just seven days ago we published future news article KDE in which we talked about how they were going to improve the interface in points such as the accent color. Today, a week later, we are talking about the same thing again, more specifically that they have begun to migrate software to QtQuick with the intention of improving the visual consistency of the user interface, and also better separating the internal components, modernizing the code and the "hackability" of the UI. In addition, the useful life of the software will increase.
That for one part. On the other hand, KDE's Nate Graham has returned to publish a long News list that will be arriving over time, among which we have more interface tweaks, new functions and bug fixes. More improvements have also been made in Wayland, and I who have tried it think that, although it works well, it still has enough to be able to use it as a main option without worries.
15 minute bugs
The list has dropped from 73 to 70, and the corrected this week is:
- Some monitors no longer constantly turn on in a loop when connected (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.24.5).
- Anyone can change their favorites back in Kickoff and Kicker and have those changes persist after restarting Plasma or the computer (Méven Car, Plasma 5.24.5).
- After installing a Flatpak app using Discover, there is no longer a tricky "Install" button there anyway (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.24.5).
New Features Coming to KDE
- Skanpage now supports the export of searchable PDFs using optical character recognition (Alexander Stippich, Skanpage 22.08).
- Dolphin now allows sorting by file extension if preferred (Eugene Popov, Dolphin 22.08).
- In the Plasma Wayland session, it is now possible to change the screen resolution to resolutions beyond those officially supported, just like you can in the X11 session (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.25).
Bug fixes and performance improvements
- Dolphin Terminal Panel no longer desyncs from the view itself (Felix Ernst, Dolphin 22.04.1).
- Elisa's "Load Playlist..." and "Save Playlist..." actions now work from the global menu (Firlaev-Hans Fiete, Elisa 22.04.1).
- Filelight tooltip text is no longer cropped at the ends (Harald Sitter, Filelight 22.08).
- Plasma no longer randomly crashes when you have more than one application with multiple windows open and interact with one of the Task Manager tooltips (Fushan Wen, Plasma 5.24.5).
- In Plasma Wayland session, KWin no longer crashes when connected USB-C monitors wake up from their power saving states (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.24.5).
- The global menu widget no longer shows menus that have been marked as hidden by the app, such as Kolourpaint's "Tools" menu (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.24.5).
- In the Plasma Wayland session, KWin no longer crashes when closing a laptop and reopening it when its internal display is set to turn off on close (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.25).
- In the Plasma Wayland session, fixed another way KWin could crash when unplugging an external display (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.25).
- Closing a window that spawned a "Get New [Thing]" child window now closes the child window as well, instead of letting it continue to exist, and so the parent application crashes or has an invisible window that cannot be displayed again until the application is removed using System Monitor or a terminal window (Alexander Lohnau, Frameworks 5.94).
- In an application that uses xdg-desktop-portals (for example, the Flatpak and Snap applications), when using a file dialog to access a file in a remote location that is automatically mounted using kio-fuse under the hood, the next time you open the file dialog again, it will open showing the original location, not your weird-looking kio-fuse mount point (Harald Sitter, Plasma 5.25).
- Applications like Konsole that allow you to set a custom color scheme for the entire window that overrides the system's default color scheme are now substantially faster to launch (Nicolas Fella, Frameworks 5.94).
Improvements in the user's interface
- KWin Scripts' KCM has been ported to QtQuick, modernizing its appearance and simplifying future maintenance (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.25).
- Filelight has been ported to QtQuick, modernizing its appearance and simplifying future maintenance (Harald Sitter, Filelight 22.08).
- DrKonqi's bug reporting wizard has been ported to QtQuick as well (Harald Sitter, Plasma 5.25).
- For apps using xdg-desktop-portals, the app switcher dialog now looks and behaves better (Nate Graham, Plasma 5.25).
- For those who didn't like the change to always skip minimized tasks when scrolling through Task Manager to switch tasks, it is now configurable (Abhijeet Viswa, Plasma 5.25).
When will this all come to KDE?
Plasma 5.24.5 will arrive next Tuesday, May 3, and Frameworks 5.94 will be available on the 14th of the same month. Plasma 5.25 will arrive as early as June 14, and KDE Gear 22.04.1 will land with bug fixes on May 12. KDE Gear 22.08 does not yet have an official scheduled date.
To enjoy all this as soon as possible we have to add the repository backports from KDE or use an operating system with special repositories like Kde neon or any distribution whose development model is Rolling Release.