This Week in Plasma: 6.6 is Here!
Welcome to a new issue of This Week in Plasma!
This week we released Plasma 6.6! So far it’s getting great reviews, even on Phoronix. 😁
As usual, this week the major focus was on triaging bug reports from people upgrading to the new release, and then fixing them. There were a couple of minor regressions as a result of the extensive work done to modernize Plasma widgets’ UI and code for Plasma 6.6, and we’ve already got almost all of them fixed.
In addition to that, feature work and UI improvements roared into focus for Plasma 6.7! Lots of neat stuff this week. Check it all out:
Notable new features
Plasma 6.7.0
While in the Overview effect, you can now switch between virtual desktops by scrolling or pressing the Page Up/Page Down keys! (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Bugzilla #453109 and kwin MR #8829)
On Wayland, you can optionally synchronize the stylus pointer with the mouse/touchpad pointer if this fits your stylus usage better. (Joshua Goins, KDE Bugzilla #505663)
The old print queue dialog has been replaced with a full-featured print queue viewer app, allowing you to visualize multiple queues of multiple printers connected locally or over the network! It still offers a good and normal experience for the common case of having one printer, but now also includes loads of enterprisey features relevant to environments with many printers. (Mike Noe, print-manager MR #280)
You can now exclude windows from screen recording using permanent window rules! (Kai Uwe Broulik, kwin MR #8828)
Added a new --release-capture command-line option to Spectacle that allows invoking it with its “accept screenshot on click-and-release” setting using automation tools. (Arimil, spectacle MR #479)
Notable UI improvements
Plasma 6.6.1
The Custom Tiling feature accessed with Meta+T no longer inappropriately respects key repeat, and therefore no longer becomes practically impossible to open with a very high key repeat rate. (Ritchie Frodomar, KDE Bugzilla #515940)
Close buttons on the default “Thumbnails” Alt+Tab task switcher are now more legible on top of the window thumbnails. (Nate Graham, kwin MR #8830)
The Networks widget now shows a more appropriate icon in the panel or System Tray when you disable Wi-Fi. (Nate Graham, plasma-nm MR #526)
Plasma 6.7.0
The System Monitor app and widgets now respect your chosen “binary unit” choice. This means for example if you’ve asked for file sizes to be expressed as “GB” (gigabyte, or one billion bytes) rather than “GiB” (gibibyte, or 2^30 bytes), the system monitoring tools now respect that. (David Redondo, KDE Bugzilla #453854)
If the auto-generated scale factor for a screen is very close to 100%, 200%, or 300%, it now gets rounded to that value, prioritizing performance and visual fidelity. (Kai Uwe Broulik, kwin MR #8742)
The Color Picker widget now displays more sensible tooltip and placeholder text when it hasn’t been used yet. (Joshua Goins, kdeplasma-addons MR #1010)
Various parts of Plasma now consistently use the term “UEFI Firmware Settings” to refer to UEFI-based setup tools. (Kai Uwe Broulik, plasma-workspace MR #6246 and plasma-desktop MR #3541)
The “Terminate this frozen window” dialog now shows a little spinner as it tries to terminate the window, so you don’t think it’s gotten stuck. (Kai Uwe Broulik, kwin MR #8818)
The Widget Explorer sidebar now appears on the screen with the pointer on it, rather than always appearing on the left-most screen. (Fushan Wen, plasma-workspace MR #6251)
Notable bug fixes
Plasma 6.6.1
Fixed a case where KWin could crash during intensive input method usage. (Vlad Zahorodnii, KDE Bugzilla #506916)
Fixed a case where KWin could crash when waking up the system while using the Input Leap or Deskflow input-sharing apps. (David Redondo, KDE Bugzilla #515179)
Fixed a case where Discover could crash while trying to install updates. (Harald Sitter, KDE Bugzilla #515150)
Fixed a regression that broke drag-and-drop onto pinned Task Manager widget icons. (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Bugzilla #516242)
Fixed a regression that made certain popups from third-party software appear in the wrong place on the screen. (Vlad Zahorodnii, KDE Bugzilla #516185)
Fixed a minor visual regression in the Zoom effect on rotated screens. (Vlad Zahorodnii, kwin MR #8817)
Fixed a layout regression that made the Task Manager widget’s tooltip close buttons get slightly cut off for multi-window apps while window thumbnails were manually disabled. (Christoph Wolk, KDE Bugzilla #516018)
Fixed a layout regression that slightly misaligned the search bar in the Kicker Application Menu widget. (Christoph Wolk, KDE Bugzilla #516196)
Fixed a layout regression that made some System Tray popups always show an unnecessary hamburger menu. (Arjen Hiemstra, KDE Bugzilla #516135)
Fixed a regression that made some GTK apps not notice system-wide changes to the color scheme and enter their dark mode. (Nicolas Fella, KDE Bugzilla #516303)
Fixed a button added to Plasma 6.6 not having translated text. (Albers Astals Cid, plasma-workspace MR #6305)
Fixed server-to-client clipboard syncing in Plasma’s remote desktop implementation. (realies, krdp MR #144)
The new Plasma Login Manager introduced in Plasma 6.6 no longer shows accounts on the system that a human can’t actually log into. (Matthew Snow, plasma-login-manager MR #109)
Fixed a layout issue that made a label in the panel configuration dialog disappear when using certain Plasma styles. (Filip Fila, KDE Bugzilla #515987)
Fixed a layout issue that made the notification dialog too tall for very short text-only notification messages. (Kai Uwe Broulik, plasma-workspace MR #6145)
Fixed an issue that set the screen brightness to too low a level on login in certain circumstances. (Xaver Hugl, KDE Bugzilla #504441)
Fixed a layout issue that made the song or artist names in the Media Player widget get cut off too early when the widget was placed in a panel in between two spacers. (Greeniac Green, KDE Bugzilla #501166)
Improved the Weather Report widget’s reliability with forecasts from the Environment Canada provider. (Eric Soltys, kdeplasma-addons MR #1008)
Made the progress indicator built into icons in the Task Manager widget move in the appropriate direction when using the system with a right-to-left language like Arabic or Hebrew. (Oliver Beard, KDE Bugzilla #516053)
Custom icons embedded in third-party widgets that appear in the Widget Explorer sidebar now also appear in those widgets’ “About this widget” pages. (Mark Capella, KDE Bugzilla #509896)
Plasma 6.7.0
Eliminated a source of visual glitchiness with certain fade transitions while using an ICC profile. (Xaver Hugl, KDE Bugzilla #515194)
Frameworks 6.24
Fixed a case where KDE’s desktop portal could crash when copying certain data over a remote desktop connection. (David Edmundson, KDE Bugzilla #515465)
Notable in performance & technical
Plasma 6.6.1
Improved animation performance throughout the system by leaning more heavily on the Wayland Presentation Time protocol. (Vlad Zahorodnii, KDE Bugzilla #516240)
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.
Would you like to help put together this weekly report? Introduce yourself in the Matrix room and join the team!
Beyond that, you can help KDE by directly getting involved in any other projects. Donating time is actually more impactful than donating money. 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.
You can also help out by making a donation! This helps cover operational costs, salaries, travel expenses for contributors, and in general just keeps KDE bringing Free Software to the world.
To get a new Plasma feature or a bugfix mentioned here
Push a commit to the relevant merge request on invent.kde.org.
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