediately use the "Mark all tabs as folder" action (Konsole 21.04).
• Elisa can now play AAC files (Elisa 21.04).
• When Dolphin is sorting by size on disk, it no longer sorts folders first when not prompted to do so (Dolphin 21.04).
• When we ask Gwenview to open a set of files that includes any files having the same name, it no longer displays an overwrite dialog asking us to remove one of them, which freezes and becomes non-interactive anyway (Gwenview 21.04).
• Spectacle no longer inappropriately enables "on click" mode under certain circumstances (Spectacle 21.04).
• Fixed a case where the new Plasma System Monitor app could crash on Wayland (Plasma 5.21.3).
• The "Force Source DPI" setting can be used once again in Wayland (Plasma 5.21.3).
• Changing the settings of any of the System Monitor widgets now always results in the Apply button being enabled (Plasma 5.21.3).
• The "Amount of history to keep" setting in the system monitor widgets and the new app now works (Plasma 5.21.3).
• Moving a widget within a page in the new Plasma System Monitor app now works (Plasma 5.21.3).
• The new Plasma System Monitor app now remembers your filter text if you switch from the filtered view and then come back (Plasma 5.21.3).
• Text in table columns in the new Plasma System Monitor application is now always correctly vertically aligned no matter what font settings you use (Plasma 5.21.3).
• The "Quit Application" dialog of the new Plasma System Monitor application no longer displays its check box incorrectly when using certain fonts (Plasma 5.21.3).
• Spectacle's "Rectangle Region" mode works again in the Plasma Wayland session (Plasma 5.22).
• When using Dropbox and setting your system tray item to be "always hidden", it now remembers this state after restarting the computer (Plasma 5.22).
• For applications that live in the system tray and change the content of their context menus, those menus now display correctly in the Plasma X11 (Plasma 5.22) session.
• Flickr's Picture of the Day wallpaper now stores its API key in a central location so it can be updated as needed, without people having to wait for updates to its software (Plasma 5.22).
• Fixed a case where System Preferences could crash when installing new themes (Frameworks 5.81).
• File dialogs now add the correct filename extension while saving in the particular case when the document's filename already ends with a period (Frameworks 5.81).
• Headphones with a built-in "Play / Pause" button now do what you expect every time that button is pressed, not just every two times (Frameworks 5.81).
• Panel margins no longer change when composition is disabled (Frameworks 5.81).

Interface improvements

• Konsole once again exposes the default profile in the user interface (Konsole 21.04).
• Okular's support for FictionBook files has been improved to support tags Y (Okular 21.04).
• You can now set a keyboard repeat rate greater than 50 key events per second; the new maximum is 100 (Plasma 5.21.3).
• After moving or copying a file, the notification now indicates which application will open the file if you click the "Open" button (Plasma 5.22).
• The checkbox in the Bluetooth systray applet to disable Bluetooth can now be used to enable it again (Plasma 5.22).
• The Plasma Vaults applet now offers a separate "Show in File Manager" action that you can enable to easily jump open vaults there (Plasma 5.22).
• Using Discover to update your Nvidia drivers (or any other package with a license agreement) no longer prompts you to accept the license agreement again unless it has actually changed (Plasma 5.22).
• Sticky note widgets now ask for confirmation when you try to delete a note, but only when the note has actual content, not when it is empty or when you just created it from clipboard content (Plasma 5.22).
• The new Plasma System Monitor app now remembers the way you left the table columns and sidebars when you exited and started it again (Plasma 5.22).
• All Breeze icons that represent locked or unlocked states now follow the same visual convention of locked icons that have a filled body and unlocked icons that have a hollow body (Frameworks 5.81).

When is this coming to KDE?

Plasma 5.21.3 is coming March 16 and KDE Applications 21.04 will do so on April 22. KDE Frameworks 5.80 will land today March 13th, and v5.81 will arrive on April 10th. Plasma 5.22 will arrive on June 8.

To enjoy all this as soon as possible we have to add the KDE Backports repository or use an operating system with special repositories like Kde neon or any distribution whose development model is Rolling Release, although the latter usually take a little longer than the KDE system.

You have to remember that the above will not be met with Plasma 5.21, or not for Kubuntu until the release of Hirsute Hippo, as we already discussed in this article in which we talk about Plasma 5.20. Plasma 5.22 will depend on Qt 5.15, so it should be coming to Kubuntu 21.04 + Backports.