Next Tuesday, June 8, the KDE project will release Plasma 5.22. This will be a new major update, which means that it will make improvements to everything, but it will also remove things, like KSysGuard. But there is nothing to fear, because it will be replaced by a more modern application, such as the System Monitor which is already available, but coexisting with the "old" application. When 5.22 is released, the project will start to really focus on 5.23.
But 4 days is still time to add improvements, although to be faithful to the truth, what has advanced in this week's note are changes that have been introduced in, at least, the last seven days, so the total sum days in advance would go up to 11. And there are still many that will be introduced in Plasma 5.22. Below you have the full list of changes which they have facilitated us today.
New features coming to the KDE desktop
- It is now possible to globally disable IPv6 in the configuration of the graphical interface of Plasma networks (Jan Grulich, Plasma 5.23).
- Gwenview now inherits the Dolphin sort order if Dolphin is used to open an image, so we will never experience that of opening an image in Gwenview and navigating to the next one, only to find that it goes to a different image than the one we used wait (Marco Martin, Dolphin and Gwenview 21.08/XNUMX).
- A button can now be added to the toolbar in Okular to quickly change the color change modes for the active document (David Hurka, Okular 21.08).
Bug fixes and performance improvements
- Adding a new radio station in Elisa now works again (Jerome Guidon, Elisa 21.04.2).
- Spectacle's Image Annotator module now translates correctly when using a language other than English (Alexander Volkov, Spectacle 21.08).
- Konsole now allows you to set the default shell to the one with less than 3 letters, such as sh (Adriaan de Groot, Konsole 21.08).
- In the Plasma X11 session, the keyboard layout change OSD reappears when the keyboard layout is changed using an "alternate shortcut" trigger (Andrey Butirsky, Plasma 5.22).
- The newly downloaded Plasma System Monitor pages are now instantly available, rather than having to restart the application (David Redondo, Plasma 5.22).
- Fixed various pixel misalignment issues in some dialogs of the new System Monitor application (David Redondo, Plasma 5.22).
- Applying a global theme that includes a new color scheme now makes that color scheme always apply correctly (Benjamin Port, Plasma 5.22).
- The "Use" button for newly downloaded items in the "Get New [Thing]" dialogs works again (Alexander Lohnau, Frameworks 5.83).
- Global shortcuts that use the ampersand (&) character now display correctly (Nate Graham, Frameworks 5.83).
Interface improvements
- Gwenview now allows scrolling while navigating using the arrow keys, it only shows the "you have reached the end" menu in slide show mode by default, it allows you to disable it completely if we wish (Marco Martin, Gwenview 21.08).
- The sizes of the "Small" and "Medium" list items for the Dolphin Places panel are no longer nearly identical visually ("Small" is now smaller), and the "Medium" size is now the default, for match the size of list items used in many other places now (Tranter Madi, Dolphin 21.08).
- Elisa now uses the F11 hotkey to enter and exit Party Mode (Tranter Madi, Elisa 21.08/XNUMX).
- When using Plasma in a live session (for example before installing), when connecting to a wifi network the password is now always stored locally instead of annoyingly prompting the user for gibberish about setting up a wallet KWallet to store it (Jan Grulich, Plasma 5.22).
- GPU statistics are now only displayed in System Monitor widgets and in the application of the same name if they are compatible with the GPU (Arjen Hiemstra, Plasma 5.22).
- The Disk and Devices applet in the systray no longer allows futile attempts to eject a removable disk containing the root volume (Nate Graham, Plasma 5.22).
- Shadows from a maximized window no longer subtly cast onto adjacent screens in a multiscreen arrangement (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.22.1).
- When a virtual keyboard is selected in a Plasma Wayland session, it is no longer necessary to enable it manually through its status notifier item in the system tray for it to appear (Aleix Pol González, Plasma 5.23).
- When a panel applet or systray item is clicked, the highlight effect now touches the edge of the panel and spans the entire width / height of the applet's click area, and there is a nice subtle line that separates the panel from the pop-up window that was just opened (Niccolò Venerandi, Plasma 5.23).
- KRunner's list items have been made slightly taller to accommodate larger icons (Nate Graham, Plasma 5.23).
- Plasma no longer sometimes crashes when displaying events for a day that has exactly 5 events using one of the calendar widgets (Carl Schwan, Frameworks 5.83).
- The graphics in the system monitor widgets and the application of the same name no longer have strange bumps at the ends (Arjen Hiemstra, Frameworks 5.83).
- Clicking on the category names in the "Open With ..." dialog now expands the categories; you don't need to click on the little arrows (Ahmad Samir, Frameworks 5.83).
- The error message that appears when trying to add an autostart script for a file that does not exist or is not executable is now clearer (Nicolas Fella, Frameworks 5.83).
When will all this arrive on my system with KDE
Plasma 5.22 is coming June 8, kdegear 21.04.2 will be available two days later, on June 10, and KDE Gear 21.08 will arrive in August, but we still don't know exactly what day. Two days after the set of apps, Frameworks 5.83 will arrive, specifically from June 12. After the summer, Plasma 5.23 will arrive 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.