Well OK not literally everything. But… a lot of things! The KWin scripts KCM, Filelight, and DrKonqi. What does this mean? From a user perspective, mostly not much except for better visuals that align them better with modern KDE UI design. But it also means better-separated internals, more modern code, and easier hackability for the UI. The software’s lifespan increases and we get closer to everything using the same tech stack. It’s important stuff.
In addition, you should find lots of nice bugfixes and even a few new features!
15-Minute Bugs Resolved
Current number of bugs: 70, down from 73. 2 added, 2 found to be duplicates of other 15-minute bugs, and 3 resolved:
Certain monitors no longer constantly power-cycle in a loop when connected (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.24.5)
Everyone can once again change their Favorites in Kickoff and Kicker and have those changes persist after restarting Plasma or the computer (Méven Car, Plasma 5.24.5)
After installing a Flatpak app using Discover, there’s no longer still a misleading “Install” button there anyway (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.24.5)
New Features
Skanpage now supports exporting searchable PDFs using optical character recognition! (Alexander Stippich, Skanpage 22.08):
Dolphin now lets you sort by file extension if you prefer that (Eugene Popov, Dolphin 22.08)
In the Plasma Wayland session, you can now change the resolution of your screen to resolutions beyond the officially supported ones, just like you can in the X11 session (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.25)
Bugfixes & Performance Improvements
Dolphin’s Terminal Panel no longer gets de-synced from the view itself (Felix Ernst, Dolphin 22.04.1)
Elisa’s “Load Playlist…” and “Save Playlist…” actions now work from the global menu (Firlaev-Hans Fiete, Elisa 22.04.1)
Text in Filelight’s tooltips is no longer clipped away at the ends (Harald Sitter, Filelight 22.08)
Plasma no longer sometimes randomly crashes when you have more than one app with multiple windows open and you interact with one of their Task Manager tooltips (Fushan Wen, Plasma 5.24.5)
In the Plasma Wayland session, KWin no longer crashes when connected USB-C monitors wake up from their power-save states (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.24.5)
The Global Menu widget no longer shows menus that the app has marked as hidden, such as the “Tools” Menu in Kolourpaint (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.24.5)
In the Plasma Wayland session, KWin no longer crashes when you close a laptop and re-open it when its internal screen is set to turn off when closed (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.25)
In the Plasma Wayland session, fixed another way that KWin could crash when you disconnect an external screen (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.25)
In an app using xdg-desktop-portals (e.g. sandboxed Flatpak and Snap apps), when you use a file dialog to access a file in a remote location that automatically gets mounted using kio-fuse under the hood, the next time you open the file dialog again, it will open showing the original location, not its weird-looking kio-fuse mountpoint (Harald Sitter, Plasma 5.25)
Closing a window that spawned a child “Get New [thing]” window now closes the child window too, rather than letting it keep living, and then the parent app either crashes or has an invisible window that can’t be shown again until you kill the app using System Monitor or a terminal window (Alexander Lohnau, Frameworks 5.94)
Apps like Konsole that allow you to set a custom color scheme for the whole window that overrides the system’s default color scheme are now substantially faster to launch (Nicolas Fella, Frameworks 5.94)
User Interface Improvements
The KWin Scripts KCM has been ported to QtQuick, modernizing its appearance and making future maintenance simpler (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.25):
Filelight has been ported to QtQuick, modernizing its appearance and making future maintenance simpler (Harald Sitter, Filelight 22.08):
DrKonqi’s crash reporting wizard has been ported to QtQuick too! But honestly you should barely notice the difference (Harald Sitter, Plasma 5.25)
For apps using xdg-desktop-portals, the app chooser dialog now looks and behaves better (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.25):
For those of you who disliked the change to always skip minimized tasks when scrolling over the Task Manager to switch tasks, it’s now configurable (Abhijeet Viswa, Plasma 5.25)
…And everything else
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 more news from other KDE contributors.
How You Can Help
If you’re a developer, check out our 15-Minute Bug Initiative. Working on these issues makes a big difference quickly!
Otherwise, have a look at Get Involved - KDE Community Wiki 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