It's been almost three years since I wrote an article to which I usually link when I talk about KDE of the present and the KDE of the past. Since then, I don't usually see the bugs that made me go back to GNOME in awe, but it seems that there are still people who think that the K software is "buggy". At least the graphical environment, Plasma, but this seems to have its days numbered thanks to an initiative that they have presented this 2022.
This initiative has been called something like the 15-minute bug initiative. Those are the first ones they want to eliminate. They are bugs that are seen shortly after turning on the computer, and that can be a very bad business card if what we want is to demonstrate to an acquaintance how cool KDE is. In addition to that, they will also be fixing other bugs, as always, but it seems that in the future KDE it will be more stable.
Of the earliest known 15-minute bugs, the list it's gone down from 99 to 87, so the math would tell us that they've solved 12 of them.
Some 15 minute bugs fixed
- In the Plasma X11 session, the System Preferences touchpad page now displays your two-finger click options correctly (Arjen Hiemstra, Plasma 5.24).
- In a Plasma Wayland session, KWallet now automatically unlocks as expected when properly configured (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.24).
- When using the pam_deny PAM module which causes it to crash after a certain number of bad password attempts, the display locker now communicates this instead of letting you wonder why the password is not being accepted (David Edmundson , Plasma 5.24).
- Plasma checkboxes and tab bars again react when touched with a touch screen (Arjen Hiemstra, Frameworks 5.91).
As new features they have only mentioned that Plasma designs assigned to other screens can now be accessed and manipulated from a central location. This allows you to move desktops or panels between displays, or retrieve desktops or panels that are only visible on a display that is currently turned off. It can be accessed from the global toolbar in edit mode (Cyril Rossi and Marco Martin, Plasma 5.25).
Bug fixes and performance improvements coming to KDE
- KDE Flatpak applications now respond instantly to system-wide changes for things like color schemes, icon themes, font sizes, and so on (Aleix Pol Gonzales, when version 21.08 of the KDE Flatpak runtime that includes the change is relaunched).
- In the Plasma Wayland session:
- Fixed several ways KWin could crash when hot plugging external displays (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.24).
- KWin no longer crashes when unplugging an external display specifically while using "switch to external monitor" mode (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.24).
- Fixed a semi-common way where Plasma could randomly crash (David Redondo, Plasma 5.24).
- Fixed a major performance regression that was causing input lag and extreme CPU usage for some people (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.24).
- Mouse Mark and Mouse Click effects now work with a stylus (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.25).
- A super important Qt patch has been pushed back to the Qt patch collection which makes the Plasma Wayland session much more usable for people using NVIDIA graphics cards with the 495+ driver series (Elvis Lee and Adrien Faveraux, soon as your distro update your KDE patch collection).
- Another important Qt patch has been pushed back to the Qt patch collection that makes Plasma not hang on the Wayland session when turning an external display off and on (David Edmundson and Fabian Vogt, as soon as your distro updates its KDE patch collection).
- Discover no longer sometimes crashes when visiting the Installed page when installing certain Flatpak apps from certain Flatpak repos (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.24).
- Fixed one of the ways Discover could crash randomly while in use (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.24).
- Editing clipboard items again allows you to edit the full text, not a clipped portion of it (Fushan Wen, Plasma 5.24).
- The notifications applet popup is no longer unusually small when in a panel, rather than in the system tray (Nate Graham, Plasma 5.24).
- The System Tray popup in a bottom panel no longer suffers from a visual glitch in its header area when the back button is pressed on an applet that has its own header (Nate Graham, Plasma 5.24).
- Discover's feature for displaying package dependencies for apps packaged in the distribution works again (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.24).
- Discover now shows the installed sizes of Plasma apps and plugins (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.24).
- Launching System Preferences and/or visiting the User Feedback page no longer causes Discover to briefly appear in Task Manager and then disappear (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.24).
- Discover no longer displays a false error message when an update is canceled by refusing authentication (Ismael Asensio, Plasma 5.24).
- Search results on KRunner and Kickoff and other places that have KRunner-powered search no longer visibly flicker or flicker when typing more characters to refine search results (Eduardo Cruz, Plasma 5.25).
- Slightly reduced CPU and memory usage for all KDE software when fetching icons (Nicolas Fella, Frameworks 5.91).
Improvements in the user's interface
- We can now hover over Plasma's tab bars to switch tabs (Noah Davis, Qt 6.3, but it's being pushed back to the KDE patch collection).
- Dolphin list view highlights now fill the entire row (Tom Lin, Dolphin 22.04).
- Elisa's search now normalizes non-Latin characters, so for example you can find "Björk" by searching for "Bjork" (Yerrey Dev, Elisa 21.12.2).
- Dolphin's icon view is now correctly inverted when the app is used in right-to-left mode (Jan Blackquill, Dolphin 22.04).
- Discover no longer displays a "Launch" button on pages for things that cannot be launched, such as plugins and wallpapers (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.24).
- The folder selection dialog you see when a Flatpak app asks you to choose a folder now looks and works exactly like the dialog you get when a distro-packaged app does the same thing (Fabian Voft, Plasma 5.24).
- Permission request dialogs for Flatpak applications now look a bit prettier and more KDE-like, and preselect the only item in the list in cases where there is only one thing to choose from (Nate Graham, Plasma 5.24) .
- The Clipboard applet has some keyboard fixes for when the search field is in focus:
- The up and down arrow keys now navigate through the list;
- Hitting the clear key when search text is selected now clears it, and when no search text is selected, the clear key now does nothing instead of clearing the highlighted history item (Fushan Wen, Plasma 5.24 and 5.25 ).
- When unmounting a disk that still has file transfer operations pending (due to the Linux kernel's use of asynchronous file I/O), the Disks and Devices applet now displays a more appropriate message (Nate Graham, Plasma 5.25 ).
- Several Plasma applications and applets that have focused search fields by default are no longer focused by default in tablet mode, to prevent the virtual keyboard from appearing immediately and covering the application the moment it is launched (Arjen Hiemstra, Frameworks 5.91 and plasma 5.25).
- Task Manager badges now use the new highlight style (Jan Blackquill and Nate Graham, Plasma 5.25).
- Breeze-themed menu items in QtQuick-based applications are now larger and more touchable when in Tablet mode (Nate Graham, Frameworks 5.91):
- The desktop context menu now only shows the "Show Activity Switcher" item if there is actually more than one activity it could be switched to, making the menu a bit shorter by default and more relevant (Nate Graham, Plasma 5.25 ).
- Kate, KDevelop, and other KTextEditor-based applications now automatically detect the style of whitespace in files you open (Waqar Ahmed, Frameworks 5.91).
- The comment toggle feature in Kate and other KTextEditor based applications now works correctly when the line we are trying to comment or uncomment also has inline comments (Waqar Ahmed, Frameworks 5.91).
- Combo boxes in QtQuick-based KDE applications (and their popups) are no longer often too short to fit the text of long items (Alexander Stippich, Frameworks 5.91).
When will this all come to KDE?
Plasma 5.24 will arrive on February 8, and KDE Frameworks 5.91 will follow four days later, on February 12. Plasma 5.25 will arrive on June 14. Gear 21.12.2 will be available starting February 3. KDE Gear 22.04 does not yet have a scheduled date, or the official website does not pick it up like this. If any readers find out about something posted on an unofficial "wall", as has happened on occasion in the past, please leave the information in the comments.
To enjoy all this as soon as possible we have to add the repository backports from KDE 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.