This week in KDE: Converging towards something special

Plasma has gained its first user of the new notification inline reply feature in 5.18: Telegram Desktop!

Big thanks to Kai Uwe Broulik for venturing forth to contribute a patch to Telegram that made this possible .

Next up, we have a winner for the Plasma 5.18 wallpaper competition: the elegant and soothing Volna, by Nikita Babin !

Let’s all give a round of applause to Nikita for her incredible contribution which will be seen for years to come!

And one more thing: thanks to Niccolò Venerandi , the kde.org website now has a page showing where you can buy devices with Plasma and KDE apps pre-installed !

This is a great way for people and institutions to buy a complete product featuring the end-to-end KDE software experience without having to manually install an OS or worry about hardware compatibility.

As if that weren’t enough, here’s the usual assortment of new features, bugfixes, and UI improvements:

New Features

• The names of your wallpapers’ creators are now visible , when that information is available (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.19.0):
  
• In KDE apps that allow you to override the systemwide color scheme, there’s now an option to revert back to using the systemwide color scheme (David Redondo, Frameworks 5.67):
  

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

• Elisa’s feature to enqueue all visible tracks now works for all views and with all modern Qt versions (5.12-5.14) (Matthieu Gallien, Elisa 19.12.2)
• There’s no longer sometimes a stray thumbnail.so process left running after Dolphin is finished generating thumbnail preview images (Elvis Angelaccio, Dolphin 20.04.0)
• Searching for tags with spaces in them in Dolphin now works properly (Ismael Asensio, Dolphin 20.04.0)
• Removing the screen locking keyboard shortcut no longer crashes System Settings when navigating to the Workspace Behavior category (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.18.0)
• KMenuEdit no longer crashes when you create new entries (David Redondo, Plasma 5.18.0)
• KInfoCenter no longer crashes when visiting the PCI Devices page when there are no PCI devices , no longer shows duplicates in the USB Devices category , shows Xorg version information correctly , and now only shows the “Copy to clipboard in English” button when you are actually using a language other than English (Harald Sitter, Plasma 5.18.0)
• GTK3 windows with client-side decorations are now resizable on Wayland (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.18.0)
• Apps are no longer incorrectly and inconsistently scaled when using Qt 5.14 or newer and a high DPI scale factor (Fabian Vogt, Plasma 5.18.0)
• Discover now always shows large images when clicking on screenshots, and is also much faster to navigate between them (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.18.0)
• KRunner is now more reliable at finding open windows (Méven Car, Plasma 5.18.0)
• Separator lines in the Kickoff Application Launcher now respect the current Plasma theme (Filip Fila, Plasma 5.18.0):
  
• The highlight effect for the clickable “audio playing” indicator for Task Manager items is now drawn behind the icon so it looks good with all Plasma themes (Filip Fila, Plasma 5.18.0):
  
• The System Settings Users page now lets you remove a user’s email address , warns you before you switch to another user with unsaved data , and no longer has a pointless and unused “Defaults” button (Méven Car, Plasma 5.18 and 5.19)

User Interface Improvements

• Elisa now lets you set custom images for your favorite internet radio stations (Jérôme Guidon, 20.04.0)
• Discover no longer misleadingly shows your OS as the source for locally-downloaded package files (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.18.0)
• Turning off animations globally now also turns them off for GTK and GNOME apps too (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.18.0)
• Clicking on the button in the network widget that shows the search field now automatically gives focus to the search field too (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.18.0)
• Shadows for Plasma pop-ups and dialogs are now a bit softer and more subtle (Niccoló Venerandi, Frameworks 5.67):
  

How You Can Help

Please test the Plasma 5.18 beta release ! You can find out how here . If you find bugs, file them –especially if they are regressions from Plasma 5.17. We want to get as much testing, bug filing, and bugfixing as possible during the one-month beta period so that the official release is as smooth as possible.

More generally, have a look at https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved and find out more ways to help 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!

Finally, consider making a tax-deductible donation to the KDE e.V. foundation .