This week in Usability & Productivity, part 30

Akademy is next week (I will be there!), but that didn’t stop us from plugging away on the Usability and Productivity initiative! Check it out:

New Features

• Discover gained the ability to upgrade your computer’s firmware (Abjiheet Sharma, KDE Plasma 5.14.0)

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug that could cause Plasma to crash as soon as you log in (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Plasma 5.12.7)
• Fixed a very large number of bugs relating to font installation (Mathias Tillman, KDE Plasma 5.12.7)
• Because it’s not possible to change the trash icons, you’re no longer presented with the option to try doing it anyway (Subham Jangra, KDE Frameworks 5.49 and KDE Applications 18.08.0)
• Dragging unmodified images from Gwenview to Chromium and the Plasma desktop (to set it as your wallpaper) now works properly again (Henrik Fehlauer, KDE Applications 18.08.0)
• LibreOffice no longer hangs when launched using Konsole (Andreas Hartmetz, KDE Applications 18.08.0)

UI Polish & Improvement

• Discover’s Updates page and Settings page received some visual tweaks to look better and be more consistent with one another (Aleix Pol and me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.14.0):
  (There’s still more to be done, as you can see)
• The Desktop Effects System Settings page received some organizational improvements (Vlad Zagorodniy, KDE Plasma 5.14.0)
• Trying to create a folder with the name . or .. now shows an appropriate error message (Thomas Marshall, KDE Frameworks 5.49):
  
• Kate’s incredibly useful and powerful Text Filter plugin is now enabled by default and more discoverable (me: Nate Graham, KDE Applications 18.12.0)
• Gwenview’s Red Eye Reduction feature now has a keyboard shortcut by default: ctrl + e (Henrik Fehlauer, KDE Applications 18.12.0)

Next week, your name could be in this list! Just check out https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved , and wind out how you can help be a part of something that really matters.

If my efforts to perform, guide, and document this work seem useful and you’d like to see more of them, then consider becoming a patron on Patreon , LiberaPay , or PayPal . Also consider making a donation to the KDE e.V. foundation .