The Challenge: Getting AI Agents to Draw Correct Canvas2D

Qt 6.12 introduces Qt Canvas2D. Its API echoes the HTML5 canvas and the older Qt Quick Canvas element, both of which developers and AI models have seen many times in training data.

29 Sep 2026 1:06pm GMT

Another Akademy attended, here's some photos!

Hello hello! It was that time of the year where I go to KDE Akademy, talk to fellow nerds, almost lose my voice due to socializing and eat a lot of nice food.

This time Akademy was in Graz, Austria. I had never been in Austria before. This time I also had to travel alone due to my wife being busy with studying.

Traveling alone was nervewracking for sure, but somehow I managed to do it. Unless I am dreaming and wake up under a bench in Frankfurt airport or something.

Now I do not have a lot of photos, but I tried. I am bad at photos, many of them are super shakey or bad. But maybe these are interesting anyway.

Traveling to Graz

I spent first 6h in a midnight train from home to Helsinki and could not sleep. Then I went from Helsinki to Frankfurt on a plane, I slept like two hours maybe. And from Frankfurt I went to Graz on a plane, also managed to sleep a bit.

At airport I met fellow KDE people and we managed to figure out our way to the hotel together.

The moment I arrived there, there was a welcome event on top of some building with bunch of food and drink. I had good time though I was super tired and the place was fully packed so I had barely any energy or will to try to properly socialize.

I genuinely do not remember much, it was a lot of travel and brain fog due to sleep deprivation lol.

First day of speeches

Akademy finally properly begins and I go to the venue after good nights sleep. I didn't take much photos at the venue as I spent time just watching the talks, but I managed to take couple photos.

At evening we went for a dinner, and there was A LOT of people around Graz as apparently there was some festival. More chaos, I do not like crowds, but it was interesting.

Second day of speeches and goals

During day two I spent most of the time at the venue as well, and the new KDE Goals were announced: I am one of the KDE Goal champions now! Yay!

The goal I am champion of is Next Generation Styling for KDE.

See the youtube video of the goals, our little speech timestamped: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwv4SQSvx9g&t=2559

(I am the guy in full black with the Xenia shirt.)

So yes, make Union bug reports! :)

After the talks and goal stuff, we had a KDE birthday party! KDE is 30 years old now, so we had food and cake.

(The first image is just me being stupid dont mind me)

BoF days

No photos from these, as I spent all my time in them. BoFs are tiny group hacking/discussion/etc sessions about stuff. I attended Union related BoFs but I also held my own: Desktop icons!

There will be it's own blogpost about the desktop icon BoF soon:tm:.

Otherwise I do not have much as I spent a lot of time just hacking on Union and less listening lol.

Daytrip: Chocolate

We went to a chocolate factory!!!

I've never been in one but it was very fun. And chocolatey.

There was like 300 tasting things for different processing phases of chocolate, from the chocolate beans to the full product.

I tried to taste it all. I really, really tried. At the end of it though I felt rather sick and did not want any more lol.

Despite feeling like I never want to see any more chocolate in my life, it was very fun. Apparently there was some other part of the place too that was like a zoo full of chocolate but I was so tired of it at the end I kinda skipped it and just drank water outside.

After stuffing ourselves full of chocolate, we went to another place nearby that was really pretty, on top of a hill, where we had a lunch. A lot of bread and cheese and ham and whatnot to put on the bread, and a lot of drinks too.

Last day(s)

Thursday I spent hacking on Union together with Arjen and Noah. We are still trying to get the widgets side work nicely, though it works rather well already.

After that, I said goodbye to Konqi (and other people) and had a weird pizza that was half regular and half calzone.

On Friday, we travelled together to airport and went eventually our separate ways to wherever we went.

I got home at midnight and finally could say hi to our snek Mochi again.

It was fun!

Akademy was really fun. I will make more technical post about the desktop icon stuff when I can. It was very great to meet fellow nerds and discuss all things KDE.

I had great time. Even as someone who really does not like traveling.

See you at Akademy 2027! Or KDE Goal sprints! :)

28 Sep 2026 10:33pm GMT

Right after my GSoC tenure ended, I took off to Austria for attending Akademy. This was my first time outside my country and also my first birthday in another country!

Meeting New People

I met Albert Astals Cid and Sune Vuorela who mentored and helped me during my GSoC tenure on Poppler and Okular.

I also got to meet Christoper Cullman who had merged my first contributions into KDE to the Kate editor.

Attending talks and BoFs

I attended some talks that I could mostly understand. For example, "Are we really going to use the same Desktop UX forever?" by Scott Jensen

Some talks of which I knew 50-60% of what's going on,

And then some talks, I had no idea about what's happening lol (but they sounded interesting anyways)

I also attended some BoFs like i18n, NFC (which sounded interesting), and one BoF which was about organizing Akademy. The "organizing Akademy" BoF was especially helpful because Bhushan Shah talked with me and other fellow contributors about doing a cki (conf kde india) so I learned some things there.

Chocolate factory experience

When they said in the movie that there are roughly 300 varieties of chocolates we can try, I thought I could try all of them. But I couldn't eat anymore than 30 -_-

Closing Remarks

It was a good event and I enjoyed my time there. Thanks KDE for making it happen.

28 Sep 2026 2:59pm GMT

As usual, crossing the Atlantic is tough for me. I'm just too tall, and the seats are, well... just too small. Not to mention the stress of receiving a message on the day of the trip saying that my flight had been moved four hours earlier! I dropped everything I was doing and ran to the airport, only to dicover that it was a mistake in the "system". Add to that the delays and the the risk of missing the connection... Lufthansa did not play well this trip but everything worked out in the end!

My second Akademy was simply amazing. It was also more special beacause it was the KDE 30th anniversary edition. Unfortunately I did not get to try the Konqi cake.

I am very proud to be part of the KDE community - a welcoming, friendly, diverse and free group of people who are making the world a better place. I you ask me what is KDE in one word, I would say hope.

Camille, from the Kdenlive team, asked us to document our trip, so I did a short edit.

Habemus Champions

One of the highlights of my trip was to announce the new KDE Goals. This cycle, the community voted for:

• KDE for Enterprise and Deployments - championed by: David Edmundson, Neal Gompa, and Kai Uwe Broulik
• Better documentation - championed by: Nate Graham, Thiago Masato Costa Sueto, and Joseph P. De Veaugh-Geiss
• Next Generation Styling for KDE - championed by: Arjen Hiemstra, Akseli Lahtinen, and Andy Betts

We are currently scheduling our kickoff meeting to get things organized. I am sure many of you are eager to contribute, so stay tuned for further news.

We also did a recap of the last cycle and handed the certificates of appreciation to the champions. Congrats to them, they really raised the bar!

My favorite accomplishments, in no particular order:

• Improved graphics tablet support. This made it possible to switch all the computers at our studio to KDE Plasma. We are a 100% KDE studio now. We Care About Your Input goal
• Plasma Keyboard. It was so cool to have seen this being born. We got a lot of community feedback and it will definitely be a cherry on top for Plasma. There are also many improvements and features coming. We Care About Your Input goal
• Ship Kirigami via pip. This is something that is still in a very initial state, but there has been recent progress by a community member. Streamlined Application Development Experience goal
• I love that KDE Mentorship now has a visual identity and it is getting a new website. KDE Needs You goal
• Beacon Program is a new mentorship program that I've been working to setup for ther last months. It is currrently entering a beta phase and will share more info soon. KDE Needs You goal

BOFs

I only got to participate in two BOFs.

The first was the Mentorships one hosted by Paul and Ansh, where I got to give a preview of the Beacon Program, the work that I've been building with universities for the last two semesters.

I also participated in Drunk KDE - Brand personality of KDE hosted by Aniqa and Kieryn. Boy that was a fun one! We got to think about KDE's branding and it contemplated lot's of issues that need to be worked on. Aniqa is compiling all our input and we'll hopefully get things moving afterwards.

Kdenlive at Akademy

The second highlight was getting together with the Kdenlive crew. Although it was a very quick, as most of the team stayed only for the weekend, we managed to get a lot done. We organized future sprints, started planning our upcoming fundraising campaign, discussed some promo tasks, and we even finally managed to merge the features section of the Kdenlive home page.

We also did a lot of testing and UX brainstorming for the upcoming keyframe timeline.

Unfortunately, for most of the trip, Jean-Baptiste was under the weather, so Julius and I had to fill in for his talk.

Graz

I loved Graz, Austria's second largest city. It is so welcoming and chill. I bought a weekly transport pass but ended up using it so little... did a lot of walking.

I was happy that I got to do some last minute sightseeing before catching the plane back home. After all the clock tower and the mountains were the inspiration for this year's edition.

A nice surprise was the Steirisches Backhendl served at TU Graz was just delicious. Styrian fried chicken (in pumpkin seed oil) served with a tangy potato salad and lingonberry jam.

Behind the scenes

This was my second Akademy, not only as a participant but also part of the organizing team.

We've been meeting religiously every Tuesday to organize this edition. Each time with different background lights from Harald's streaming setup.

All the graphics of this edition were made using free software programs like Inkscape for the general graphics creation, Scribus to export the PDF for printing, Blender for the intro graphics animations, and Kdenlive for video editing.

Also a HUGE shoutout to the CCC Video Operation Center (C3VOC) team. I really hope that we have consolidated this partership with them and can continue partnering with them for future Akademies. Speaking of which, the call for hosts is still open.

Lot's of luv to the beautiful, lean, mean Akademy-making team who put together such a fantastic edition. Can't wait for the next one with you all.

Some of the team. <3

28 Sep 2026 2:50pm GMT

August 6th - 9th 2026

FOSSY was held in Vancouver, Canada this year on the University of British Columbia campus.

This was my first conference as a KDE representative sitting at the KDE sponsors table. I don't know if we were the biggest sponsor at FOSSY, but we certainly had the most people and tables in the sponsors area. We also had the most things to play with. A drawing tablet, a surface table with drawing pen, a steam deck, a rpi4 with small touchscreen, as well a various types of laptops.

28 Sep 2026 1:15pm GMT

Tellico 4.3 is available, with some additional capabilities, improvements, and bug fixes. I've received several code contributions from new people in the last few months and I wanted to say thanks. Depending a little on how I count it, Tellico turns 25 years old next month. It's always been a hobby; I'm not a programmer by trade or training, and so I'm always gratified when other folks find my little tool useful and provide feedback, bug fixes, and even code contributions.

Improvements:

• Added new data sources for Goodreads and Hardcover.
• Updated MusicBrainz (Bug 524735), IMDB (Bug 525019), Numista (Bug 474986), DarkHorse, Kino-Teatr, and Kinopoisk (Bug 525687) data sources.
• Added appropriate data rate limiting to many data sources.
• Added option to read composer during audio file import (Bug 524734).
• Added option to disable ISBN auto-formatting.
• Added option to include filters and loans when importing a collection.
• Updated file exporting to include default file extensions.
• Updated Number fields to allow 64-bit values.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed bug with MusicBrainz keyword search (Bug 524735).
• Fixed bug when exporting HTML files for collection with no title.
• Fixed bug with restoring entry values after undoing a collection append or merge.

27 Sep 2026 7:52pm GMT

Recently Michael Tunnell interviewed Aleix and I on the subject of KDE's 30th birthday, Wayland, LTS software, the new Union theming engine, and more! If you're interested, you can check it out here. Note: if you work at Microsoft, please don't watch and get any big ideas!

27 Sep 2026 4:50pm GMT

Last weekend I had the privilege of attending Akademy - the yearly gathering of the KDE community. Taking place in Graz, it was a special one, marking the 30th anniversary of the email that set the Kool Desktop Environment in motion. We got to see the trailer for a documentary that, come October 14th, will...... Continue Reading →

27 Sep 2026 7:06am GMT

After a long week of working lots and making lots of connections, here is what happened this year during Akademy!

• Talk recap
  • Ocean is divided into two areas, Ocean Graphical Assets and Ocean Design System.
  • Ocean graphical assets refers to all currently-available theming elements that Plasma provides. This includes, color schemes, fonts, icon packs, Plasma styles, pointers, and window decorations. (The only one missing is application style).
  • Ocean design system has also progressed. We begun the migration of Ocean icon sources from Figma into Penpot. This is achieved by using a svg copy function and then we paste a flat version of the icon into Penpot. With this, at least, users will be able to create mockups using actual Ocean icons. The UI will look more adjusted to what we can offer. There will be a copy in Figma for redundancy but designers will likely not need any specific changes done to icons in Penpot.
  • When Penpot is able to support more of the complex boolean operations done in Figma, this will make it easier to store better sources in Penpot.
  • My talk focused on the progress we have so far with the various elements of Ocean.

• Union BoF
  • Discussed all the areas that Union engine is working on and what is available for us to use at the moment.
  • Reviewed ways to test Union and provide feedback. Working on learning the structure and work for Ocean style.
• Desktop Icons Arrangement BoF
  • Discussed the need to revamp the way our icons are arranged in the desktop and the various workarounds that our implementation has.
  • I offered to help in bringing some good research into HCI and surfacing the most common ways that users would expect to arrange their desktops.
• Penpot BoF
  • Discussed the need to build a plugin that can export Penpot css code and turn it into Union css code so that components are more easily integrated into the style out of the design.
• Activities BoF
  • Discussed the need for a reviving of this misunderstood feature of our desktop.
  • I offered to work on building a research-based proposal

Goals

The Union + Ocean goal was selected for the next two years as a priority for the Community. "Yay for more work!".

I am so excited and thankful to the Community that saw this work as important for the future. I am committed to doing a lot more for it and during Akademy, we communicated about what our combined development path will be.

I can't wait for the work ahead!

Thank you @KDE!

26 Sep 2026 1:20pm GMT

Welcome to a new issue of This Week in Plasma!

This week about 200 KDE contributors and enthusiasts attended Akademy, but somehow people still found the time to be productive! Plasma contributors released the second beta of Plasma 6.8 and landed a bunch of user interface improvements and bug fixes.

As always, this is only a curated subset of everything that happened in Plasma over the week.

Check it out:

Notable UI improvements

Plasma 6.8

Click feedback for System Tray icons now works a lot better (even if it remains inconsistent with other things, which is also being worked on!). (Kamil Wolter, KDE Bugzilla #520915)

The focused tab in a Plasma tab bar now looks less like a link, which it isn't. (Christoph Wolk, libplasma MR #1584)

You can now use the "Switch to Last-Used Keyboard Layout" keyboard shortcut on the lock screen. (Pavel Lunin, kscreenlocker MR #373)

Password fields throughout Plasma now show an explanatory tooltip when you hover over the little eyeball icon that shows and hides the characters of the password. (Christoph Wolk, KDE Bugzilla #525790)

Muting an app or window from its Task Manager entry no longer closes the preview tooltip for it. (Christoph Wolk, KDE Bugzilla #521174)

Dragging the QR Code of an item in the Clipboard widget now shows it visually attached to the pointer during the drag. (Kai Uwe Broulik, plasma-workspace MR #7108)

Plasma 6.9

KRunner-powered searches are now more flexible about currency conversions: you can now put the currency symbol on either side of the number and it will still recognize it as something that can be converted. (Alex Čižinský, KDE Bugzilla #446045)

Copying text in Info Center now shows some visual feedback so you know it worked. (Mradul Pal, kinfocenter MR #313)

You can now search for a weather station whose name includes punctuation without including the punctuation in your search. For example, you can search for "st louis" to find weather stations for "St. Louis". (Bohdan Onofriichuk, KDE Bugzilla #515637)

Notable bug fixes

Plasma 6.7.6

Fixed a bug that could make logout, shutdown, or restart fail if there was already another attempt to do so running in the background. (Gregor Papez, KDE Bugzilla #525911)

Fixed a bug in the Weather Report widget that could make it get stuck after canceling a search that returned any results from the BBC. (Bohdan Onofriichuk, kdeplasma-addons MR #1133)

Fixed a regression that made CPU Information get cut off in Info Center. (Nate Graham, KDE Bugzilla #523197)

Plasma 6.8

Plasma no longer crashes when you delete a starred clipboard entry from the Meta+V popup. (David Edmundson, KDE Bugzilla #526007)

Long labels can no longer overlap on System Settings' Shortcuts page. (Christoph Wolk, KDE Bugzilla #525725)

Fixed a bug in the Weather Report widget that could mis-report the night temperature for weather stations from the wetter.com provider. (Bohdan Onofriichuk, KDE Bugzilla #520315)

Queries in KRunner-powered searches longer than 63 characters no longer spam the journal log with hundreds or thousands of pointless messages. (David Edmundson, KDE Bugzilla #525983)

The Dictionary widget's minimum size no longer breaks its layout. (Christoph Wolk, kdeplasma-addons MR #1138)

Notable in performance & technical

Plasma 6.8

Plasma's Bluetooth setup wizard can now be used to find and pair Bluetooth Low Energy devices while something else on the system (such as KDE Connect) holds open a discovery session for other devices. (Robert August Vincent II, KDE Bugzilla #526178)

Plasma 6.9

The C.UTF-8 locale is now available on System Settings' Region & Language page. (Nate Graham, KDE Bugzilla #438290)

How you can help

KDE has become important in the world, and your time and contributions have helped us get there. As we grow, we need your support to keep KDE sustainable.

Would you like to help put together this weekly report? Introduce yourself in the Matrix room and join the team!

Beyond that, you can help KDE by directly getting involved in any other projects. Donating time is actually more impactful than donating money. Each contributor makes a huge difference in KDE - you are not a number or a cog in a machine! You don't have to be a programmer, either; many other opportunities exist.

You can also help out by making a donation! This helps cover operational costs, salaries, travel expenses for contributors, and in general just keeps KDE bringing Free Software to the world.

To get a new Plasma feature or a bug fix mentioned here

Push a commit to the relevant merge request on invent.kde.org.

26 Sep 2026 12:00am GMT

Let's go for my web review for the week 2026-39.

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The Test

Tags: tech, culture, business, politics

Yes, the preposterous statements from the tech moguls have a use. They allow them to gauge how obedient you are. This is thus a political function and a way to check their power. Maybe it's time we collectively start to say the Emperor has no clothes?

https://tante.cc/2026/09/24/the-test/

I asked 100 companies for my data. Some deleted it instead.

Tags: tech, data, law, privacy

Don't be like those companies! I wish there'd be more responsible handling of such requests.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/08/i-asked-100-companies-for-my-data-some-deleted-it-instead/

Why I Love AI

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, copilot, science, research

Since I've got my PhD in AI almost twenty years ago now, this piece strikes hard. This fellow kept doing research while I didn't (the reasons to be told another time but it's linked to this article). Clearly AI researchers who started around that time or before have a very different vision to what "AI" means as a field (although I've a few difference I'm fairly aligned with this article)… Clearly we've been robbed of the term by the industrial complex.

https://www.possibilityspace.org/blog/posts/i-love-ai/

Don't be fooled by this summer of AI hype

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, copilot, hype, ethics, ecology

The hype is very high right now indeed. This can lead only to misguided decisions. But really it's mostly distraction from the massive ethical concerns this industry carries. It would require for policymakers to step up but I'm afraid it unfortunately won't happen or they'll come up with misguided attempts if they don't first consult with field experts.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/09/22/1144867/dont-be-fooled-summer-ai-hype/

No Sloptober

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, copilot

Interesting initiative. I wish it'll be popular and many people will follow it. Maybe it'll cure some of them of their AI psychosis…

https://no-sloptober.com/

How to talk about "AI" without adding to the anthropomorphization

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, linguistics

Goes maybe a tad too far in the opposite direction at times leading to clunky phrases. That said this effort of naming things properly is badly needed. I hope the media will seize it and report about those tools properly.

https://buttondown.com/maiht3k/archive/how-to-talk-about-ai-without-adding-to-the/

America is getting its AI race with China wrong

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, trust, business, law

So apparently the low adoption is due to the lack of trust in the systems and regulations could help? Who knew…

https://restofworld.org/2026/america-china-ai-race-trust/

ChatGPT now knows what you do on other websites via ad collector

Tags: tech, gpt, attention-economy, surveillance

It was only a matter of time I guess. Another vehicle of the attention economy. They're trying to monetise through advertisements.

https://www.buchodi.com/chatgpt-now-knows-what-you-do-on-other-websites-via-ad-collector/

Laya - 33ms Multilingual System 1 Decision Engine with Calibrated Probabilities

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, decision-making

Now this look like a very interesting and useful model you can run locally. Definitely helps for classification tasks or assisting in decision making.

https://laya.convaiinnovations.com/

kev: tiny Jev-like family of decision models built on top of Qwen3.5 you can train and run on your own

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, decision-making

Looks like yet another interesting model to build decision assistance systems and classifiers.

https://github.com/jaredpalmer/kev

Linux programs look at things in /proc more than you'd expect

Tags: tech, linux, system

And most times as developers we don't even realize it happens! It's so conveniently hidden deep in most libraries or runtimes.

https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/linux/ProcGetsUsedByPrograms

About alignment, struct layout and the cache…

Tags: tech, c++, memory, caching, performance

Need to mind the memory layout of your structs to get good performance. Often overlooked but that also includes the padding.

https://meetingcpp.com/blog/items/About-alignment-struct-layout-and-the-cache-.html

How did AMD Ryzen get 50% faster in two years?

Tags: tech, hardware, cpu, amd, performance

There's really something brewing at AMD. They're on a roll performance wise.

https://lemire.me/blog/2026/09/18/how-did-amd-ryzen-get-50-faster-in-two-years/

How many strings can you create per second?

Tags: tech, memory, performance, c++, rust, go, python, javascript

Probably more than you think in this setup. And even more in C++ with the STL having years of smart tricks behind it.

https://lemire.me/blog/2026/09/25/how-many-strings-can-you-create-per-second/

Why CAFEBABE?

Tags: tech, java, funny

So many weird magic numbers to consider… Funny conversation around the one of Java class files.

https://www.artima.com/insidejvm/whyCAFEBABE.html

Union vs sum types

Tags: tech, type-systems

Wondering about the differences between union types and sum types? This gives a good idea about what they are.

https://viralinstruction.com/posts/uniontypes/

The Engineering Manager's Guide to Emotional Tolerance

Tags: tech, management, emotions

This mostly fine advice. Managing requires acknowledging emotions otherwise you can't lead effectively. Don't get dragged too far into it though, you're not a therapist.

https://thrivinginengineering.substack.com/p/the-engineering-managers-guide-to-emotional-tolerance

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Bye for now!

25 Sep 2026 9:13pm GMT

My experiences at Akademy

It's been a hot minute since my last blog post, mostly because I was focusing on finally finishing my studies - while I'm not quite done yet (still missing one exam), I have a good reason to come out of hiding: KDE Akademy 2026 just happened and I was there!

Talks

While I was already at the Plasma Sprint in Graz last year, this is my first other KDE-related event I attended and oh boy was it ever an event. So many talks ranging from educational and thought provoking to simply silly fun and plenty of opportunities (for frequent and extended coffee breaks leading to even more education, thought provoking and simply silly fun conversations!

BoFs

If it was just that I would have already called this amazing, but the "talks" part of Akademy was just the first two days (not counting the "arrival day" + evening welcome event which I could unfortunately not attend myself), but the following days were equally amazing, if not even more so. A bunch of lively discussions in plenty of BoF rooms (and, which I have learned there, the famous hallway BoFs) around so many topics I can't even hope to mention them all here. I attended some conversations around how to better get in touch with stakeholders to reduce the general society's reliance on big tech, the technical intricacies of theming systems in general and KDE Union in particular, implementation details for the new XDG Intents, ... I could go on forever, really, but I shall restrain myself.

In short: Tons conversations and planning that works best in-person was done as well as a lot of networking and putting-faces-to-names.

The C word

Now unfortunately not everything was sunshine and roses - Wednesday was a day of unspeakable, chocolate-based torture for all of us. We toured the Zotter factory near Graz which included the ability to taste-test their chocolates at various steps during production process (yes, this includes up to as early as whole dried cocoa beans!) as well as a wide selection of their final products. It was much more interesting than I thought it would be and such a great experience to do all this with so many kool (with a K!) people.

However... let's just say mistakes have been made and I misunderstood the Zotter employee's statement that there are "roughly 300 taste testing stations" as a promise and not a threat. I definitely purchased a number of chocolate bars in their shop at the end but I don't think I'll be eating any of them any time soon after my complete lack of self control during the tour and the ensuing (and entirely predictable!) consequences.

And the worst part: After that we went to a Buschenschank for a good old "Brettljausn" (not sure how to translate, but essentially a meat and cheese buffet) where I also ate way too much since it's been way too long since my last proper Brettljausn.

And with that I think I covered everything I wanted to talk about - Thanks so much to everyone organizing and attending to make this such an unforgettable week! If you'll excuse me, I'll now fall into bed and sleep what feels like for several days straight

24 Sep 2026 8:00pm GMT

Here are the new modules available in the Plasma 6.8 beta:

• kup: Backup scheduler for the Plasma desktop

Some important features and changes included in 6.8 beta are highlighted on KDE community wiki page.

Help stress-test the Union theming system

This releases marks the second half of the Union theming system's public tech preview!

New in Plasma 6.8: Union now themes QtWidgets applications, such as Dolphin and Kate. Bear in mind this support is preliminary and you will encounter bugs. When you do, please report them here!

To test Union:

1. Make sure the union package is installed (name may differ depending on your distro)
2. Launch System Settings
3. In the sidebar, navigate to Colors & Themes → Application Style
4. Click "Breeze (Union)"
5. Click Apply

This will apply Union styling to both QtQuick and QtWidgets apps.

The intention is for these apps to look as similar as possible when styled with Union to how they look with Breeze - though any minor visual improvements should be considered intentional!

If you find any issues, make sure they're Union-specific by running the app with the Breeze style to compare the two. If the issue is Union-specific, report it here!

KWin

KWin now depends on the plasma-wayland-protocols 1.23.0 release to provide fix for memory leak.

Everything else

View full changelog

24 Sep 2026 12:00am GMT

During this year's Akademy, while celebrating KDE's 30th birthday, I found some time to do some hacking on a beloved old toy widget: the Bouncy Ball I used to maintain for a while, and which Filip recently made available for Plasma 6 again.

The all-new Bouncy Ball 3D - find it on the KDE Store (and by extension your Plasma's Add Widgets dialog) now - adds high-quality 3D graphics, more expressive physics with satisfying ball squish, and better support for living in and launching from a Plasma panel.

I have of course coordinated this with Filip a bit, and we agreed it's better to make this a seperate widget/release for now to keep the classic ball available for its fans.

Note the new widget requires at least KDE Frameworks 6.26+, i.e. around the Plasma 6.7 timeframe.

Enjoy the bounce!

While you bounce about, consider watching my Akademy 2026 presentation on taking KDE to the Great Pyramid in Egypt for high-tech archeological research.

24 Sep 2026 12:00am GMT

I got pissed off with the current situation occurring on social media regarding multiple topics, so I decided to make a FAQ explaining the situation.

The topics include the mentions of AI at Akademy, the policy proposal, and some moderation shenanigans.

Does this count as damage control? Probably. Does it originate from being upset with the current situation rather than some weird corporate-esque reputation thing? Yes. Was I the only one to feel the exact same thing at around the same time? No.

Misinformation in general already bothers me a lot, misinformation that damages other people to such a high degree is another level of pisses me the fuck off though.

It doesn't really matter. I hope the following is informative, especially to dispel misinformation.

Note that I'm not a KDE e.V. board member. The following is based on what I know. I just used neutral language for the most part.

I should also note that I'm in the NoAI camp, that I actually watched the talks mentioned here (imagine that), that I spent half a year learning about AI and ethical use (part of which is mentioned in Slop is incompetence, treat it as such) to spite-ground my complaints about it better.

I am not going to go through the timeline of events because Nate already did that in his KDE and AI, and you, and me blog post. I'm only going to address matters I've personally seen online. Some of those were already addressed by the Promo team (where most of the work was from one person doing their best).

I am not sure this blog post counts as speaking for other KDE people when I say "we" or "KDE does", but I feel confident about these at least being a general sentiment.

Why was an "AI-native" talk part of Akademy?🔗

The referred talk is What would it take? A lovable, sovereign, AI-native KDE.

Anyone can submit a talk, and it was accepted precisely to get a different perspective and to see people's opinions on AI.

As you can see, the reception wasn't great.

Was the "AI-native" talk written with AI?🔗

Clearly. The only one to do so.

What was the "AI-native" talk actually about?🔗

The main three points the talk brought were lovability, sovereignty, and making KDE AI-native.

"Lovability" does not mean "Loving KDE software" in any sort of Actual Love sense (it's weird that I have to clarify that, some people did understand it like that).

It refers to the idea achieved through usability studies that people liking what they use and seeing it as actually theirs creates a significant appeal enough to matter even in commercial or governmental settings. In a sense, you could just call it "Appeal".

It talks about the sudden urge coming from outside KDE to make it a desktop for sovereign nations, outside the control of the Silicon Valley. Naturally, for this to be achieved, this appeal is necessary.

"Making KDE AI-native" does not mean "Making KDE AI-first". It primarily meant a few things:

• Some users will use AI on Plasma.
• Whether a user uses AI on Plasma is optional and should stay that way.
• Users trying to use AI on Plasma (or any environment) don't feel safe.
• Therefore, a solution to this would be having a nice interface with a proper privacy-focused, sandboxed environment.

Here, "native" is a bit of a stretch, referring to "we provide the optional facilities for you to use AI safely". It also ties into the appeal trait mentioned before, using points like Nepomuk in its favor.

Naturally, the conclusion is an opinion of the presenters. And of course, this is a gross oversimplification of the talk points.

Does that mean KDE is going AI-native?🔗

No. The talk derives from the opinions of the presenters and is not a statement from KDE.

Does that mean KDE is making a stance about AI by accepting this talk?🔗

No.

Why was Omarchy mentioned at Akademy?🔗

Scott Jenson's talk Are we really going to use the same Desktop UX forever? briefly mentions Omarchy as an example of lack of innovation in UX.

One of Scott's points was that the UX hasn't changed in the desktop, and desktop Linux especially has been waiting for Windows and MacOS to make innovations to the desktop paradigm first.

The AI ecosystem is not bound to this, so they are making "new things in a weird way". Yet, Omarchy, which is deeply AI bound, does not enter this category and is another example of unchanged UX.

KDE contributors want no association with Omarchy. Nate said this in his blog post, but this is easily seen in the audience booing Omarchy when it was mentioned in the talk.

Scott Jenson's general stance about AI in the video is "we're going to improve things on the desktop, if it ends up benefiting AI too I don't care".

Are you aware of the ethical and environmental concerns surrounding AI?🔗

Yes, to varying degrees per contributor.

KDE Eco has already made a statement against AI. We have people arguing about the environmental damage caused by data centers, although I see it's the same discussion and narrative argumentation I've seen in traditional environmental talk pretty much.

The AI ecosystem is shifting towards open source, but ethically trained datasets are still a minority. We are all aware of Anthropic and Amazon buying books for scraping and subsequent destruction.

These are strong points of contention for our contributors and we acknowledge that. Not just the question of using it at all, but even the question of what constitutes ethical use in the field is blurry, which makes things difficult for us to even discuss the matter properly. Please be patient with us on that matter.

Is the proposed AI policy pro-AI?🔗

No. I'd call it "permissive of AI under strict circumstances". Very much like other policies in the FOSS world. This one was, in fact, inspired by them.

In my opinion, a pro-AI policy would simply allow AI contributions or would be in favor of AI in general, actively seeking to integrate it in core Plasma components.

Even if you do equate both terms, it would be against the fact that we are dissatisfied with the current situation, have been keeping slop out, and want to keep slop out, and want to validate that with a policy.

The terminology doesn't matter, to be honest. You get the idea from this whole post. I'll call it "permissive" for now.

Why was the proposed AI policy permissive of AI?🔗

It is an initial draft intentionally designed to guide contributor behavior, leaving a lot to interpretation.

Initial drafts are there to get input from other contributors and be improved, and to measure community expectations.

What pretty much all KDE contributors already agree with is that any slop should be rejected and if any AI contribution is made, it should be done to our highest standards and following proper professional behavior. Emphasis on "if any". Hence, the draft starts with that.

Agreement past that point is difficult because KDE traditionally does consensus-based decisions for this, and there are technical and non-technical points of nuance to elaborate and formalize the policy. Which we didn't do yet.

The draft as it stood was not a statement on what the general contributor community does or its values.

Another point to take from this is that the policy draft as it stood was stricter than the current practice. Nate mentions it in his blog and elaborates on this better than me.

Why did you remove the policy proposal?🔗

We didn't. It is confidential and locked.

The main reason why is due to bikeshedding and heated arguments. This problem was further enhanced once it was exposed on social media, but this was not the sole cause.

It would end up being locked even without outside interventions.

While mentions from non-contributors are not the sole cause for the issue locking, they aggravate the situation.

Are you ignoring non-contributing voices?🔗

No. While it is true that, ultimately, this is a contributor decision for contributors, we are aware of KDE For People, and we are aware you do not want AI in KDE software.

We ask that you be patient with us. The proposal was made with bad timing, as most main KDE contributors would soon be present at Akademy, making it difficult to commit properly.

Please wait at least a week after Akademy ends. Akademy does not last only for the first two days with talks.

A new draft proposal that should better align with the community expectations is on the way. Probably by me.

We ask that you be polite with us. These sorts of situations lead to contributors receiving email threats and trolling, and this has already happened. Nobody deserves that.

"Ultimately, this is a contributor decision for contributors"?🔗

The KDE account said it best:

Maybe this needs clarifying. "For maintainers only" does not mean that no other opinions count in the discussion, but that the policies will mostly be useful to "maintainers only".

If you are not maintaining a KDE project, these policies will not be applicable. Maybe other policies adapted to other roles will have to be developed down the line.

But, at the moment, the people who are suffering most the deluge of slop, are maintainers, so this is for them.

Furthermore, "listening to users" and "doing exactly what users say we should do" are different things. Naturally, this also means "if KDE doesn't follow what users say, they didn't listen" or "if KDE deliberates instead of taking a quick decision, they didn't listen" are fallacies.

What about the awful person commenting on the proposal and the person denouncing them that was banned first?🔗

Disclaimer: I can't say I know about this in detail, because to me it was such a non-issue. Either way, I can't explain the minutiae out of respect for our moderation team.

From what I can tell, the moderation was already steering towards the desirable result because we don't want people like that near us or our users.

The reason the person denouncing them was banned first is because they clearly broke our Code of Conduct, or process.

The other person's ban required some discussion among other moderators for Reasons™️, and some time was required to discuss this with other mods about the situation (people do live in different timezones, you know). Imagine that, wanting input from other moderators, certainly not something that has ever happened in history.

This is effectively the same explanation given by the KDE account, although I knew this before it was given:

Person A violated the internal rules of invent and was banned on the spot. Person B was banned after an investigation. The two bans were inevitable. We cannot have people violating our processes (person A) or our CoC (person B).

That person A made the ban of person B happen faster? True. But person B would've been banned sooner or later regardless.

Hint for the future: when denouncing someone, follow the community's Code of Conduct and use appropriate channels. Otherwise you do a disservice to yourself, to your own cause, and damage the community you like.

This would actually have been a non-issue that would have gone entirely unnoticed if people didn't demand immediate results on social media and literally just waited (some people even calling KDE fascists).

What should we expect from a new policy proposal?🔗

If it were up to me:

It would be more explicit about what we want and don't want, and it would educate people on how to avoid AI as well as provide a means to extend this educational resource, which is something I've seen nobody else do. Whether this is in the policy itself or in an appendix doesn't matter. We already see use of AI as a problem that hinders personal growth, and we love helping people grow as contributors.

It would keep justifications like technical reasoning, ethics and environment out, but not excluded. This means an appendix of sorts being linked in the proposal, and possibly done after the policy. This would be purely to keep the policy brief and clear.

It might not be a policy at all, but guidelines or some other sort of document.

It will probably not come immediately or be mentioned publicly, because we've had enough of harassment and "death to you and family" threats that are worse than Phoronix and Reddit comments or "apolitical" right-winger techbros, which is honestly both impressive and sad.

It would come a significant amount of time after Akademy. Imagine that: people go to Akademy, have a good time, and have no time or motivation to deal with some extrinsic force coming from social media, and are kept out of the discussion because of that? No. The people involved also need a cooldown anyway.

It would probably not be a 100% AI ban or match your full expectations, but it should at least cover your fears of KDE becoming an AI desktop (that is not going to happen). It will probably have nuance that will surprise you.

Again, it would be an initial proposal. By the time it is proposed, or soon after, don't feel anxious that it's not a 100% ban, because that's not the final result. Please wait. Anticipatory anxiety is unhealthy.

Why did Nate call KDE For People brigading in his blog post?🔗

It's his opinion of what that is, or a definition I suppose. I'll restate the obvious that it does not mean KDE as a whole thinks of it as brigading. Another obvious thing is that people can have opinions.

Note that his blog post is, well, a blog post, on his own website, using informal language and "I" pronouns, issuing a personal apology because he feels guilty and responsible for what happened, that he felt inclined to write instead of working on some Wayland thing he actually wanted to fix. Imagine actually leaking personal opinions or definitions in such a thing. Shocking!

Once again, re-stating the obvious, his blog is his words and his opinions, in case it wasn't clear from how it was framed by the KDE account as a "first-hand account".

In case you didn't read any of the comments, his definition has to do with "outside force exerting pressure onto community's decision-making". This might or might not have matched reality in this case, but it doesn't matter. You were offended by it, and this needed clarification.

He already edited it because of my input that originates from a friend that signed the petition.

24 Sep 2026 12:00am GMT

So I accidentally triggered an online shitstorm in the process of trying to craft a set of more restrictive LLM usage guidelines for KDE. Sorry about that.

I'm going to leave the comments on this post open, but I will request that everyone who wants to comment read and understand the entire post first.

So anyway…

What happened?

Here's a verifiable timeline of events:

1. Several weeks ago, a KDE developer started a mailing list thread asking about how we should handle the flood of AI slop merge requests.
2. Everyone agreed it was a problem, and that we don't want that crap.
3. There was less certainty about the best way to handle it socially.
4. Several wished for an official policy so we didn't all have to figure it out on our own.
5. I proposed a set of draft guidelines making it quite clear that slop merge requests are unwanted, and can be ignored or closed.
6. It received a generally positive reception.
7. Another KDE developer requested that we workshop it somewhere more modern and capable.
8. I got busy and didn't do so.
9. Several weeks later, various people on the internet discovered that a talk proposing "a lovable, sovereign, AI-native KDE" had been accepted at Akademy 2026 and created drama around it.
10. Akademy happened, and the talk was given to what I'm told was a fairly chilly reception.
11. The next day, a workshop was held about the topic, also receiving a chilly reception.
12. Realizing this topic was not going away, later that day I re-opened a second draft of my LLM guidelines on invent.kde.org.
13. KDE contributors began to discuss the draft proposal.
14. Two people unknown to any KDE contributors appeared and began fighting with one another about the broader topic of the morality of AI, not the proposed guidelines.
15. One of those people doxxed the other (edit: I have been informed that this is not really what doxxing is) exposed the other person's odious Twitter posts in an effort to discredit them.
16. Comments on the draft proposal were locked to only KDE developers - one of two tools that that Gitlab provides for this kind of thing, the other being to hide it entirely.
17. The person who doxxed exposed the other was banned.
18. Later, the identity of the doxxed exposed person was verified, and they were also banned for their conduct outside of KDE being so unacceptable that people inside KDE did not want to associate with them.
19. Someone else outside of KDE set up https://kdeforpeople.com in an attempt to brigade (edit: I have been convinced that this was too strong a word to use here) pressure KDE into banning LLMs.
20. A bunch of people signed onto it, almost none of whom are known KDE contributors (I see one person I know in there).
21. The topic was picked up on social media and the press with… varying levels of accuracy.
22. The draft proposal was removed and the whole topic hidden.

TL;DR:

A bunch of people mostly outside of KDE who disapprove of LLM usage derailed KDE's attempt to add restrictions to LLM usage.

Yep, that's where we're at in the state of online discourse around AI.

I'm sorry

After everything I wrote last month about keeping your community safe and containing damage so it doesn't spill out into public view, I feel pretty bad that my attempt to craft a compromise policy around LLM usage in KDE (which would have tightened it!) backfired and created a storm of drama.

It wasn't my intention, and I apologize for my role in it. If I make another attempt to craft a policy that provides certainty and cover for maintainers who want to reject AI slop, I will be even more careful to avoid creating unnecessary drama. If someone else wants to, I will try my best to help them with the same.

More facts

People jumped to some pretty wild conclusions in the various social media threads about the topic that I saw. Before we continue, let me set some more records straight:

• KDE e.V. has not taken money from DHH or Omarchy. I also have not, either personally, or in my business.
• KDE e.V. has taken money from Framework, but only after verifying that Framework had severed their (already very limited) ties with DHH and Omarchy. Also, all of this happened a year ago, before Omarchy received a ludicrous amount of money from a veritable rogues gallery of villains.
• Today, Omarchy is radioactive in KDE and adjacent communities I'm aware of. Nobody I know wants to have anything to do with them.
• The "lovable, sovereign, AI-native KDE" idea was presented by two people important to KDE in decades past, but who had not made any contributions recently besides this Akademy talk. Their idea does not reflect the overall direction of KDE or Plasma, and I don't think it ever will. If "a lovable, sovereign, AI-native KDE" freaks you out, I believe it is completely reasonable and safe to ignore.

What on earth is going on here?

I know people are really riled up about AI. I get it. The negative effects of LLM usage seem to become more obvious by the day:

• They lower the barrier to entry for people who have no idea what they're doing to DDoS FOSS maintainers with a tidal wave of crap. And this was the actual reason for the proposed restrictions.
• They make it easy for lazy people to avoid learning communication and job skills.
• They make it easy for lonely people to form unhealthy para-social relationships.
• The companies behind the big ones are really bad.
• Some of their training data was stolen.
• Some of their training data that was not stolen results in the destruction of rare books.
• The process of training them on freely available online data imposes extra hosting costs and slows down access for humans, acting as economic free riders.
• The license of source code they produce is legally unclear.
• They have been discovered autonomously hacking rival companies.
• Their resource usage frequently strains the infrastructure of the communities their data centers are located in or near.
• Their data centers are using enough electricity to blunt and reverse prior positive global trends of lower electricity demand and greener electricity generation.
• The specialized hardware they use has monopolized global production lines, massively inflating the price of normal consumer and business computer hardware.
• The enormous amount of capital allocated to them may be impossible to recoup, with the potential to eventually cause a worldwide economic crash.
• They are either mandated or voluntarily used by so many people already, that many who do not use them fear they will "fall behind" or "become obsolete" despite concerns with any of the above.

So yeah, bad stuff. I completely understand why a lot of people have problems with LLMs. I have these concerns as well.

I also understand why a lot of experts in their field really like LLMs. These are very powerful and sophisticated tools. Capable people with decades of experience can successfully automate away a lot of tedious work, and still end up with a final product identical to what they would have done by hand.

I don't use LLMs for automating work myself, but I do understand the appeal to many experts.

And I also understand that LLMs can be responsibly used in really useful ways for general tasks like learning a nebulous skill, retrieving deeply-buried information you can only describe in unspecific ways, or helping you troubleshoot a problem with unclear steps or parameters.

At the same time, I think we have to acknowledge that irresponsible LLM usage by people who are not yet experts is a disaster for their learning, expertise, social skills, and emotional health.

In other words, this is a hard problem.

What on earth do we do?

How are we expected to handle a technology that is:

1. Very powerful
2. Genuinely useful for various things
3. Dangerous, de-skilling, and/or addictive in the wrong hands
4. Full of really bad externalities
5. Broadly available worldwide at effectively zero cost

It's like 100 billion toaster-sized nuclear reactors dropped from the sky one day. The very least you can say is that this would be very de-stabilizing!

The world is changing fast and I have no idea what's going to happen. But I don't think the genie is going to be put back in the bottle. I don't know what to do, and that's scary. And I have a lot of empathy for anyone else who's scared by this, too. We're in this boat together.

What can you do to help?

If I or someone else tries again to propose a set of usage guidelines that restrict inexpert usage of LLMs, with the goal that KDE receives fewer of the AI slop merge requests that are burning people out, please don't make things worse.

Please don't derail the process.

Please don't take it as an opportunity to fight over the broader topic of AI in general.

Please don't try to burn each other to the ground over it.

Please don't actually doxx or send hate mail to anyone over it, or try to get them fired from their job.

Please, just be kind. We're all trying our best over here. No one in FOSS is a cackling techbro… outside of maybe Omarchy. The rest of us are trying to figure out what to do about the nuclear reactor that fell into our living room without killing ourselves, hurting anyone else, or becoming unemployable.

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If at this point you want to post a comment, please be kind and treat the topic with an adult level of maturity. I believe in you.

23 Sep 2026 7:54pm GMT