He published it later than usual, but we already have available this week's entry where we can see what is KDE working on. In addition to arriving later than expected, this week they have also told us less news, and even less if we take into account that some of the published ones are already available since the launch of Plasma 5.18.2 that took place last Tuesday. On the other hand, they did mention more new functions than the usual ones, 5 this time.
Nate Graham says that this week they have managed to fix a lot of bugs and have made many small tweaks that the user community had requested, which is a bit surprising if you take into account that this week's entry is shorter than those of previous weeks. Among the bugs fixed, he mentions the automatic rotation in Wayland, which previously only worked in X11, that Krunner is no longer obscured by the panels above it also in Wayland or that widgets can now be automatically centered in the panels.
New Features Coming to KDE
- Dolphin now supports the WS-DISCOVERY protocol, which makes Samba shares from Windows visible once again (Dolphin 20.04.0).
- Now we can use the Alt + numeric keys to jump directly to any of the first 9 tabs in Konsole (Konsole 20.04.0).
- Screen rotation, both manual and automatic, now works in Wayland (Plasma 5.19.0).
- Plasma panels can now use a new type of spacer that expands and contracts as needed to automatically center widgets on the panel (Plasma 5.19.0).
- App reviews in Discover now tell us which version of the app the review was written about (Plasma 5.19.0).
Bug fixes and performance and interface improvements
The first two points of the following list are already available from Tuesday, February 25:
- Fixed crash when logging into Wayland (Plasma 5.18.2).
- Buttons for configuring unconfigured time and comic widgets now work correctly and have the correct icon (Plasma 5.18.2).
- Again, it is possible to drag links to the Sticky Notes widget (Plasma 5.18.3).
- By disabling the "audio is playing" prompt, Task Manager no longer disables other related functions automatically (Plasma 5.18.3).
- KRunner is no longer covered by a top panel in Wayland (Plasma 5.19.0).
- GTK3 windows can now be assigned to individual activities, instead of always appearing in all of them (Plasma 5.19.0).
- Fixed scrolling in detail page of new "Get New [Item]" windows (Frameworks 5.68).
- The System Preferences Displays page now shows the aspect ratio of each available screen resolution (Plasma 5.19.0).
- The "Configure" button in note widgets now disappears when not needed, as do the other buttons (Plasma 5.19.0).
- The digital clock widget now has a visually pleasing right margin when at the edge of a horizontal panel (Plasma 5.19.0).
- Yakuake has a new icon (5.68).
When will all these news arrive on the KDE desktop
As we have mentioned, some of the news included this week are not such. These are features and changes that, it seems, they didn't remember to mention last Sunday, just before the release of plasma 5.18.2. The rest of the aforementioned will begin to arrive on March 10, coinciding with the launch of Plasma 5.18.3. The 5.18 series will receive two more updates, v5.18.4 on March 31 and v5.18.5 on May 5. The next major release of the graphical environment, Plasma 5.19.0 is coming June 6, and it will be a version that will include outstanding news. On the other hand, Frameworks 5.68 will be released on March 14 and KDE Applications 20.04.0 will be released on the same day as Kubuntu 20.04, that is, on April 23.
Remember that everything mentioned in these articles does not reach Discover as soon as it is launched. In order to enjoy it as soon as possible, we have to add the KDE Backports repository or use an operating system with special repositories like KDE neon.