Since my initial post was a bit scatterbrained and ill-explained, I thought before getting into any progress details I'd first re-introduce this project with a proper explainer, cover the work done, answer some technical questions, and touch on where it's going.

What is Strand

Strand is "Progressive Web Application" (or PWA) runtime. Its primary purpose is to run web-based applications with better system integration than the browser, using only configuration - no programming. I understand my previous post used muddled language, so I'll be using the "Runtime" term moving forward.

Strand is built using Qt/KDE tech. It uses QtWebEngine for the browser-driven work. It is using plain Qt Widgets for the interface. Initially the plan was one-main-process-per-app, but that's changing. More on that in a bit.

The first version used AI to develop a proof-of-concept. Initially I thought I'd simply fix-up the AI codebase, but the deeper I dug the more disappointed I was. I still consider it nice-to-have, and I might occasionally pull the odd fragment from it, but the overall structure was, ultimately, unsalvageable.

Work Done & The Work-Week Refactor

Hacking on this in the evenings, I initially began by moving common functions into utility classes, general refactoring, inspecting the code more thoroughly for flaws, establishing tractable logic flows, deduplicating code, I added a couple features, etc.

It isn't my preferred way to work, and honestly, it felt like some old jobs I used to have where most of my effort was cleaning up other people's messes. I don't know too many people who like working that way. Generally the way I *like* to work is by writing the code I want to write with my ideal imaginary classes, then I go and implement those classes. This was the opposite; I was grinding against classes filled with whatever was most convenient for the AI to write, and more than a few times I would find the same functionality written different ways in different places because the AI had no planning foresight.

So instead of fighting the bad code I eventually just opened a fresh project. I copied a few of the cleaned-up files, I pulled in what was working, and now I'm developing more traditionally - only I have some code reference I can pull from. I'm not saying I don't use AI - it's still decent at filling out the odd small method or autocompleting lines - but it was worse than anticipated at larger efforts.

How is Memory

In my initial post I mentioned Electron a few times as a heavy maintenance burden, and found a few comments wondering about memory usage. The truth is, while Electron apps are heavy, most of that weight comes simply from running the Chromium engine. My larger concern was mainly the effort involved in maintenance. While the human-written version will be different, I did some memory tests just to see where in the ballpark this might land.

My basic setup was installing a few app wrappers: YouTube Music, Flathub, and Prospect Mail (Outlook). Hilariously, one was a Snap, one was a Flatpak, and one was an AppImage. I installed all apps on Chrome (except Flathub, which has no PWA - it ran as a tab). Finally, a FlatHub profile was added to Strand.

The bullet-point info:

• Running one App: Electron and Strand beat Chrome with near-identical memory usage. Chrome overhead for one app (even if only a single PWA window) can easily add 200MiB of RAM.
• Running Multiple Apps: Chrome pulls ahead the more apps you run because it recycles the engine. The current version of Strand, as well as Electron, duplicate the engine each app. 2 apps in either Strand or Electron use more memory than Chrome. 3+ just increases the lead for Chrome.

In the revised version of Strand I'll be using Chrome-style profiles instead of one-process-per-app. This *should* put running Strand at less memory than full-fat Chrome while offering the cumulative savings. That running PWAs in a browser you're already using will always be most memory-efficient.

Why did I make the process structure blunder? Well, I'll be real, the AI gaslit me. There was a bug in the early code causing profiles to share data, but the AI confidently told me I required -user-data-dir as an environment flag. It didn't. Despite the grating discovery I'm keeping the process-level separation code. The plan now is to split the process if an app is toggling engine-level features like hardware acceleration. I'll have a little map of the engine parameters, I'll turn them into a little "process hash-key", and it'll share the engine with matching profiles.

Checking Out Youtube Music Desktop & Where it's Going

In testing the Electron variants I found "Youtube Music Desktop", which is probably the nicest Electron wrapper app I've seen. It provides a client-side decoration, very nice settings menu, and customization options which a configuration-only system like Strand simply can't provide.

I thought about it, and questioned if Strand application profiles should include Javascript/CSS integrations as a feature so profiles can have extra enhancements… But I really didn't like the malicious potential - especially since distribution is still a wild-card. I wondered "Could I trust a banking PWA in this system, with access knowing it's my bank, without either verification or inspecting someones code?"

There's also the question, "What happens if an app updates, and the custom code breaks? Will it fail to open? Will it subtly break? How long might a user have to wait before an author hears their app isn't working?"

Ultimately I decided that I'll integrate some ideas it offers (E.g. "Launch on Startup" as an option) but keep the overall system configuration-based. If you want to run your bank on the Strand Runtime, or a corporate-approved app, it needs to be secure and functional first. And, well, Strand was always meant to be a middle-ground; if it can't do everything a bespoke app can do - that's fine.

Hopefully this re-introduction was a bit clearer, and explained some of the technicalities. I'll be posting more as the human-led version reaches parity, but this is an evening-and-weekend project so I won't promise annoying updates until it gets interesting again.

23 Mar 2026 2:02am GMT

Animations… Everybody loves animations. They make your desktop look more eye candy, and they also help with guiding or drawing the user's attention towards certain elements on the screen, for example a new window or a popup or a button, etc.

An animation is a just quick series of images to simulate the movement of an object on the screen. For example, consider a basic animation that only lists digits

As you can see, it's just a sequence of individual digit images that are presented quick enough.

The animation frames have to presented at a steady pace to maintain the smooth feeling. If one or two frames are late, a frame drop can occur, which the user will likely notice. There are various reasons why a frame may not be presented on time. One reason might be that the app has been busy doing something else, for example loading a big file from the disk. However, there can also be reasons that are not exactly under the direct influence of the app, for example the operating system scheduler may prioritize scheduling other tasks or perhaps the memory scheduler has decided that it needs to do some of its things, etc. An animation with a frame drop may look as follows

If a frame cannot be painted on time, we are in a sticky situation no matter how you look at it. The animation won't look as smooth as it could.

That being said, it is also worth mentioning how some apps (and compositors) drive animations. A lot of them advance animations simply by the amount of time that has passed since the last frame. In pseudo-code, it looks as follows:

const milliseconds target = next_presentation_timestamp();
const milliseconds delta = target - previous_repaint_time;
previous_repaint_time = target;
advance_animations_by(delta); 

The biggest drawback of this approach is that it can introduce discontinuities to the motion of an object. For example

If the app becomes busy for about 48 milliseconds after painting the frame 3, the delta interval will be 48 the next time a frame will be painted, which will effectively advance the animation to frame 7. Technically, this is not the wrong behavior. It does make sense if you look purely at the math. From the human eyes point of view though, the fact that there is a discontinuity in the animation now is far from ideal.

Luckily, there is a simple workaround. If we know the refresh rate of the monitor, we could estimate the maximum allowed delta interval for a single frame (for example, for a 60Hz monitor, it will be 16.6ms) and limit the animation delta time by it. It won't make animations butter smooth but it will reduce discontinuous jumps in the animation.

In comparison to the aforementioned described method to advance animations, with the proposed method, animations will advance as follows

As you can see, even though there was a frame jitter, the frames 4, 5, and 6 have not been dropped. Obviously, this is not a silver bullet solution. The final motion may still look "wonky" depending on the duration of the frame jitter but even with that being said, the advantages are still worth it. In pseudo-code, it will look as follows

const milliseconds target = next_presentation_timestamp();
const milliseconds max_delta = 1000 / output->refresh_rate;
const milliseconds delta = min(max_delta, target - previous_repaint_time);
previous_repaint_time = target;
advance_animations_by(delta);

Plasma 6.7

The animation delta interval throttling will be implemented in the next release of Plasma. Note that this will only affect compositor-side animations, for example the ones that are played when a window is opened or closed. It will not affect animations that are played inside applications, the compositor has little actual influence on those.

In my testing, both on my desktop and a less powerful laptop, I noticed slight improvements when opening new windows, animations feel a little bit more smoother especially on the laptop. That being said, please don't take it as me saying that animations will be perfectly smooth. No, if a frame jitter occurs, we're in a pretty ugly situation and these changes are mostly about hardening kwin so the animations look less choppy.

22 Mar 2026 2:24pm GMT

During FOSDEM this year, I met a group of very cool people that put together events about Open Source Design. They invited me to participate this year.

The topic was similar to my talk during FOSDEM, but with a twist on the soft skills needed to complete the creation of a new design system for Plasma.

The conference is only one day. Something really cool they did was to have something like BoF (Birds of a Feather) sessions during the afternoon slot before my talk. We had the opportunity to discuss important aspects proposed by the attendees around design and making your way into the field.

Since I was representing KDE in this project, I brought my newly-acquired tshirt from FOSDEM!

The experience was great. Everyone was awesome and even met up with new contributors to the VDG. Comments from after my talk were very positive and I look forward to participating in even more events of this nature.

Design System Update

At this time, the design system keeps evolving. I have gone back to rework some application icons. After reviewing the current designs and consulting with team members, the consensus is that they should be simpler, more approachable. I have made some concepts that I will keep exploring going forward.

Additional to that, new tokens have been created. We now have shadow tokens, and I have applied them to all the components that I can think of. They have replaced manually-created shadows from the previous time.

Radius and spacing tokens now need to also make their way into the components. Unfortunately, Penpot is struggling today on creating new tokens. I will wait for an update. However, the work involves going through out component buttons and applying foundational spacing tokens to the sides and inner spaces for the components.

While this might be long, it is easy. The spacing numbers are already in the component. My part is to create all the spacing components, locate the margin or padding number I see today in buttons, find the base component, and apply the spacing tokens.

I am also closely following up on Penpot's new beta, hopefully coming out soon, with their new rendering engine.

I have also connected the Penpot team with our LAS (Linux App Summit) event and hopefully they can attend.

More to come!

If you're interested in participating in this effort and have some awesome design and integration skills, join us!

https://matrix.to/#/#visualdesigngroup:kde.org

21 Mar 2026 5:06pm GMT

Welcome to a new issue of This Week in Plasma!

This week several new features landed, in addition to a number of user interface improvements and some nice performance improvements and bug fixes. Check 'em out:

Notable new features

Plasma 6.7

For each additional time zone you add to the Digital Clock widget, it now also shows how far forward or behind that time zone is compared to yours. (Nate Graham, plasma-workspace MR #6417)

After

Before

If you disable the feature to invoke KRunner by typing on the desktop, instead typing on the desktop invokes "type-ahead", which allows selecting files by typing the first letter or two of their names. (Guillermo Steren, KDE Bugzilla #427961)

You can now reverse the ordering of items in the System Tray widget. (Nathaniel Krebs, KDE Bugzilla #517016)

Notable UI improvements

Plasma 6.7

Discover now sorts app lists by number of reviews by default, resulting in vastly more relevant results while browsing rather than searching. The old rating-based sorting method is still available, of course. (Nate Graham, discover MR #1274)

After

Before

Discover now filters out non-apps from its home page, preventing death spirals of negativity where people would leave 1-star reviews saying they were broken (not being launchable apps, the "Launch" button wouldn't work), causing them to move up higher in the list. (Nate Graham, discover MR #1287)

System Settings and KWin now consistently use the word "pointer" to refer to the mouse/touchpad pointer. (Philipp Kiemle, plasma-workspace MR #6425 and kwin MR #8982)

Screen un-dimming is now faster than dimming, since un-dimming would mean you're ready to use the system again. (Kai Uwe Broulik, kwin MR #8963)

The currently-active task in a grouped task tooltip now has bold text, to help you pick it out. (Christoph Wolk, KDE Bugzilla #516278)

Labels for Bluetooth devices in the System Tray widget have been re-arranged so that you can always see the battery level no matter how long the device name is. (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Bugzilla #515090)

The Global Menu widget's menu highlights are now rounded consistently with the highlights for other menus. (Akseli Lahtinen, libplasma MR #1459)

You can now set a modifier key all on its own to focus a Plasma panel. (Christoph Wolk, plasma-desktop MR #3547)

Plasma's panel configuration window now only offers opacity settings if the active Plasma style supports it. (Filip Fila, KDE Bugzilla #516042)

Notable bug fixes

Plasma 6.5.6

Fixed a bug that distorted the image on certain vertically-oriented monitors while displaying the Plasma Login Manager. (Anton Gobulev, KDE Bugzilla #517409)

Plasma 6.6.3

Fixed a case where KWin could crash after changing the Zoom effect's settings in certain specific ways. (Ritchie Frodomar, KDE Bugzilla #517073)

Fixed two cases where KWin could crash when misconfigured or given broken content. (Nicolas Fella, KDE Bugzilla #517137 and KDE Bugzilla #517711)

Fixed a few cases where KDE's printing management system could crash due to faulty information from printers about their ink levels. (Mike Noe, print-manager MR #311)

The tooltip for the Refresh button in Discover's Updates section no longer says "F5 (QQuickShortcut(gobbledygook))", fixing an unexpected side-effect of a recent KDE Frameworks update. (Akseli Lahtinen, KDE Bugzilla #516392)

Plasma 6.6.4

Fixed an issue that made the "bounce keys" accessibility feature break key repeat in the Brave browser. (Ritchie Frodomar, KDE Bugzilla #513268)

In the shortcut conflict dialog opened by System Settings' Shortcuts page, the "Re-assign" action now works. (Dávid Bácskay-Nagy, KDE Bugzilla #471370)

Made the update count in Discover's notifications more accurate. (Akseli Lahtinen, discover MR #1284)

Frameworks 6.25

Reverted an innocent-looking change that broke icons for some apps like OBS and Ungoogled Chromium due to an underlying deficiency in the Qt toolkit's SVG renderer. (Nate Graham, KDE Bugzilla #516007)

Notable in performance & technical

Plasma 6.6.4

Reduced CPU and GPU load for full-screen windows (also known as "direct scan-out") on screens without the pointer on them. (Xaver Hugl, KDE Bugzilla #516808)

Plasma 6.7

Added support for "3D LUTs" in KWin, which reduces resource usage on GPUs that support color pipelines in hardware. (Xaver Hugl, kwin MR #8475)

The Networks widget now only fetches network speed information while that information is visible. (Ser Freedman, plasma-nm MR #544)

Stopped creating unnecessary OpenGL contexts for apps that don't use OpenGL, which reduces their memory usage by 10-15 MB or more per app and also speeds up launch times. (Vlad Zahorodnii, plasma-integration MR #209)

Qt 6.10.3

Fixed an issue that broke HDR support while using the Vulkan renderer on certain hardware. (Joshua Goins, Qt patch #711621)

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.

21 Mar 2026 12:00am GMT

Let's go for my web review for the week 2026-12.

The "small web" is bigger than you might think

Tags: tech, web, self-hosting, blog

Also, it's likely a pessimistic estimate… Indeed, it's mostly based on a list from Kagi, which likely doesn't list many sites which would qualify.

https://kevinboone.me/small_web_is_big.html

Have a Fucking Website

Tags: tech, web, social-media, self-hosting

So much this… I'm sick of all those little businesses having only an Instagram or Facebook account or whatever. I wish we'd have proper websites for all of those instead.

https://www.otherstrangeness.com/2026/03/14/have-a-fucking-website/

RIP Metaverse, an $80 Billion Dumpster Fire Nobody Wanted

Tags: tech, facebook, vr, hype

This was stupid hype… Why do we have regularly this kind of fever in our industry?

https://www.404media.co/rip-metaverse-an-80-billion-dumpster-fire-nobody-wanted/

Bluesky announces $100M Series B after CEO transition

Tags: tech, social-media, bluesky, business

The writing is on the wall I think… the real question is not if but when will the enshittification begins? It's been data harvesting for a while now.

https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/19/bluesky-announces-100m-series-b-after-ceo-transition/

Open Source Gave Me Everything Until I Had Nothing Left to Give

Tags: tech, foss, psychology, productivity, life

This is an account of how dark things can become when you align your identity with your contributions. Stay healthy, stay safe!

https://kennethreitz.org/essays/2026-03-18-open_source_gave_me_everything_until_i_had_nothing_left_to_give

How Can Governments Pay Open Source Maintainers?

Tags: tech, foss, business, fundraising

Let's help them help us. There are a few things to have in place for governments to be able to pay maintainers.

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/03/how-can-governments-pay-open-source-maintainers/

The price of accountability: corruption erodes social trust more in democracies than in autocracies

Tags: politics, democracy

This is definitely a disturbing result. It indeed makes democracies more fragile, all the more reason to build more democratic resilience.

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/political-science/articles/10.3389/fpos.2026.1779810/full

Age Verification Lobbying: Dark Money, Model Legislation & Institutional Capture

Tags: tech, gafam, facebook, law, lobbying, surveillance

It looks more and more likely that the current age verification fever has dark origins…

https://tboteproject.com/

Rep. Finke Was Right: Age-Gating Isn't About Kids, It's About Control

Tags: tech, politics, law, surveillance

The commentaries and analysis of those unjust laws continues. The motives behind the people pushing for them are getting clearer and it isn't pretty.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/03/rep-finke-was-right-age-gating-isnt-about-kids-its-about-control

Ageless Linux - Software for Humans of Indeterminate Age

Tags: tech, law, surveillance

Good initiative to push these unjust laws to their limits. Hopefully it'll show how absurd they are.

https://agelesslinux.org/

Lotus Notes

Tags: tech, history, email

On the little known history of Lotus Notes. Crossed its path as a teenager during an internship at a bank. Can't say I remember it fondly though.

https://computer.rip/2026-03-14-lotusnotes.html

The Most Important Software Innovations

Tags: tech, innovation, history

Interesting list and way to frame the problem. It's important to maintain this resource, an update is likely needed.

https://dwheeler.com/innovation/innovation.html

Wayland has good reasons to put the window manager in the display server

Tags: tech, wayland, x11, history, complexity, input

Let's not forget where we're coming from and why window managers tend to be merged with display server. It removes some complexity and some latency.

https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/unix/WaylandAndBuiltinWindowManagers

Containers Are Not Automatically Secure

Tags: tech, containers, security

Kind of obvious I think, but this likely bears repeating. Containers are not a magical recipe for security. There are many attack vectors to keep in mind and evaluate.

https://www.lucavall.in/blog/containers-are-not-a-security-boundary

Why WebAssembly components

Tags: tech, webassembly, rust

Good explanation of where WebAssembly is going and why the current initiatives are important to its success.

https://blog.yoshuawuyts.com/why-webassembly-components/

How many branches can your CPU predict?

Tags: tech, cpu, hardware, performance

Not all CPUs are born equal in term of branch prediction. Interesting little benchmark.

https://lemire.me/blog/2026/03/18/how-many-branches-can-your-cpu-predict/

C++26: Span improvements

Tags: tech, c++, standard

Nice little quality of life improvements coming to std::span in C++26.

https://www.sandordargo.com/blog/2026/03/18/cpp26-span-improvements

More Speed & Simplicity: Practical Data-Oriented Design in C++

Tags: tech, data-oriented, object-oriented, design, architecture, c++, performance

A very good talk which walks you through how to move from object-oriented design to data-oriented design. Shows quite well how you must shift your thinking and the difficulties you might encounter with data-oriented designs. I appreciate a lot that it's not just throwing object-oriented design out of the window, indeed you have to pick and choose depending on the problem space. Also it's interesting to see how C++26 reflection might make some of this easier.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzjJfKHygaQ

Minecraft Source Code is Interesting!

Tags: tech, 3d, graphics, game, portability, refactoring

Lots of interesting tricks in this code base. Gives also a good idea of the shape and tradeoffs of such ports.

https://www.karanjanthe.me/posts/minecraft-source/

Oxyde ORM

Tags: tech, python, rust, orm

Looks like an interesting ORM which brings advantages of the Django one without all the bagage. It's still young, let's see how it evolves.

https://oxyde.fatalyst.dev/latest/

Python 3.15's JIT is now back on track

Tags: tech, python, performance, jit

Interesting read on how the CPython JIT effort has been saved.

https://fidget-spinner.github.io/posts/jit-on-track.html

The Optimization Ladder

Tags: tech, python, performance, optimisation

Here are the main levers to make Python code faster. Tries also to distinguish the effort level of each approach.

https://cemrehancavdar.com/2026/03/10/optimization-ladder/

XML is a Cheap DSL

Tags: tech, data, declarative, xml, portability

Interesting lesson here. It looks like XML still has its place in our modern tool belts. We should stop dismissing it too quickly.

https://unplannedobsolescence.com/blog/xml-cheap-dsl/

JPEG compression

Tags: tech, graphics, compression

Wondering how JPEG works? Here is a primer.

https://www.sophielwang.com/blog/jpeg

A Decade of Slug

Tags: tech, graphics, fonts, shader, patents

Nice algorithm for rendering fonts. Turns out it's not patent encumbered anymore, this is good news.

https://terathon.com/blog/decade-slug.html

Video Encoding and Decoding with Vulkan Compute Shaders in FFmpeg

Tags: tech, video, codec, vulkan, computation

Vulkan compute shaders are very much capable nowadays. Exemplified by its use in FFmpeg.

https://www.khronos.org/blog/video-encoding-and-decoding-with-vulkan-compute-shaders-in-ffmpeg

The Best Darn Grid Shader (Yet)

Tags: tech, 3d, graphics, shader, mathematics

Good exploration on how to make grid shaders. It's definitely not a simple problem.

https://bgolus.medium.com/the-best-darn-grid-shader-yet-727f9278b9d8

A sufficiently detailed spec is code

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, copilot

Or why this latest trend in genAI hype is a fool's errand.

https://haskellforall.com/2026/03/a-sufficiently-detailed-spec-is-code

Rob Pike's 5 Rules of Programming

Tags: tech, programming, optimisation, performance, complexity

These are good rules. Take inspiration from them.

https://www.cs.unc.edu/~stotts/COMP590-059-f24/robsrules.html

Invest Your Political Capital

Tags: tech, architecture, organisation, politics

Interesting model for bringing architectural and organisational changes. This is indeed at least in part political games… so you need some political capital to spend.

https://architectelevator.com/transformation/political-capital/

Bye for now!

20 Mar 2026 4:49pm GMT

Last week we released version 1.5 of Marknote, a fast and free alternative to existing slow and pay-walled note-taking apps. Today we announce a release that fixes some issues and improves a few things across the app.

So here is a list of the most notable changes and improvements:

• Pasting text in Source mode no longer clears document content.
• Pasting images from clipboard works really well too.
• Find and replace text shortcuts are brought back.
• Note names are now properly elided.
• Markdown syntax highlighter is added to the Source mode.
• Code blocks now have their own background.
• Items in the Table of Contents will follow active paragraphs.
• Edit button is shown in compact mode (for when the format bar is hidden).
• Fullscreen mode is brought back for those who need full immersion (Ctrl+Shift+F on Linux or Alt+Enter on Windows).
• The KRunner plugin now works pretty well inside Flatpak.
• Single note loading is much faster now.
• We optimized image loading and reduced video memory usage by almost 50%.

The future is bright

To address some of the questions since the last release:

• Yes, code blocks will have proper highlighting in upcoming versions (please keep in mind that we don't have the staff of a large enterprise company, and we probably don't need one either ;)).
• Yes again, quotes and some embedded content types are planned to be added too.
• Yes once more, cross-platform support is set to be improved. We will release stable versions for all the major platforms once they get through proper testing.
• And one more thing: the all-new and shiny block editor is a work in progress, and it will be done when it's done™.

Thank you all

Thanks to everyone for making Marknote your software of choice. We will make sure to keep Marknote up and running at lightning speed for everyone. As always, you can get the latest version of the app via Flatpak, Snapcraft or your favorite package manager. Stay tuned!

20 Mar 2026 7:00am GMT

The second and third betas for Krita 5.3.0/6.0.0 have been released, with the final release drawing near. There was also a hotfix stable release, 5.2.16, to fix a regression causing problems with HEIF files.

Read on for a look at development news and the Krita-Artists forum's featured artwork from last month.

Development Report

5.2.16 Hotfix Release

This release contains exactly two regression fixes: some HEIF files not loading properly (bug), and the Move Tool movement shortcuts not working until clicking the canvas (bug).

If you're encountering either issue, update to 5.2.16.

Manual Updated Ahead of Release

The Krita Manual has been updated with all the new features in 5.3.0, thanks to the efforts of manual writer Wolthera and others.

Having trouble figuring something out? The friendly documentation is there to guide you in multiple languages, thanks to the ongoing work of all the translators!

Second and Third Betas for 5.3.0/6.0.0 Released

The second beta and third beta for 5.3.0/6.0.0 were released, with many bug-fixes and a look at the new splash screen artwork by Tyson Tan.

Thanks to everyone who tested! The beta period is at an end with the final release right around the corner, but you can keep testing the latest nightly builds (found at the bottom of this post), and keep reporting bugs!

Fixes in Beta 2

Zoom In/Out to Cursor is the default canvas input zoom again, and Zoom In/Out to Center is the alternatively configurable action. (bug; change by Carsten)

Qt6 Fixes

Some Krita 6 bugs were caused using an outdated version of Qt6. As updating Qt would cause too many issues before the final release, Dmitry backported the fixes to our version.

On Windows, Krita won't crash when news is enabled (bug; change) and menus won't instantly close when using a stylus with WinTab (bug 1, bug 2; change).

On Linux with Wayland, issues with incorrect stylus cursor position (bug 1, bug 2; change 1, change 2), wrong cursor shape (change), and shortcut keys being auto-repeated (bug; change) are fixed.

The Help menu's Report Bug item is back, so don't be shy to report bugs! (bug; change by Luna)

Fixes in Beta 3

File Layers now allow Inherit Alpha and Layer Styles (change), .kra files used as File Layers now use their color profiles (bug; change), and renaming File, Filter, and Generator Layers is now undoable (bug; change), all thanks to Dmitry.

Agata fixed some regressions. Tools that auto-scroll when dragged to the edge of the canvas, such as the Selection tools, no longer scroll too much when zoomed in (bug change); Liquify Transform Masks no longer appear different than before (bug; change), plus the new Comics Panel Editing Tool no longer affects text (rather than turning characters into blocks) (bug; change)

On Android, a saving issue where the file is claimed to be unwritable was fixed by Carsten (change).

On Linux with X11/XWayland, there have been reports of Krita 6 running at a low framerate. The fix for this is to switch the OpenGL interface from GLX to EGL. This switch needs testing, so please read the EGL backend testing thread on how to do that and leave some feedback on whether it works or not.

Fixes in the Upcoming Final Release

Crashes were fixed when making a new vector layer after switching to a session (bug; change by Wolthera), converting the only layer of a group into a selection mask (bug; change by Dmitry), or on startup after removing a bundle containing tags. (change by Carsten)

More issues loading and saving HEIF images were fixed (bug; change 1, change 2 by Dmitry).

The Selection Actions Bar was fixed by Luna and Carsten to work with stylus or touch again, and have the right colors. (change 1, change 2; change 3)

More fixes to the Comic Panel Editing Tool by Agata (change): Only cut shapes the cut goes all the way through. Remove shapes that are small enough to be inside the cut gap. Work properly when using Shift for a straight line and putting the cursor on the end of the line. Don't add to the undo stack when nothing happened. The buttons and options have explanatory tooltips now (CCbug; change 1, change 2).

Krita 6 no longer crashes when loading window layouts. (bug; change by Gregg Jansen van Vuren)

On Linux with Wayland, pasting images with multiple sources in the clipboard no longer crashes. (bug; change by Luna)

Krita 6 on Windows no longer crashes when trying to open the background color selector. (bug; change by Dmitry)

A regression in beta 3 that broke translations on Android and Krita 6 has been fixed by Carsten and Freya (bug; change 1, change 2). Missing translations in Krita 6 were fixed by Dmitry and Ivan (change 1, change 2). Translations for some standard menu items such as 'New File' or 'About Krita' were also fixed for all versions. (bug; change by Dmitry)

The G'MIC plugin has been updated by Ivan to version 3.7.2 (change) and a crash when using the 'Layers Blend [Seamless]' filter was also fixed by Carsten (bug, change).

Text

The usual plethora of text fixes by Wolthera:

In the Text Properties Docker, Line Height property is now visible by default (change) and the dropdowns are touch-scrollable (change by Carsten). The Style Presets preview now shows properly in paragraph mode (bug; change).

The Text Tool won't modify hidden or locked layers (bug; change). Rendering issues when undoing/redoing text modifications have been fixed (bug; change 1, change 2).

Text-on-path now works properly with RTL and end-anchors (change). Gradients are properly positioned on text-in-shape (change), and flow-text-in-shape only happens for filled shapes (change). Text-on-path can't also be inside a shape (bug; change).

Instead of crashing when loading a font on startup fails, a fallback font is loaded (bug; change). Try harder to load some fonts (CCbug; change 1, change 2).

And Even More!

If that wasn't enough bugfixes for you, there's even more listed in the "Additional Changes" section near the bottom of this post.

Roadmap Revealed

The next major release is almost here! But the work to improve Krita never ends, so the development team got together to decide their next priorities.

Read the 2026 Krita Roadmap post to find out what problems the team wants to address after 5.3/6.0.

Community Report

February 2026 Monthly Art Challenge Results

The winner of the "Alien World Building" challenge is…

Birth in the Depths by Rhea_Asma

Join This Month's Art Challenge!

For March's theme, last month's winner has chosen "An unforgettable scene - 5 seconds before". Maybe you've got an artwork just waiting to happen?

Featured Artwork

This month's featured forum artwork, as voted in the Best of Krita-Artists - January/February 2026:

Skeleton and Cat by ShangZhou0

Pennywise Fan-art by Devin_Lopez

We are going to have to defend it with machete by Joseiby_Tapia

Why.. So.. Serious? by TBs_thename

Bad opal by Sineater

Nominate and Vote For Next Month's Featured Artwork!

Participate in next month's nominations and voting to voice your opinion on the Best of Krita-Artists - February/March 2026.

Krita is Free - But You Can Contribute!

Krita is free to use and modify, but it can only exist with the contributions of the community. A small sponsored team alongside volunteer programmers, artists, writers, testers, translators, and more from across the world keep development going.

If this software has value to you, consider donating to the Krita Development Fund. Or Get Involved and put your skills to use making Krita and its community better!

Additional Changes

5.3.0/6.0.0 Beta 2 (Stable pre-release):

• Freehand Brush Tool: Properly remember Stabilizer sample count values. (bug; change by Dmitry Kazakov)
• Dockers: Palette: Don't scroll the palette view when the foreground color changes with select nearest palette color on. (change by Carsten Hartenfels)
• Android: Fix the UI font being too big with the Enable HiDPI setting disabled. (bug; change by Carsten Hartenfels)
• Android: Fix the Add Style Preset dialog being a white box. (bug; change by Carsten Hartenfels)
• Android: Go back to the previous way of working around the window not updating when first opening an image. (bug; change by Carsten Hartenfels)
• Linux Wayland: Fix a crash when running with --nosplash. (change by Dmitry Kazakov)
• Python Plugins: Batch Exporter: Fix script error when exporting. (bug; change by Freya Lupen)
• Qt6: Fix line-edits having an unreadable placeholder text color. (bug; change by Freya Lupen)
• Qt6 macOS: Fix the SVG Text Editor's background always using macOS style. (change by Freya Lupen)

5.3.0/6.0.0 Beta 3 (Stable pre-release):

• Selection Tools: Improve Selection Actions Bar. Switch between light and dark icons. Show the cursor when hovering over it. (change by Luna Lovecraft)
• Text Tool: Make sure text selection highlight is synced to changes. (bug; change by Wolthera van Hövell)
• Text Tool: Fix double ends being drawn in type setting mode. (change by Wolthera van Hövell)
• Text: Avoid crash by testing bounds for cursor pos. (change by Wolthera van Hövell)
• Type Setting Mode: Don't maintain pos when there's no selection. (change by Wolthera van Hövell)
• File Formats: PNG: Fix the 'Assume sRGB' setting to actually use sRGB for PNG images without a color profile. (bug; change by Dmitry Kazakov)
• Input Profiles: Bind mouse button 6 to Eraser Mode in the Krita Default input profile and Eraser Preset in the other default profiles. Bind middle-click on Android to mouse button 6. (change 1 change 2 by Carsten Hartenfels)
• Bundle Creator: Fix thumbnails of selected resources to not be blank in thumbnails view mode. (bug; change by Dmitry Kazakov)
• Plugins: Workflow Buttons: Fix settings button not being visible. (bug; change by Timothée Giet)
• Scripting: Avoid crashing if another version of PyQt is on Python's search path, by removing its containing folder (which may contain other modules) from the search path. This also adds a new script function, 'pykrita.qt_major_version()'. (bug; change by Freya Lupen)
• Qt6 Dockers: Specific Color Selector: Fix saturation and value/lightness not updating in HSV/HSL mode. (bug; change by Freya Lupen)
• Linux Wayland: Fix deploying Wayland client-side-decoration (change by Dmitry Kazakov)
• Linux Wayland: Fix error when opening Settings on compositors without the 'wp_color_manager_v1' extension. (change by Luna Lovecraft)
• Linux: Make sure Dr.Konqi has a bugreport address (bug; change by Dmitry Kazakov)
• Linux Wayland: Fix the Pop-up Palette's docker config dialog not appearing. (bug; change by Luna Lovecraft)

Krita Plus (Stable, 5.3.0/6.0.0):

• Tools: Make non-mouse multi-clicks in tools such as Crop and Polyline work. (bug 1, bug 2; change by Carsten Hartenfels)
• Freehand Brush Tool: Improve Pixel Smoothing mode and fix it to work with sensor dynamics. (change by Carsten Hartenfels)
• Brush Engines: Fix brush speed lurching. (bug; change by Carsten Hartenfels)
• Crop Tool: Show negative coordinates in grow mode, snap to the canvas bounds when not in grow mode. (change by Luna Lovecraft)
• Comics Panel Editing Tool: Fix the last edge being missing when merging shapes by removing a gutter. (change, by Agata Cacko)
• Pasting: Fix missing colorspace with Paste into New Image with a selection. (bug; change by Luna Lovecraft)
• Layer Stack: When switching to a mask with a shortcut, show its name in the floating message instead of its parent layer's. (bug; change by Dmitry Kazakov)
• Resources: Fix being able to save resources that are inside a subfolder into a document. (bug; change by Dmitry Kazakov)
• Palettes: Save modifications to palettes saved in documents. (change by Mike Will)
• Palettes: Make the 'Default' palette the default in the FG/BG color selector. (bug; change by Dmitry Kazakov)
• Touch Input: Don't touch paint when multiple fingers were down. (bug; change by Carsten Hartenfels)
• Touch Input: Disable pointless long-press on the FG/BG color selector. (change by Carsten Hartenfels)
• Text Properties Docker: Fix right-clicking slider-spinboxes selecting the text label instead of only the value. (bug; change by Luna Lovecraft)
• General: Speed up start-up by making the Text Properties Docker load color theme faster. (change by Carsten Hartenfels)

Krita Next (Unstable, 5.4.0/6.1.0-prealpha):

• Pop-up Palette: Add option to not rotate the triangular color selector; 'Settings->Pop-up Palette->Fix sRGB Triangle Selector Rotation'. (change by Dat Le)
• Scripting: Add brushFade get/set to the View class. (change by Aqaao Aqaao)
• Toolbox Docker: Add horizontal layout and compact mode (remove separators) options to the context menu. (change by Mike Will)

Nightly Builds

These pre-release versions of Krita are built every day.

Note that there are currently no Qt6 builds for Android.

Test out the upcoming Stable release in Krita Plus (5.3.0/6.0.0-prealpha): Linux Qt6 Qt5 - Windows Qt6 Qt5 - macOS Qt6 Qt5 - Android arm64 Qt5 - Android arm32 Qt5 - Android x86_64 Qt5

Or test out the latest Experimental features in Krita Next (5.4.0/6.1.0-prealpha). Feedback and bug reports are appreciated!: Linux Qt6 Qt5 - Windows Qt6 Qt5 - macOS Qt6 Qt5 - Android arm64 Qt5 - Android arm32 Qt5 - Android x86_64 Qt5

20 Mar 2026 12:00am GMT

Bind QML Values across an Arbitrary Number of Elements

Properties bound across multiple instances of a window

// internalmessagebroker.hpp
// Singleton broker class contains signals that serve as pipes
// for different parts of a program to communicate with each other.
#pragma once
#include <QObject>
class InternalMessageBroker : public QObject
{
Q_OBJECT
// Hide regular constructor
private:
InternalMessageBroker() = default;
public:
// Disable copy constructor
InternalMessageBroker(const InternalMessageBroker& obj) = delete;
InternalMessageBroker& operator=(InternalMessageBroker const&) = delete;
static std::shared_ptr<InternalMessageBroker> instance()
{
static std::shared_ptr<InternalMessageBroker> sharedPtr{new InternalMessageBroker};
return sharedPtr;
}
// This is where all the signals would go
signals:
void broadcastAPropertyChange(int value, bool broadcast);
};

// Main.qml
// Here are 3 windows, each with a PropertiesModel,
// that allows them all to share a binding to aProperty
// across all window instantiatons.
import QtQuick
import QtQuick.Window
import QtQuick.Layouts
import QtQuick.Controls
import com.kdab.example
Item {
Instantiator {
model: 3
delegate: Window {
PropertiesModel {
id: propertiesModel
aProperty: 1
}
ColumnLayout {
anchors.fill: parent
Text {
text: propertiesModel.aProperty
}
Slider {
id: hueSlider
value: propertiesModel.aProperty
Layout.fillWidth: true
onMoved: {
propertiesModel.aProperty = value;
}
}
}
}
}
}

// An ordinary getter
int PropertiesModel::aProperty()
{
return m_aProperty;
}

// An ordinary notifier, form propertiesmodel.h
signals:
void aPropertyChanged();

// Private setter implementation for a property that's being broadcasted
void PropertiesModel::setAProperty(const int value, const bool broadcast)
{
if (broadcast)
emit m_broker.get()->broadcastAPropertyChange(value, false);
else if (m_currentScreen == screenName) {
m_aProperty = value;
emit screenSaturationChanged();
}
}
// Publicly exposed setter prevents the broadcast argument from being
// specified by other callers
void PropertiesModel::setAProperty(const int value)
{
// Always broadcast properties not being set by the message broker
setAProperty(value, true);
}

// The constructor is used to connect signals from the broker to setter properties
PropertiesModel::PropertiesModel(QObject* parent)
: QObject { parent }
{
m_mb = InternalMessageBroker::instance();
// Connections take place after the class has been instantiated
// and its QML properties parsed.
QTimer::singleShot(0, this, [this] () {
connect(m_mb.get(), &InternalMessageBroker::aPropertyChange,
this, &ScreenModel::setAProperty);
});
}

// propertiesmodel.h
#pragma once
#include "internalmessagebroker.hpp"
#include <QQmlEngine>
class PropertiesModel : public QObject {
Q_OBJECT
QML_ELEMENT
Q_PROPERTY(int aProperty READ aProperty WRITE setAProperty NOTIFY aPropertyChanged FINAL)
public:
explicit PropertiesModel(QObject* parent = nullptr);
int aProperty();
void setAProperty(const int value);
signals:
void aPropertyChanged();
private:
void setAProperty(const int value, const bool broadcast);
std::shared_ptr<InternalMessageBroker> m_mb;
int m_aProperty;
};

// In the original code what here I named broadcast used to be named spread.
void ScreenModel::setScreenHue(const int hue, const bool spread=true, const QString &screenName="s")
{
if (spread)
emit m_mb.get()->spreadHueChange(hue, false, m_currentScreen);
// The incoming value is only accepted if screenName matches the screen
// that the window is at and discarded otherwise.
else if (m_currentScreen == screenName) {
m_screens[m_currentScreen].hue = hue;
emit screenHueChanged();
}
}

Properties bound across instances of a window

The post Bind QML Values across an Arbitrary Number of Elements appeared first on KDAB.

19 Mar 2026 8:26am GMT

Embedded World 2026 in Nuremberg showcased the growing dominance of open source technologies and ecosystems. Various stacks, tools, and frameworks saw increased adoption in embedded systems. Discussions heavily focused on two emerging topics: cybersecurity regulations and artificial intelligence, pointing to major future investments despite some hype.

19 Mar 2026 7:00am GMT

This article explains the syntax of SWHIDs, describing how the core identifier and optional qualifiers are structured. It shows how SWHIDs can reference software artifacts such as files, directories, revisions, and releases, and how their design enables precise comparison of software

17 Mar 2026 7:00am GMT

An amazing journey of 8 weeks full of code, new experiences, and interactions.

I had an amazing time at the Season of KDE 2026. All the guidance from my mentors, Benson Muite and Srisharan VS, really helped me work on Mankala and also helped me learn new skills.

So, lets summarize things a bit, what I was able to achieve during the span of these two months at KDE.

Complete GUI redesign

• I have made major changes in the MankalaNextGen GUI, introducing Kirigami to have different light and dark themes. Improved the design for different pages, MainMenu, Rules, About, Profile, and much more, where I worked to introduced better colors and geometry to the shapes, like buttons or display boxes.
• For the main Game interface, we made new boards and shells. I worked on integrating the logic for displaying the shells and fixing the Board based on the exact numbers shown from Mankala.
• I tried generating a board using Perlin noise, which can be later integrated into MankalaNextGen to design the boards more efficiently based on variants. Added new code to generate a calm background music and a wooden click sound to make it look more authentic.

Translations and Localization

I started learning about Lokalize, KDE's own translation software. I had successfully made translations for Mankala Engine and MankalaNextGen in Tamil and Hindi using Lokalize.

Artworks and KDE review

• I have started working on the KDE review tasks and started with the fix to correct GitLab CI Build pipelines.
• In the last few weeks, I started learning about Krita and made cover images for the three variants Bohnenspiel, Oware, and Pallanguzhi using their cultural Mankala boards and traditional motifs.

The journey doesn't end here. Season of KDE has been a much-needed experience to improve my commitment towards projects and open-source. I plan to work with Mankala Engine and the KDE Community much more and make many other contributions.

Thanks to my mentors, my fellow contributors, and to the entire community for helping me so far. 🚀

17 Mar 2026 5:14am GMT

Tuesday, 17 March 2026. Today KDE releases a bugfix update to KDE Plasma 6, versioned 6.6.3.

Plasma 6.6 was released in February 2026 with many feature refinements and new modules to complete the desktop experience.

This release adds two weeks' worth of new translations and fixes from KDE's contributors. The bugfixes are typically small but important and include:

View full changelog

17 Mar 2026 12:00am GMT

It's been an eon since I've had anything meaningful to talk about in the world of Open Source, so maybe it's time to post about some nonsense I've been working on!

I have a love/hate relationship with progressive web apps. My job these days is in a corporate environment, and there are some things you can't escape. Outlook. Teams. Other web-based applications. Be it Chrome or Firefox, there's just so many things PWAs don't do well. No persistent system tray icons. No break-away from the browser. Odd menu entries. What's worse is that the PWA standard itself is limited in a lot of ways, and it really does feel like an afterthought by every browser vendor. Also, you can't exactly get PWAs easily listed in app stores.

There's Linux-y solutions. Electron-based apps. But those are an incredible time investment to maintain, and there's about a dozen apps they don't cover.

My C++ fu has atrophied, having been replaced with Java as my daily working language, and I haven't kept up with KDE frameworks and Qt… But this itch was driving me crazy, and I just wanted to see some proof-of-concept that the entire situation could be just a little bit better!

Here's the moronic idea: We split the difference between browser-based PWAs and hyper-tailored Electron apps. We just have… A pure "PWA Browser."

So, this weekend I decided to give this "Vibe Coding" thing a try, see if this idea is viable. After hacking with Claude over the weekend, I did manage to get some decent results… So, see for yourself!

The result is something I'm calling "Strand Apps", because if you can't have the whole web, maybe you can have a Strand of it.

How does it work? "Strand Apps" are basically just .desktop files that live in your .local/share/strand-apps folder. These simple manifests gives you the basics like name, description, home location, a few safe links the app should trust, default permissions, and a couple behaviors… Like so!

Ideally we simply define what would be "natural" for the application in a configuration file, and let the host provide exactly that. Would the app be persistent in the background? Sure. Turn on the tray icon. Does it need a toolbar? If not, turn it off. We get that "Near native" behavior, but without forcing people to maintain an entire electron container. Once we have that configuration then anyone with that config gets a top-tier experience.

The first time you launch a strand, you'll get onboarded for that app. Pictures below is the Outlook 365 Strand…

It's not pretty, but for now it lets you see what the app wants, and you can choose what you give it. There's a lot to do with this to improve the onboarding experience, but it's a start. Before I even get into it - no, basically none of these do anything. Don't read too much into it, I just looked at what Chrome gives PWAs and ripped off that list.

Another thing on my todos is having it create launcher .desktop files in the menu as an option in the onboarding window. I have the ingredients there, just haven't put em' together.

That's not to say it's all wall-dressing. The applications each run in their own little silos, unable to read or see what the others are doing, the host system separating their browser persistence completely. I can be signed into an alternate Google account for my Gmail strand, and my main account on my YouTube strand. Each application can also manage its cache and storage separately, kinda like Android apps.

Apps using this don't share settings. If you need to tweak one strand app, you don't need to commit everywhere. This was a major problem I had with traditional PWAs, because I explicitly needed to disable hardware acceleration on one app (can't remember why), but everything followed the parent Chrome installation. I remember I had Chromium installed just for that one specific PWA.

One of the key motivations I had was something small - tray icons and background persistence. Question: How do you get a fully functional Outlook app on Linux? I'm sure someone has a solution, but I never found a satisfactory one myself. Ultimately, I had a webview widget in my system tray purely for the icon and persistence, and a Chrome PWA for an actual app window that wasn't locked to the corner of my screen. I'd use both interchangeably, but I was always annoyed by the solution - and resource usage.

This fixes that problem. That manifest snippet you saw has a "CloseToTray" value. Tells the app that it's goanna persist. It does. These are the sorts of integration features I'm focused on. Here's Gmail showing its proper indicator count in the tray:

Beyond the tray, I'll be thinking about what other behavior settings an app might have, such as the config that removes the toolbar for "safe" apps, or for apps to specify if they're single-window or multi-window by nature. What I really want is a solution where you can easily distribute apps that behave "as you expect", and not like something with one foot in the browser.

Speaking of the tray… MPRIS works. Interestingly, navigation was borked in Chrome proper but somehow it "just works" with the strand. I didn't even mean for that to happen.

Right now I have 3 Strand Apps; Gmail, Outlook, and YouTube Music. If I launch Strand without specifying a profile, it's kind enough to give me a basic list of my installed apps. It also lets you launch the config for them before running, so if you break a web application profile you can recover. E.g. something has freaky WebGL that crashes the renderer.

The code is QT/KDE Frameworks. I didn't wind up using Kirigami, ideally these apps won't have much interface to them anyway, and I also wanted to use the fastest path from launch-to-application.

So… Perfect, right!?! NOTHING wrong with this setup? Push it up tomorrow?

This is where I get real about AI. Claude is pretty good, but it's still an amateur chef in a professional kitchen. Even by my substandard C++ skills it's apparent. At best I'd describe this work as wonderful scaffolding, but it's still in need of a serious audit. I caught no less than 3 significant security risks it tried to give me, and it needs serious organization at minimum. Progress-wise none of the permissions are hooked up, and I want to dive into the PWA spec "proper" because I basically ignored it, and it might be able to streamline things. There's also a lot of UX work to be done.

Beyond even that, there's also the core design. The .desktop manifest format I designed is built around the concept that someone will make a bespoke configuration file for every app worth having. This has the strength that a properly configured strand will be a stellar out-of-box experience, and with YouTube Music as my dog food it almost feels nicer than the Electron version… But how do we distribute these weird files? Does someone even want to distribute them? Is my silly little experiment giving people reading this headaches because infrastructure and distribution is always the bigger problem? Who makes them? Is my flagrant disregard of the .desktop file spec going to cause problems? Should I brace myself for the lynching that using AI has earned me? No matter what, the one thing I know is that, somehow, these can be distributed.

This is something I'm going to futz with for a while. I figure I'll do a serious code review next weekend, maybe re-org it, then get it into a git repo somewhere when I'm satisfied it won't eat anyone's cat.

16 Mar 2026 2:31am GMT

KDE Gears 26.04 hit beta phase just a few days ago, so it is time to give an update on the new features in KJournald.

For 26.04, the main release goal was to have a natural integration of systemd user services and system services in the log view workflow. This means:

• When opening a journald database on a system, from now on per default both the system and user service log records are opened and both will be displayed in a joint view. - If you do not like this, got to "Current Journal" -> "Limit Accessed Logs" and choose your preference. That configuration then is also stored persistently over several boots.

Revisiting the overall UI with this feature in mind, we need few more changes to really make it fly:

• User units often are templated systemd services. This means, there is a single service definition but multiple instances of the service template with different parameters can be created. Using the traditional way to list every unique service in the filter criteria view (left side view) makes the filtering hard to use due to the number of services. So, as a new (opt-out; enabled per default) feature, templated services are grouped. So, for example, all my "app-org.kde.dolphin@[…].service" services can be enabled/disabled at once in the filter view. In the service name hover-info in the log view however, they still are displayed as full service names.
• Typically, due to user units being user workflow specific, there are a lot of systemd services that are not started in every boot, because a user can control their startup individually. For this reason, services and executables are now being pre-filter according to the selected boot. Log priorities are not (yet) taken into account for this pre-filtering, but at least only useful filter entries are shown, which should be a major usability gain on its own.

If you interested in the features, try out the KDE Gears beta release or just install the latest nightly build of org.kde.kjournaldbrowser from the KDE Flatpak nightly CI.

15 Mar 2026 12:57pm GMT

Another month has gone by since the last time I wrote about KDE Linux, KDE's upcoming new operating system. The project hasn't stood still! Here's an assortment of what's gone on recently:

Real sizes for system updates

Aleix Pol Gonzalez and Harald Sitter built the machinery to allow update sizes to be calculated for delta updates. This means the sizes listed in Discover are no longer "Unknown". Instead, you'll see a real number:

Better tools for extending the OS

Lasath Fernando started building out the new Kapsule system, which is a tool for installing software in long-lived containers with great integration with Konsole and the rest of the OS. Before this, we experimented multiple options for experts to extend the system - including Homebrew, Distrobox, and Nix - but none really hit the sweet spot. They were too limited, too dangerous, too complex, too ephemeral, or too something else.

Kapsule deeply integrates with Konsole, which makes sense because a terminal window is a major interface for touching or extending the system in this way. Integrations with Kate and Discover are planned, too. In other words, we want to go all in on this promising new technology for the "extending the system" story for experts and software developers.

You can read more about Kapsule in these blog posts.

Moving to better infrastructure

Harald did a lot of work to upload KDE Linux images to a better location, in preparation for far higher server loads in the future as the OS gains users and rolls out a user-focused edition.

Pre-installed backup system

I pre-installed KDE's Kup backup system, which is really quite nice! Basic documentation can be found here.

APFS filesystem support

Hadi Chokr turned on support for reading from and writing to disks formatted with Apple's APFS filesystem.

Safer Homebrew, ydotool, and AMD GPUs

renner03 put in place a safety mechanism that prevents Homebrew packages from breaking the system in case you install Homeberew and any of its packages would otherwise conflict with system files. Now, the Homebrew packages break instead.

Note that we still don't recommend Homebrew. But now you can use it without endangering the rest of the system.

I made the ydotool automation tool safer; now it's an off-by-by-default system service you need to authenticate to turn on.

I also put in place a workaround for total system freezes affecting AMD GPU users. This stubborn AMD driver issue has been unfixed for months, so a workaround here is appropriate.

More languages in pre-installed Flatpak apps

Guilherme Marçal Silva fixed an issue that made the pre-installed Flatpak apps only usable in English.

Longer time for installation

Jonar Harer bumped the installation timeout from 30 minutes to 1 hour to account for slower devices.

Outstanding issues

KDE Linux is still an alpha product with lots of bugs and rough edges. We had our second dev call yesterday and discussed the road to a beta release, which will include user builds. We're going to be focusing on a number of high priority issues and will consider the other beta-milestoned issues to be done on an "if we can" basis.

Get Involved!

Progress on KDE Linux is steady but nonetheless rather slow. Help is greatly appreciated. In addition to installing it and reporting issues, there are lots of development task that need doing:

• High priority tasks for technical experts
• Other tasks to make the user builds better
• Tasks for newcomers

14 Mar 2026 10:43pm GMT

We feel how dependencies can hurt

There is a lot of talk about digital sovereignty. Being able to act as a state or as a company is obviously important. But there are real dependencies, and given the current geopolitical dynamics, there are real risks. Unfortunately, there are no easy answers. Digital sovereignty matters, but so do stability, efficiency, and innovation. Fortunately, there are options and some good examples of how to deal with it. I collected some material in an awesome list on digital sovereignty.

While it is complex at the state level, it is merely complicated at the personal level. Reaching something like personal digital sovereignty is possible. If you are informed about the technical landscape, you probably already have a good intuition about it. You feel the pain of having to stop using a service because the provider decided to discontinue it without you having a say. You can decide whether it feels right to upload your personal diary to a server in a jurisdiction you do not control.

Free Software provides a path

There is a clear path to personal digital sovereignty. The goal is nicely expressed in KDE's mission: "A world in which everyone has control over their digital life and enjoys freedom and privacy." The path is provided by Free Software. The freedoms to use, study, share, and improve give you exactly what you need to be in control.

For software you run yourself, this works well. Running Free Software on your personal computer gives you control. It feels good. It becomes more complicated when you use services you do not and cannot run yourself. The software freedoms do not transfer easily. There are a lot of services, which are mostly based on Free Software, but only the service providers enjoy the freedoms, not their users. I have written about this before when working on my Fair Web Services project.

A good testament to personal digital sovereignty is the Blue Angel for software. Its focus on resource and energy efficiency is one side of responsible software use. Maybe even more important is its emphasis on user autonomy: being able to use software without ads being forced on you, being able to choose what to install, and having transparency about what you run. These are the ingredients of personal digital sovereignty.

Finding the balance

Freedom is one side, but convenience is another. Sometimes it is easier to just use something a vendor has invested heavily in providing, even if you pay with your data and some independence. It is also a question of where you spend your time: do you build something for yourself, or do you use something that already exists? And sometimes it is about the limits what you can do yourself. Powerful tools can give you leverage so you can focus on your actual mission.

So it is also about compromise. One very important aspect for me is that I am still able to choose. That is the core of personal digital sovereignty. Sovereignty does not mean doing everything yourself. It means preserving the ability to leave, even if you choose not to.

Federated services make it easy to migrate. For git, for example, it does not matter so much where the server is or who runs it, because switching is as simple as changing the remote. For a proprietary note-taking service, this looks different. You may need special exports, format conversions, and you might lose functionality because it is not based on open standards. Choose your dependencies wisely.

It is important to remember that dependencies are not bad per se. We know this from Free Software. We know what it feels like to stand on the shoulders of giants. We rely on the collective strength of a global community. It is not about rejecting all dependencies or doing everything on your own. It is about creating alternatives and shaping an ecosystem based on openness, so that we can choose and act on our own terms.

My personal stack

I am quite happy with my personal stack, which gives me the control I need. My 12-year-old desktop runs Linux and KDE. I pay to host my own email, Nextcloud, and git services. One project I particularly like is GitJournal, which gives me control over my note-taking across all my devices. This covers the core of my computing needs, with my family, my friends, and what I decide to keep private.

To stay connected to the wider world, there is no way around being present on large networks. GitHub and LinkedIn are the compromises that give me reach without requiring me to abandon all my principles. I would not publish my writing only on LinkedIn, though, because I want to own what I produce.

AI is a difficult question right now. It is easy to switch between services, and with rapid development it is changing quickly what the best choice is. And it can provide tremendous leverage. So it remains an evolving compromise. An ideal future would offer open models powerful enough to serve your needs and that you can run locally.

Building digital sovereignty

On a personal level, you can decide for yourself. There are limitations, and you will have to build on the environment available to you. But there are alternatives, and you can choose to build your personal digital sovereignty.

At the corporate and state level, it is more difficult. The systems are more intertwined, but the pain of dependencies you cannot control and the risks of others making decisions for you are just as real. Alternatives exist there as well, often the same ones available on a personal level. It can be worth taking bold decisions.

Digital sovereignty at the state level is about national security. At the personal level, it is about personal freedom. Free Software provides a powerful path to maintaining control over our digital lives.

I am not arguing for tools. I am arguing for agency.

14 Mar 2026 6:05pm GMT