KDE says they are already thinking about the future Plasma 6.0, but they end the month with more improvements for Plasma 5.27

KDE is already thinking about Plasma 6

Smells of change in KDE. Currently, all its developers are working to improve what already exists, such as Plasma 5.26, and the future in the medium term. But they also take into account that Plasma 5 is close to reaching the end of its path, and they are already looking askance at Plasma 6 that they will deliver to us, more or less, after the summer of 2023. There will be a change in number, but they do not want to make changes aggressive that can weigh down the user experience.

One thing everyone seems to agree on is to avoid making any big changes to the architecture, most of them being in the user interface and new features. Basically, and if I haven't misunderstood, the number change will be because Plasma 6 will be based on Qt 6, but it won't give them a "developer attack", they won't introduce many more changes under the hood and the transition should be smoother than Plasma 4 to Plasma 5.

New Features Coming to KDE

  • For those of you who don't like Dolphin's recently changed list view behavior of selecting or opening an item by clicking on empty areas of its row, you can now revert to the old way (Felix Ernst, Dolphin 22.12):

Dolphin on KDE Gear 22.12

  • Discover now has a new home page layout with dynamically updating categories showcasing the most popular apps, and a new set of featured apps showcasing the best of KDE (Aleix Pol González, Carl Schwan, Nate Graham, and Devin Lin, Plasma 5.27):

Discover on KDE Plasma 5.27

  • The networking icon can now be middle-clicked to turn airplane mode on and off (Nate Graham, Plasma 5.27):
  • "Run" (i.e. click or return key) dictionary definition entries in KRunner's results list now copies the definition text to the clipboard, and even sends a system notification about it to let it be known to have occurred (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.27)
  • In Dolphin path browser bar dropdowns, hidden folders will now be shown there if hidden files are currently visible (Eugene Popov, Frameworks 5.100):

Dolphin together with Frameworks 5.100

Improvements in the user's interface

  • On Info Center pages that consist of monospaced text, the text is now copyable (and therefore copied) and no longer overflows slightly on the right side (Ivan Tkachenko, Plasma 5.26.2)
  • In the X11 Plasma session, portalized dialogs displayed by Flatpak apps no longer use the wrong theme and colors (Harald Sitter, Plasma 5.26.2)
  • Breeze-themed windows now have a subtle outline around them, which not only looks very stylish, but also helps prevent dark-themed windows from blending into each other (Akseli Lahtinen. Plasma 5.27):

Future Breeze Theme

  • Floating Panels now deflate when any window touches them, and the margins they gain from doing so are now smaller and less weird looking. This also causes Panel popups to touch the edge of a floating Panel (Niccolò Venerandi, Plasma 5.27)
  • The new portalized Kirigami-based app switcher dialog now has more focused and relevant text in the header area (Nate Graham, Plasma 5.27):

Choosing which application to open with in KDE

  • KRunner can now be searched for "Save Session" to invoke the functionality to save sessions manually, and when using KRunner to switch sessions, the message dialog it displays is now worded in a more understandable way and does not do what we are about to do. make it look scary (Natalie Clarius, Plasma 5.27).
  • The KRunner "Recent Files" plugin now matches substrings (Natalie Clarius, Plasma 5.27).
  • The Kickoff popup can now be resized to be smaller than it is by default (Niccolò Venerandi, Plasma 5.27).
  • The title text on QtWidgets-based System Preferences pages now have the same padding and alignment as those on Kirigami-based pages, so there is no longer a strange difference between them when changing pages (Ismael Asensio, Plasma 5.27).
  • In all KDE software, the appearance of list views and list section headers has been greatly improved (Devin Lin, Frameworks 5.100):

Discover in KDE Frameworks 5.100

  • Panel Widgets' popups now display centered on their Panel when they could be displayed that way without disconnecting from their Panel icons (Niccolò Venerandi, Frameworks 5.100).
  • In dialogs where files can be permanently deleted, the buttons to do so now say "Permanently Delete" so you can be absolutely sure what you're getting into (Guilherme Marçal Silva, Frameworks 5.100).

Important bug fixes

  • In the Plasma Wayland session:
    • "Flat" acceleration profile now works correctly (John Brooks, Plasma 5.26.2).
    • Tapping the address bar in Firefox with a touch screen now always brings up the soft keyboard as expected, without having to focus on another app and switch back to Firefox first (Xaver Hugl and Xuetian Weng, Plasma 5.26.2).
    • Clicking and dragging something in Firefox no longer causes the cursor to get stuck in its "grabbed hand" state until a tab is dragged (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.26.3).
  • Fixed one of the most common Plasma crashes when using Plasma Vaults (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.26.3).
  • Fixed a recently introduced bug that could make it difficult to tap the top right pixel on the screen to trigger the close button of a maximized window (Arjen Hiemstra, Plasma 5.26.3).
  • Fixed a recent regression in the X11 session that caused maximized windows to not maximize properly when scaling (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.26.3).

This list is a summary of the fixed bugs. The complete lists of bugs are on the pages of 15 minute bugvery high priority bugs and overall list. This week a total of 144 bugs have been fixed.

When will this all come to KDE?

Plasma 5.26.2 will arrive on Tuesday, November 8 and Frameworks 5.100 will be available four days later, on the 12th. Plasma 5.27 will arrive on February 14th, and KDE Applications 22.12 will be available on December 8th.

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.

Information and images: pointieststick.com.


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