KDE is already recovering from the great party that was Mega-Release of 6. Normality has not yet arrived, since the applications will come out of time in the coming months, but it is almost there. In a future for which there is currently no scheduled date, they will launch two versions of Plasma a year, and that will be the new normal until further notice. But right now they are still fixing bugs and introducing new features, as always.
Among this week's new features there are several that will make Dolphin improve as a file manager. In fact, the article published a few hours ago is called "Dolphin leveling up", which refers to the fact that there are several points with him as the protagonist. You will see it in the next one News list (a little cropped because it does not include the plasma 6.0.2 released this week).
New Features Coming to KDE
- KSSHAskPass now supports SK type SSH keys (Franz Baumgärtner, KSSHAskPass 24.05).
- The web browser widget has been given the option to always load a specific page each time, or remember the last page browsed (Shubham Arora, Plasma 6.1):
- The Information Center has a new page that displays technical audio information for debugging purposes (Shubham Arora, Plasma 6.1).
- The icon selection dialog has a filter so that you can see only symbolic icons, or no symbolic icons (Kai Uwe Broulik, Frameworks 6.1):
Improvements in the user's interface
- The Dolphin icon changes once again with the accent color (Kai Uwe Broulik, Dolphin 24.02.1. Link)
- Most bars in Dolphin now animate by fading in and out (Felix Ernst, Dolphin 24.05. Link):
- Some folders in Dolphin have special view settings applied by default, such as the Trash and Downloads folders. Now these special view settings apply to those folders, even if you are using the “use the same view settings for all folders” option (Jin Liu, Dolphin 24.05).
- Dolphin now has a new tab in its settings window for its panel settings, which were previously hidden in a context menu. So far only the Information Panel is represented there, but others may be added later (Benedikt Thiemer, Dolphin 24.05):
- Improved touch scrolling in Konsole (Willian Wang, Konsole 24.05).
- Improved the way the Konsole text cursor scales in Wayland, especially with fractional scaling factors (Luis Javier Merino Morán, Konsole 24.05).
- Okular now allows you to navigate through a document with the hjkl keys. Now if you hold down the Shift key while scrolling 10 times faster (Someone with the pseudonym "GI GI", Okular 24.05).
- Improved keyboard navigation in Kirigami sidebars using the GlobalDrawer component (Carl Schwan, Frameworks 6.1).
- Increased the size of the “Get new Plasma widgets” dialog (Nate Graham, Frameworks 6.1).
Error correction
- Dragging widgets to or from panels no longer sometimes causes Plasma to crash or the widget to ghostly get stuck on the desktop (Marco Martin, Plasma 6.0.3).
- In Wayland, adding a second keyboard layout causes the corresponding systray widget to appear immediately, rather than only after restarting Plasma or the system (Harald Sitter, Plasma 6.0.3).
- Fixed a way where Bluetooth pairing could fail (Ajrat Makhmutov, Plasma 6.0.3).
- On X11, the OSD screen selector works again (Fushan Wen, Plasma 6.0.3).
- Breeze GTK is again the default GTK theme (Fabian Vogt, Plasma 6.0.3).
- Fixed login sound again so it actually plays (Harald Sitter, Plasma 6.0.3).
- Reverted to an older and better way of sending pointer events in Wayland, which fixes several issues with unexpected teleportation of windows and cursors when dragging to maximize or minimize windows (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 6.1).
- Fixed several strange cursor issues with GPUs that do not properly support variable refresh rate (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 6.1).
- Fixed a source of xdg-desktop-portal crashes at startup (David Redondo, Frameworks 6.1).
- Fixed two issues with “Get New [Thing]” dialogs that caused them to not display installation progress correctly and get stuck after uninstalling something (Akseli Lahtinen, Frameworks 6.1).
- System monitor graphics now appear correctly for users of Intel integrated GPUs older than 10 years (Arjen Hiemstra, Frameworks 6.1).
- More UI elements across QtQuick-based KDE software stop animating when animations are globally disabled, which also fixes an issue where Plasma highlight buttons would disappear when animations were globally disabled (Nate Graham, Frameworks 6.1).
This week a total of 207 bugs have been fixed.
When will this all come to KDE?
plasma 6.0.3 will arrive on March 26, and Plasma 6.1 will arrive on June 18. Frameworks 6.1 will arrive on April 5, and KDE Gear 24.02.1 is scheduled for March 21. Looking at the page of these releases, it is confirmed that 24.02 will only have two maintenance updates, and probably in August it will return to the usual numbering/scheduling of a new major update in April-August-December.
To enjoy all this as soon as possible we have to add the repository backports of KDE, use an operating system with special repositories like Kde neon or any distribution whose development model is Rolling Release.
Images and content: pointieststick.com.