It is surprising when you are using software and you realize that it does not have a basic function. In fact, it has not exactly happened to me like that, because that function I never use it, but Nate Graham has returned to publish un article about what KDE is working on and the first thing he mentions is something new for Elisa that I think should have been there from the beginning, but it wasn't.
The novelty that the KDE player will add in April 2021 will be the ability to repeat a song over and over again, and not just albums and playlists. As always, we have also been given other news and changes that will come in the future to one of the desktops that the Linux community likes the most, which is none other than Plasma with KDE apps and its libraries.
What's New Coming Soon to KDE
- Elisa allows us to repeat the current song over and over and over again if we choose (Elisa 21.04).
- The Plasma Timers widget now has a page that lists all the predefined countdowns, allowing us to modify them or add our own (Plasma 5.21).
- Now we can configure a fixed icon size for the items in the Places Open / Save dialogs (Frameworks 5.78).
Bug fixes and performance improvements
- When using Elisa's Files view, pressing the Play or Queue buttons on grid items now works (Elisa 20.12.1).
- Elisa no longer increases Plasma CPU usage while playing music (Elisa 20.12.1).
- Spectacle is no longer sometimes slow when more than one screenshot is taken in rapid succession (Spectacle 20.12.1).
- Meetings / screencasts using WebRTC now work in the Plasma Wayland session (Plasma 5.20.5).
- The virtual keyboard on the lock and login screen no longer covers the password field when it appears (Plasma 5.20.5).
- When viewing an app's details in Discover, a fun little tooltip for app licensing no longer always appears; it is now only visible when you hover over the link to the full text of your license, as expected (Plasma 5.20.5).
- The Comics applet now displays icons on the tab bar tabs, as it was always supposed to do (Plasma 5.20.5).
- The Bluetooth applet placeholder message now displays the correct text when Bluetooth is off (Plasma 5.21).
- When we change the user avatar on the Users page of System Preferences, the image displayed in the user list now also changes immediately (Plasma 5.21).
- The back and forward navigation buttons in Kirigami-based software no longer sometimes overlap with the current page name (Frameworks 5.78).
- The Install and Remove buttons in Discover no longer look a bit strange and have an invisible icon; now they use the standard style and recolor the icon (Frameworks 5.78).
- KDE app window sizes and positions are once again correctly remembered in KDE software running on Windows (Frameworks 5.78).
- KDE app windows sometimes no longer open in a maximized state when they were not maximized at the time they were last closed (Frameworks 5.78).
Improvements in the user's interface
- Elisa's configuration window has received an improvement and modernization of its interface (Elisa 21.04).
- Elisa's pending tracks indicator now resides at the bottom of the playlist next to the total number of tracks (Elisa 21.04).
- The Bluetooth applet and its page in System Preferences now only show paired devices; available devices are displayed in a separate list, only visible when adding new devices (5.20.5).
- There are now default shortcuts configured to move the active window to another virtual desktop (Meta + Ctrl + Shift + arrow keys) and to another screen (Meta + Shift + arrow keys) (Plasma 5.21).
- When receiving files via Bluetooth, the notification displayed on the screen now has information on how many files are left and displays an "Open in file manager" button when completed (Plasma 5.21).
- Improved the appearance of user avatars in the user avatar selector view (Plasma 5.21).
- After the first time you manually mount a removable disk, by default it will automatically mount on all subsequent occasions when you connect it (Plasma 5.21).
- The default actions of "Mount" and "Unlock Vault" in the Disks and Devices applets of Plasma and Plasma Vaults (respectively) have been changed to "Mount and Open" and "Unlock and Open" to save an additional step of having to open manually the file manager and navigate to the newly available locations. For people who don't want this, the old actions "Mount unopened in file manager" and "Unlock Vault without showing in file manager" are still present, but in expanded view instead of being used as default actions (Plasma 5.21).
- The Discover task progress sheet now shows the current download speed as well as the estimated completion time (Plasma 5.21).
- The detailed icon size popup on the System Preferences icon page confusingly no longer offers to allow setting the size of the 'Desktop' icons, because it didn't actually change the size of the files and folders on the desktop (Plasma 5.21).
When will this all come to KDE?
Plasma 5.21 will arrive on February 9 and Plasma 5.20.5 will do it next Tuesday, January 5. KDE Applications 20.12.1 will arrive on January 7, and 21.04 will arrive sometime in April 2021. KDE Frameworks 5.78 will land on January 9.
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.
Yes, the above will not be met with Plasma 5.20 or 5.21, or not for Kubuntu until the release of Hirsute Hippo, as we already discussed in this article.