This seems to be a personal preference, but one that is widespread among developers of KDE. I remember that, a long time ago, a novelty was introduced, I think in Windows 98, in which you could interact with the operating system as you do on the web, that is, with one click you would open the files. I never liked it, because I was already used to the fact that a click was to select, but if it existed and exists, it's for a reason. And in KDE it will still exist, but as an option.
It had already been brought forward weeks ago, and this will also change in KDE neon, where by default one click is still used to open files. The change of one click to select and two to open It will arrive together with Plasma 6, so distributions that prefer it that way will not have to change anything on their own. Yes, users who prefer this behavior will have to do it, and from the next version of Plasma they will have to go to the settings and recover that way of working.
News that will arrive with KDE Plasma 6
- KWin's blur effect has been totally rewritten to improve its reliability and performance. Among other things, this fixes the infamous crashes that have been showing up for people using fractional scaling factors, as well as blocky cursor trails for users of AMD GPUs (Vlad Zahorodnii).
- When a KDE application crashes and the "Report Bug" button in the notification is clicked, the DrKonqi bug report wizard that you will see has now been greatly simplified and includes an option to automatically report the bug to the new Sentry-based bug tracker without the need for a Bugzilla account (Harald Sitter):
- The System Preferences autostart page now allows you to view the technical details of the entry's startup sequences, allowing you to debug why they might not behave as expected (Thenujan Sandramohan):
- Scrolling through the keyboard brightness level keys (eg with Fn+Space on many laptops) now displays an OSD for the change (Natalie Clarius).
- When turning the keyboard backlight off and back on, it now remembers the previous brightness level (Natalie Clarius).
- The minimum display brightness is now always 1, and the minimum keyboard brightness is now always 0, ensuring that the display backlight never turns completely off at minimum brightness, whereas the keyboard backlight always does (Nate Graham and Natalie Clarius).
- The “Alternative Widgets” popup has been modernized and now has the typical highlight effect on hover (Lukas Spies).
- It is now possible to change the wallpaper immediately after changing the desktop containment type, eg switching from Folder View to Desktop or vice versa (Fushan Wen).
- In the System Tray settings window, the icons displayed to represent the widgets now match the actual icons displayed in the System Tray itself (Nate Graham):
- The project to completely eliminate the concept of icons in the Plasa style has been completed. More information.
Interface improvements
- Dolphin's configuration window has received an overhaul to reorganize things to be more logical (Dimosthenis Krallis, Dolphin 23.12).
- The initial location of Elisa's "Files" view is now user-configurable, but defaults to the location of the system "Music Folder" (Nate Graham, Joshua Goins, and Eduardo Bray, Elisa 23.12).
- KCalc now remembers its window size, and position in X11 as well (Gabriel Barrantes, KCalc 23.12).
- Applications using the KHolidays framework now have support for Tanzanian holidays (Lukas Sommer, Frameworks 5.110).
- Configuration dialogs for QtWidgets-based applications now have a search field in the header area that can be used to find settings on individual pages. (Waqar Ahmed, Frameworks 6.0):
- Improved the icon for .bak files and other types of backup files (Alexander, Wilms, Frameworks 6.0).
Correction of minor bugs
- Fixed the possibility of Plasma crashing when starting an application via Task Manager with the tooltip open (Fushan Wen, Plasma 5.27.8).
- Implemented a fix for a rare issue that could cause Plasma to slow down and crash on systems that frequently changed monitor layouts (Harald Sitter, Plasma 5.27.8).
- Fixed a way that taking screenshots using Spectacle could fail in the Plasma X11 session (Noah Davis, Plasma 5.27.8)
- System Monitor sensors and widgets of the same name now work correctly when the system is using the C locale (Maciej Stanczew, Plasma 5.27.8).
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 91 bugs.
When will this all come to KDE?
plasma 5.27.8 will arrive on Tuesday September 12th, Frameworks 110 should arrive on September 9th and still no confirmed date on Frameworks 6.0. KDE Gear 23.08 will be available on August 24, KDE Gear 23.12 will arrive sometime in December, and Plasma 6 will arrive in the second half of 2023. The exact arrival date of Plasma 6 is also unknown, but there is a page where they will report about the releases of the next version of the KDE desktop. It is almost certain that it will arrive before the end of this 2023.
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.
Images and content: pointieststick.com.
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