This week we released the Plasma 5.24 beta, so go check it out and file bug reports! We spent most of the weak preparing for it and fixing bugs, which we’ll continue to do for the next month in preparation for the final release.
New Features
The Disks & Devices applet now offers you the option to open Partition Manager with the specified partition (me: Nate Graham, Partition Manager 22.04):
You can now configure which apps handle geo:// and tel:// links (Volker Krause and Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.24):
Bugfixes & Performance Improvements
Gwenview no longer sometimes crashes when you zoom out on an image while in full screen mode (Nicolas Fella, Gwenview 21.12.2)
Elisa no longer sometimes crashes when trying to enqueue files (Yerrey Dev, Elisa 21.12.2)
The overwrite dialog shown when extracting files using Ark that have the same name as other files already there no longer always misleadingly says, “The files are identical” (Albert Astals Cid, Ark 22.04)
Taking a screenshot with Spectacle using the terminal flags (e.g. spectacle -bc) no longer causes two notifications to be shown (Antonio Prcela, Spectacle 22.04)
The System Settings Printers page no longer displays long printer names in an ugly pixelated way when using a high DPI scale factor (Kai Uwe Broulik, print-manager 22.04)
In the Plasma Wayland session, fixed a case where KWin could randomly crash (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.24)
In the Plasma Wayland session, the System Settings Font Management is now available (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.24)
Turning off a monitor no longer sometimes causes your panels to disappear (Marco Martin, Plasma 5.24)
Fixed various graphical glitches with multi-monitor setups (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 524)
Close buttons on tabs no longer inappropriately always have circles around their “X” symbol (Luke Horwell, Plasma 5.24)
Initials text in the System Settings Users page no longer sometimes overflow (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.24)
Downloading “Get New ” items with dependencies once again works (Alexander Lohnau, Frameworks 5.91, though distros should be backporting the fix ASAP for 5.90)
In the Plasma Wayland session, Help Center should no longer sometimes randomly crash when moving the cursor or hovering over links (Christoph Cullmann, Frameworks 5.91)
In the Plasma Wayland session, opening and closing the Widget Explorer sidebar no longer rearranges your windows (David Edmundson, Frameworks 5.91)
System Settings pages with “Get new ” buttons now use less memory (Alexander Lohnau, Frameworks 5.91)
User Interface Improvements
You can now find System Settings and Info Center pages by searching for their keywords in KRunner-powered searches in KRunner, Kickoff, the Overview effect, etc. (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.24)
Plasma Folder View now always shows tooltips for items whose titles are elided, just like Dolphin does (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.24):
You can now middle-click on the Bluetooth applet to turn Bluetooth on or off (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.25)
Search fields in Kirigami-using apps now have a little magnifying glass in them, and it even has an animated disappearance effect when you focus the search field (Carl Schwan, Frameworks 5.91)
The Places Panel (including in Dolphin!) now has a little Eject button in it next to ejectable/unmountable disks (Kai Uwe Broulik, Frameworks 5.91):
KHamburgerMenu menus now have a simpler design for the bottom items: there is now a “More” item at the very end that shows you all the rest of the menu items, and the “Help” item is right above it, and both have proper icons (Mufeed Ali, Frameworks 5.91):
Bottom navigation bars now use the new selection style (Felipe Kinoshita, Frameworks 5.91):
…And everything else
Keep in mind that this blog only covers the tip of the iceberg! Tons of KDE apps whose development I don’t have time to follow aren’t represented here, and I also don’t mention backend refactoring, improved test coverage, and other changes that are generally not user-facing. If you’re hungry for more, check out https://planet.kde.org/, where you can find blog posts by other KDE contributors detailing the work they’re doing.
How You Can Help
Have a look at https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved to discover ways to be part of a project that really matters. Each contributor makes a huge difference in KDE; you are not a number or a cog in a machine! You don’t have to already be a programmer, either. I wasn’t when I got started. Try it, you’ll like it! We don’t bite!
Finally, consider making a tax-deductible donation to the KDE e.V. foundation