Right now we are in the middle of summer in the northern hemisphere, and for that reason it is likely that we will see how some projects slow down a bit in their development. That seems not to be the case KDE, that although the person who informs us of his news is on vacation right now and has published a more "lazy" entry, he acknowledges that it is likely that some things that have taken place in the last seven days have not been included.
From the information we have, KDE still working on preparing Plasma 6 for the launch of the stable version, which will take place at the end of this 2023, no less was expected. And some bugs that will come with Plasma 5.27.7 have also been fixed. Considering when that update is planned, the releases of 6.0 and 5.27.7 will almost coincide.
What's New in Plasma 6
La information page plasma 6 has received information important as a “how to use/try it” section, which in summary explains that you can build from source code or use pre-release versions of Fedora KDE, KaOS ISO and Install and KDE neon Unstable. My personal recommendation is to test it in a virtual machine, although developers can also do it on their computers, taking into account that they will definitely have to solve problems.
As for the software itself, KRunner's auto-completion behavior has changed: now, the auto-completion text appears as a "placeholder" (reserved space) in gray and we have to click on the right arrow or on the tabulator to accept it, as is common in other places where the text can be auto-complete. For those who prefer the old behavior, the option still exists.
The keyboard indicator widget now visually displays the status of caps and number lock, and added a color that indicates when we've gone above 100% if we have the option enabled.
As somewhat more general new functions, we have only been told that Kate now has an option to open new tabs immediately to the right of the current one.
User interface improvements coming to KDE
- Elisa now has a smarter algorithm for finding cover files (which turns out to be a surprisingly complex topic after covering the simple and easy cases), ensuring that fewer of them are lost (Jack Hill, Elisa 23.08).
- Self-hiding panels that use a dark color scheme no longer sometimes show a visual glitch when sliding in and out (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.27.7).
- When using a multi-channel audio setup that has been configured to have different volume levels for the channels, global volume level adjustment (for example, using keyboard keys or a global shortcut) now adjusts the volume of each channel proportionally instead of absolutely (Quinten Kock, Plasma 5.27.7).
- Open/Save dialogs now always show the items "Recent Files" and "Recent Folders" in their sidebars (Méven Car, Frameworks 6.0).
- When merging the contents of two folders, the prompt dialog now makes it clear that the contents will be merged, instead of scaring you by talking about overwriting (Méven Car, Frameworks 6.0).
Correction of minor bugs
- Gwenview no longer crashes when opening .nef format RAW image files (Kevin Backhouse, Gwenview 23.04.3).
- Fixed a major performance issue in the Plasma Wayland session that affected Intel GPUs and caused poor performance when animating widgets with the Background Contrast effect enabled (Xaver Hugl and David Edmundson, Plasma 5.27.7).
- The System Monitor application and widgets again display statistics for NVIDIA devices using the 535 series of proprietary drivers. Also, it should now be more robust against future changes to the way the NVIDIA proprietary driver formats your data (David Redondo, Plasma 5.27.7).
This list is a summary of the fixed bugs. The complete lists of bugs are on the pages of 15 minute bug, very high priority bugs and overall list. This week a total of 68 bugs have been fixed.
When will this all come to KDE?
plasma 5.27.7 will arrive on Tuesday, September 19, and there is no confirmed date on Frameworks 6.0. KDE Gear 23.04.3 will be available on July 6, 23.08 will arrive in August and Plasma 6 will follow in the second half of 2023. There is still no official date confirmed, but there is a page where they will report about the releases of the next version of Plasma.
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.