Although I always seem very excited on the weekends, when Graham posts one of his weekly “treats,” I’m not really someone who likes change very much. The improvements and the new functions yes, but those changes that make you think about how things work, those not so much. I comment on this because the developer of KDE Has published this week’s note, and it highlights a change in a component that we use a lot, and the change is aesthetic.
The modification I am referring to is a «New» Kickoff. As we see in the header image (eye, retouched; the only original thing is the Kickoff itself), it looks a little more like Windows 10, where on the left we have some options and on the right others. Although forgive me for making this assessment because, if I remember correctly, and it is that I do not use it much, what we would see on the right in Windows 10 would be our anchored apps, nothing to do with the menu on the left. In any case, there will be a new Kickoff, and it will arrive in February.
New Features Coming to KDE
Before we start with the new features, we need to continue to comment on Kickoff: Graham says its use will improve keyboard, mouse, touchscreens and accessibility, but that you can go back to the previous version downloading “Legacy Kickoff” from store.kde.org (I won’t). With this explained, other news to come will be:
- The Plasma volume applet now has a display for the volume output level of the current recording (Plasma 5.21).
- Konsole allows us to select which text editor will open when we Ctrl + click on a text file to open it (Konsole 21.04).
Bug fixes and performance improvements
- Kate can now open files starting with a colon from the command line (Kate 21.04).
- Opening and closing split views in Dolphin is now animated (Dolphin 21.04).
- Right-clicking an ISO image in Dolphin no longer imposes such a long delay before the context menu appears (Dolphin 21.04).
- Dolphin Toolbar URL / Navigation Bar Browser is now the correct size the first time you open Dolphin (Dolphin 21.04).
- Filelight now shows the correct amount of free space on a disk (Filelight 21.04).
- Filelight tooltip is now correctly placed in multi-display setups (Filelight 21.04).
- The screen locker no longer sometimes consumes 100% of CPU resources (Plasma 5.18.7 and 5.21).
- The Folder View applet now has a healthy layout when used in a vertical panel over 50px thick (Plasma 5.18.7 and 5.21).
- Fixed one of the most common ways Plasma could crash when interacting with screen related settings (Plasma 5.21).
- When Discover and the Emoji picker are already open but out of focus, activating them via systray icons or global shortcuts now properly open existing windows (Plasma 5.21).
- Fixed the network speed widget for people seeing it not working properly for them on some occasions (Plasma 5.21).
- The «Get New [artículo]»Now correctly displays recently installed content when you activate its« Installed »filter (Frameworks 5.79).
Interface improvements
- Kate’s Quick Open Panel now supports fuzzy matching (Kate 21.04).
- Notifications about items moved to the trash no longer give you the option to open the item, because that’s nonsense (Plasma 5.21).
- After clicking the “Connect” button in the Plasma network list, the online password field no longer escapes you if the list is rearranged (Plasma 5.21).
- The KWin Accessibility and Scripts pages in System Preferences now honor the “Highlight Changed Settings” feature (Plasma 5.21).
- Maximize and Full Screen animations now use the standard animation acceleration curve (Plasma 5.21).
- When configuring a KWin window rule, the default value for each newly added property is now “Apply initially”, not “Do not affect” (Plasma 5.21).
- The clipboard applet now closes when you select a history entry with the keyboard, just like when you do it with the mouse (Plasma 5.21).
- Dolphin and other KDE applications now show thumbnail previews of old animated Windows cursor .ANI files (Frameworks 5.79).
When will all this get to the KDE desktop
Plasma 5.21 will arrive on February 9 and KDE Applications 21.04 will do so sometime in April 2021. KDE Frameworks 5.78 will be available today, and 5.79 will be available on February 13.
To enjoy all this as soon as possible we have to add the KDE Backports repository or use an operating system with special repositories like KDE neon or any distribution whose development model is Rolling Release.
Yes, the above will not be met with Plasma 5.20 or 5.21, or not for Kubuntu until the release of Hirsute Hippo, as we already discussed in this article.
