Plasma windows will start in the center of the screen by default, and other new features in KDE

After GNOME news article yesterday, on Saturdays it is the turn of KDE, that community of developers that likes to create software for demanding users who seek greater productivity. At today's articleNate Graham has told us about many new features, but none of them really stand out, as shown by the fact that the headline mentions more KHamburguerMenus or that the Plasma windows will start in the center by default.

In the following list, Graham has included many new features already available (not included here), specifically those corresponding to the plasma 5.23.3 released this Tuesday. Among the rest, and it seems that it will be like that until they give the saint, there are again several related to Wayland, the graphical server of the future that is already present in GNOME. You have the full list of news below.

New Features Coming to KDE

• Okular has adopted KHamburgerMenu, so the menu bar can now be hidden for a sleeker, more modern look without losing access to any functions. It is not activated by default; you have to manually hide the menu bar first. (Felix Ernst, Okular 21.12).
• In the Plasma Wayland session, they have reintroduced the concept of "primary monitor" (because Wayland does not have that concept on its own), and it does the same in Wayland as in the X11 session (Aleix Pol González, Plasma 5.24).

Bug fixes and performance improvements

• Okular no longer crashes when opening a Markdown file containing images with alt text that are within links (Albert Astals Cid, Okular 21.12).
• Ark now correctly handles zip files whose internal metadata uses backslashes as path separators (Albert Astals Cid, Ark 21.12).
• In the Plasma Wayland session, Yakuake's "Keep window open when you lose focus" setting now works (Firlaev-Hans Fiete, Yakuake, 21.12/XNUMX).
• When the battery is critically low and Plasma notifies about it, the notification now automatically disappears when the power cord is connected (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.23.4).
• The Media Frame applet now supports displaying images of folders whose names contain unusual characters such as ellipsis (Patrick Northon, Plasma 5.23.4)
• In the Plasma Wayland session, it is now possible to run an XWayland application as a different user (Weng Xuetian, Plasma 5.23.4).
• On the System, Display and Monitor Preferences page, the text in the "reverse this change" dialog is no longer cut off when using a language with long words such as German or Brazilian Portuguese (Nate Graham, Plasma 5.23.4) .
• Fixed a case where the Plasma Wayland session could crash when logging out (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.24).
• When the systemd startup function is not used, Plasma is now properly cleaned up on logout, terminating all the processes it launched as expected (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.24).
• Clicking the "Check for updates" button in Discover while only the Flatpak backend is active now seems to do something (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.24).
• Searching for cities in the weather applet using the BBC UK Met search provider should now be more reliable (Bharadwaj Raju, Plasma 5.24).
• In the Plasma Wayland session, Plasma OSDs displaying things like current volume and brightness levels no longer inappropriately respect KWin's maximized window placement policy, so they don't end up being huge when using that policy ( Marco Martin, Frameworks 5.89).
• In the Plasma Wayland session, clicking the hamburger menu button of a QtWidgets application such as Dolphin or Gwenview or Okular while its window is out of focus no longer causes the menu to appear as a separate window (Felix Ernst, Frameworks 5.89).
• In System Preferences and Information Center, QtQuick-based page title rows no longer strangely fade while loading (Nate Graham, Frameworks 5.89).
• The KCommandBar no longer shows empty space on the right side (Eugene Popov, Frameworks 5.89).

Improvements in the user's interface

• Newly opened windows are now placed in the center of the screen by default (Nate Graham, Plasma 5.24).
• The app list items in Discover now have a more attractive and logical design (Nate Graham, Plasma 5.24).
• In the wallpaper picker, the previews now use the same aspect ratio as the screen whose wallpaper is being chosen, so the preview will be visually accurate (Iaroslav Sheveliuk, Plasma 5.24).
• The Display Settings applet no longer has three settings buttons (Nate Graham, Plasma 5.24).
• The Battery and Brightness applet now shows the battery status of more devices, including more types of Bluetooth devices in particular (Nicolas Fella, Frameworks 5.89).
• The KCommandBar now displays a placeholder message when what to search for is found (Eugene Popov, Frameworks 5.89).

When will this all come to KDE?

Plasma 5.23.4 is coming November 30 and KDE Gear 21.12 on December 9. KDE Frameworks 5.88 will be available today November 13, and 5.89 will be available on December 11. Plasma 5.24 will arrive on February 8.

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.