KDE promises that the Plasma user interface will improve a lot, and they have already fixed an annoying bug

A little over a month ago, when they launched the first beta of Kubuntu 21.04, I launched myself to install it without thinking twice. The truth is that it was not too bad for me, but there was a bug that was quite annoying: when taking a screenshot by selecting a rectangular area, we saw the notification followed by an error message, always, always. It seems like, KDE It has already fixed that problem, which was present in the stable version but will disappear when Frameworks 5.82 is released.

That is something that Nate Graham has advanced in your weekly article about what's new coming to the KDE desktop. And it is that Plasma 5.22 is approaching and they are already making the final touches for the launch of the beta, because the graphical environment also launches test versions. Below you have the full list of changes they are working on, but the one that most caught my attention is the one I mentioned at the beginning of this post.

As new functions they have only mentioned one that will come with Plasma 5.22: it will be possible to limit the interval of updates of the graphics of the system monitor.

Bug fixes and performance improvements coming to KDE

• Fixed a dark way where Konsole could crash when opening its Settings window (Carlos Alves, Konsole 21.04.1/XNUMX/XNUMX).
• Gwenview is no longer confused and saddened when asked to open a document whose mimetype does not match its file name extension (Arjen Hiemstra, Gwenview 21.08).
• Fixed the way Plasma could crash immediately upon login when using certain items from the systray, or when the keyboard layout was changed (Konrad Materka, Plasma 5.22)
• Clicking the "Sleep" button when using the Systemd startup mode with an older version of Systemd no longer shuts down the computer instead of putting it to sleep (Yaroslav Sidlovsky, Plasma 5.22).
• Fixed a rare bug that could cause KRunner to not turn on or off when pressing its global shortcut (Fabian Vogt, Plasma 5.22).
• When you tell the clipboard applet to clear history and it asks if we really want to proceed, clicking "No" after checking the "do not ask again" box no longer breaks the "clear history" functionality forever (Bharadwaj Raju, Plasma 5.22).
• The swap space used is now visible in the new memory graph of the Plasma System Monitor application (Ravid Redondo, Plasma 5.22).
• Opening a .flatpakref file in Discover for an already installed application no longer presents a strange error (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.22).
• Discover no longer shows an "Uninstall" button on update pages where it doesn't make sense (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.22).
• The button to configure the screen reader on the Accessibility page of System Preferences now really works (Carl Schwan, Plasma 5.22).
• The kdeinit5 process no longer crashes randomly or constantly when trying to generate thumbnails during semi-common operations like taking screenshots, copying files, etc (Fabian Vogt, Frameworks 5.82).

Improvements in the user's interface

• Ark now shows a welcome screen when we directly open the program without calling it to unzip a file. The window size is also more suitable (Jiří Wolker and Nate Graham, Ark 21.08).
• Spectacle's options on what to copy after taking a screenshot (if anything) has been substantially clarified in the settings window, and the setting to copy file path to clipboard now works even if autosave is on. disabled (saves file to temporary path) (Srevin Saju, Spectacle 21.08).
• The Gwenview sidebar has received a visual update to be more in line with current KDE user interface guidelines (Noah Davis, Gwenview 21.08).
• The Dolphin tag menu in the search view now has a "Clear Selection" button so that those who make extensive use of tags can more easily start a new tag-based search (Ismael Asensio, Dolphin 21.08).
• The "Clear all notifications" action of the notifications applet has been moved out of the hamburger menu to make it more accessible, and the applet's "Configure" button now opens the System Preferences notifications page instead of a notification window. applet configuration almost empty (Nate Graham, Plasma 5.22).
• The systray notification popup now closes when the last notification is cleared using the manual close buttons in the view instead of the "Clear all notifications" button (Eugene Popov, Plasma 5.22).
• Discover's Fonts menu is now accessible and usable with the keyboard (Carl Schwan, Plasma 5.22).
• The Audio Volume page of the System Preferences no longer shows unused and unenforceable settings when the system uses the new PipeWire-PulseAudio compatibility system (Nicolas Fella, Plasma 5.22).
• The "Highlight windows" function of the Task Manager now only activates when the cursor is hovered over the thumbnail of a window, which makes it useful and not annoying, so we activate it by default (Bharadwaj Raju, Plasma 5.22 ).
• The "Create New Vault" button on the systray applet now lives in the header, to match the layout of other systray applets (Nate Graham, Plasma 5.22):
• The system tray Brightness and Battery System applet header has received a fix: the "Configure" button now opens the corresponding System Preferences page instead of a nearly empty applet configuration window, and the only option from that window has become a selectable item in the hamburger menu (Nate Graham, Plasma 5.22).
• The System Preferences window is no longer too small (Nate Graham, Plasma 5.22).
• The radius of the corners of the title bars drawn by KWin now respects the scale factor in X11 (Paul McAuley, Plasma 5.22).
• There is no longer a small empty space on the right edge of a non-maximized panel (Jan Blackquill, Plasma 5.22).
• Dolphin's breadcrumb loaf now displays more friendly text for search results (Kai Uwe Broulik, Frameworks 5.83).
• The System Preferences Browser Identification page has been removed because it was almost completely useless at this time (Nicolas Fella, Frameworks 5.83).

When will all this come

KDE Frameworks 5.82 will be released today, so kdeinit5 bug will be fixed soon. Plasma 5.22 is coming June 8, KDE Gear 21.04.1 will be available from May 13th and 20.08pm will arrive in August, but exactly what day is not yet known.

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.