KDE many users like it, but it is not perfect. The project itself knows this, and that is why they are always trying to improve things. An initiative launched this year will try to eliminate bugs that appear after 15 minutes of use, but there is also software that could look better. Although I have never complained, I have read comments from KDE users who claimed that Discover is not a good software store, something that could change in the medium term.
This is one of the novelties have mentioned this week on KDE. In fact, the title is “Discover redesign has begun”. Plasma 5.24 is coming soon, and all the tweaks KDE Discover has to receive are too many to release so soon, so the design change will be visible in Plasma 5.25.
15 Minute KDE Bugs
They have fixed 3 and the total is still 83, which means that 3 have been found in the last seven days:
- Plasma, Discover and many other apps no longer always crash on launch when user feedback sharing is enabled (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, KUserFeedback 1.1.0).
- Changing user properties on the accounts page of System Preferences works again in version 22.04.64 or newer of the AccountsService package (Jan Blackquill, Plasma 5.24).
- Discover no longer randomly freezes when viewing app details (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.24.1).
Other fixes and performance improvements
- Gwenview is again able to open RAW files, at the cost of sometimes not being able to open files that have the wrong name extension. A patch that fixed that but broke RAW support was reverted (Nate Graham, Gwenview 22.12.2).
- Dolphin no longer crashes when a media archive job that was started from one of Dolphin's context menu "Compress" items is canceled (Méven Car, Ark 21.12.3).
- When browsing an FTP server in Dolphin, opening files re-opens in the correct application instead of the web browser (Nicolas Fella, Dolphin 21.12.3).
- At the Plasma Wayland session.
- Kate no longer blinks when pressing Ctrl+S to save changes (Christoph Cullmann, Kate 22.04).
- Dragging and dropping multiple things into XWayland apps no longer causes them to sometimes stop accepting clicks until the system is rebooted (David Redondo, Plasma 5.24).
- NOAA Picture of the Day wallpaper now works again (Fushan Wen, Plasma 5.24).
- Spectacle's Rectangular Region overlay now appears over all fullscreen windows, not just some of them (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.24).
- Displaying system and network information in System Monitor now always works every time it is opened after login, and not just the first time it is opened (Arjen Hiemstra, Plasma 5.24).
- System Monitor bar graph bars no longer disappear when making the graph very narrow (Arjen Hiemstra, Plasma 5.24).
- When dragging and dropping items to the desktop, they are now all placed in the dragged location, instead of only one being placed there and all others being placed after other icons (Severin Von Wnuck, Plasma 5.24).
- Discover no longer crashes when installing or uninstalling more than one Flatpak app at a time (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.24).
- Discover now displays the correct size for very large packets (Jonas Knarbakk, Discover 5.24).
- In the X11 Plasma session, using 30-bit color now works (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.24).
- The System Tray popup now has the correct background color when the widget is placed on the desktop instead of a panel (Ivan Tkachenko, Plasma 5.24.1).
- System Monitor CPU sensors can no longer briefly display negative values (Arjen Hiemstra, Plasma 5.24.1).
- Discover's screenshot popup no longer overlaps with the sidebar after resizing the window to be small and then large again (Ismael Asensio, Plasma 5.24.1).
- The Battery and Brightness applet no longer inappropriately displays the "Low Battery" icon when the only batteries present are from external wireless devices with adequate charge level (Aleix Pol González, Plasma 5.25).
- KIO no longer tries to improperly handle non-file-based URLs registered in apps (e.g. tg:// for Telegram or mailto:// for your email client) when apps advertise that they accept URLs (Nicolas Fella, Frameworks 5.91).
- KWin keyboard shortcuts (eg Alt+Tab) no longer sometimes break after restarting KWin (Vlad Zahorodnii, Frameworks 5.91).
- QtQuick-based applications are now slightly faster to load and run overall (Nicolas Fella, Frameworks 5.91).
- When using a dark color scheme, the Breeze icon for the KDE Plasma logo no longer partially disappears at large sizes (Gabriel Knarlsson, Frameworks 5.91).
- Fixed a couple of inconsistencies and bugs in various Breeze mimetypes and folder icons (Gabriel Knarlsson, Frameworks 5.91).
Improvements in the user's interface
- Tabs can now be dragged from one Kate to another (Waqar Ahmed, Kate 22.04).
- Okular's bookmarks sidebar page now has an improved user interface, with buttons that have text and an "Add Bookmark" context menu item (Nate Graham, Okular 22.04).
- Dolphin's Info Panel now shows "Dimensions" by default instead of separate "Image Width" and "Image Height" fields (Méven Car, Dolphin 22.04).
- When zipping multiple files from Dolphin's context menu, the menu now says the name of the resulting file (Fushan Wen, Arca 22.04).
- Konsole can now be found by searching for "cmd" or "command prompt" (Someone with the pseudonym "MB", Konsole 22.04).
- When searching System Preferences pages, exact title matches are weighted much more heavily (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.24).
- Discover can no longer be used to uninstall itself (Nate Graham, Plasma 5.24).
- The Discover Apps page has been redesigned to improve aesthetics and usability (Headshot, Nate Graham and Manuel Jésus de la Fuente, Plasma 5.25).
- The new keyboard shortcut Meta+Alt+P can now be used to switch keyboard focus between panels and activate applets with the keyboard (Marco Martin, Plasma 5.25).
- The clipboard applet configuration window is now much more understandable (Jonathan Marten, Plasma 5.25).
- Searching for “switch user” no longer finds an item called “New session”; it is now called "Switch User", as expected (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.25).
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 21.12.3 will be available from March 3, and KDE Gear 22.04 on April 21.
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.