English - Planet KDE

English - Planet KDE
Welcome to Planet KDE
This is a feed aggregator that collects what the contributors to the
KDE community
are writing on their respective blogs, in different languages
Català
Euskara
Italiano
Nederlands
Português
Slovenčina
Svenska
Türkçe
Русский
Українська
««
»»
Friday, 24 April 2026
Speaking at Chennai FOSS: GUI Design, QT, SOK and a lot more
Sayandeep Dutta
SoK
@devsam:matrix.org
04:03 +00:00
Atom
Chennai FOSS 2026
Earlier this month, on 18th April 2026, I had the incredible opportunity to speak at Chennai FOSS 2026, an event organized by FOSS United.
If you aren’t familiar with them, FOSS United is a non-profit foundation dedicated to promoting the Free and Open Source Software ecosystem in India.
About my talk
My talk, titled "Getting started with GUI Design and Music Generation using Qt and C++," was a reflection of my recent contributions to the Season of KDE 2026.
The session shares how I, personally, as a new developer, found my way across one of my favorite projects, Mankala Engine, and started contributing in the Season of KDE 2026.
I had shared my work from the Season of KDE, which included updating the GUI using C++ and QML, and also implementing elements like sounds and physics using QT. How developers can make contributions using Kirigami and other QT modules of KDE.
Most contributions are not limited to code, and I also shared the artworks I created for Mankala Engine, as well as my experience being part of Season of KDE 2026.
Here is my session PDF:
I don't like too much text, my session was mostly a live demo :)
Apart from learning about many new topics, which proved helpful to me, I also got the chance to network with other projects and contributors.
Thanks for reading 🚀
References & useful resources
- Link to my proposal at Chennai FOSS
- Chennai FOSS 2026
Thursday, 23 April 2026
KDE email, part two: use an email client
Nate Graham
ngraham
21:53 +00:00
RSS
One of the many benefits of going to in-person sprints is you get to see how other people use their computers, and you can learn some workflow tricks from them. Or, you might notice areas of inefficiency and share tips of your own.
This post will be about the latter, on the subject of email.
Because during the sprint, I observed multiple people using email on their laptops in ways that are slow or ineffective:
Logging into webmail in a web browser
Switching between multiple webmail sites to manage multiple email accounts
Clicking on buttons in the webmail UI to delete or reply to messages
If you recognize yourself here, there’s a better way, I promise.
And I’d like to help you achieve it!
Back in 2024, I
wrote about my email workflow
and offered some general tips for managing email overload in KDE. I’m going to write more in depth about this topic, today starting with…
Use an email client app.
KDE has one:
KMail
. If it works well for you, use it! If it doesn’t, use
Thunderbird
instead, it’s fine. Don’t feel guilty for not using a piece of KDE software. Nobody’s gonna excommunicate you from KDE! I’m officially giving you permission.
Maybe you use an email client on your desktop but haven’t set one up on your travel laptop yet? Well, it’s time!
Because the important part is to consistently use an email client app
of some sort
. Why?
Way better for multiple accounts
Most of us have 2 or more email accounts. With webmail, this becomes a pain that scales linearly with the number of accounts.
With an email client app, you can manage multiple accounts’ worth of emails in one UI. When all your accounts are managed from one app, your brain doesn’t need to learn and remember multiple UIs, and and opening new email accounts doesn’t scale the mental burden at all.
Faster to use
An email client app lets you interact with emails using learnable and consistent keyboard shortcuts. Processing emails this way is super fast, so you can get done quickly and go back to something useful. Email sucks; life’s too short to waste time on it.
Easier to access
You can access the email client app easily using the Task Switcher, Overview, or Alt+Tab, rather than letting those webmail tabs get buried among your 75 normal browser tabs and 10 pinned tabs.
Easier to leave email mode
Quit the email client app when you want to stop receiving emails.
For webmail, you’re tempted to leave it open in a tab forever, which means to avoid being constantly tortured with email notification, you’ll have to turn them off entirely, so you stop noticing emails when they arrive. This is problematic for the “keep my email open all day” approach where the whole point is being able to action new emails immediately so they don’t pile up.
Using an app that can be turned off also facilitates being a “check email once a day” kind of person, if that’s your jam. Open the app, check your email, action the important ones, delete or archive all of them, then close the app. You can carve out 5-20 minutes for email, be free of email for the rest of the day, and still keep on top of everything!
Using good tools is enjoyable
Imagine trying to manage versions or debug code without
git
or
gdb
. It would take ages and the results wouldn’t be as good. Proficiency with these tools makes you feel like a bird soaring above the clouds or a wizard effortlessly wielding powerful magic, not some clod stumbling around in the mud.
Email clients are the same way. Learn powerful tools to bolster your professional skills and feel better about the
process
of participating in KDE, not just the outcomes.
The Thunderbird email client is the foundation of my email system. In conjunction with other techniques — which I
briefly described in the earlier post
and will flesh out in more detail over the coming weeks — this is currently my email situation:
Those are all of my emails across 5 accounts. Here are just my KDE emails:
As you can see, this is completely manageable. It takes practically no effort to keep it this way, and there’s no feeling of dread when checking emails in the morning. If you’re drowning in email, you can get here too, I promise.
It starts with using an email client. If you aren’t regularly using one yet, it will take some up-front work, and some re-training, but it’s worth it: you’ll spend less time and mental resources on email and more of it on what actually matters —
without
taking the easy path of neglecting email and being perceived as a person who’s hard to contact or unreliable.
So get started today with
KMail
or
Thunderbird
Qt Creator 19.0.1 released
Qt Dev Loop
10:39 +00:00
RSS
We are happy to announce the release of Qt Creator 19.0.1!
This release of Qt Creator fixes various issues, including but not limited to
Wednesday, 22 April 2026
Qt for MCUs 2.12.1 LTS and Updates
Qt Dev Loop
09:10 +00:00
RSS
Qt for MCUs 2.12.1 LTS has been released and is available for download.
This patch release provides bug fixes and other improvements while maintaining source compatibility with Qt for MCUs 2.12 (see
Qt for MCUs 2.12 LTS released
). This release does not add any new functionality.
Monday, 20 April 2026
Kookbook 0.3.0 released
Sune Vuorela
svuorela
15:01 +00:00
RSS
I recently released version 0.3.0 of my recipe manager application Kookbook – find it in git in
KDE Invent
or as released tarballs in https://download.kde.org/stable/kookbook/
Changes since last time is more or less “Minor bugfixes and a Qt6 port” – nothing as such noteworthy unless you aim to get rid of Qt5 on your system.
so what is kookbook?
It is a simple recipe viewer that works with semi-structured markdown. More details can be seen in the quite old
0.1.0 announcement
At some point I should do a 10 recipe example collection, but my personal collection is in danish, so I’m not sure it is going to be useful. Unless someone will donate me some handfuls of pre-formatted recipes, I will happily announce it.
Saturday, 18 April 2026
KDE Mega Sprint 2026 Graz
Raresh Rus
@nmariusp:kde.org
13:54 +00:00
Atom
Hello
I am Raresh Rus,
I took part in the KDE Mega Sprint 2026 Graz
The sprint was from 09:00 - 19:00, Monday 2026.04.06 - Saturday 2026.04.11.
In room HS FSI 1, Inffeldgasse 11, Graz, Austria. In the Inffeldgasse campus of the Technical University Graz (TU Graz).
We were hosted by the "Grazer Linuxtage 2026" organization. Thank you Kevin Krammer.
I travelled by bus and slept almost all of the time.
The city of Graz has a population of 300,000 and is the second largest city in Austria after the capital Vienna.
Graz has a large number of well preserved pre First World War buildings.
More than 20 KDE contributors participated. Including CorneliusS and LaurenzW from the GNOME community.
Before the sprint, I created a youtube video "KDE Mega Sprint 2026 and Grazer Linuxtage 2026 #glt26"
During the sprint, I did small gitlab Merge Requests.
Some KDE git repositories had the main readme file say that the KDE project can most easily be built using kdesrc-build. I replaced "kdesrc-build" with "kde-builder".
I saw that
was ready to replace
. So we did this replacement.
I have edited the flatpak manifest of some KDE GUI apps, such that less files are present in the flatpak package file.
KDE Linux comes with kwrite preinstalled from flathub. I saw that
does exist. But this flatpak manifest for kwrite does not exist in the KDE git repository of kwrite and kate.
I have encountered various issues with the licenses displayed in the about dialog of various KDE GUI apps. Scroll issues in license text viewer in Kirigami app. Not correct license being displayed. There are also differences between the license in reuse in the KDE git repository, the license shown in the GUI app's about dialog, the license shown for that app in Discover, apps.kde.org, flathub and snap store.
Also, in reuse, the license of files which come from outside the KDE community for example app icons for VLC and Blender have different licenses in the upstream git repository and in the KDE git repository.
The reuse linter prefers that we use file "REUSE.toml" instead of ".reuse/dep5".
Top issues that I have encountered: I saw Plasma Welcome Center tens of times without reinstalling operating systems or reverting VM snapshots. My hardware laptop took many minutes to start until I have disabled "Intel VMD" from the UEFI firmware screen with advanced settings.
Fedora 44 Workstation and Ubuntu 26.04 use the GNOME desktop, do not have a GNOME desktop X11 session, but I can connect using the Remote Desktop Protocol. See
Work is in progress to have these features available also for KDE Linux and the KDE Plasma Wayland session.
The big epics are probably: "KDE Plasma Wayland session - make it possible via command line to change the KDE Plasma Wayland session resolution to arbitrary width and height integer values", "vdagent - make it possible to paste plain text towards KDE Plasma Wayland", "vdagent - make it possible to copy plain text from KDE Plasma Wayland", "RDP server in KDE Plasma Wayland - implement plain text clipboard copy/paste", "RDP server in KDE Plasma Wayland - make it possible to log into KDE Plasma from a RDP client such as xfreerdp".
Toward the end of the sprint, we recorded a youtube video "Conclusions panel KDE Mega Sprint 2026 Graz"
State of Kdenlive - 2026
Kdenlive
09:00 +00:00
RSS
In 2025, the Kdenlive team continued grinding to push the project forward through steady development, collaboration, and community support. Over the past year we’ve found a nice balance between adding new features, bug fixing, polishing the user interface, and improving performance and workflow, with stability taking priority over feature creep.
We relaunched the website with a new content management system, refreshed some content and the design, and restored historic content dating back to 2002. We also strengthened upstream collaboration with the MLT developers and contributed several improvements to OpenTimelineIO.
Here’s a look at what we've been up to and what is ahead.
RELEASE HIGHLIGHTS
As part of
KDE Apps
, we follow the KDE Gear
release cycle
, with three major releases each year—in April, August, and December—each followed by three point maintenance releases.
25.04.0
This release added a powerful automatic masking tool and brought the last batch of features from our last fundraiser.
->
Read full changelog
Background Removal
The new Object Segmentation plugin based on the [SAM2][4] model allows to remove any selected object from the background.
OpenTimelineIO
We rewrote our OpenTimelineIO import and export function using the C++ library. Now you can exchange projects with other editing applications that support this open source file format.
Waveform improvements
Audio waveform generation got a 300% performance boost, along with a refactored sampling method that accurately renders the audio signal and higher-resolution waveforms for greater precision.
25.08.0
This release focused heavily on stabilization, bringing over 300 commits and fixing more than 15 crashes. Instead of major new features, the effort went into polishing and bug fixing.
->
Read full changelog
Audio Mixer
We redesigned the audio mixer bringing levels with clearer visuals and thresholds. We also did some code refactoring and cleanup. This change fixes issues with HiDPI displays with fractional scaling.
Markers and Guides
Guides and Markers got a major overhaul this release to improve the project organization.
Titler improvements
This release the titler received some much needed love like improved SVG and image support with ability to move and resize items, added center resize with Shift + Drag, and renamed the Pattern tab to Templates and moved the templates dropdown to it
25.12.0
The focus of this release cycle was on improving the user experience and polishing the user interface.
->
Read full changelog
Welcome Screen
We added a new first-run launch screen for first time users as well as added a Welcome Screen allowing to easily launch recent projects.
Docking System
We added a new, more flexible docking system that lets you group widgets, show or hide them on demand, and save layouts as separate files that can be shared or stored within projects.
Redesigned monitor
The audio waveform in the Project Monitor got a revamped interface with an added minimap.
THE ROAD AHEAD
26.04
This next release is just around the corner and brings a nice batch of nifty new features like monitor mirroring and animated transition previews, making it much easier to visualize how they will look before applying them. Additionally, dropping a transition onto the timeline can now automatically adjust its duration to match the clips above and below, saving time and reducing manual tweaking.
This feature allows you to mirror any monitor while working in fullscreen mode. It’s especially useful when working with multiple displays or collaborating with others in the editing room.
OTHER NOTEWORTHY FEATURES
Change the playback speed of multiple clips at once
Import a clip directly from the timeline context menu and insert it at the click position
Option to always zoom toward the mouse position instead of the timeline playhead
Generate audio thumbnails for sequences
ROADMAP
Our
roadmap
is constantly being reviewed and updated, and some of the upcoming highlights include implementing the new features in MLT, the multimedia framework which powers Kdenlive. Some exciting upcoming features include 10/12 bit color support,
playback optimizations (decoding)
, and
OpenFX
support.
(Shoutout to a Kdenlive community member for leading this effort)
. Also expected is a refactoring of the subtitle system as well as continuing to develop the
Advanced Trimming Tools
DOPESHEET
We are currently working on refactoring the keyframing system and implementing a Dopesheet, basically it is a dedicated timeline for managing and viewing keyframes from multiple effects simultaneously. This work will also introduce per-parameter keyframing (currently, once you add a keyframe to an effect, it is applied to all parameters by default). More info can be found in the last
status report
. This work is made possible through an
NGI Zero Commons grant via NLnet
MICROSOFT STORE
We have been working on
enabling and fixing
multiple modules in MLT to compile with MSVC allowing us to ship Kdenlive in the Microsoft Store soon. Another advantage is that it will allow to run unit tests on our
CI for Windows.
COMMUNITY
NEW CONTRIBUTORS
Currently, the Kdenlive core team is made up of 8 active members, including 2 developers.
In 2025, 38 people contributed code to Kdenlive (including the core dev team and other KDE devs), a truly impressive number! Even more exciting, about half of them were first-time contributors, which is always great. We hope to see many of them continue contributing in the future. On behalf of the Kdenlive team, we salute you all!
List of contributors and commits
Note that these numbers refer specifically to contributions to the Kdenlive application. Other projects such as the test suite and website are hosted in separate repositories and are not included in these figures.
878 — Jean-Baptiste Mardelle
(core team)
126 — balooii balooii
109 — Julius Künzel
(core team)
60 — Darby Johnston
(fundraiser)
26 — Bernd Jordan
(core team)
24 — Ajay Chauhan
11 — Eugen Mohr
(core team)
9 — Scarlett Moore
(KDE)
8 — Yuri Chornoivan
(KDE)
7 — Justin Zobel
(KDE)
7 — Ron Lee
(core team)
6 — Farid Abdelnour
(core team)
5 — Josep M. Ferrer
5 — Étienne André
(fundraiser)
4 — Kunda Ki
4 — Swastik Patel
3 — Camille Moulin
(core team)
3 — Carlos De Maine
2 — Johnny Jazeix
(KDE)
2 — Luigi Toscano
(KDE)
2 — Nicolas Fella
(KDE)
2 — Richard Ash
2 — Side Projects Lab
2 — Xander Bailey
2 — chocolate image
1 — Adam Fidel
1 — Alex Efimov
1 — Edward McVern
1 — Eli George
1 — Helga K
1 — Jack Bruienne
1 — Jonas Endter
1 — Oliver Kellogg
1 — Rafael Sadowski
1 — Steve Cossette
SPRINTS AND EVENTS
AMSTERDAM SPRINT
In February, part of the Kdenlive core team met in
Amsterdam for a short sprint
, highlighted by a visit to the Blender Foundation, where we met with Francesco Siddi and he shared valuable insights into Blender’s history and offered advice on product management for Kdenlive. We also attended their weekly open session, where artists and developers present progress on ongoing projects. During the sprint, we discussed and advanced several technical topics, some highlights include:
Refining the audio workflow task
Developing a proof of concept to improve clip timecode handling
Finishing an MLT Framework patch to enable rendering without a display server (needed for Flatpak testing)
BERLIN SPRINT
The
Berlin sprint
was one of our most productive gatherings to date. Most of the team was there in person, and we also connected online with those who couldn’t make it. We discussed just about every aspect of the project, from roadmap planning to upcoming features and workflow improvements. Some of the highlights include:
Evaluated the current state of the Titler and discussed possible integration with Glaxnimate
Reorganized the Menu structure
Developed a proof of concept for using KDDockWidgets
Redesigned and started development of the audio clip view in the Clip Monitor
Thanks to the nice folks at
c-base
who kindly hosted us.
AKADEMY 2025
Akademy is always a great opportunity to exchange ideas with the broader KDE and Qt communities. One of the highlights was meeting the maintainer of Glaxnimate, where we discussed common goals and ways to collaborate. This year,
Akademy will be in Graz
on the 19-24 of September, and we hope to see you there.
SHOWCASE
We’re very happy to see more YouTube channels talking about Kdenlive. Here are some examples of what the community has been creating.
We'd love to see what you've been working on in the past year. Share your videos productions in the comments!
SPREAD THE WORD
Help us grow the community by organizing meetups, talks, or workshops in your local area. Don’t hesitate to contact us if you need guidance, materials, or support to get started.
Below are photos from a workshop with indigenous communities in Paraguay.
STATS
DOWNLOADS
Kdenlive was downloaded 11,500,714 times from our download page in 2025. Do note that many additional installs happen through Linux distribution package managers, the Snap Store, Flathub, and other third-party servers, where statistics are not always available or reliably measurable.
The Flatpak package from
Flathub
gets 41,499 downloads per month.
25.04.2 got the most number of downloads.
17.08.2 was downloaded 1 time!
Downloads per release cycle
Windows
Linux
Mac
A script element has been removed to ensure Planet works properly. Please find it in the original post.
A script element has been removed to ensure Planet works properly. Please find it in the original post.
CODE COMMITS
Per Release Cycle
25.04 cycle: 403 commits
25.08 cycle: 368 commits
25.12 cycle: 405 commits
Files With Most Code Changes
src/mainwindow.cpp: 102 commits
src/bin/bin.cpp: 70 commits
src/timeline2/view/timelinecontroller.cpp: 67 commits
src/monitor/monitor.cpp: 60 commits
data/org.kde.kdenlive.appdata.xml: 57 commits
Files With Most Bug Fixes
src/mainwindow.cpp: 1021 commits
src/timeline2/model/timelinemodel.cpp: 600 commits
src/bin/bin.cpp: 593 commits
src/timeline2/view/timelinecontroller.cpp: 506 commits
src/renderer.cpp: 501 commits
USERBASE
Continent
🌍 Europe — 949,077
🌎 Americas — 781,131
🌏 Asia — 750,406
🌍 Africa — 127,948
🌏 Oceania — 53,397
🧊 Antarctica — 5
To the 5 of you in Antarctica, let us know what you are editing. ;)
Country
🇺🇸 United States — 392,967
🇮🇳 India — 267,449
🇧🇷 Brazil — 153,319
🇩🇪 Germany — 118,115
🇫🇷 France — 111,071
🇨🇳 China — 104,692
🇷🇺 Russia — 96,051
🇪🇸 Spain — 91,052
🇬🇧 United Kingdom — 86,165
🇮🇹 Italy — 61,814
Region
🇺🇸 California, United States — 42,769
🇧🇷 São Paulo, Brazil — 37,452
🇮🇳 Tamil Nādu, India — 27,313
🇫🇷 Île-de-France, France — 26,755
🇮🇳 Mahārāshtra, India — 25,246
🇺🇸 Texas, United States — 22,470
🇨🇦 Ontario, Canada — 20,016
🇳🇱 Noord-Holland, Netherlands — 19,826
🇺🇸 Florida, United States — 18,997
🇨🇳 Shanghai Shi, China — 18,991
FUNDING
Ever since our last, and
very successful
, fundraiser in 2022, we haven’t actively asked for donations, yet the community has continued to support us. We are very grateful for that.
In 2025, we received a total of €9,344.80 from donations (down from €11,526.61 in 2024). Around 30% of the amount was given by donors who kindly set up a recurring plan. The average donation was about €25, with the lowest amount being €10 and the highest €500.
We allocate 20% of our budget to
KDE e.V.
to support infrastructure costs (servers and related expenses), as well as administration, legal support, and travel. As in previous years, your contributions enable us to continue supporting Jean-Baptiste (Kdenlive's maintainer), allowing him to dedicate several days each month to Kdenlive in addition to his volunteer work.
WE
NEED
YOUR SUPPORT
Kdenlive needs your support to keep growing and improving. If just a quarter of the people who downloaded Kdenlive in 2025 contributed €5, our maintainers would be able to dedicate more time to the project, and it would even allow us to hire more develpers to speed up development and improve stability. Small amounts can make a big difference, please consider making a donation.
A script element has been removed to ensure Planet works properly. Please find it in the original post.
More options to donate
You may also contribute by getting involved and helping in:
Reporting
, debugging, and
triaging bugs
Translating
Kdenlive in your language
Promote Kdenlive in your local community
Hello old new “Projects” directory!
Matthias Klumpp
ximion
08:06 +00:00
RSS
If you have recently installed a very up-to-date Linux distribution with a desktop environment, or upgraded your system on a rolling-release distribution, you might have noticed that your home directory has a new folder: “Projects”
Why?
With the recent 0.20 release of
xdg-user-dirs
we enabled the “Projects” directory by default. Support for this has already existed since 2007, but was never formally enabled. This closes a
more than 11 year old bug report
that asked for this feature.
The purpose of the
Projects
directory is to give applications a default location to place project files that do not cleanly belong into one of the existing categories (Documents, Music, Pictures, Videos). Examples of this are software engineering projects, scientific projects, 3D printing projects, CAD design or even things like video editing projects, where project files would end up in the “Projects” directory, with output video being more at home in “Videos”.
By enabling this by default, and subsequently in the coming months adding support to GLib, Flatpak, desktops and applications that want to make use of it, we hope to give applications that do operate in a “project-centric” manner with mixed media a better default storage location. As of now, those tools either default to the home directory, or will clutter the “Documents” folder, both of which is not ideal. It also gives users a default organization structure, hopefully leading to less clutter overall and better storage layouts.
This sucks, I don’t like it!
As usual, you are in control and can modify your system’s behavior. If you do not like the “Projects” folder,
simply delete it!
The
xdg-user-dirs
utility will not try to create it again, and instead adjust the default location for this directory to your home directory. If you want more control, you can influence exactly what goes where by editing your
~/.config/user-dirs.dirs
configuration file.
If you are a system administrator or distribution vendor and want to set default locations for the default XDG directories, you can edit the
/etc/xdg/user-dirs.defaults
file to set global defaults that affect all users on the system (users can still adjust the settings however they like though).
What else is new?
Besides this change, the 0.20 release of
xdg-user-dirs
brings full support for the Meson build system (dropping Automake), translation updates, and some robustness improvements to its code. We also fixed the “arbitrary code execution from unsanitized input” bug that the Arch Linux Wiki mentions
here
for the
xdg-user-dirs
utility, by replacing the shell script with a C binary.
Thanks to everyone who contributed to this release!
KDE Sprint and Grazer Linuxtage 2026
Volker Krause
@vkrause:kde.org
08:00 +00:00
Atom
I spent the last week in Graz, Austria, attending a
KDE sprint
as well
as
Grazer Linuxtage
KDE Sprint
Just like
last year
the Grazer Linuxtage team had made rooms available for KDE people to meet in the week prior to the conference.
More than twenty contributors attended, below are a few notes from discussions I have been involved with.
Photo by Kieryn Darkwater
AppStream release notes
We use
AppStream
application metadata in a number of places
currently:
The
apps.kde.org
website.
Software stores such as
Flathub
F-Droid
, Google Play or the Microsoft Store.
Software centers such as Discover.
In-app application metadata has so far been maintained separately though, using the
KAboutData API
With KDE Frameworks 6.26 it will become possible to populate that from AppStream data as well,
reducing duplicated data and duplicated translation efforts.
We also expanded how we use release notes from AppStream data:
Release notes
can now also be translated
There’s
new API
for accessing
AppStream release notes inside an application itself. This is meant to avoid duplicated efforts
for
in-app release notes
The KDE Gear release automation will now
handle notes for pre-releases
correctly. This means you can add release notes for users of CD builds already, those will get translated
and merged into the subsequent stable release notes automatically.
There’s a few more things to do here still:
We don’t have a Kirigami-based standard component for in-app release notes yet.
The metadata converters for F-Droid and Google Play don’t handle release notes yet.
LSAN rollout on the CI
After Albert had
added
infrastructure
for
LeakSanitizer (LSAN)
suppressions in the CI, we were
able to enable LSAN in several more repositories which had previously been blocked on “unfixable” or
intentional “leaks” outside of our control.
The increased visibility on actual issues then also helped with identifying and fixing a couple more “real”
leaks, e.g. in
KGuiAddons
and
LibKGAPI
Qt 6.11 for Android
There has been some progress on the long overdue Qt update for our Android builds. This had been delayed
as it’ll imply some rather drastic changes to the supported Android versions and devices. Lacking alternatives
we will go ahead with this.
In particular, after 26.04.0 is out this means
only Android 9 and higher will be supported
, and
32bit ARM builds will be discontinued
We prepared Qt 6.11 CI images and applied necessary build fixes to practically all of our apps that have Craft-based Android builds.
Initial test looks promising, and some of the annoying input handling glitches seem to have been fixed.
Sentry for Android
Another Android-related topic we looked into was uploading crash information to KDE’s Sentry instance. Our Linux and
Windows builds can do this since some time, and it has been a great help with identifying, prioritizing and fixing
crashes.
Initial experiments got this to work quickly on Android as well, but it will require more work to do this properly and give users full
control over whether they want to upload crash information or not. We explored a few options on how to do that and
have a plan now, but that yet has to be implemented.
KMime move to KDE Frameworks
The long-lasting move of
KMime
to KDE Frameworks will finally happen
early May, after the 26.04 KDE Gear release and in time for the 6.27 KDE Frameworks release.
Users of KMime will need a few minor build system adjustments for this. The CMake target name changes from
KPim6::Mime
to
KF6::Mime
, and the version number changes from KDE PIM versioning KDE Frameworks versioning. You can either replace
this at once, or use the forward-compatibility approach suggested below.
The following CMake snippet replaces the previous
find_package
call for
KPim6Mime
and will handle both variants
from before and after the move.
find_package
KF6Mime 6.27 CONFIG
if
NOT TARGET KF6::Mime
find_package
KPim6Mime 6.7.0 CONFIG REQUIRED
add_library
KF6::Mime ALIAS KPim6::Mime
endif
()
Target names in
target_link_library
calls can then be switched to the new
KF6::Mime
already. Once the transition
is complete, the above snippet can be simplified to a single
find_package
call for the new variant again, without
needing to touch anything else anymore.
Akademy preparations
While we were in Graz the dates for this year’s
Akademy
were announced: September 19-24.
Registration
as well as the
Call for Participation
are
open as well.
As it was already known that Akademy would be in Graz this year, we could use the opportunity to inspect venues, test food options,
as well as to review and improve
OSM
(indoor) mapping of the conference location.
Itinerary
With a bunch of people traveling to the sprint,
Itinerary
also got a bit of attention
of course:
Performance of opening the “My Data” page the first time was improved, by optimizing computing some of the statistics
shown on that page.
A new way of sharing GraphQL query fragments should simplify maintaining support for the various
OpenTripPlanner
flavors in
KPublicTransport
. For some of the backends, the information
available for rental bikes/scooters/cars became more detailed as a result of this.
Kate’s
syntax highlighting got
support for IATA SSIM flight schedules
That’s fallout from work on importing such data into
Transitous
, where it will
eventually also benefit Itinerary and
KTrip
And more…
That’s not all of course, other topics included:
Improving the usability of the
push services
configuration in System Settings.
Enabling System Settings to
configure notifications from Flatpak apps using KNotificiation
Aligning the different ways currently used to share plain text via
Purpose
Fixing some non-obvious issues with the static builds after a recent CI image update.
There’s also reports from e.g.
Kieryn
Albert
and
Kristen
on
Planet KDE
with more details and other perspectives.
Grazer Linuxtage
KDE
At Grazer Linuxtage we had a KDE booth again, showing devices running
Plasma
Krita
and
Plasma Mobile
handing out stickers as well as the famous amigurumi Konqis, collecting donations, and of course
with a bunch of KDE contributors around to talk to.
KDE's booth at Grazer Linuxtage (photo by Kieryn Darkwater)
Albert also did a presentation about
30 years of KDE
Transitous
Also as part of the conference program I
spoke about Transitous
and what has been built for that and around that in the past two years.
Following the
recent discussions about dynamic traffic data
the talk about
monitoring vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure messages
was particularly interesting. The information shown on
opentrafficmap.org
is obtained that way,
and shows how incredibly detailed this is.
There’s current positions of trams, busses, and regular cars, speed, acceleration vectors, status of all external lights, and which pedal gets pressed.
Traffic lights report their current state and change timings as well as provide a full machine-readable model of their signal groups and lane relations.
All of that in a standardized and (intentionally) unencrypted form.
Lots of potential in this, I wasn’t aware this went anywhere after things had gotten a bit quieter around the self-driving cars hype.
How you can help!
Bringing people together, for a small meeting or a big conference, is extremely useful and productive.
The necessary travel and logistics come with costs though, which is where your donations to organizations
like
KDE e.V.
or
Grazer Linuxtage
help!
This Week in Plasma: Per-Screen Virtual Desktops and Wayland Session Restore
Nate Graham
ngraham
00:00 +00:00
RSS
Welcome to a new issue of
This Week in Plasma!
Last week over 20 KDE contributors converged on the Austrian city of Graz for our
annual mega-sprint
. It was a busy week, offering a good opportunity for the kinds of face-to-face conversations that can unblock stuck work and reach new consensus. Expect reports to appear on
Planet KDE
over the next week or two.
We skipped an issue of TWiP due to the sprint but these past two weeks have indeed been busy! Some major features landed, along with a slew of impactful UI improvements. Let’s get right into it:
Notable new features
Plasma 6.7
Each screen can now switch between any of the system’s virtual desktops independently! (Hynek Schlindenbuch,
KDE Bugzilla #107302
You can now choose your default calendar app on System Settings’ Default Applications page. (Denys Madureira,
plasma-workspace MR #6468
…And you can now middle-click on the Digital Clock widget to open the calendar app you’ve configured there. (Denys Madureira,
plasma-workspace MR #6462
You can now configure the
Alt
Tab
window switcher to always appear on the primary screen, rather than whichever screen has keyboard focus or the pointer on it. (Yuki Tsujii,
KDE Bugzilla #329696
You can now mark app-specific actions that you find in a search as favorites. (Kai Uwe Broulik,
plasma-workspace MR #6224
The Kicker Application Menu widget now highlights newly-installed apps, just like the Kickoff Application Launcher widget does. (Christoph Wolk,
plasma-desktop MR #3649
You can now drag-and-drop apps to the “Favorites” sections of the Kickoff, Kicker, and Dashboard widgets. (Christoph Wolk,
KDE Bugzilla #383302
and
plasma-desktop MR #3652
If you find yourself captivated by a picture of the day wallpaper image, you can now right-click on it and access external information about it. (Kai Uwe Broulik,
kdeplasma-addons MR #1035
You can now optionally set Discover to quit after installing updates. (Taras Oleksyn,
KDE Bugzilla #508743
Notable UI improvements
Plasma 6.6.5
While entering the password for a Wi-Fi network using the Networks widget, the password field no longer loses keyboard focus if you happen to move the pointer away from it. (Tobias Fella,
plasma-nm MR #556
Plasma 6.7
There’s now a new standard “Badge” component in Kirigami, and many parts of Plasma have been ported to use it. (Nate Graham,
kirigami MR #1847
plasma-desktop MR #3089
plasma-workspace MR #6488
systemsettings MR #399
discover MR #1290
, and
kinfocenter MR #262
After
Before
The Input Method System Tray widget no longer
disables
the active input method if you click it while the input method isn’t currently visible. Now it just shows and hides it. (Aleix Pol Gonzalez,
plasma-workspace MR #6485
Improved the design of Discover’s grid and list items, which also slightly increases the information density of the pages that show them. (Nate Graham,
discover MR #1292
After
Before
The Kicker Application Menu widget now shows tooltips for items whose labels have been elided. (Christoph Wolk,
KDE Bugzilla #515608
System Monitor now differentiates multiple GPUs by their names, rather than by arbitrary numbers. (Bernhard Friedreich,
libksysguard MR #464
and
ksystemstats MR #129
System Monitor now exposes top-level actions you can use to launch it and go straight to a specific page. These can be invoked from the app’s context menu, or via a global shortcut you set yourself. (Bernhard Friedreich,
plasma-systemmonitor MR #427
The Margins Separator widget is now added from the panel configuration dialog’s “Add New” menu, rather than the widget explorer sidebar. This matches how the similar spacer widget is added. (Antti Savolainen,
plasma-workspace MR #6494
and
plasma-desktop MR #3663
The clipboard popup invoked with
Meta
now closes if it’s open when you press that keyboard shortcut a second time. (Kristem McWilliam,
plasma-workspace MR #6450
Improved how System Settings’ Shortcuts page handles being told to assign a shortcut that’s already assigned to something else. (David Bacskay-Nagy,
KDE Bugzilla #484526
and
KDE Bugzilla #489544
KRunner now lets you evaluate fancy mathematical expressions more flexibly; in the past you could ask for
sqrt(2) + 2
but not
2 + sqrt(2)
; now both are accepted. (Alex Cizinsky,
KDE Bugzilla #496343
Frameworks 6.26
The dialog that asks you if you want to launch or edit an executable text file (like a
.desktop
file) no longer gives you the opportunity to tell it to always do that thing. This behavior was making
.desktop
files un-launchable for people who selected the option to always open those types of files in a text editor. Anyone who wants to use this feature can still configure it in Dolphin’s settings. (Nate Graham,
kio MR #2171
After
Before
Removed the CFP franc from the list of common currencies, so it no longer shows up automatically for every currency conversion run using KRunner-powered searches. (Pellaeon Lin,
kunitconversion MR #84
Notable bug fixes
Plasma 6.6.4
Fixed a case where Plasma Keyboard could crash after
Alt
Tab
bing away from a window marked as “keep above others”. (Devin Lin,
KDE Bugzilla #517087
Worked around a bug added in Qt 6.11 that made some of Spectacle’s annotation tools unclickable. (Oliver Beard,
KDE Bugzilla #515304
Fixed a layout issue in the Activity Pager widget that made it look weird at specific non-default panel sizes. (Marco Martin,
KDE Bugzilla #518451
Plasma 6.6.5
Fixed a case where KWin could crash on logout when the session that’s closing had sent any emulated keyboard or mouse events. (Vlad Zahorodnii,
kwin MR #9092
Fixed an issue with the screen locker that could cause the buttons to malfunction and leave you unable to unlock after you pressed the
Esc
key in combination with various other actions with specific timings. (Akseli Lahtinen,
KDE Bugzilla #515299
Fixed an issue that made color picker functionality throughout the system return random colors on systems with certain graphics hardware. (Xaver Hugl,
KDE Bugzilla #518770
Fixed an issue that made the clock times shown on the lockscreen differ across the screens of a multi-screen setup. (DeepChirp,
KDE Bugzilla #516479
Fixed two issues that made network connections added from the Plasma setup wizard not always work properly. (Adam Williamson,
KDE Bugzilla #514841
and
plasma-setup MR #100
Fixed a couple of cases where auto-hide panels might not hide properly when there were any unread notifications. (Patrick Cleary,
KDE Bugzilla #519046
Switching away from the Networks Widget in the System Tray no longer briefly makes a placeholder message appear. (Tobias Fella,
KDE Bugzilla #511367
Improved the reliability of the Weather Widget’s icon fallback behavior, making it less likely to show broken weather icons. (Ismael Asensio,
kdeplasma-addons MR #1032
Plasma 6.7
Fixed an issue that could make the Audio Volume widget not notice that a new audio device was connected and became the default one. (Oliver Beard,
plasma-pa MR #393
Using the clipboard’s non-default “Never save [non-text items] in history” option no longer breaks the ability to paste items that have been moved to the top of the clipboard history. (Christoph Wolk,
KDE Bugzilla #514095
Apps in the Quick Launch widget can once again be re-arranged. (Alex Folland,
KDE Bugzilla #481922
Fixed two quirky issues with Spectacle’s magnifier in Rectangular Region mode. (Noah Davis,
KDE Bugzilla #509776
and
KDE Bugzilla #509777
Notable in performance & technical
Plasma 6.7
KWin now supports the Wayland session management protocol! This is an important step for apps to be able to remember their sizes and positions after restarting the system. The next step is for toolkits, libraries, and apps to implement support. We’re getting there! (Vlad Zahorodnii,
KDE Bugzilla #436318
Reduced the size of animated GIF images produced by apps like Spectacle that use KDE’s KPipeWire library. (Bernhard Friedrich,
kpipewire MR #247
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
««
»»