Today is a day that is marked in the “Calendar” for any Linux user. Whether or not you use any x-buntu, Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish will be released today, but that doesn't mean that everything else falls by the wayside or has to be shelved. Today was also scheduled to launch KDE Gear 22.04, the KDE suite of apps from April 2022, and the only thing that has changed is that have announced it a couple of hours earlier than usual.
Seven weeks after the last point update, KDE Gear 22.04 is the first version of a new series, which means it brings new features. Among them, there are again many new features for their video editor, Kdenlive, but they also wanted to tell us about a new addition: Kalendar is now officially available and has become part of the KDE set of apps.
KDE Gear 22.04 Highlights
The full list of changes, and there are many, is at this link. The highlights are the following:
- Dolphin:
- Now shows previews of more file types and more information on each item. For example, ePub files or .part files, or while a file is being compressed.
- Connecting MTP devices such as cameras now works much better.
- Console:
- It will now appear in searches if we search for “cmd” or “command prompt”.
- The plugin for SSH has been improved and now you can assign different visual profiles with different colors for the background etc for each SSH account.
- New quick commands feature, available in Plugins/Show quick commands, and we will be able to create scripts that we use frequently and invoke them when we need it with a few clicks.
- Konsole now supports Sixel images to be displayed inside the window.
- Scrolling performance has been greatly improved, and is now twice as fast.
- kdenlive:
- It is now available for macOS users with M1 devices.
- The render dialog has been improved and it is easier to see all the options.
- Custom profiles can now be created, and zonal rendering is now possible.
- Initial support for 10bit color.
- Kate:
- Starting today, Kate will boot faster and make it easier to navigate our project directories.
- Indentation code has been improved.
- Improved support for Wayland.
- Improved usability, stability and range of functions.
- OK:
- Improved interface and usability.
- Now shows a splash screen when opened without opening from any file.
- Immediate notice when we are going to sign a document, but we do not have valid certificates.
- Elisa improves its support for touch screens, it's faster, more stable and you can now drag and drop music files and playlists from your file manager to the playlist panel.
- With Skanpage you can now share scanned documents (including multi-page PDFs) using KDE's general sharing system.
- Spectacle's annotation tools add functionality to crop, scale, undo, redo, and generally do much more with the images you capture. Also, any annotation settings that are changed will be remembered the next time the program is started.
- Gwenview detects and guides the installation of camera importers that lack support packages. There's also a new print preview functionality for when you need a hard copy.
- KDE Itinerary improves support for more train companies (such as Renfe and Amtrak) and airlines. It also adds more detailed time information and a built-in barcode scanner to scan ticket information directly from the app.
- Kalendar comes to KDE Gear. It is a modern calendar and task manager app with an attractive interface and many useful features that can be used to sync with other calendars. Works on desktop and Plasma Mobile. It should be noted that this Kalendar "gets out" of Kontact, the application that KDE used to also manage mail, but that they have left aside a bit due to the problems it caused.
- Falkon and Skanpage have also joined KDE Gear.
KDE Gear 22.04 has been posted just an hour ago, and the apps will appear starting today on Flathub, Snapcraft, and KDE's Backports repository. They will be arriving in the official repositories over the months.