KDE Discover now shows app ratings
Plasma 5.26 beta is just around the corner. With its launch already on the horizon, KDE has stepped on the accelerator and has delivered many of the novelties on which it is working, with the intention that they appear in the final version of the next version of its graphical environment. They have yet to be accepted, but today they have spoken to us of several of them.
Still, KDE acknowledges that right now the idea is to focus on bug fixes and polishing the user interface over the next six weeks. They are also open, in fact they ask for it, to receive suggestions and help from the community, in order to continue improving things.
New Features Coming to KDE
- In the Night Color page of System Preferences, you can now set a daytime color in addition to a night color for maximum flexibility (Natalie Clarius, Plasma 5.26).
- Discover enhancements:
- Now it shows the content ratings of the applications that support them (Aleix Pol González, Plasma 5.26).
- Now allows changing the name used to submit a review (Bernardo Gomes Negri, Plasma 5.26).
- New "Share" button on the details page of each application that allows you to send a link to the application to another person (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.26).
- Now it checks that there is enough free space before updating, and warns when there isn't (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.26).
- You can now configure what happens when a window that is currently on another Virtual Desktop is activated: it switches to that window's Virtual Desktop (the default setting) or the window jumps to the current Virtual Desktop (Natalie Clarius, Plasma 5.26).
Improvements in the user's interface
- When using a multi-monitor setup, the position of windows is now remembered per screen, so when screens are switched on and off, windows that haven't been moved manually will automatically move to the last screen they were known to be on. they were (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.26).
- Notifications for pairing/permission/etc. of Bluetooth devices will now appear even when in Do Not Disturb mode (Nicolas Fella, Plasma 5.26).
- The Color Picker widget popup now displays a placeholder message when there are no colors in it, and allows you to remove saved colors (Fushan Wen, Plasma 5.26).
- The compact rendering of a separate media controller widget (not the one that appears in the system tray by default) now shows the title, artist, and album art of the currently playing track (Fushan Wen, Plasma 5.26).
- Now you can also zoom using the keyboard shortcut GOAL++, which should be easier for people with ISO keyboards than the old default of just GOAL+= (Nate Graham, Plasma 5.26).
Correction of minor bugs
- When the battery reaches the "critically low" threshold, the screen no longer lights up inappropriately if it was already below the brightness level it was automatically set to (Louis Moureaux, Plasma 5.24.7).
- Applying a cursor theme that inherits itself no longer causes the user account to be unlogged (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.25.5).
- In Plasma Wayland session, KWin no longer crashes sometimes when dragging an attachment from Thunderbird (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.25.5).
- In Discover, clicking the button to remove user data for an app that is no longer installed and that comes from a local Flatpak package (not a more common .flatpakref file or app from a remote repository) already not all user data is removed from all Flatpak applications (Aleix Pol González, Plasma 5.26).
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. As for the first one, they have halved the amount since they started with this initiative.
When will this all come to KDE?
Plasma 5.25.5 will arrive next Tuesday, September 6, Frameworks 5.97 will be available next Saturday, September 10th, and KDE Gear 22.08.1 on Thursday, September 8th. Plasma 5.26 will be available from October 11th. KDE Applications 22.12 does not yet have an official release date scheduled.
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.