KDE offers many options to its users, and that is one of the reasons why they choose this desktop. For example, its image viewer allows us to carry out basic editions without having to use other software, such as GIMP, and its KRunner even allows us to search the Internet without having to open the browser and search in the traditional way. Still, this launcher could improve, and it's something they're working on right now.
KDE users are demanding, and we want everything to work well. For that reason, the project that likes the letter K the most has received many complaints about various things not being displayed in the order they should be when using Locker, so a couple of developers, Natalie Clarius and Alexander Lohnau, decided to step up and make some improvements.
- System Preferences pages whose names exactly match the search term now have a much higher weight, so they should appear first.
- Several other things with an exact name match also now have a much higher weight, so they should appear first, and also recent files have their relevance reduced based on age.
- Entering something like "CET Time" or "Shanghai Time" now shows not only the time, but also how much earlier or later it is than our current time zone.
- The exec= lines in .desktop files for Chrome web apps and Flatpak apps no longer pair improperly.
As a new feature, Gwenview allows you to change the brightness, contrast and gamma of images (Iliya Pominov, Gwenview 22.12).
Interface improvements coming to KDE
- All global volume settings have been moved to the Audio Volume page of System Preferences, and the Audio Volume widget no longer has its own settings page. So clicking its settings button takes you to System Preferences. Additionally, this has provided the opportunity to make the global mute feature truly global, and also to make the sliders on the System Preferences page only go up to 150% when using the “Raise Max Volume” setting. » (Bharadwaj Raju, Plasma 5.27).
- When using offline updates, Discover can now be used to view changelogs for individual packages, just like with online updates (Aleix Pol González, Plasma 5.27).
- Wallpapers in the wallpaper picker grids that you see in multiple places are now drag-and-drop, so they can be dragged into image editors for editing, a file manager for copying, and so on. (Fushan Wen, Plasma 5.27).
- While on the lock screen, you can now press the Escape key to turn off the screen and save some power (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.27).
- When the computer is connected and using performance mode or an application has requested to use power saving mode, it can now be seen in the system tray (Nate Graham, Plasma 5.27):
Important bug fixes
- Krita now supports the use of a global menu (Antonio Rojas, Krita 5.1)
- Librewan VPN detection now works if using version 4.9 or higher, and StrongSwan and OpenSwan detection should now be more accurate as well (Douglas Kosovic, Plasma 5.24.8)
- In the Plasma Wayland session, when using the default setting of "Legacy apps scale themselves", Steam and some other apps using XWayland now scale to the correct and expected size (Nate Graham, Plasma 5.26.3)
- Switching between launcher widgets (eg Kickoff and Kicker) no longer rearranges favorites to be in alphabetical order; its manual ordination is now preserved (Bharadwaj Raju, Plasma 5.27)
- You can turn off the Show Windows effect again within the Desktop Grid effect, keeping the windows where they are and using it as a Virtual Desktop toggle (Marco Martin, Plasma 5.27)
- All kinds of KDE applications no longer crash on startup when files in their "Recent Documents" lists are not accessible for some reason (Christoph Cullmann, Frameworks 5.100)
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. This week a total of 133 bugs have been fixed.
When will this all come to KDE?
Plasma 5.26.3 will arrive on Tuesday, November 8 and Frameworks 5.100 will be available four days later, on the 12th. Plasma 5.27 will arrive on February 14th, and KDE Applications 22.12 will be available on December 8th.
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.
Information and images: pointieststick.com.