This week in KDE: Moar performance!

Some very nice performance fixes landed this week, which should substantially boost move and copy speeds for local transfers and transfers to and from Samba shares in particular . But that’s not all, and there’s more on the menu…

New Features

• Dolphin now displays thumbnails for .3mf files (David Edmundson, Dolphin 20.08.0)
• It’s now possible to configure the visibility of volume-related OSDs in a much more granular way (Sebastian Goth, Plasma 5.19.0):
  

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

• Transferring large files to or from Samba shares is now between 50% and 95% faster (Harald Sitter, Dolphin 20.08.0)
• It’s once again possible to create more than one row of virtual desktops in the System Settings Virtual Desktops page (Eugene Popov, Plasma 5.18.4)
• Fixed a possible security hole that could allow executable .desktop files to be executed with no confirmation from the Kicker/Kickoff/Application Dashboard launchers after they had been edited or run once before (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.18.4)
• The wallpaper settings view no longer shows black rectangles instead of previews until the view is scrolled (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.18.4)
• Dragging-and-dropping items from KRunner now works again (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.18.5)
• KInfoCenter now shows the right OpenGL information for NVIDIA Optimus setups (Harald Sitter, Plasma 5.18.5)
• When the System Tray pop-up is pinned open and a clipboard history item is clicked to put it on the clipboard, the applet now stays open until manually closed (Eugene Popov, Plasma 5.19.0)
• The Digital Clock’s calendar popup now shows events for the current day correctly the first time you open it (Eugene Popov, Plasma 5.19.0)
• Installing new Task Switchers from the “Get new Task Switchers” button on the applicable System Settings page no longer causes an unnecessary “save or discard changes?” prompt when navigating away from the page (Cyril Rossi, Plasma 5.19.0)
• Move and copy speed throughout KDE software is generally faster, especially for small files (Méven Car, Frameworks 5.69
• When multiple users on a multi-user system mount the same Samba share, it now remains visible to all of them in Dolphin’s Places panel (Méven Car, Frameworks 5.69)
• In the “Get new [thing]” dialogs, the list of available versions of the thing you’re trying to downloaded is now scrollable when it’s really really humongous (Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen, Frameworks 5.69)
• In the “Get new [thing]” dialogs, links to external URLs now show tooltips when hovered and no longer show any dead links (me: Nate Graham, Frameworks 5.69):
  

User Interface Improvements

• When dragging a file in Dolphin, the cursor changes into grabby hand by default rather than the “copying” cursor (Tranter Madi, Dolphin 20.08.0)
• Konsole’s default Ctrl+Shift+L shortcut for “Detach current tab” has been removed, so it’s no longer so easy to accidentally detach the current tab when what you meant to do was clear the display using Ctrl+Shift+K (Edward Kigwana, Konsole 20.08.0)
• Notifications have received some visual refinement and now have a defined header area holding the buttons and the name of the app that sent the notification (Niccolò Venerandi, Plasma 5.19.0):
  
• The System Settings File Search page now allows you to determine whether or not to index individual paths and features a clearer UI for doing so (Stefan Brüns and me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.19.0):
  
• GTK apps run in Plasma now always default to using the Breeze cursor theme and don’t emit horrific beeps that make you want to throw your computer out the window anymore (Carson Black, Plasma 5.19.0)
• The list of Task Switcher styles in the System Settings Task Switcher page are now listed in alphabetical order rather than semi-randomly (Cyril Rossi, Plasma 5.19.0)
• Breeze icons that depict documents now consistently put the corner fold in the top-right corner (David Hurka, Frameworks 5.69)
• The Breeze find-location icon is now much better (David Hurka, Frameworks 5.69):
  
• Keyboard navigation in save dialogs is now improved: while the file view is focused, hitting the return/enter key while a folder is selected will enter that folder instead of saving inside it and closing the dialog (Méven Car, Frameworks 5.69)

How You Can Help

In Plasma 5.19, we are making a push on our Breeze Theme Evolution work. It’s proceeding, but would go faster with your help! There are tons and tons of mockups in the linked task and its child tasks, and what we really need at this point is people willing to help implement them. QML skills are helpful, and C++ is also useful for the needed work on the Breeze theme itself. If this sounds interesting to you, don’t be shy, step right up! Head over to the VDG channel to find out how you can get involved and coordinate work.

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 .