We are back on the weekend, which means that Nate Graham has published an article about some news that excites us and makes us nervous in equal parts. They excite us because they will reach the KDE desktop, but they make us nervous due to impatience, especially for Kubuntu users who, as we will explain at the end of this article, we will have to have a little (a little enough) more patience.
The article that posted This week Graham has titled it "All Things," referring to the fact that they are retouching a little here, a little there, adding functions on the other hand ... The KDE desktop is already one of the best that exists, the best according to the point of view of the author of this article, but it improves with each new release of Plasma, KDE Applications and their Frameworks.
New features coming to the KDE desktop
- Okular allows us to sign digital documents (Okular 21.04).
- Kate and other KTextEditor-based apps now include a new feature to swap selected text with the latest item on the clipboard (Frameworks 5.78).
- All KDE software supports the AV1 image format when the libavif library is installed, which includes showing previews in Dolphin (Frameworks 5.78).
Bug fixes and performance improvements
- Dolphin is never in a situation where it always tries to run executable JavaScript files instead of opening them, when in a different context it has previously been told to always run executable files (Dolphin 20.12.1).
- Fixed a common crash when launching bug in Dolphin and a case where Dolphin could crash when opening a new tab while there was text in the search field (Dolphin 20.12.1).
- Dolphin no longer hangs when trying to drag a disc into the Places panel (Dolphin 20.12.1).
- Elisa's "Force file system indexing" option is now correctly remembered in the configuration window (Elisa 20.12.1).
- Massively increased performance and search speed for large documents on Kate (Kate 21.04).
- Kate's quick-open panel now always opens the correct item (Kate 21.04).
- Character placement has been improved in various command line applications running with Konsole (Konsole 21.04).
- The Emoji selector opens once more to display your "Recent" page (Plasma 5.20.5).
- Improved support for multi-monitor setups using different scale factors for each monitor in the Plasma Wayland session (Plasma 5.21).
- When you press Alt + Tab in an XWayland window in the Plasma Wayland session, mouse wheel scrolling now always works correctly in the window (Plasma 5.21).
- The global menu applet now works correctly in the Plasma Wayland session for XWayland windows (Plasma 5.21).
- The Users page of System Preferences no longer fails to set an avatar image when given a very large file; now resizes it to fit (Plasma 5.21).
- The lockout / logout applet works correctly again (Plasma 5.21).
- KRunner now correctly evaluates single digit factorial expressions (Plasma 5.21).
- The KGlobalAccel daemon no longer hangs, either once or repeatedly, when logging out of the user account or shutting down the computer (Plasma 5.21).
- Fixed the most common crash affecting all KDE software: when graphics drivers are updated but before rebooting, and hardware acceleration is no longer available (Frameworks 5.78).
- Fixed one of the most common ways an application could crash while downloading or updating Get New [Article] content, and a less common way that would occur (Frameworks 5.78).
- Plasma panels no longer show a strange black line when compositing is disabled (Frameworks 5.78).
- File dialogs can now open files whose names begin with a colon (Frameworks 5.78).
- Custom shortcuts configured to activate Plasma applets are no longer sometimes lost after reboot (Frameworks 5.78).
- Improved the efficiency of the Plasma SVG caching system, leading to a small but measurable performance improvement across Plasma (Frameworks 5.78).
- The Plasma calendar widget no longer supports trying to display negative years, which would cause Plasma to crash (Frameworks 5.78).
Improvements in the user's interface
- In Kate's tab switching panel, the currently selected document can now be closed by pressing the key combination Ctrl + W (Kate 21.04).
- The desktop sessions page user interface has been rewritten in System Preferences in QML for a cleaner, more modern look (Plasma 5.21).
- The default automount changes announced last week have been reverted because the new Disk and Devices behavior makes them largely unnecessary (Plasma 5.21).
- The Layout and Lock Screen pages in System Preferences now support the "Highlight Changed Settings" feature (Plasma 5.21).
- Re-added the option for the Disks and Devices pop-up not to open automatically when a new device is connected (Plasma 5.21).
- A few more adjustments have been made to the Audio Volume applet, including moving the tab bar to the bottom, always hiding inactive devices, and moving all tool buttons to the header row, as with other applets in Plasma 5.21 (Plasma 5.21).
- On Discover's review sheet, individual review date stamps are now displayed in a format appropriate for our region (Plasma 5.21).
- On Discover's "Updates" page, the "Update" and "Check for updates" actions have been repositioned (Plasma 5.21).
- Relative paths can now be entered in URL browsers used in various KDE applications (Frameworks 5.78).
Arrival date to the KDE desktop
Plasma 5.21 will arrive on February 9 and Plasma 5.20.5 will do it next Tuesday, January 5. KDE Applications 20.12.1 will arrive on January 7, and 21.04 will arrive sometime in April 2021. KDE Frameworks 5.78 will land on January 9.
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 or any distribution whose development model is Rolling Release.
Yes, the above will not be met with Plasma 5.20 or 5.21, or not for Kubuntu until the release of Hirsute Hippo, as we already discussed in this article.