Christmas is not celebrated the same around the world. At least we can affirm it in terms of gifts, since there are countries in which Santa Claus (Santa Klaus) brings them, in others some other "being generous" and in Spain the most traditional are the Three Wise Men who today will begin to show up all over the country. With this explained, the Original article by Nate Graham, from KDEIt is titled "Late Holiday Gifts," but we have modified it because for us they arrive just when they should arrive.
Like every week, Graham tells us about new features and changes that will come to the KDE world in the coming weeks / months. Among them there is a novelty that personally attracts my attention: the possibility of reply to messages directly from notification. For example, if we receive a message from Telegram, in Plasma 5.18 we can reply to it from the notification without having to open the app. Interesting.
Upcoming KDE news
- There are now previews of cursor files (Dolphin 20.04.0).
- The Plasma notification system includes support for replying to messages from within the notification itself (Plasma 5.18).
Bug fixes and performance and interface improvements
- The context menu on the Network Connections page of System Preferences no longer sometimes appears in the wrong place when clicked (Plasma 5.17.5).
- Alt-tilde shortcut to switch between current application open windows now works in Wayland when Num Lock mode is active (Plasma 5.18.0).
- The System Preferences Icons page now correctly highlights the current icon theme when installed and activated using Discover, and deleting an icon theme no longer restores the currently selected theme in view (Plasma 5.18.0).
- System Preferences no longer displays the dreaded "ambiguous shortcut" dialog when you press Ctrl + F; shortcut now works to focus search field (Plasma 5.18.0).
- KDE's GTK theme now respects the GTK2_RC_FILES environment variable (Plasma 5.18.0).
- Dolphin no longer crashes when trash can be renamed (Frameworks 5.66).
- Elisa displays the full album and artist names in the header area instead of breaking after a line (Elisa 20.04.0). We remember that Elisa could become the default player in Kubuntu 20.04 and that something they're doing still needs some tweaking.
- In Elisa, we can now play different songs in the playlist using the keyboard (Elisa 20.04.0).
- When using the plasma browser integration, files downloaded using the web browser appear as recent documents in Dolphin, the file dialog boxes, and the application launcher menu (Plasma 5.18.0).
- Discover displays application and plugin presentations more elegantly (Plasma 5.18.0).
- Audacity project files now include nice Breeze icons (Frameworks 5.66).
When will all these KDE news arrive?
Although this week's entry has not been as long as that of past weeks, they continue to make it clear that plasma 5.18 It will be a more than important launch. To be able to enjoy all its news we will still have to have a little patience, since its official launch will take place on February 11. Before the next LTS version of Plasma, KDE Community will release a maintenance version of the 5.17 series, a Plasma 5.17.5 that will arrive next Tuesday, January 7th.
On the other hand, we still do not know the exact day on which the KDE Applications 20.04, since on the page official website of its programming They have not set the date yet. Considering the numbering, we do know that they will be released in mid-April, but they will not be included by default in Kubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa. Before 20.04, the 19.12.1 to 19.12.3 will be released in mid-January, February and March. Finally, KDE Frameworks 5.66 will arrive on January 11th.
We remember that in order to enjoy all these news as soon as they are available we have to install them from their code or wait a few days for them to appear in the KDE Backports repository. There are also operating systems like KDE neon with special repositories that receive them much earlier.