There are things that never change, but there are others that do. The position of the close, restore/maximize, and minimize buttons, for example, have been on the left and right in Ubuntu, and were long used in KDE One click to open the documents. As it happens with the mentioned buttons, which are most common is that they are on the right and that is where most desktops for Linux put it, most of the people prefer that one click serves to select, KDE listened to us and it will be like that by default from a medium-term future onwards.
Is one of the new arrivals that they have advanced this week. Although most KDE contributors prefer click to open, they have decided to make the switch to suit the wishes of the majority. What it will be up to them and anyone who wants the old behavior is to go to the settings and make the manual change. This won't be the case in all cases, as different distributions can make the switch themselves and I think only KDE neon did it differently. And no, you're not having some sort of déjà vu; what's new this week is that it will also be like this on touch devices.
In addition to that, it is said that convergence is starting to become a reality, and the open problems are much less than during the past week.
News that will arrive with KDE Plasma 6
- In the Plasma Wayland session, text copied from an application using XWayland now remains on the clipboard after it is closed (David Edmundson).
- In the Plasma Wayland session, dialog windows with parent windows set to live on multiple virtual desktops now always appear on the current virtual desktop (Vlad Zahorodnii).
- The minimum size of the System Configuration window is now smaller, so it is better suited for low resolution 1366x768 displays with thick panels (Nate Graham).
- The System Preferences Printers page has been rewritten in QML for better future maintainability and a more modern, consistent look (Mike Noe, Printer Manager 23.12 with Plasma 6):
- Icons in Dolphin's item view now look better and smoother when using the fractional scaling factor (Kai Uwe Broulik, Dolphin 23.12 alongside Plasma 6).
Other UI improvements
- In Dolphin, you can now middle-click a file to open it in the first app in the expanded "Open With" list, instead of the default app for its file type (Méven Car, Dolphin 23.12).
- .3mf files now show thumbnails showing the content of their 3D models (Bernhard Sulzer, Dolphin 23.12).
Correction of minor bugs
- Fixed again the ability to monitor NVIDIA GPUs via System Monitor, this time improving compatibility with multi-GPU setups (Oliver Beard, Plasma 5.27.8).
- Fixed a semi-common way where Plasma could crash when launching applications via Task Manager while tooltip window thumbnails were visible (Fushan Wen, Plasma 5.27.8).
- The time after which the system is set to dim the screen is now respected, instead of the screen dimming in half that time (Konstantin Kharlamov, Plasma 6.0).
- Starting a Plasma Wayland session in VirtualBox is now more reliable (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 6.0).
- Improved reliability of symlinked files on Samba shares opened by KDE applications using KIO (Kevin Ottens, Frameworks 5.110).
This list is a summary of the fixed bugs. The complete lists of bugs are on the pages of 15 minute bug, very high priority bugs and overall list. This week a total of 90 bugs.
When will this all come to KDE?
plasma 5.27.8 will arrive on Tuesday September 12th, Frameworks 110 should arrive on September 9th and still no confirmed date on Frameworks 6.0. KDE Gear 23.08.1 will be available on September 14, KDE Gear 23.12 will arrive sometime in December, and Plasma 6 will arrive in the second half of 2023. The exact arrival date of Plasma 6 is also unknown, but there is a page where they will report about the releases of the next version of the KDE desktop. It is almost certain that it will arrive before the end of this 2023.
To enjoy all this as soon as possible we have to add the repository backports of KDE, use an operating system with special repositories like Kde neon or any distribution whose development model is Rolling Release.
Images and content: pointieststick.com.