This Week in Plasma: 6.7 beta release
Welcome to a new issue of This Week in Plasma!
This week we released a public beta of Plasma 6.7, ready for testing. A last-minute virtual keyboard feature snuck in… and with that, it’s now frozen for further features, and focus will shift to polishing and bug-fixing for the next month or two.
So let’s have a look:
Notable new features
Plasma 6.7
You can now configure what triggers Plasma’s virtual keyboard to appear. (Kristen McWilliam and Yelsin Sepulveda, kwin MR #9206 and plasma-workspace MR #6548)
The per-window “Hide from Screencast” feature now also hides the window from static screenshots, too. It’s been renamed accordingly. (Elliot Flint, kwin MR #9171)
You can now allow an app that’s controlling input devices to do it every time it asks, instead of having to authorize it each time. (David Redondo, xdg-desktop-portal-kde MR #496 and flatpak-kcm MR #175)
Plasma 6.8
Plasma’s virtual keyboard now has a dedicated layout and mode of operation for the Amharic language! (Abenezer Wesenseged, plasma-keyboard MR #118)
System Settings’ Networks page now lets you configure wireless access points to automatically select a channel. (Mickaël Thomas, plasma-nm MR #523)
Notable UI improvements
Plasma 6.6.6
Made a couple of buttons on System Settings’ Fonts page readable by the Orca screen reader. (Nicolas Fella, KDE Bugzilla #519471)
Plasma 6.7
Discover now groups items on its “Installed” page into categories by default! This makes it much easier to find what you’re looking for. (Tobias Fella, KDE Bugzilla #423344)
Plasma notifications now slide in from off-screen, rather than fading in. It looks really good, and helps draw attention to new notifications without being too attention-grabbing. (Vlad Zahorodnii, kwin MR #9139)
Improved the Kickoff Application Launcher’s ability to launch the item you searched for with a very fast press of the Enter key after some very fast typing. (Christoph Wolk, KDE Bugzilla #519579)
Gwenview is now set to be Plasma’s default SVG viewer, so these files won’t open with GIMP by default anymore. (Darafei Praliaskouski, plasma-desktop MR #3712)
Made multiple improvements to the workflow around unlocking the session using a smart card. (Andreas Lundqvist, kscreenlocker MR #310)
Moved the “Keep Above Others” window tweak to the top level of the titlebar context menu so you can reach it more easily. We reasoned that this is likely to be one of the more frequently-used items, so it ought to be faster to access. (Vlad Zahorodnii, kwin MR #9201)
Notable bug fixes
Plasma 6.6.6
Fixed an issue that made Plasma crash when restarted using systemctl restart --user plasma-plasmashell.service on systems with multiple screens and multiple panels. (Nate Graham, KDE Bugzilla #515234)
Fixed an issue that made Plasma crash when switching Activities using the Activity Pager widget on systems with multiple screens. (Marco Martin, KDE Bugzilla #520065)
Cloning a panel now successfully copies any standalone launcher icons, too. (Marco Martin, KDE Bugzilla #519502)
The System Monitor app and sensors no longer continue to report phantom network activity while the system isn’t connected to any networks. (Kartikeya Tyagi, KDE Bugzilla #508516)
Typing on the desktop to invoke KRunner now works when pressing keys on the number pad, too. (Marco Martin, KDE Bugzilla #504304)
App reviews in Discover no longer get duplicated if you install, uninstall, and re-install the app while Discover remained open. (Tobias Fella, discover MR #1325)
Frameworks 6.27
Fixed a layout issue that could sometimes break Discover completely when the system language was set to Arabic, Chinese, or Japanese. (Akseli Lahtinen, KDE Bugzilla #517091)
The Breeze Icons repo no longer inappropriately uses copyrighted third-party icons. (Nate Graham and Martin Sh., KDE Bugzilla #487595)
Fixed a subtle issue in the common icon browser dialog that made it impossible to select a standard icon from the active icon theme after first selecting an icon from a specific location on disk. (Christoph Wolk, KDE Bugzilla #520007)
Notable in performance & technical
Plasma 6.7
Implemented support for “progressive encoding” for Plasma’s built-in remote desktop server, which can be used when a client doesn’t support H.264 encoding, or codecs for it aren’t available, or when progressive encoding would be more bandwidth-efficient. (David Edmundson, krdp MR #165 and krdp MR #173)
Improved performance and reduced latency for Plasma’s built-in remote desktop server. (David Edmundson, krdp MR #170)
Implemented support for version 3.2 of the Wayland Text Input protocol. (David Edmundson, kwin MR #8970)
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 bug fix mentioned here
Push a commit to the relevant merge request on invent.kde.org.
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