This week in KDE: fixing all the things

Plasma 5.17 was released this week to glowing reviews! As with most new releases, our loyal users wasted no time in finding all the bugs we missed! So you know what that means, right? We all burned the midnight oil fixing the problems you found, and Plasma 5.17.1 will be released in just a few days with everything we’ve knocked out so far (detailed below) so never fear!

New Features

• The System Settings Widget Style page now has a shiny new grid-style user interface that follows the new format and looks and works much better (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.18.0):
  
• The weather widget now shows windy conditions with fancy new icons (me: Nate Graham, Shawn Starr, and Carson Black, Plasma 5.18.0 and Frameworks 5.64):
  

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

• Clicking the “Defaults” button in the System Settings Global Shortcuts page no longer erases all the Task Switcher shortcuts (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.12.10)
• The new startplasma-* apps no longer break multi-line shell functions and environment variables (Fabian Vogt, Plasma 5.17.1)
• When you plug an external screen into a laptop, close the laptop’s lid, and then re-open it, the laptop’s screen is now re-enabled as expected (Nicolas Fella, Plasma 5.17.1)
• Certain System Tray icons no longer have an ugly black background (Konrad Materka, Plasma 5.17.1)
• Non-critical notifications are no longer inappropriately suppressed when an external screen is connected to a laptop and the laptop’s built-in screen is disabled (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.17.1)
• Some GTK2 apps no longer look weird after using another GTK2 app with global menu support (Fabian Vogt, Plasma 5.17.1)
• When one screen is a replica of another, the name of the replicated screen is now shown properly in the System Settings Display Configuration page (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.17.1):
  
• The NOAA environmental visualization picture of the day wallpaper now works again (they keep changing the structure of their website so parsing keeps breaking) (Yunhe Guo, Plasma 5.17.1)
• In the System Settings Display Configuration page, the rotation icons no longer have huge borders and mis-positioned tooltips (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.17.1)
• The “bouncing app icon” effect (which can be disable if you hate it, BTW) is now scaled to the proper size when using High DPI scaling (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.17.1)
• When the version strings in Discover’s Updates page become shortened because there’s not enough space to display everything, they now return to their full forms when the window is resized to add additional space (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.18.0):
  http://s1.webmshare.com/Zxxby.webm
• The System Settings Compositor page no longer crashes in certain circumstances (David Edmundson, Frameworks 5.64)
• Media icons throughout Plasma are no longer subtly blurry (Noah Davis, Frameworks 5.64)
• Accessing remote Samba shares is now more accurate when you enter the wrong password (Harald Sitter, Frameworks 5.64)
• KOrganizer is once again able to find and downloads add-ons (Allen Winters, Kontact 19.08.3):
  
• When Konsole is used outside of Plasma, its scrollbar no longer floats over the left side of the window (Mariusz Glebocki, Konsole 19.12.0)
• Search results in Discover are now more accurate, particularly for exact matches (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, AppStream 0.12.10)

User Interface Improvements

• Previews in the System Settings SDDM theme chooser page are no longer ugly when using a high DPI scale factor (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.17.1)
• The System Settings Display Configuration page now lets you switch between the settings for multiple connected displays using a combobox (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.17.1)
• Discover’s “Updates are available” notification is no longer persistent and once again disappears on its own, because there’s already a persistent thing in the System Tray when updates are available (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.17.1)
• The Plasma Audio Volume applet now uses an outline-style star icon for the “Default Device” buttons corresponding to non-default devices (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.18.0):
  http://s1.webmshare.com/Mxxer.webm
• NEEDS A PICTURE The scale factor value in the System Settings Display Configuration page is now expressed as a percentage rather than a decimal , and now limits the increments to 6.25% on X11, which minimizes visual glitches in applications (this restriction is not present on Wayland, which is able to handle a broader range of scale factors) (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.18.0)
• The System Settings Thunderbolt Device Management page now shows a placeholder message in the device list when it’s empty so you don’t think it’s broken (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.18.0):
  
• You’re now warned when launching a new Windows executable that can be opened with WINE (Yunhe Guo, Frameworks 5.64)
• Dolphin no longer tortures you by displaying advanced search options that won’t work when you’re searching in a non-indexed location; instead they’re just hidden instead (Ismael Asensio, Dolphin 19.12.0)

How You Can Help

Check out https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved and find out ways to help be a part of something that really matters. You don’t have to already be a programmer. 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 .