This week in KDE: Plasma bug-fixing and Samba bug-squashing

Plasma 5.18 has been released ! A ton of work went into this release and we’re very proud of it. However I’d like to apologize for it being a bit buggier than we’d have preferred. We’ve gone balls-to-the-wall off the chain bananas fixing the issues you folks are reporting! Almost all of the highest-profile issues are fixed already, to be released with Plasma 5.18.1 in a few days! And we’ve got the less major regressions in our sights too! But still, we know that stability hasn’t always been our strong suit and we’re aiming for a higher standard next time, discussing how we can get there. So thank you for your patience and understanding, and enjoy Plasma 5.18!

Oh and we also fixed some of the most long-standing issues with Samba shares. Check it all out:

New Features

• Konsole now lets you set a custom color for the text under the block-style insertion point (Arthur Kasimov, Konsole 20.04.0):
  
• In Elisa, it’s now possible to disable the feature of showing the current song’s playback position on the app’s Task Manager entry (Matthieu Gallien, Elisa 20.04.0)

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

• Moving or copying files onto Samba shares no longer resets their timestamps to the current time (Harald Sitter, Dolphin 19.12.3)
• In Dolphin, it’s now possible to create and paste files on Samba shares (Harald Sitter, Dolphin 19.12.3)
• When trying to connect to a Samba share, you now have the opportunity to specify the domain, allowing connections to shares with a non-default domain (Harald Sitter, Dolphin 19.12.3)
• URLs beginning with cifs:// are now accepted as valid paths to Samba shares (Harald Sitter, Dolphin 19.12.3)
• Files on Samba no longer nonsensically show up as belonging to random local users (Harald Sitter, Dolphin 19.12.3)
• Samba shares now show their available amount of free space in Dolphin (Harald Sitter, Dolphin 19.12.3)
• Dolphin now correctly hides files on Samba shares that have been marked as hidden (Harald Sitter, Dolphin 19.12.3)
• Okular no longer crashes when showing a print preview (Albert Astals Cid, Okular 20.04.0
• Okular no longer permits PDF documents with embedded JavaScript code to exhaust all system resources (Harri Porten, Okular 20.04.0)
• Konsole’s dark background detection feature now works again (Manuel Rüger, Konsole 20.04.0)
• Those of you who had your widgets locked in Plasma 5.17 or earlier can now access the new global edit mode . In the meantime, before Plasma 5.18.1 is released, as a workaround you can run qdbus org.kde.plasmashell /PlasmaShell evaluateScript "lockCorona(false)" to fix the issue immediately (Marco Martin, Plasma 5.18.1)
• Then “Apply” button on the System Settings Fonts page now activates normally again so you can actually save changes you’ve made to the default font configuration (Benjamin Port, Plasma 5.18.1)
• Mouse input in GTK apps using XWayland now works properly (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.18.1)
• Closing windows using the Present Windows effect no longer messes up the window stacking order and prevents windows from being focused or de-focused (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.18.1)
• Snap apps no longer get stuck in a half-installed state if you cancel the installation after being told that installing the app will require disabling security confinement (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.18.1)
• Plasma no longer crashes when you switch virtual desktops after changing the layout on Wayland no longer crashes when you switch virtual desktops after changing the layout on Wayland (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.18.1)
• Menubar text in Electron-based apps is now readable (Carson Black, Plasma 5.18.1)
• The desktop’s chord keyboard shortcuts (e.g. Alt + d, then a) once again work (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.18.1)
• System Settings pages once again prompt you to save or discard your changes if you try to navigate to another page with unsaved changes (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.18.1)
• The Plasma Wayland session is no longer sometimes called “Plasma (Wayland) (Wayland)” on the System Settings Login Screen (SDDM) page (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.18.1)
• The System Settings Search page no longer allows content in the scrollable list view to overlap with the scrollbar (Plasma 5.18.1):
  
• The content layout of the “Advanced” tab in the System Settings Login Screen page no longer hilariously stretches vertically with large window sizes (Filip Fila, Plasma 5.18.1)
• Recent files that are located on Samba shares can now be accessed properly using the application launcher menus (Méven Car, Plasma 5.19.0)
• The Baloo file indexer can now be enabled and disabled and paused and resumed again (David Edmundson, Frameworks 5.68)
• The Baloo file indexer now correctly resumes indexing, both automatically and manually, after the machine has woken from sleep (Stefan Brüns, Frameworks 5.68)
• Fixed various Plasma apps and System Settings pages crashing when needed plugins aren’t available for some reason (Kai Uwe Broulik, Frameworks 5.68)
• Fixed a recent regression in how controls in FormLayouts throughout Plasma and Kirigami apps were positioned (Marco Martin, Frameworks 5.68)
• Non-maximized panels using non-default color schemes or Plasma themes no longer have odd white corners (Niccolò Venerandi, Frameworks 5.68)

User Interface Improvements

• Dolphin’s context menu now has “Create New” back at the top again (me: Nate Graham, Dolphin 20.04.0):
  
• Elisa’s Now Playing view now uses a blurred and lightened version of the album art as the background rather than showing a slice of it at the top (me: Nate Graham. Elisa 20.04.0):
  
• Elisa’s grid items are now opened by simply clicking/tapping once on them (me: Nate Graham, Elisa 20.04.0):
  
• When a notification pop-up tracking the progress of an extended job is expanded to show more details, it no longer ever repeatedly resizes itself to be smaller and then larger again as the height of the text inside changes (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.18.1)
• After feedback that Task Manager tooltips with album art in them looked a bit crowded, we redesigned them to look better and have better usability (me: Nate Graham, Manuel Jésus de la Fuente, and Tranter Madi, Plasma 5.19.0):
  
• The “audio playing” indicator on Task Manager items are now a bit smaller and closer to the edge when using an Icons-Only Task Manager so that you aren’t so likely to click on them by mistake (George Vogiatzis, Plasma 5.19.0). Also as a reminder, if you hate them, you can turn them off! Just right-click on an empty area of the Task manager, click “Configure Task Manager…”, and uncheck “Mark applications that play audio”.
• Large titles throughout KDE software are no longer quite so huge (me: Nate Graham, Frameworks 5.68):
  

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• icons that incorporate the :no_entry_sign: symbol now have the slash going through it in the exact same orientation (Matej Mrenica, Frameworks 5.68)

How You Can Help

Upgrade to Plasma 5.18 and find all the bugs we missed! The first point release (i.e. Plasma 5.18.1) will be released in two days, so every bug report we get soon is super important.

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 .