With the fifth Plasma 5.19 series maintenance update now available, KDE has focused squarely on Plasma 5.20. Nate Graham has been telling us about the next version of the graphical environment in which he collaborates for a long time, but today just ten days ago they launched their first beta, which means that users can now install it, test it and report the bugs that we find. That is what is happening, and the project has begun to repair everything that is being communicated to it.
Regarding new roles, Graham Has mentioned only one this week, more specifically that Okular will allow us to deactivate the animation of smooth scrolling from the same app, a novelty that we do not know when it will arrive because they have not indicated the version that will include it. It will probably arrive in December of this year. Below you have the rest of news that have advanced us a few minutes ago and that will arrive in the coming weeks.
Bug fixes and performance improvements coming to the KDE desktop
- Kate's File menu no longer loses menu items after closing a tab (Kate 20.08.2).
- Okular's editable shapes no longer display poorly when inertially scrolled (Okular 1.11.2).
- When a scanner hardly fits a particular page size, Skanlite will now show the option to scan to that page size anyway (libksane 20.12).
- The text of Elisa's keyboard shortcuts is now translated correctly (Elisa 20.12).
- Clearing clipboard history in Wayland no longer crashes Plasma (Plasma 5.20).
- Improved Plasma SVG cache heuristics so that various things that can sometimes be invisible after updating Plasma are now displayed as they are supposed to (Plasma 5.20).
- In Wayland, clicking on a Task Manager entry while that entry's tooltip is visible no longer crashes Plasma (Plasma 5.20).
- In Wayland, clicking on a Task Manager thumbnail now activates that window, as you would expect (Plasma 5.20).
- Also in Wayland, the window stacking order is now always correct (Plasma 5.20).
- Those that are hidden automatically revert to an animated show / hide effect (Plasma 5.20).
- Scroll effect for title bar buttons in GTK header bar apps appears once again when it should (Plasma 5.20)
- System Preferences and Information Center application names are now translated correctly (Plasma 5.20).
- The Plasma Emoji input window now always shows nice colorful emojis even if the fontconfig files in the distribution are a bit messy (Plasma 5.20).
- The little arrow in the System Preferences list items for a top-level category will no longer appear if the category's existence is obfuscated because it only has one item, in which case System Preferences automatically takes you to the child item (Plasma 5.20).
- Shortcuts for switching to particular activities now work again when configured from the corresponding System Preferences page (Plasma 5.20).
- Plasma applet configuration windows now always show the correct appearance of the sidebar (Plasma 5.20).
- In Wayland, context menus now always have shadows, as expected (Plasma 5.20).
- Buttons in Breeze now display the correct colors when using certain non-default color schemes (Plasma 5.20).
- Improved the way KWin detects completely opaque windows, allowing you to do less work by not rendering anything that is completely covered by them (Plasma 5.21).
- You are no longer annoyingly asked if we want to run non-executable script files when we try to open them (Frameworks 5.75).
- Again, it is possible to enter shortcuts on the Shortcuts page of System Preferences that use the Alt key when the "Alt + something" shortcut you are defining would trigger an action on the shortcut input page. (Frameworks 5.75).
- In applications that display the message "Are you sure you want to close multiple documents?" the dialog when exiting while multiple documents are open will no longer do so if the application is closed as part of the normal shutdown sequence when using session save (Frameworks 5.75).
- User avatars in Kickoff Application Launcher and the new Users page of System Preferences are no longer blurred (Frameworks 5.75).
- Button icons on login and lock screens are no longer faded (Frameworks 5.75).
Interface improvements
- Pressing the Esc key in Gwenview while in full screen view now leaves full screen view the first time you press it, instead of returning to browse mode first (Gwenview 20.12).
- Elisa now has keyboard shortcuts to go back and forward per track while in the app (Ctrl + left arrow and Ctrl + right arrow) (Elisa 20.12).
- Newly generated thumbnail preview images will no longer incorporate mostly transparent mime icons in the lower right corner, which was very confusing (Dolphin 20.12).
- Scroll bars in GTK applications using the Breeze GTK theme now have the correct width (Plasma 5.20).
- After changing the battery charge limit, a message is only displayed saying “Charger may need to be reconnected) if it is not already plugged in (Plasma 5.20).
- System Preferences and Information Center now have a "Report Bug ..." menu item in their hamburger menus (Plasma 5.20).
- The System Activity window (what appears when you press Ctrl + Esc) now has correct margins (Plasma 5.20).
- The KRunner settings page now uses more precise text for the positioning function (Plasma 5.20).
- The Information Center now includes a new network interfaces page (Plasma 5.21).
When will all this come
Plasma 5.20 is coming October 13. As for the other versions, it has not yet been revealed when Plasma 5.21 will arrive, but it is known that Plasma 5.18.6 will arrive on September 29. The second point update KDE Applications 20.08 will land on October 8th, and we already "know" that KDE Applications 20.12 will arrive on December 10th. We put it in quotes because in the web of your programming They have made it clear that it is not official. KDE Frameworks 5.75 will arrive on October 10.
To enjoy all this as soon as possible we have to add the KDE Backports repository or use an operating system with special repositories like Kde neon.