This week in KDE: a smooth release of Plasma 5.27

This week we finally released Plasma 5.27 and so far it’s been very smooth! The only significant regressions found so far are already fixed, ready for release in a few days. There have been some grumblings about the new window outlines feature, but you can’t please everyone, and there’s a chance we’ll end up making them optional.

New Features

Dolphin now lets you configure how permissions are shown in Details view (Serg Podtynnyi, Dolphin 23.04. Link)

While you’re viewing the page for an installed Flatpak app in Discover, you can now jump straight to the System Settings page for configuring its permissions (Ivan Tkachenko, Plasma 6.0. Link 1 and link 2):

User Interface Improvements

Dolphin’s code for counting directory sizes has been made faster, improving performance especially with manually-mounted network shares that for some reason aren’t detected as such (Méven Car, Dolphin 23.04. Link)

Gwenview now zooms smoothly rather than in steps when you Ctrl+scroll using a touchpad (Frisco Smit, Gwenview 23.04. Link)

Holiday calendars no longer include astronomical events, so when you also have the Astronomical Events calendar plugin active, you won’t see the same astronomical events twice in the same day anymore (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.27.1. Link)

When you search for apps in the portal-based app chooser dialog, it now automatically searches through all of them rather than just the limited set of “recommended” apps that are shown by default (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.27.1. Link)

When apps using the portal-based system ask for you to allow screen sharing, you can now give them a specific screen region, not just the whole screen or a single window (Dominique Hummel, Plasma 6.0. Link)

The Task Manager’s “Close” context menu item now says “Close All” for clarity if you right-clicked on a grouped task (Fushan Wen, Plasma 6.0. Link)

The Weather Report widget’s tooltip now shows wind speed and humidity by default (Guilherme Marçal Silva, Plasma 6.0. Link):

All System Settings pages that were missing “file a bug on this specific page” support should now have it (Alexander Lohnau and me: Nate Graham, Frameworks 5.104 and the next versions of a couple other things on different release schedules. Link)

Significant Bugfixes

(This is a curated list of e.g. HI and VHI priority bugs, Wayland showstoppers, major regressions, etc.)

The Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD) weather provider now works again after they changed their data format (Emily Ehlert, Plasma 5.24.8. Link)

Fixed a case where KWin could crash after waking from sleep while using multiple screens with windows tiled to a screen that wakes up very slowly after the system wakes from sleep (Dominique Hummel, Plasma 5.27.1. Link)

Fixed a recent regression in 5.27 that could, under certain circumstances, cause desktop icons to disappear after waking the system from sleep until Plasma was manually restarted (Marco Martin, Plasma 5.27.1. Link)

Fixed a recent regression in 5.27 that caused XWayland-using Electron apps (such as VSCode, Discord, and Element) to be displayed too small when using scaling (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.27.1. Link)

The new Flatpak Permissions page in System Settings will not create app-specific overrides properly when using the system in a language other than English (Harald Sitter, Plasma 5.27.1. Link)

Fixed a case where Plasma could crash after waking from sleep after the set of connected screens changed while it was asleep (Marco Martin, Plasma 5.27.1. Link)

Fixed showing information about NVIDIA GPUs in System Monitor, again. This time, for real! (David Redondo, Plasma 5.27.1. Link)

Fixed a recent regression in 5.27 that caused the Digital Clock’s tooltip to redundantly show the current time and timezone even when no additional timezones are configured (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.27.1. Link)

The Networks widget will no longer unnecessarily show the loopback interface when using NetworkManager 1.42 (David Redondo, Plasma 5.27.1. Link)

Setting charge limits for batteries that supports charge limits but not charge minimums now works (Fabian Vogt, Plasma 5.27.1. Link)

In the Plasma Wayland session, KDE app windows once again correctly remember their size when using more than one screen (me: Nate Graham, Frameworks 5.104. Link)

Removing content downloaded using the Get New <thing> system is now significantly more robust (Fushan Wen, Frameworks 5.104. Link)

Other bug-related information of interest:

• 12 Very high priority Plasma bugs (up from 8 last week). Current list of bugs
• 43 15-minute Plasma bugs (up from 37 last week). Current list of bugs
• 106 KDE bugs of all kinds fixed this week. Full list of bugs

Automation & Systematization

Added an autotest for the Media Player widget’s interactions with the MPRIS2 data interface (Fushan Wen, Plasma 5.27.1. Link)

Changes not in KDE that affect KDE

In the Plasma Wayland session, non-fullscreen Chromium web apps will no longer hijack all global keyboard shortcuts (Nick Diego Yamane, Chromium 111. Link)

…And everything else

This blog only covers the tip of the iceberg! If you’re hungry for more, check out https://planet.kde.org, where you can find more news from other KDE contributors.

How You Can Help

If you’re a user, upgrade to Plasma 5.27! If your distro doesn’t offer it and won’t anytime soon, consider switching to a different one that ships software closer to its developer’s schedules.

If you’re a developer, consider working on known Plasma 5.27 regressions! You might also want to check out our 15-Minute Bug Initiative. Working on these issues makes a big difference quickly!

Otherwise, visit https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved to discover other ways to be part of a project that really matters. Each contributor makes a huge difference in KDE; you are not a number or a cog in a machine! You don’t have to already be a programmer, either. I wasn’t when I got started. Try it, you’ll like it! We don’t bite!

And finally, KDE can’t work without financial support, so consider making a donation today! This stuff ain’t cheap and KDE e.V. has ambitious hiring goals. We can’t meet them without your generous donations!