This week in KDE: Get new clipped subsurface Dolphin folder sizes

This week a lot of work was put into improving the reliability of the “Get new [thing]” feature integrated into many KDE apps and System Settings pages. Also, several Wayland improvements landed, including subsurface clipping. Finally, a major Dolphin feature request was implemented, allowing the display of on-disk folder sizes! There are also scads of other things, so read the full list and be happy:

New Features

• Dolphin can now optionally compute and display on-disk folder sizes in Details view (Méven Car, Dolphin 20.08.0):
  
• Dolphin service menu plugins that require executing a script or installing a distro package can now be installed right from the “Get new [thing]” window with no manual steps required (Alexander Lohnau, Dolphin 20.08.0)
• Subsurfaces are now clipped ! If this means nothing to you, the simple explanation is that it will reduce many examples of visual glitchiness throughout software run under the KWin window manager (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.19.0)
• Elisa and other KDE audio apps now support Audible audiobooks (Stefan Brüns, shared-mime-info 2.0 and KDE Frameworks 5.71)

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

• Dolphin no longer triggers a bunch of pointless “Examining…” messages when connecting to remote servers (Kai Uwe Broulik, Dolphin 20.04.1)
• Resolving DNS hostnames for Samba servers is now much faster (Harald Sitter, Dolphin 20.04.1)
• Dragging files in Dolphin while using a dark theme no longer makes the filename unreadable during the drag (Christian Christiansen, Dolphin 20.08.0)
• Percent symbols in Konsole bookmark names are now correctly displayed (Yaroslav Sidlovsky, Konsole, 20.08.0)
• Fixed a very bizarre bug that could cause system tray icons to become invisible under certain circumstances (Konrad Materka, Plasma 5.18.5)
• Clearing KRunner’s search history using the “Clear History” button in its System Settings page now actually works (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.18.5)
• The Plasma Networks system tray icon is no longer blank when a WireGuard VPN connection was already active when Plasma was started up (Jan Grulich, Plasma 5.18.6)
• Restoring a Plasma Vault from backup now works properly (Ivan Čukić, Plasma 5.19.0)
• Fixed a crash on Wayland when dragging-and-dropping something from an XWayland-using window (e.g. Firefox) to a native Wayland surface (e.g. Dolphin or Plasma) (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.19.0)
• Fixed a common crash in the System settings Display Configuration page when configuring displays (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.19.0)
• Adjusting the icon size of an icon grid view in a Folder View widget on the panel no longer erroneously applies that size to the list view as well (Alexandre Pereira, Plasma 5.19.0)
• Uninstalling installed 3rd-party Dolphin services now works (Alexander Lohnau, Frameworks 5.70)
• Installing and uninstalling content using the “Get New [thing]” dialogs now works much more reliably (Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen, Frameworks 5.71)
• When a thing from the “Get New [thing]” Dialog fails to install or uninstall , its still-installed or not-installed status is now correctly reflected in the user interface (Alexander Lohnau, Frameworks 5.71)
• Using the “Get New [thing]” dialogs to update existing items now works and no longer shows “unknown open collaboration service API error” (Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen, Frameworks 5.71)
• The “Get New [thing]” dialogs’ option to show only updatable add-ons now actually does show only updatable add-ons (Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen, Frameworks 5.71)
• The Baloo file indexing service no longer triggers a brief I/O spike when renaming files, and its database now stores information more efficiently and therefore grows more slowly (Stefan Brüns, Frameworks 5.71)
• System Settings grid view items are no longer blurry under certain circumstances (Fabian Vogt, Frameworks 5.71)

User Interface Improvements

• “Print” and “Print Preview” are once again next to one another in Okular’s File menu (Albert Astals Cid, Okular 1.10.1)
• Dolphin’s Services settings page now has a search field at the top to help you quickly find what you’re looking for (Alexander Lohnau, Dolphin 20.08.0):
  
• The file overwrite dialog now shows an arrow pointing from the source file to the destination file to help you understand what will happen (Ahmad Samir, Frameworks 5.70):
  
• Fixed pixellated icons when using a fractional scale factor in Lokalize , Kig , KDiskFree , KColorSchemeEditor , and Cantor (Matej Mrenica, the next versions of those apps)

How You Can Help

We recently updated our documentation for how to build and run Plasma Mobile locally on your desktop machine: https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved/development#Plasma_Mobile . Plasma Mobile is really amazing and advancing at warp 9 speed, so please do check it out and see what all the fuss is about! More information can be found at https://www.plasma-mobile.org

More generally, have a look at https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved to discover 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 .