This week, Valve introduced the Steam Deck, a portable console that is actually like a miniature PC. Use a new version of SteamOS (archive article) which is based on Arch Linux, and the environment is on KDE. Nate Graham writes every week articles about project news, but this was kept very quiet. Until today, since the this week's note It starts right by talking about the Valve device.
Graham is very excited about this project, and assures that he has been and continues to be involved in it. But what excites him the most is that KDE is reaching more and more people and devices, which is not surprising to many because it works very well and is full of options. In fact, Ubuntu Studio changed XFCE to Plasma, and I wouldn't be surprised if one day Manjaro announced that its main flavor becomes KDE.
This week, as a new feature we have only advanced one: The system monitor and sensor widgets can now show the load averages of many types of sensors (David Redondo, Plasma 5.23).
Bug fixes and performance improvements coming to KDE
- Dolphin no longer sometimes crashes when hovering over the "Activities" item in the context menu (Harald Sitter, Dolphin 21.08).
- Gwenview and Dolphin no longer hang on startup if DBus is not available (Alex Richardson, Gwenview, and Dolphin 21.08).
- Okular no longer sometimes fails to display FictionBook books (Yaroslav Sidlovsky, Okular 21.08).
- Reliability of sorting in Dolphin has been improved when folder sizes use actual sizes on disk (Christian Muehlhaeuser, Dolphin 21.08).
- Empty folders in the trash now show the text "The folder is empty" instead of "The trash is empty" (Jordan Bucklin, Dolphin 21.08).
- In Plasma Wayland, KWin no longer sometimes hangs when disconnecting or reconnecting certain external displays (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.22.4).
- The daemon ksystemstats (which provides the sensor data to the System Monitor and various sensor widgets) no longer hangs on startup for some people with certain hardware (David Redondo, Plasma 5.22.4).
- The Information Center now displays the correct information about non-x86 CPUs (Harald Sitter, Plasma 5.22.4).
- KWin's DRM process has been completely overhauled to offer far-reaching enhancements such as increased speed and startup time, automatic recovery from certain driver errors, and a modernized infrastructure to facilitate future enhancements (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.23).
- When using Plasma's optional systemd login feature, KWallet now unlocks correctly when it could otherwise (for example, the wallet is named 'kdewallet', its password matches the login password and all PAM bits necessary have been configured correctly) (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.23).
- When using the optional Plasma boot feature, systemd, the Baloo file indexer now starts correctly (Skier Page, Plasma 5.23).
- The Information Center now displays a placeholder message when the Energy page would be blank, instead of a blank page (Harald Sitter, Plasma 5.23).
- In Plasma Wayland, left or right clicking on an application's systray icon no longer causes that application's icon to start bouncing near the cursor as if it were being launched (David Redondo, Plasma 5.23) .
- Resource usage has been slightly reduced for all QtQuick-based KDE desktop software (Aleix Pol González, Frameworks 5.86).
- Selecting a custom binary / app on the Default Apps page of System Preferences now works (David Edmundson, Frameworks 5.86).
- When using a custom Plasma theme that lacks graphics for a UI element for which Breeze does have graphics (for example, the header bar that you see at the top of many applets and notifications), the Breeze's theme graphic is no longer used inappropriately (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Frameworks 5.86).
Interface improvements
- Thumbnail previews now respect the scale factor and always look sharp and clear (Méven Car, Dolphin 21.08).
- Kate now ships with a session by default, which means that all of her session-specific features, such as automatically remembering open documents, are turned on by default (Michal Humpula, Kate 21.12).
- When arrows are displayed on scroll tracks, the arrows are now always visible, instead of being visible only when hovering over the track (Jan Blackquill, Plasma 5.23).
- In Plasma Wayland, the virtual keyboard on / off status is now remembered when the system is rebooted (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.23).
- System Monitor now exports a global menu bar so that those who use a Global Menu applet can find things there just as they expect (Felipe Kinoshita, Plasma 5.23).
- Sensor buttons in the System Monitor customization interface now look better (Noah Davis, Frameworks 5.86).
- Traditional menubars in QtQuick-based KDE applications now look like other applications (Janet Blackquill, Frameworks 5.86).
When will all this come
Plasma 5.22.4 is coming July 27 and KDE Gear 21.08 will arrive on August 12. Frameworks 14 will arrive on August 5.85, and 5.86 will do so on September 11. Already after the summer, Plasma 5.23 will land with the new theme, among other things, on October 12.
To enjoy all this as soon as possible we have to add the KDE Backports repository 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.