KDE
Plasma 5.21 review - Very slick, just one or five oily patches
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Monday 8th of March 2021 03:25:03 PM Filed under
Can you hear the drums, Fernando? There's a new Plasma release out there, marked 5.21. Which means test I must and see what the future of this typically phenomenal desktop environment brings us. Now, if you've not followed my KDE adventures lately, then I was kind of pleased with the LTS edition, similarly enthused when it comes to Plasma 5.19, and really happy with 5.20, which I felt should have been the LTS. It was everything I could have hoped, and then some. Well, almost.
This makes today's experiment all the more interesting. There's an almost Ancient Greece drama level of tragic heroism in Linux, so any good or decent release must often follow with a disappointment. But hopefully, it ain't going to be the case today. Begin to explore, we shall.
[...]
Plasma 5.21 is pretty nice. Very refined. But it also has problems, including some there weren't there in the previous release. And this kind of thing always alarms and dismays me. Yes, there will be bugs, but I've yet to find a single Linux-associated project that has ultra-robust, detailed, fully defined, mapped and formalized QA procedure that involves 90% of the total software effort. Alas, no one wants to do the boring stuff. Take the System Monitor as an example - no need for it, KSysGuard could do with minor fixes and maybe a rename, the rev counter dashboard and broken functionality add no value. The font issues are also new. The crashes, well.
That said, this is still one dope desktop environment. It is really way ahead of anything else GUI Linux, and it has hallmarks of a pro product. But not quite. There's always a little bit of that open-source hobbyist chaos lurking around, like an old enemy. Still, I am largely pleased and hope to see more awesomeness from the KDE team. Plasma 5.21 is pretty, elegant, cohesive, consistent, fast, and builds on a solid foundation. Shame about the bugs, but let's hope there will be a fundamental, methodological shift in the approach so that every future Plasma release shines, and there never be random regressions. One can hope. As for 5.21, definitely worth testing and enjoying.
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Kdenlive 20.12.3 is out
Submitted by Rianne Schestowitz on Monday 8th of March 2021 11:36:57 AM Filed under
The last maintenance release of the 20.12 series is out with the usual batch of usability and bug fixes. The highlights include lots of polishing of the Subtitling Tool and adding a spell checking feature. The Titler also got a fair amount of usability improvements most notably fixing the invisible text cursor. Fixes were also made to the chroma key color picker and various clip selection issues. The Windows version received fixes to resetting the config file and finding downloaded title templates and lumas.
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KDE: Meeting of the KDE Itinerary Developers and Exiv2 Project
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Saturday 6th of March 2021 01:16:49 PM Filed under
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KDE Itinerary @ German Open Transport Meetup
The German Open Transport Meetup started mid last year, as a get-together for anyone interested or involved in mobility or transportation in general, and in Open Data/Free Software in that context in particular.
Being forced to be virtual from the start due to the pandemic is probably what gave it the critical mass to keep up the unusual high pace for such an event with its bi-weekly rhythm, and with no shortage on topics in sight.
Many of the things discussed at the meetup so far had immediate impact on KDE Itinerary (and the KPublicTransport library in particular), the biggest example probably being the rental bike/scooter support. A large number of the attendees actually working for local or national transport operators or public administration has also been invaluable for getting first-hand access and insights.
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Exiv2 project submission to the KDE community
Ladies and Gentlemen: I am writing to you on behalf of the Exiv2 project https://exiv2.org. Exiv2 is a C++ library and a command-line utility to read, write, delete and modify Exif, IPTC, XMP and ICC image metadata. It is widely used in the Linux ecosystem and part of many applications such as digiKam, Gimp, darktable and many more. The Exiv2 project is hosted at the moment on GitHub ( https://github.com/Exiv2/exiv2). We would like to evaluate the possibility of onboarding the Exiv2 project into the KDE community. The project is in good shape and the next release is scheduled to ship May 2021. There is a small group of people who frequently contribute to the project. However the current maintainer, Robin Mills, is retiring at the age of 70 after 13 years of service to the project. Robin has written a book about the project and discusses every aspect of both the Exiv2 Architecture and Image Metadata Standards. https://clanmills.com/exiv2/book/ Last Saturday (2021-02-27) there was a meeting concerning the future of the Exiv2 and we tried to find a new maintainer. Regrettably because of the time demand imposed on the maintainer, no one volunteered. By joining the KDE community we hope to address this issue and keep this important project alive. The meeting notes can be found on the GitHub issue ( https://github.com/Exiv2/exiv2/issues/1466). In addition to finding a new maintainer, being part of KDE would bring Exiv2 into the Open Invention Network. We are very interested in this aspect of KDE as it mitigates risks involved in patent discussions. Yours, Alex Esseling and Robin Mills
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Exiv2 Looks To Team Up With The KDE Project
Exiv2, the widely-used C++ metadata library / tools for dealing with image metadata via EXIF / IPTC / XMP standards and ICC profiles is looking to join the KDE project.
This C++ library and CLI tools for dealing with image metadata is widely used already in the open-source world, including by several KDE programs like Krita, digiKam, and KPhotoAlbum. Software outside of KDE like GIMP and Darktable also leverage this image metadata library.
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This week in KDE: Adaptive panel opacity and auto-restored unsaved documents in Kate!
Submitted by Rianne Schestowitz on Saturday 6th of March 2021 08:34:55 AM Filed under
A big Plasma feature was added this week: adaptive Plasma panel opacity! Now the panel and panel applets are more transparent than they were before, allowing more of a tint from the beautiful wallpaper on your desktop! But what’s this? You’re about to complain that you maximize all your windows so the increased transparency will look ugly? In fact, we now make your panel and panel applets 100% opaque when there are any maximized windows, ensuring no ugly effect! But what if you don’t want that either? Well, if you don’t want adaptive opacity we now let you make your panel and panel applets always transparent, or always opaque! Hopefully that should make everyone happy. Let’s give a round of applause to Niccolò Venerandi and Jan Blackquill for this work, which will show up in Plasma 5.22.
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KDE Developers' Updates
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Saturday 6th of March 2021 12:50:32 AM Filed under
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bhyve for Calamares Development
bhyve (pronounced “bee hive”) is a hypervisor for BSD systems (and Illumos / openSolaris). It is geared towards server workloads, but does support desktop-oriented operation as well. I spent some time wayyyy back in November wrestling with it in order to replace VirtualBox for Calamares testing on FreeBSD. The “golden hint” as far as I’m concerned came from Karen Bruner and now I have a functioning Calamares test-ground that is more useful than before.
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KDE Plasma 5.22: Adaptive Transparency!
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Kevin Ottens (ervin) Web Review, Week 2021-09
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Jonathan Riddell: Updated Snaps for KDE Apps
I’m updating the KDE snaps and would like to ask for some testing.
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KDE’s Apps Update for March 2021 Improves Spectacle, Gwenview, and More
Submitted by Marius Nestor on Thursday 4th of March 2021 05:02:16 PM Filed under
KDE Applications 20.12.3 comes a month after KDE’s Apps update for February 2021 to fix even more bugs in several of the included apps and components, most of which are needed or ship by default with the latest KDE Plasma desktop environment series.
Among the improvements implemented in the KDE Applications 20.12.3 update, there’s the ability to set the compression quality in the Spectacle screenshot utility to 100%, support for a newer OpenGL drawing view to support hardware-accelerated transitions on Wayland and a working JPEG quality chooser in the Gwenview image viewer.
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Offline Update Arrives in KDE Neon (Unstable Edition)
Submitted by arindam1989 on Wednesday 3rd of March 2021 06:59:11 AM Filed under
The team announced the immediate availability of the offline update feature in the KDE Neon unstable edition. Here's how it works.
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KDE Plasma 5.21.2 Update Re-Enabled Key Repeat by Default, Improves System Settings
Submitted by Marius Nestor on Tuesday 2nd of March 2021 05:48:20 PM Filed under
Coming just one week after the KDE Plasma 5.21.1 update, which improved support for Nvidia Optimus laptops, the KDE Plasma 5.21.2 point release is here to re-enable key repeat by default, something that probably many of you out there were complaining about.
In addition, the KDE Plasma 5.21.2 update improves the System Settings by addressing a bug that made it crash when attempting to clear the history from the Activities page and making the screens in the Display Configuration page draggable again.
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KDE Plasma 5.21.2, Bugfix Release for March
Submitted by Rianne Schestowitz on Tuesday 2nd of March 2021 05:40:22 PM Filed under

Plasma 5.21 was released in February with many feature refinements and new modules to complete the desktop experience.
This release adds a week's worth of new translations and fixes from KDE's contributors. The bugfixes are typically small but important and include...
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Plasma Mobile updates make the user interface more customizable (and a bit more Android-like)
Submitted by Rianne Schestowitz on Monday 1st of March 2021 08:04:50 PM Filed under
There are several different user interfaces available for Linux smartphones, but the one that will probably feel the most familiar to Android users is KDE’s Plasma Mobile.
Like Android, it has a home screen, an app drawer, navigation buttons on the bottom, status notifications at the top, and a quick settings panel that appears when you swipe down from the top of the screen.
Soon, it may work even more like Android – developers plan to add support for multiple home screens that you can scroll through horizontally, giving you more space for app icons and widgets. Support for custom app launchers may also be on the way.
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