This Week in Plasma: 6.8 Beta 2; Keep Testing!
Welcome to a new issue of This Week in Plasma!
This week, Plasma 6.8 continues to pass through the bug-fixing process in preparation for its release on October 14th, including the release of a second beta version. So far we still don’t have many reported regressions, so again either Plasma 6.8 is amazing already, or else people aren’t testing it enough!
In addition to bug fixing and polishing, Plasma contributors also began landing some features and UI improvements for Plasma 6.9. Check it out:
Notable new features
Plasma 6.9
The context menu for Task Manager tasks now includes a “Move to Screen” feature, mirroring the similar one already accessible from windows’ titlebar context menus. (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Bugzilla #465058)
System Settings’ Firewall page can now display comments associated with custom firewall rules made with the ufw firewall backend. (Arie Miller, plasma-firewall MR #109)
Notable UI improvements
Plasma 6.8
Tiled windows now have square corners, so they fit together nicely. (Ethan Chappel, KDE Bugzilla #490716)
The Dictionary widget now fully adjusts its colors when the active color scheme or Plasma style changes, and looks more “Plasma-style” in general. (Christoph Wolk, kdeplasma-addons MR #1141)
New
OldSystem Monitor’s Processes and Applications pages no longer sometimes show double scrollbars. (Christoph Wolk, plasma-systemmonitor MR #466)
Plasma now sends fewer notifications about the screen configuration changing — particularly for cases where they offer no real value. (Kai Uwe Broulik, plasma-workspace MR #7094 and plasma-workspace MR #7148)
Plasma 6.9
System Settings’ Touchpad page now expresses the available options for right- and middle-clicking in a more natural way. (Jakob Petsovits, plasma-desktop MR #4041)
On System Settings’ Notifications page, some icons on the list items for configuring individual notifications now have tooltips to explain what they do, in case their icons aren’t comprehensible enough. (Tobias Fella, plasma-workspace MR #6785)
If you’ve configured any custom clipboard actions in the Clipboard widget’s settings, they’re now placed above the standard MIME type actions, rather than below them. (Paul Wise, plasma-workspace MR #6107)
The “In rows” and “In columns” arrangement options for desktop icons now arrange icons the way they say they will, rather than according to the opposite option. (Daniel Pflager, KDE Bugzilla #512993)
Notifications with speed graphs no longer redundantly show the current speed twice while expanded. (Méven Car, plasma-workspace MR #7050)
Notable bug fixes
Plasma 6.6.7
Fixed an issue that could make Plasma freeze on systems where the Wi-Fi adapter is disabled and re-enabled frequently. (Jay Fleischer, plasma-nm MR #669)
Fixed an issue in the Comics widget that could make it occasionally get stuck in an infinite loop and waste system resources. (Tobias Fella, KDE Bugzilla #525856)
Plasma 6.7.6
Fixed a case where KWin could crash on systems with NVIDIA GPUs using version 610.57.04 or later of the proprietary driver. (Xaver Hugl, KDE Bugzilla #524840)
Fixed a case where Plasma could crash when you dragged a widget to a panel. (David Edmundson, KDE Bugzilla #501289)
Fixed a case where Plasma could crash while trying to fetch weather data from Environment Canada. (Bohdan Onofriichuk, KDE Bugzilla #512054)
Fixed a memory leak in the Process Table widget. (David Edmundson, KDE Bugzilla #525978)
Worked around an upstream issue in version 9.12 or later of the coreutils library that prevented KWallet from being unlocked at login as expected. (Omid Kordbache, KDE Bugzilla #525805)
Fixed a recent regression that made the names of touchpads vanish from the device chooser combobox on System Settings’ Touchpad page. (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Bugzilla #521800)
Plasma 6.8
Fixed a case where Plasma could crash in response to apps closing or crashing in very specific ways. (David Edmundson, KDE Bugzilla #506562)
Fixed an issue that made Spectacle sometimes fail to save screen recordings. (Zhora Zmeykin, KDE Bugzilla #516848)
Spectacle’s “Share” feature once again works. (Tobias Fella, KDE Bugzilla #525413)
When you drag the thumbnail of a file or screenshot from a notification to somewhere else, the drop menu once again includes “Move” as an option. (Christoph Wolk, KDE Bugzilla #508520)
Remote desktop authentication now works with version 3.32 or later of the freerdp library. (Ben Marshall, krdp MR #248)
Fixed an issue that could cause remote desktop sessions closed remotely while in progressive mode to get stuck and block starting new sessions. (Oliver Beard, krdp MR #246)
The Brightness & Color widget is now fully screen-reader-friendly. (Christoph Wolk, KDE Bugzilla #508485)
Fixed a bizarre clipboard issue that mis-rendered certain Unicode characters in the 100th position of a piece of copied text. (Tomáš Hnyk, KDE Bugzilla #508224)
Plasma 6.9
Text in a right-to-left language that you copy to the clipboard while using a left-to-right language is no longer covered up by the hover buttons in the clipboard history. (Tomáš Hnyk, KDE Bugzilla #440349)
Fixed a visual glitch affecting notifications with speed graphs that could appear when you sent them to the history, and then restored them. (Méven Car, KDE Bugzilla #514677)
Notable in performance & technical
Plasma 6.8
The Task Manager widget’s feature to filter tasks by virtual desktop has been made compatible with the “per-screen virtual desktops” feature. (Kai Uwe Broulik, plasma-workspace MR #7147)
System Monitor and its widgets now measure GPU memory usage more accurately. (Roan Bukaci, KDE Bugzilla #525481)
How you can help
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