KDE Applications 21.08 is already in development. News and other changes prepared by the project

KDE Applications 21.08

This week, Nate Graham of the KDE project, has titled his weekly upcoming news post "Some Great Good Features." As soon as I opened it, I thought that the news section would mention many or, if not, they would be more striking, but no. He has mentioned three, and none of them seem important enough to me to put that title on the entrance. In any case, it also talks about performance and interface improvements, like every Friday.

They always add many new features, and surely we will always find something that interests us, but what stands out today is that the project has told us for the first time about KDE Applications 21.08, the set of project apps that will be released in mid-August. Below you have the list of what's new Graham has advanced, among which we will eliminate those of Plasma 5.21.3 because it was released a few days ago.

New Features Coming to KDE

  • KDE Connect now supports the Plasma notification quick reply feature, allowing you to reply to a text message from within the notification itself (KDE Connect 21.08).
  • Kate now has an optional panel that shows all TODO items in a project (Kate 21.08).
  • In the "Applications" tab of the audio volume applet, hovering over the name of an application that is currently playing audio now shows which device it is broadcasting to (Plasma 5.22).

Bug fixes and performance improvements

  • The Partition Manager now correctly reports the SMART status of all disks (Partition Manager 21.04).
  • KCalc "Constants" buttons now have human-readable text when using a dark color scheme (KCalc 21.08).
  • When using Okular in a multi-monitor system that supports and uses different scale factors for each screen, Okular now draws your window and content according to the scale factor of the screen you are currently on, rather than the highest out of all the connected displays (Okular 21.08).
  • Pasting saved Klipper text in GTK applications into Plasma Wayland session now works (Plasma 5.21.4).
  • When applying a global theme to a new user, applet positions are no longer messed up when logging in as that user a second time (Plasma 5.21.4).
  • Assigning a color to one sensor in the new Plasma System Monitor app no ​​longer incorrectly applies it to all (Plasma 5.21.4).
  • Navigating the desktop to switch between virtual desktops now respects the 'Navigation wraps around' setting that you can set on the Virtual Desktops (Plasma 5.22) System Preferences page.
  • The "Highlight Configuration Changes" feature in System Preferences is no longer confused with localized text on the locations page (Plasma 5.22).
  • After setting a fractional scale factor (say 125%) in the Plasma Wayland session, the XWayland windows now respond correctly to mouse input immediately, instead of requiring the system to reboot first (Plasma 5.22 ).
  • When uninstalling an item from a "Get New [Item]" window, the user interface no longer sometimes claims that the uninstall process hangs forever, even when it was actually successful (Frameworks 5.81).

Interface improvements

  • It is now possible to select the text of the file name in the Dolphin information panel, so that it can be copied to the clipboard (Dolphin 21.04)
  • When we open a document in Okular that was already open, Okular now switches to that document by default (behavior is configurable) instead of opening it again in a new instance (Okular 21.04)
  • The Gwenview status bar is now always at the bottom of the window (Gwenview 21.08)
  • When opening the Window Rules page from the title bar context menu, it now opens in System Preferences instead of a weird custom dialog, which fixes several bugs, including text that cannot be copied ( Plasma 5.22)
  • Improved animation effect for blue line showing you which systray item is active (Plasma 5.22)
  • Discover's screenshot pop-up now has a visible close button so you don't have to realize you click the darkened background area to close it (Plasma 5.22).

When will this all come to KDE?

Plasma 5.21.4 is coming April 6 and KDE Applications 21.04 will do so on the 22nd of the same month. KDE Frameworks 5.81 will be released on April 10. Plasma 5.22 will arrive on June 8. As for the KDE Applications 20.08, at the moment we only know that they will arrive in August.

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.


Be the first to comment

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked with *

*

*

  1. Responsible for the data: Miguel Ángel Gatón
  2. Purpose of the data: Control SPAM, comment management.
  3. Legitimation: Your consent
  4. Communication of the data: The data will not be communicated to third parties except by legal obligation.
  5. Data storage: Database hosted by Occentus Networks (EU)
  6. Rights: At any time you can limit, recover and delete your information.