This week's article on KDE It has been a bit short, but the truth is that there have been two (three, counting the input methods), one yesterday and one today. In the first they explained to us how the progress of Plasma 6 is going, and in the second we found the news they have collected in the last seven days. So today and here we are going to include the information of both, and each one to decide what seems most interesting to them.
In the article about the Plasma 6 progress, which we recommend reading in the original medium, there is a list of what is done, and a lot are ports to the new version. This is important, because a large part of the work that has to be done is to make what exists work in what is to come.
What is done in Plasma 6
- Port all uses of Plasma SVG elements to KSvg.
- Adapt everything to use Kirigami colors and units.
- Port PlasmaExtras.Heading to Kirigami.HeadingAvoid direct use of KActionCollection.
- Improve and modernize the wallpapers API.
- Improve and modernize the API of the Plasmoid component.
- Improvement and modernization of the Plasmoid Actions API.
- Adapt PlasmaCore.IconItem to Kirigami.Icon.
- Port to header declarative actions in KCMs (KCM is short for "KDE Control Module" and is internal slang for a page in System Settings).
News prepared for Plasma 6
- Copying and pasting files on the desktop that do not fit because there is not enough space now displays a notification explaining the problem (Thenujan Sandramohan).
- In the Plasma Wayland session, cursors now look better when using fractional scale factors (Vlad Zahorodnii).
Interface improvements coming to KDE
- Gwenview now makes transitions between images more smoothly, or, if it can't because the system is under heavy load, doesn't animate the transition at all (Felix Ernst, Gwenview 23.08).
- Dolphin's location bar can now be focused using the Alt+D shortcut (Amol Godbole, Dolphin 23.12).
- Ctrl+Scroll to zoom in Dolphin now goes in the expected direction in Wayland (Amol Godbole, Dolphin 23.12).
- In Dolphin, you can now press and hold with a touch screen to enter selection mode for already selected files or folders as well (Steffen Hartlieb, Dolphin 23.12).
Correction of minor bugs
- When browsing the Kickoff app launcher, the initially selected item is now always the first one, not the one under the mouse pointer (Fushan Wen, Plasma 5.27.7).
- Fixed another way KWin could crash in the Plasma Wayland session when clicking a window decoration tooltip (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.27.8).
- In Plasma Wayland session, alt+tab through windows no longer goes backwards when Caps Lock is on (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.27.8)
- Fixed a bug that could cause Color Night to not turn off correctly after waking the computer from sleep at a time when it would otherwise have automatically turned off (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.27.8).
- In volume and brightness OSD menus, the text "100%" no longer appears between two lines inappropriately in some languages (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.27.8).
- Fixed a bug that could cause some items to be silently skipped when copying a large number of files (Harald Sitter, Frameworks 5.109).
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 113 bugs.
When will this all come to KDE?
If we pay attention to the calendar of 6 weeks apart, plasma 5.27.8 will arrive on Tuesday, September 12, and there is still no confirmed date on Frameworks 6.0 (5.109 should arrive on August 12). KDE Gear 23.08 will be available on August 24, KDE Gear 23.12 will arrive sometime in December, and Plasma 6 will arrive in the second half of 2023. The exact arrival date of Plasma 6 is also unknown, but there is a page where they will report about the releases of the next version of the KDE desktop. It is almost certain that it will arrive before the end of this 2023.
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.