KDE keeps improving Wayland in general and Spectacle in particular

Gwenview on KDE Gear 21.08

In different hardware projects, there is a phrase that is repeated: "ARM is the future." In Linux, part of that future passes through Wayland, the graphical server that it already uses by default, for example, Ubuntu. I have experienced some problems with Wayland, to which is added that not all software is prepared for it, and that is known to all developers, so KDE, among others, are working to improve things.

Today Nate Gragam from the KDE project has republished an article about the news they are working on, and at the beginning he tells us about improvements to Plasma Wayland in general and Spectacle in particular. And it is that the tools that we use now to capture the screen do not work in Wayland if they are not adapted, as is the case with SimpleScreenRecorder. They are also working to make Plasma 5.22 perform better.

New Features Coming to KDE

  • Spectacle can now be invoked globally to take a screenshot of the window under the cursor using Meta + Ctrl + Print (Antonio Prcela, Spectacle 21.08).
  • Gwenview can now read the embedded color profile information for image formats other than JPEG and PNG (Daniel Novomeský, Gwenview 21.08).
  • If the keyboard lacks a "mute microphone" key, it can now be done by default using the keyboard shortcut Meta + mute speaker (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.22).
  • In the Plasma Wayland session, the systray now notifies when something is recording the screen, and offers the opportunity to cancel it (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.23).
  • KCommandBar has been added to all KDE applications that use KXMLGui, so you can start using it by pressing Ctrl + Alt + I in Dolphin, Gwenview, Okular, Konsole, Krita, Kdenlive, etc. (Waqar Ahmed, Frameworks 5.83).

Bug fixes and performance improvements

  • Spectacle is now much faster and more reliable in the Plasma Wayland session (Vlad Zahorodnii, Spectacle 21.04.2).
  • Konsole no longer crashes sometimes when using the "random color scheme" setting (Luis Javier Merino Morán, Konsole 21.04.2).
  • Elisa's elegant blur effects have been ported to use a lighter implementation, greatly improving the visual performance of the application when entering or exiting party mode or when resizing the window (Tranter Madi, Elisa 21.08).
  • Dolphin no longer crashes sometimes when emptying garbage (Ömer Fadıl Usta) Dolphin 21.04.2).
  • In the Plasma Wayland session, disconnecting an external display no longer causes all open Qt applications to crash (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.22).
  • The reliability of the Plasma Wayland session has been greatly improved for users of Nvidia hardware with the proprietary driver (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.22).
  • Fixed a case where the new Plasma System Monitor application could crash on launch (David Redondo, Plasma 5.22).
  • The new Plasma System Monitor application no longer crashes sometimes when its main window goes out of focus (David Redondo, Plasma 5.22).
  • The new Plasma System Monitor application now displays disk usage information with full precision (David Redondo, Plasma 5.22).
  • Launching an app using the Kickoff App Launcher no longer displays an unnecessary left swipe animation within the popup before it closes (Marco Martin, Plasma 5.22).
  • Fixed many issues on the Virtual Desktops page in System Preferences, including a case of broken text display, the "Apply" button is not activated when it should, the "Defaults" button does not return deleted virtual desktops, and various problems with the animation duration selector (Nicolas Fella and David Edmundson, Plasma 5.22).
  • On the Global Themes page of System Preferences, the "Use theme desktop layout" button now correctly activates the Apply and Restart buttons (Cyril Rossi, Plasma 5.22).
  • Fixed a recent regression that could cause Dolphin to crash when searching for files (Kai Uwe Broulik, Frameworks 5.83).

Interface improvements

  • Gwenview has adopted the KHamburgerMenu, giving it a cleaner look and a more accessible set of actions when the menu bar is hidden (Noah Davis, Gwenview 21.08).
  • Discover's "Installed" view is now case-insensitive for search (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.22).
  • The arrow in the System Tray used to show the popup window with hidden applets no longer appears when using the "Show all entries" setting (Konrad Materka, Plasma 5.22).
  • The new Plasma System Monitor application now allows you to search for multiple search terms separated by commas, as did the old KSysGuard application (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.23).
  • Users are now informed of what they will lose when they disable file indexing (Nate Graham, Plasma 5.23).
  • The Virtual Keyboard System Tray applet (featured in the Plasma Wayland session) is now completely disabled if the virtual keyboard has been disabled globally (Nicolas Fella, Plasma 5.23).
  • In the Virtual Desktops page of System Preferences, you can now double-click on a desktop name to rename it, and while in rename mode, the "Rename" button becomes a "Confirm new name" button. »(Nate Graham, Plasma 5.23).
  • Self-generated avatar images used in various Plasma locations and applications now use spot colors for backgrounds, rather than gradients (Jan Blackquill, Frameworks 5.83).

When will all this arrive on your KDE desktop

Plasma 5.22 is coming June 8kdegear 21.04.2 will be available two days later, on June 10, and KDE Gear 21.08 will arrive in August, but we still don't know exactly what day. Two days after the set of apps, Frameworks 5.83 will arrive, specifically from June 12. After the summer, Plasma 5.23 will arrive on October 12.

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, although the latter usually take a little longer than the KDE system.


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