As scheduled, true to its timeliness, the KDE project has launched plasma 5.18.5. This is the last maintenance version of this series, the one that they have included in Kubuntu 20.04 LTS, although the version included in Focal Fossa it will not be updated in this operating system as we will explain at the end of this article. As a maintenance release, no new features are included, beyond bug fixes and performance and interface improvements.
As always with such a release, KDE has published several articles on this release. In one of them tells us about the availability of Plasma 5.18.5, while in a more extensive one they provide us with the full list of news, 66 changes this time. In this article we are going to put an unofficial list, but one that they mentioned in recent weeks and that includes such outstanding news that they had the need to share them with all of us before the official launch.
Plasma 5.18.5 Highlights
- Resizing icons on the System Preferences icon page now results in icon sizes in all KDE software being changed immediately, rather than having to be restarted.
- The folder view pop-up dialog is again wide enough to display behind columns of icons.
- Searching in the Kickoff App Launcher works again when the cursor is positioned under the tab bar.
- After applying a global theme, the correct Plasma style, widget style, and home screen are now selected on their respective pages.
- The Standard Shortcuts System Preferences page window now has a sensible default size when opened independently in its own window.
- Fixed a bug that made system notifications appear to be muted by default and not controllable from System Preferences without first adjusting the volume once using the third-party Pavucontrol app.
- Logging out of Wayland no longer blocks KWin and leaves you with a black screen.
- Plasma Vaults no longer hangs when you cancel the mount dialog after you cannot mount a vault due to the mount location not being empty.
- Fixed various crashes and UI issues in the DrKonqi issue reporter window on Wayland.
- Task Manager entries for pinned icons only no longer jump when launched if any of the pinned apps come from configuration file entries that use the preferred scheme: // URL.
Soon in Discover
Plasma 5.18.5 is already available, but at the time of this writing it is only in code form. It will soon be coming to Discover on all operating systems that have added a special repository like the Backports from KDE or the official KDE neon.