This Week in Plasma: Plasma 6.4 stabilizes
Welcome to a new issue of This Week in Plasma! Every week we cover the highlights of what’s happening in the world of KDE Plasma and its associated apps like Discover, System Monitor, and more.
This week we released a second beta version of Plasma 6.4 and worked a ton on polishing it up in preparation for general release in about two weeks. We’re getting a good response from beta testers who are submitting lots of bug reports — please keep it up! These are hugely valuable, and we’re prioritizing them.
Notable UI Improvements
Plasma 6.4.0
Handled more device types in the Bluetooth widget so that it’s more accurate about identifying the device type. (Kai Uwe Broulik, link)
The Bluetooth pairing wizard now displays devices with real names on top so you can find them more easily. (Albert Astals Cid, link)
Improved keyboard navigation across search result columns in the Kicker Application Menu. (Christoph Wolk, link)
The Dictionary and Web Browser widgets now both use symbolic panel icons, to match what other widgets do now. (Christoph Wolk, link 1, link 2)
Made numerous functional and visual improvements to the Fifteen Puzzle widget. (Christoph Wolk, link 1, link 2, link 3, link 4, link 5, link 6)
Plasma 6.5.0
You can now advance to the next wallpaper in a wallpaper slideshow using a keyboard shortcut, if you assign one to the new global action we created for this purpose. (Kai Uwe Broulik, link)
KWin’s Magnifier and Zoom effects now share their initial zoom level and zoom factor settings. (Ritchie Frodomar, link)
The Digital Clock widget’s calendar add-ons page has been given a visual overhaul and looks much nicer now. (Christoph Wolk, link 1, link 2, and link 3)
Plasma now warns you that keeping the “Raise maximum volume” setting active for prolonged periods will damage the device’s speakers, and lets you know it’s designed only for temporary use to boost the volume of quiet media. (Nate Graham, link)
System Settings’ Legacy X11 App Support page is now clearer about what you would use its settings for, and what the security consequences of doing so are. (Nate Graham, link)
The menu that appears when you click on the little app icon in a window’s titlebar is now consistently called the “Window Menu” everywhere. (John Veness, link 1 and link 2)
Notable Bug Fixes
Plasma 6.3.6
Fixed a random-seeming KWin crash. (Vlad Zahorodnii, link)
Fixed a common crash in the Powerdevil power management subsystem. (Vlad Zahorodnii, link)
The Legacy X11 App Support settings now apply accurately no matter what keyboard layout you’re using. (Vlad Zahorodnii, link)
The keyboard shortcut in the desktop context menu for the ”Launch KRunner” menu item (if you’ve manually enabled it) is once again shown correctly. (Kai Uwe Broulik, link)
Fixed a very subtle visual glitch in the radio button switching animation. (Kai Uwe Broulik, link)
The Power And Battery widget no longer bugs you to install power-profiles-daemon when it’s already installed but your hardware simply doesn’t support it. (Nate Graham, link)
Plasma 6.4.0
Fixed multiple bugs where dragging-and-dropping widgets onto panels or the desktop would only work once until Plasma was restarted, or could make Plasma crash, or where widgets dropped on a panel could overlap. (Marco Martin, link 1, link 2, link 3, and link 4)
Fixed a case where Plasma or System Settings could crash when you removed certain locations from the locations list for the Slideshow wallpaper plugin. (Marco Martin, link)
Fixed an extremely strange and subtle issue in Spectacle that would cause content on the wrong screen to get captured when using certain multi-screen arrangements with certain fractional scale factors. (Noah Davis, link)
Fixed a case where a newly-configured System Monitor Sensor widget wouldn’t save its state after the system was restarted. (Arjen Hiemstra, link)
The Bluetooth widget no longer briefly shows the status as “Disconnecting” for a moment while actually connecting to a device. (Kai Uwe Broulik, link)
Clicking on the active Global Theme on System Settings’ Global themes page no longer shows a dialog saying the theme is broken. (David Edmundson, link)
Installing or uninstalling an app while the Kickoff Application Launcher is open no longer makes it clear the visible page until you navigate away from it and then back again. This is useful for when you’ve got it pinned open and are uninstalling unnecessary apps you find there one-by-one. (Christoph Wolk, link)
Fixed the width of the main column in the Kicker Application Menu so that it returns to its normal width after clearing the search field text, and ridiculously long text now elides rather than being cut off. (Christoph Wolk, link 1 and link 2)
Fixed a bug in the Kicker Application Menu that would cause sub-menus to be displayed at the wrong size when switching to them immediately after viewing a smaller sub-menu with its own sub-menus. (Christoph Wolk, link)
Fixed a bug that caused the header backgrounds for the few remaining System Settings pages written in QtWidgets to not change properly after you switch color schemes until System Settings was restarted. (Marco Martin, link)
Fixed the window stacking order being sometimes scrambled when using the “Slide Back” effect. (David Edmundson, link)
Fixed a bug preventing the items in Firefox’s popup showing recently downloaded files from being draggable as intended. (Vlad Zahorodnii, link)
Frameworks 6.15
Fixed a bug that caused KWin to crash when the screen arrangement is changed while the Overview effect was open. (Vlad Zahorodnii, link)
Fixed a bug that caused apps to hang when they try to access passwords if somehow your default KWallet wallet has gotten its name set to an empty string. (Marco Martin, link)
Fixed a bug that caused the KWalletManager app to freeze if you start creating a new wallet, then change your mind in the middle of the process and close the new wallet creation dialog. (Marco Martin, link)
Worked around a GTK bug a bug that caused some Breeze icons to appear as white rectangles in GTK 3 apps. (Mors Mortium, link)
In the “Get New [thing]” windows, the button to open the comments page is now an actual button, not an underlined link, which was misleading. (John Veness, link)
Qt 6.8.4
Fixed one of the most common random crashes in any and all QtQuick-based KDE software. (Ulf Hermann, link)
Qt 6.10
Fixed a bug that caused context menus in some apps to be offset and displayed in the wrong location when using a multi-screen setup. (Vlad Zahorodnii, link)
Other bug information of note:
- 3 very high priority Plasma bugs (same as last week). Current list of bugs
- 25 15-minute Plasma bugs (down from 27 last week). Current list of bugs
Notable in Performance & Technical
Plasma 6.5.0
Reduced memory usage of Plasma by keeping fewer unnecessary copies of each screen’s wallpaper in memory. (David Edmundson, link)
Changing the icon theme no longer triggers an unnecessary refresh of the application metadata cache. (Nicolas Fella, link)
Qt 6.10.0
Implemented the ability to have companion items in QtQuick-based user interfaces label one another for the purpose of screen readers saying more sensible things when they’re focused. Once this is released, we’ll be able to start adopting it throughout KDE software! (Nicolas Fella, link)
How You Can Help
KDE has become important in the world, and your time and contributions have helped us get there. As we grow, we need your support to keep KDE sustainable.
You can help KDE by becoming an active community member and getting involved somehow. Each contributor makes a huge difference in KDE — you are not a number or a cog in a machine!
You don’t have to be a programmer, either. Many other opportunities exist:
- Triage and confirm bug reports, maybe even identify their root cause
- Contribute designs for wallpapers, icons, and app interfaces
- Design and maintain websites
- Translate user interface text items into your own language
- Promote KDE in your local community
- …And a ton more things!
You can also help us by making a donation! Any monetary contribution — however small — will help us cover operational costs, salaries, travel expenses for contributors, and in general just keep KDE bringing Free Software to the world.
To get a new Plasma feature or a bugfix mentioned here, feel free to push a commit to the relevant merge request on invent.kde.org.
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