In my search for the ultimate Linux music app, several times I have felt that I had found what I needed. One of those times I thought about it when trying the Elisa de KDE, the default player in Kubuntu since 20.04, but it lacks many things to polish, such as that it does not have an equalizer. If everything goes well, my default player will be VLC, but when it reaches v4.0, although the KDE proposal continues to improve with each version they release.
And it is that, as Nate Graham advances us in your article this week, Elisa will allow us to tag songs starting next month, a tool with which we can repair many of the bugs that we find in our library. As usual, they have also told us about dozens of improvements that will arrive in the KDE desktop in the coming months, and you have them all below.
New features coming to the KDE desktop
- Elisa allows us to edit the metadata of the tracks from the same app (Elisa 20.12).
- Elisa allows us to easily find the location of each song on the disk thanks to a new button (Elisa 20.12).
- Konsole adds a configurable toolbar (Konsole 21.04).
- New KRunner launchers can now be downloaded from store.kde.org directly from the System Preferences page (Plasma 5.21).
Bug fixes and performance improvements
- Dolphin no longer frequently crashes when writing to the filter bar (Dolphin 20.12).
- Dolphin once again displays the correct number of files within folders with symbolic links (Dolphin 20.12).
- The Dolphin ISO Mount Plugin no longer fails to mount the same ISO twice and now also properly unmounts the underlying loop device (Dolphin 20.12).
- Dolphin is now more reliable and less prone to freezing in the absence of network information (Dolphin 20.12).
- Middle-clicking the tabs in Kate closes them once more (Kate 20.12).
- In Elisa, touch scrolling and fast scrolling by holding the Shift key while scrolling now work (Elisa 20.12).
- Elisa now accepts the album art for albums with the album art in a file called albumart. [Jpg | png] (Elisa 20.12).
- When Elisa is loading a view, the progress wheel no longer overlaps a placeholder text (Elisa 20.12).
- Discover can reinstall locally downloaded distribution package files (for example, .rpm and .deb files) (Plasma 5.20.4).
- When right-clicking on something in the Kicker or Kickoff launcher menus now, the context menu appears instantly the first time (Plasma 5.20.4).
- On the System Preferences Cursors page, the Available Cursor Sizes menu now shows those cursors at their actual sizes (Plasma 5.20.4).
- In the Plasma Wayland session, dragging tabs from Firefox to the desktop no longer blocks the entire session (Plasma 5.21).
- Context menus for third-party systray items no longer stack on top of each other when right-clicking multiple consecutive applets (Plasma 5.21).
- On the Window Decorations page of System Preferences, border size text is no longer cut off when using a scale factor or language with text longer than English (Plasma 5.21).
- The sound test function on the Audio Volume page of System Preferences no longer causes the subwoofer to make strange noises (Plasma 5.21).
- Circular timeout indicators within notifications are no longer invisible under certain circumstances (Plasma 5.21).
- After updating items from store.kde.org using Discover or the Get New [Item] window, some of those things are no longer incorrectly displayed as updatable the next time I check for updates (Frameworks 5.76).
- Fixed one of the ways Discover could crash when making updates that include plugins (Frameworks 5.77).
- In the Plasma Wayland session, keyboard shortcuts can now be reassigned without accidentally triggering their actions in the process (Frameworks 5.77).
- Using Meta + Tab as a shortcut on the Shortcuts page of System Preferences no longer results in the word "tab" being visually duplicated in the shortcut selection box (Frameworks 5.77).
- When using a fractional scale factor, Konsole no longer shows ugly horizontal lines in some places with some font sizes (Qt 5.15.1).
Improvements in the user's interface
- Dolphin URL browser is now on the toolbar (Dolphin 20.12).
- Hovering over an item in the Places Panel now displays a small tooltip with the full path to that location (Dolphin 20.12).
- All appearance-related pages in System Preferences have now been rearranged to be within a top-level "Appearance" list item that leads to the Global Themes page, to make it clearer that Global Themes can affect potentially all of them (Plasma 5.21).
- The way you add and switch between time zones in the Digital Clock applet has been completely revised to clarify the difference between changing the system-wide time zone and changing the time zone in the applet, and to make it easier to change the the system-wide time zone (Plasma 5.21).
- The KWin Rules page of System Preferences now warns you when you try to set rules for a window not managed by KWin that cannot be affected by the window rules (Plasma 5.21).
- The appearance of the Media Player applet (Plasma 5.21) has been further refined.
- When you configure a custom keyboard shortcut to activate the systray popup, the shortcut now also closes it if it is currently open, as it does for other applets (Plasma 5.21).
- The Networks applet now has its search field built into the header area and visible by default, instead of being hidden behind a button (Plasma 5.21).
- Separators between list items in Kirigami-based applications now have a more subtle and less conspicuous appearance (Frameworks 5.77).
- The desktop drag and drop menu no longer has an unnecessary extra separator (Frameworks 5.77).
- Section headings in Kirigami-based applications now wrap correctly when they are very long or when their window / view is very narrow (Frameworks 5.77).
When will this all come to KDE?
plasma 5.20 I arrive last October 13, Plasma 5.21 will arrive on February 9 and Plasma 5.20.4 will do it next Tuesday, December 1. KDE Applications 20.12 will arrive on December 10th, KDE Frameworks 5.76 will arrive sometime today and the next version, Frameworks 5.77, will arrive on December 12th.
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