KDE Developer Nate Graham has come up with his usual weekly blog post about what's happening in KDE ecosystem. It's been another busy week for KDE developers, bringing exciting new features, UI improvements, and crucial bug fixes to the Plasma desktop environment and KDE applications. This week's updates focus on enhancing user experience with sharper visuals, expanded functionality, and smoother performance.
Table of Contents
Highlighting the Enhancements
- A significant visual upgrade arrives with the introduction of SVG-based cursor themes for Plasma 6.2.0. This change allows themes like Breeze Light and Breeze Dark to display crisp, scalable cursors regardless of size. This implementation doesn't currently use the Hyprcursor system, but KDE developers are contemplating making it a cross-desktop standard soon.
- In a move towards better cross-desktop compatibility, KDE apps now support the cross-desktop thumbnailer spec starting with KDE Frameworks 6.6. This means any compatible thumbnailers already present on the system, such as the STL file thumbnailer, will seamlessly integrate with KDE apps. This is particularly beneficial for users who work with 3D models or 3D printing.
New Features to Enhance Your Workflow
- The Elisa music player receives a handy update in version 24.12.0, displaying the total duration of playlist songs in the footer, providing a quick overview of your listening session.
- Plasma users now have the option to hide clocks on login and lock screens in Plasma 6.2.0.
- The Plasma Pager widget gains increased flexibility, allowing users to disable window outlines for a cleaner look focused solely on virtual desktops.
- The Breeze Light and Dark Plasma styles now respect the system-wide accent colour, resulting in a more unified and visually appealing desktop experience. This is particularly impactful when using the Breeze Twilight Global Theme, which is now entirely accent-color aware.
UI Improvements and Bug Fixes
Beyond the major additions, KDE developers have been hard at work refining the user interface and squashing bugs:
- Elisa (24.08.0) and Filelight (24.12.0) now reliably remember window maximization state, geometry, and size across launches, improving user experience.
- A visual glitch causing a blurry corner in the rounded title bars when using background blur, particularly noticeable in apps like Konsole, has been fixed in Plasma 6.2.0.
- Several bug fixes address issues in System Settings, improving the auto-rotate settings accessibility and column header sorting in System Monitor.
- Workarounds for quirks in VLC and Qt enhance media playback control responsiveness and prevent widget overlap in Plasma's Widget Explorer.
- Plasma 6.2.0 sees a fix for the "copy time/date to clipboard" function in the Digital Clock widget on Wayland, addressing broader clipboard issues.
- The "Small font" setting in System Settings' Fonts page is now functional again thanks to a fix for a Plasma 6 porting error.
Performance Optimizations for a Smoother Experience
Significant efforts have been made to boost performance and efficiency:
- Plasma 6.1.4 tackles an issue that caused noticeable frame drops on systems with hybrid Intel+NVIDIA GPU setups.
- Wayland users can now drag and drop items to a Plasma panel in auto-hide mode, mirroring the behaviour on X11.
- Changing languages in System Settings' Region & Language page is now more reliable, even when distributions may not have configured everything perfectly.
- Discover benefits from a faster and more efficient search function in Plasma 6.1.5.
- System performance while using ICC colour profiles sees improvement in Plasma 6.2.0.
- Video players are now more likely to utilise KWin's direct scan-out feature, resulting in power savings and reduced system resource usage.
- Plasma's Global Menu functionality on Wayland sees improved reliability, especially with exported menus from Electron apps like VSCode.
Join the KDE Community
This summary only scratches the surface of the continuous development efforts within the KDE community.
- For a deeper look at the latest developments, visit https://planet.kde.org/.
- If you're interested in contributing to KDE, a wealth of information and opportunities awaits at https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved.
Every contribution, big or small, is invaluable to KDE's mission of creating a powerful and user-friendly free software ecosystem.
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