Kai Uwe's Blog – Page 2 – Stories of a KDE developer

Plasma Browser Integration 1.9

I’m pleased to announce the immediate availability of Plasma Browser Integration version 1.9 on the Chrome Web Store. This is a maintenance release shipping a couple of important changes as well as the usual translation updates. The extension now ships 46 different localizations and will of course continue working just fine under the upcoming Plasma 6!

Konqi surfing the world wide web

Plasma Browser Integration bridges the gap between your browser and the Plasma desktop. It lets you share links, find browser tabs and visited websites in KRunner, monitor download progress in the notification center, and control music and video playback anytime from within Plasma, or even from your phone using KDE Connect!

Freezing in Style

One of the the less apparent omissions in Plasma’s Wayland session compared to X was the lack of a prompt for terminating an unresponsive app. Of course, you should never see one because any decent app will just crash and quit rather than get stuck. Nevertheless, over the course of three evenings I spent way too much time making the “KWin Killer Helper” work on Wayland and while at it revamped its user interface entirely.

On the Road to Plasma 6, Vol. 4

Chill your Champagne bottles – it’s official: the KDE Plasma 6.0 + KDE Frameworks 6.0 + KDE Gear 24.02 Mega Release™ that will take KDE software to the next level is going to happen on 28th February 2024! Let’s have a look at what I’ve been up to in the past two months, again working mostly on either Qt itself or dealing with its behavior changes on the application side.

Empty KDE Plasma 6 desktop with a bluish-gray mountain wallpaper. A yellow sticky note on it reading “Hello!”. Bottom right caption reads “KDE Plasma 6.0 Dev. Visit bugs.kde.org to report issues” — It feels like every time I take a desktop screenshot for this type of post, the caption has changed slightly. :-)

LinuxDay Vorarlberg 2023

After four years KDE finally made it to Dornbirn, Austria again for the annual LinuxDay Vorarlberg where Carl Schwan, Tobias Fella and I showcased the latest and greatest in KDE software and hardware.

KDE booth at LinuxDay Vorarlberg

On the Road to Plasma 6, Vol. Ⅲ

Another month, another Plasma 6 update. I’ve been pretty busy during the past weeks, mostly further improving the Wayland session, fractional scaling, and dealing with Qt bugs. Working under the hood like this is tremendously important albeit somewhat ungrateful when there aren’t any pretty pictures to show.

Empty KDE Plasma 6 desktop with a bluish-gray mountain wallpaper. Bottom right caption reads “KDE Plasma 6.0 Dev. Visit bugs.kde.org to report issues” — Still looks the same now, doesn’t it? By the way, there is a Wallpaper Contest going on!

On the Road to Plasma 6, Cont’d

A little over two months ago I involuntarily switched my daily driver laptop to a Plasma 6 development build (see this blog post on how that went). Since then there has been stunning progress on ironing out bugs, tidying things up, and implementing new features. Let me show you what I’ve been working on, stumbling blocks to look out for, and what you can do to help to make Plasma 6 a truly great release!

Empty KDE Plasma 6 desktop with a bluish-gray mountain wallpaper. Bottom right caption reads “KDE Plasma 5.27.80. Visit bugs.kde.org to report issues” — Yes, please do report all the bugs!

A couple of weeks ago I actually finally switched to a Plasma Wayland session full time and it’s been working great! This now also means I have to fix all of my pet peeve bugs, and boy did I!

Hot Summer Akademy 2023 in Thessaloniki

I just returned from blazing hot Thessaloniki, Greece where the KDE Community’s annual conference Akademy was held this year. Unlike last year I stayed in the same hotel as many fellow KDE people so the pre-Covid Akademy vibes finally returned in the form of evening hotel lobby hacking. Sadly, I caught a gastrointestinal infection on Monday which made me fly home early and miss the day trip to Mount Olympus I had been looking forward so much.

Landscape photo of the sea, late sunset in the background, houses in the distance with lights on and a row of houses to the right getting smaller along the coastline — Thessaloniki harbor front

On the Road to Plasma 6

After I accidentally screwed up my system Friday night, I ended up with no choice but to install all system updates from KDE neon “unstable” which now defaults to a Plasma 6 session. I certainly wasn’t planning on spending a few hours that evening fixing my setup. Alas, I am now taking “eating your own dog food” to the extreme and made my daily driver laptop run Plasma 6.

“About this System” dialog: KDE neon Unstable Edition.
KDE Plasma Version: 5.27.80
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.24.0
Qt Version: 6.5.0 — There’s a few loose screws here and there.

Plasma Sprint 2023 in Augsburg

After what felt like an eternity we were finally able to come together in Augsburg, Germany for the Plasma Sprint that was originally planned for April of 2020, kindly hosted by TUXEDO Computers in their offices. There were sixteen attendees from six countries and it was great to have three newcomers on board, too.

Sadly, I wasn’t allowed to take him home.

Looking Back at 2022

Depending on your calendar system, another year is coming to a close very soon. While this year was a lot more enjoyable for many of us than the last two, we surely didn’t expect things to go downhill even more for others. As I am looking forward to some days off with my family, let me take a step back and reflect on some of the things I did in KDE in the last twelve months.

Konqi, KDE's mascot, a green cute dragon, dressed as Santa Claus with white long beard, red robe, and some KDE presents in his sack — “Happy Holidays”, Konqi called at the cheering crowd in front of him (CC-BY-SA raghukamath)