29 May 2026

feedPlanet KDE | English

Web Review, Week 2026-22

Let's go for my web review for the week 2026-22.

What I Learned About Billionaires at Jeff Bezos's Private Retreat

Tags: business, politics, culture, ethics

Wondering how those very rich people think and perceive the world? Here is an explanation. I felt unease reading through this.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/05/billionaire-consequence-free-reality/686588/?gift=fXb4ymsFcV2ntAzqIpmYvZ5SHmVudSgCCvY8EbJPC2Q


Secure Boot and Microsoft CA Rollover - a heads-up for distributions

Tags: tech, microsoft, linux, security

Microsoft has been deploying new CA certificates late… Now distros have to wake up and prepare new signatures for their shims quickly.

https://blog.einval.com/2026/05/22#secure_boot_ca_rollover


Big Tech's Anti-Labor Playbook Has Come for Wikipedia

Tags: tech, wikipedia, community, business, work, ethics

This is very concerning. We don't need Wikipedia to fall prey to this kind of tactics… On the contrary!

https://medium.com/@jakeorlowitz/wikipedia-is-doing-the-capitalist-thing-56a393232943


Google, I Dump Your Ass!

Tags: tech, google, web

I guess it's time we realise Google doesn't send much traffic on the open web / small web / indie web (call it as you please) and so there's no need to let them harvest.

https://jaredwhite.com/20260522/google-i-dump-your-ass


The AI Gold Rush Is Eating Its Own

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, wikipedia, cognition, business

This is clearly the Ouroboros moment in our industry. People pushing for such restructuring and layoffs are drinking the kool-aid and will ultimately be responsible for killing what put them there in the first place.

https://blog.ppb1701.com/the-ai-gold-rush-is-eating-its-own


The Community is the Achievement; the Achievement is the Community

Tags: tech, knowledge, commons, community, ai, machine-learning, gpt, copilot, ethics, diversity

Very interesting take. This gives very valid ground on why tech communities should reject AI based contributions. Not doing so will indeed hinder the commons communities rely on to exist and improve. This is a path to prevent getting better at inclusivity and diversity (which is really needed).

https://linguacelta.com/blog/2026/05/LLMs.html


Affordances for me, but not for thee

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, ethics, politics, accessibility

This is a fact I don't get… people are going their way to satisfy the need of a LLM but not the ones of fellow humans. I guess it's the conclusion which is somewhat right, it's about who has power. This is sad if true… also I doubt it's the single explanation.

https://werd.io/affordances-for-me-but-not-for-thee/


The price of humans

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

Interesting point… Didn't think about it this way. We'll see I guess. Maybe human made services will actually get a premium rate indeed. Wouldn't be a bad outcome I guess?

https://blog.umangsurana.com/blog/price_of_humans/


Can we have the day off?

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, work, culture, productivity

I mean, with the announced productivity gains of generative AI… It doesn't feel like a big ask. 😜

https://mlsu.io/posts/day-off/


BitWarden selling out? Self hosting a password vault?

Tags: tech, self-hosting, security

With Bitwarden sinking, it's maybe time to look at alternatives? This AliasVault option looks like an interesting contender even though a not young.

https://firesphere.dev/articles/bitwarden-selling-out-self-hosting-a-password-vault


A cheap VPS is a good front

Tags: tech, self-hosting, security, vpn, wireguard

Sounds like a good solution to self host things at home while having some protection.

https://ergaster.org/thoughts/front-server/


The mysterious XF86AudioPlay issue

Tags: tech, audio, hardware

This is an odd and unexpected one! Funny after the facts bit clearly annoying otherwise.

https://michael-prokop.at/blog/2026/05/20/the-mysterious-xf86audioplay-issue/


Serving files over HTTP three ways: synchronous, epoll, and io_uring

Tags: tech, linux, io, asynchronous

Good post to have an idea of the modern IO APIs available.

https://theconsensus.dev/p/2026/05/18/serving-files-three-ways.html


Rust Patterns & Engineering How-Tos

Tags: tech, rust

The writing isn't perfect, but it covers quite a few important topics in Rust. Seems to be a nice resource even though it's still work in progress.

https://microsoft.github.io/RustTraining/rust-patterns-book/


How Virtual Tables Work in the Itanium C++ ABI | File Descriptor Two

Tags: tech, c++, type-systems, memory

Wondering about the memory layout emitted by the compiler when a virtual table exists for a type? This is a good summary.

https://peter0x44.github.io/posts/vtables-itanium-abi/


The worst job interview I ever had

Tags: hr, interviews

Urgh… indeed this sounds like a very bad experience. Don't do this to applicants!

https://www.oliverio.dev/blog/the-worst-job-interview-i-had


What is a harmonic? An interactive comic about additive synthesis

Tags: physics

Need a refresher on harmonics? This is a quick and fun way to do so.

https://melatonin.dev/additive-synth-comic/what-is-a-harmonic/


Why Japanese companies do so many different things

Tags: japan, business, culture

Interesting exploration of the Japanese business culture and why it's so different to most companies found in Western countries.

https://davidoks.blog/p/why-japanese-companies-do-so-many


Bye for now!

29 May 2026 1:57pm GMT

Qt Creator 20 - CMake Update

Here are the new CMake changes in Qt Creator 20:

29 May 2026 10:54am GMT

28 May 2026

feedPlanet KDE | English

SPDX Cryptographic Algorithm List: Spring 2026 Update

The SPDX Cryptographic Algorithm List keeps growing. New cryptoClass values, a structured docs folder, PQC as a new property, and SCANOSS as our first user-contributor. Here is what happened in the past months.

28 May 2026 12:52pm GMT

GSoC 2026: Week 1 (Coding Period)

The community bonding period is over, and coding started, so this feels like the right moment for a first blog post. I'm contributing to KeepSecret this summer as part of GSoC 2026, working on single-wallet UX and page navigation architecture.

What I did during community bonding:

->Close/dismiss button for entry detail panel

Before the Community Bonding Period:

Resolving three issues:

  1. !17 (focus the search field when the Search action is triggered),
  2. !18 (fix the "New Entry" dialog title, which was incorrectly saying "Create New Item") and
  3. !20 (hides the sidebar when only one wallet exists, worked on the five layout states and cover edge cases like narrow windows with multiple wallets, single-wallet with an item open, and all three pages visible at once).

Week 1 plan:

This week, I'm working on Import/export: study existing wallet data structures in KeepSecret. Define file format and design the export flow.

Port KeepSecret's actions to the new org.kde.kirigami.actioncollection API from kirigami-app-components. This wasn't in the original proposal but it's a good addition, suggested by my mentor, notmart (Marco Martin) - it means users will be able to configure keyboard shortcuts for actions like "New Wallet" and "New Entry" through a standard KDE dialog.

More updates next week. The code is at invent.kde.org/utilities/keepsecret

GSoC 2026 KDE KeepSecret Kirigami Qt / QML

28 May 2026 11:53am GMT

Introducing Agentic Test Generation Skills for Qt Quick

Introducing Agentic Test Generation Skills for Qt Quick

Writing unit tests can be one of the most time-consuming and least creative phases of software development. For every QML component a developer writes, an equivalent volume of test code must follow - covering properties, signals, mouse and key interactions, state transitions, and edge cases.

28 May 2026 8:02am GMT

KDE Plasma 6.7 Beta Release

Here are the new modules available in the Plasma 6.7 beta:

Some important features and changes included in 6.7 beta are highlighted on KDE community wiki page.

Help stress-test the Union theming system

This releases marks the first public tech preview of the new Union theming system!

To make it easier to test Union in 6.7 Beta 2 and onwards, Union can now be enabled globally by setting it as your Application Style in System Settings > Colors & Themes > Application Style. Applications must be restarted to use Union.

If you'd like to test Union with a specific application, type QT_QUICK_CONTROLS_STYLE=org.kde.union [program name] into a terminal, where [program name] is, for example, systemsettings, plasma-systemmonitor, plasma-discover, spectacle, or any other QML-based app. Don't set the environment variable globally, or this will break Flatpak apps.

The intention is for these apps to look as similar as possible when styled with Union to how they look without Union (though any minor visual improvements should be considered intentional!).

If you find any issues, make sure they're Union-specific by running the app without Union, either by launching it with Breeze as your Application Style or by not overriding the QT_QUICK_CONTROLS_STYLE environment variable; this uses the current styling system so you can compare the two.

If you've found a Union-specific issue, report it here.

Everything else

View full changelog

28 May 2026 12:00am GMT

27 May 2026

feedPlanet KDE | English

Monthly Report - May 2026

Krita 5.3.2/6.0.2 is here. Read on for a look at development news and the Krita-Artists forum's featured artwork from last month.

Development Report

Krita 5.3.2/6.0.2 Released

Krita 5.3.2/6.0.2 was released, containing various bugfixes and improvements from the nearly two months since 5.3.1/6.0.1.

Fixes Since Last Month

In the Text Properties docker there are now buttons to toggle Bold and Italic next to the Font Style chooser, toggling italics with Ctrl+I works properly the first time, and an issue where some fonts wouldn't allow choosing Regular style was fixed (bug; CCbug; change).

A freeze on opening a high PPI image with a vector layer was fixed, as well as the image progress bar getting stuck (bug; change 1, change 2).

Developments in the Unstable Builds

In Krita Next, the Selection Tools now have a tool option to Move Selected Content by dragging the inside of a selection. (wishbug; change by Ricky Ringler)

Wolthera has made some improvements to the Wide Gamut Color Selector. L*a*b* and YCbCr are converted to LCh (lightness, chroma, hue) instead of directly using their channels, meaning they are now able to map properly to the HSV-based selector layouts (change). Additionally, the static hue edge option is now implemented for when hue is shown in a bar instead of a ring (change).

Community Report

April 2026 Monthly Art Challenge Results

The winner of the "Microadventure" challenge is…

Bumblebee hug by npc

Bumblebee hug by npc

Join This Month's Art Challenge!

For May's theme, last month's winner has chosen "Animals and Patterns"

Featured Artwork

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

Recharge by zegalur

Recharge by zegalur

One Heartbeat by Rhea_Asma

One Heartbeat by Rhea_Asma

Resilience Amidst the Chaos by Valquer

Resilience Amidst the Chaos by Valquer

Fungal Paradise by RoamingOwl

Fungal Paradise by RoamingOwl

Siamese Cat by Xaphyrx

Siamese Cat by Xaphyrx

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 - April/May 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!

Krita's mascot Kiki putting money in a piggy bank

Additional Changes

Krita Plus (Stable, 5.3.2/6.0.2):

Krita Plus (Stable, 5.3.3/6.0.3-prealpha):

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

Nightly Builds

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

Note that there are currently no Qt6 builds for Android.

Get the latest bugfixes in Stable Krita Plus (5.3.3/6.0.3 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

27 May 2026 12:00am GMT

Krita 5.3.2 Released!

Today we're releasing Krita 5.3.2 and 6.0.2. This release fixes a number of issues with the text tool, and improves the Selection Action Panel significantly. Furthermore, Android now handles resource copying in the background, preventing a common crash on startup. In addition to that, many more bugfixes were made, including some by new contributors!

Check out the release notes for a full overview of all the new features in Krita 5.3 and 6.0.

[!WARNING] One again, we consider Krita 5.3.2 suitable for productive work; 6.0.2 is, because of the many changes from Qt5 to Qt6 more experimental.

Download 5.3.2

Windows

If you're using the portable zip files, just open the zip file in Explorer and drag the folder somewhere convenient, then double-click on the Krita icon in the folder. This will not impact an installed version of Krita, though it will share your settings and custom resources with your regular installed version of Krita. For reporting crashes, also get the debug symbols folder.

[!NOTE] We are no longer making 32-bit Windows builds.

Linux

Note: starting with recent releases, the minimum supported distro versions may change.

[!WARNING] Starting with recent AppImage runtime updates, some AppImageLauncher versions may be incompatible. See AppImage runtime docs for troubleshooting.

MacOS

Note: minimum supported MacOS may change between releases.

Android

Krita on Android is still beta; tablets only.

Source code

For source archives, please download one of the 6.0.2 archives and build with Qt5.

Download 6.0.2

Windows

If you're using the portable zip files, just open the zip file in Explorer and drag the folder somewhere convenient, then double-click on the Krita icon in the folder. This will not impact an installed version of Krita, though it will share your settings and custom resources with your regular installed version of Krita. For reporting crashes, also get the debug symbols folder.

[!NOTE] We are no longer making 32-bit Windows builds.

Linux

Note: starting with recent releases, the minimum supported distro versions may change.

[!WARNING] Starting with recent AppImage runtime updates, some AppImageLauncher versions may be incompatible. See AppImage runtime docs for troubleshooting.

MacOS

Note: minimum supported MacOS may change between releases.

Android

Krita 6.0.2 is not yet functional on Android, so we are not making APK's available for sideloading.

Source code

md5sum

For all downloads, visit https://download.kde.org/stable/krita/6.0.2/ and click on "Details" to get the hashes.

Key

The Linux AppImage and the source tarballs are signed. You can retrieve the public key here. The signatures are here (filenames ending in .sig).

27 May 2026 12:00am GMT

25 May 2026

feedPlanet KDE | English

Splitting Konsole views from Helix to run tools

I have been tinkering with Helix editor lately since I quite like it.

It's a fun little editor. Can recommend for those who like modal editing. I do not know if it'll ever replace Kate editor for me, but I'm challenging myself to try new tools, just for the fun of it.

With Helix, I've used this git tool called gitu that is rather quick and easy to work with. Though I still use lazygit for more complex tasks.

Main pain point for me has been how to use some of these tools like gitu within Helix. Lazygit could be done with some magic, but I was never really satisfied with it.

I also tried Zellij for terminal multiplexing and running commands between two splits and so on. It was a bit cumbersome to get it to work as I wanted, since Zellij has tons of features I'll never need. This also caused my fingers to get entangled since I had to remember all sorts of shortcuts. Just not for me.

In Konsole terminal, there is a shortcut for splitting views easily and automatically to a fitting size. I use it a bunch. But because I'm lazy, I would have to press the shortcut, go to the other splitview, type the command for other tool, do things and then close commands. I wanted something a bit more automated.

I found that Konsole can be set to allow scripting over dbus commands: Scripting Konsole.

So I made myself a little shell script that I placed in my path: konsole-split.sh!

Here's what it does:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# In konsole settings, make sure
# - run all konsole windows in single process is disabled
# - enable the security sensitive parts is enabled

if [ $# -eq 0 ]; then
 echo "Command is missing!"
 exit
fi

# Split the view automagically. We can use MainWindow_1 since we have only one process
qdbus6 "$KONSOLE_DBUS_SERVICE" /konsole/MainWindow_1 org.kde.KMainWindow.activateAction split-view-auto >/dev/tty

# Get the session of the current terminal window
CURRENTSESSION=$(qdbus6 "$KONSOLE_DBUS_SERVICE" "$KONSOLE_DBUS_WINDOW" org.kde.konsole.Window.currentSession) >/dev/tty

# Run the given arguments as a command in that session
qdbus6 "$KONSOLE_DBUS_SERVICE" /Sessions/"${CURRENTSESSION}" org.kde.konsole.Session.runCommand "$@" >/dev/tty

It's really simple, but now I can use this in my helix config like this:

[keys.normal."+"]
b = ":sh git log -L %{cursor_line},+1:%{buffer_name}" #This is git log for a line, also useful, kinda like git blame
s = ":sh konsole-split.sh 'exec scooter'" # Scooter is a search and replace in multiple files tool, very handy
g = ":sh konsole-split.sh 'exec gitu'"

In practice, what happens is:

  1. In helix, i press +

  2. Then I select the command, in this case gitu, so g

  3. Konsole splits itself automatically to a comfortable size

  4. It then gets the session of that new split

  5. And runs the gitu command with exec

    • So if the execution stops/fails, it just closes the split instantly

This works really well for my needs, and I was surprised to see how simple it was to create something like this. I think the error handling when command does not work could be better, but oh well, works for me for now.

Let me know if you do anything similar or have any improvement ideas! :)

25 May 2026 7:39pm GMT

Implementation Plan for Tournaments in Mankala Engine

We are almost at the end of our community bonding period. It's been nearly 1 month since GSOC 2026 results, and the time to formulate a proper plan for the future plan of action regarding our project💡

Here is the breakdown of a rough plan of what I want to achieve during these 12 weeks.

(Project Setup and Implementation Plan) 💻

Week 1:

Week 2:

Week 3:

Week 4:

Week 5:

Week 6:

Week 7:

Week 8:

Week 9 and 10:

Week 11 and 12:

Thanks for reading. Happy coding🚀

25 May 2026 2:51pm GMT

Week 1 : Coding Begins

It's May 25. Community bonding is over. Coding starts today.

The last few days of bonding were about wrapping loose ends, got two MRs merged: warn before deleting tracks and snap playhead to snap points. A few others are still open and in review, but the coding period waits for no one.

Now for the actual project.

This week I'm starting on the Curves Widget , the first of three widgets I'm building this summer for Kdenlive.

The current CurveParamWidget has a channel dropdown (R, G, B, All), but switching channels wipes the previous curve. There's no memory per channel. So if you carefully tune the red channel and switch to green, your red curve is gone. You'd have to apply the effect multiple times, once per channel which is exactly the kind of friction the proposal is trying to eliminate.

The fix is per-channel tabs, each storing its own curve independently. All channels serialize together into avfilter.curves format: r='0/0 0.5/0.7 1/1' g='0/0 1/1' b='0/0 1/1'

Backward compatible with existing projects, no data loss when switching tabs.

This week's goal is foundation work: understand the full CurveParamWidget architecture, design the tab skeleton, and get the per-channel data structure in place. No full functionality yet, get the structure right first, then build on it.

I'll post every week on Sundays. Daily progress goes to JB on Matrix.

Let's go.

25 May 2026 3:57am GMT

24 May 2026

feedPlanet KDE | English

Introductory Blog

Hello, I am Ojas Maheshwari.

I am a C++ engineer who is currently writing code for KDE community for GSoC '26. My project involves performing "font subsettting" on a PDF rendering library called Poppler which Okular (KDE's Universal PDF Viewer uses).

This site will contain general blogs as well as the official documentation and progress updates on what I did through the whole journey including:

This is an introductory page to see if the site works correctly. Thanks :D

24 May 2026 3:12pm GMT

23 May 2026

feedPlanet KDE | English

“Long-Term Support” doesn’t mean what you think

My last post about good beginner-friendly KDE-focused operating systems sparked some discussions about the concept of "Long-Term Support" (LTS) releases.

But what does this term mean? It's a bit generic-sounding, making it easy to interpret as meaning almost anything. So let's go to the source: how the term is defined by the operating systems using it! Here are the non-commercial ones:

Debian Stable says:

Security updates are provided by Debian security team for three years. This generally means that each stable release is supported for its whole life plus an extra year (or so) after a new version of stable is released. In addition, further security support is provided by the LTS and LTS/Extended projects.

Ubuntu says:

LTS stands for long-term support - which means five years of free security and maintenance updates

Kubuntu says:

The latest Long Term Support (LTS) version of the Kubuntu operating system for desktop PCs and laptops, Kubuntu 26.04 [is] supported with security and maintenance updates, until April 2029.

(I didn't include openSUSE Leap because its marketing material doesn't use this term, though what it offers is fairly similar in practice)

So these operating systems are fairly consistent about what "Long-Term Support" means to them:

That's it! So let's look at what's NOT promised:

That doesn't mean an LTS release of Debian, Ubuntu, or Kubuntu will be devoid of these things. It just means they aren't promised. Probably you'll get a lot of them anyway, but there's no guarantee.

I think this is where some of the persistent confusion around the LTS topic comes from.

LTS releases are fairly reliable as long as you use the most popular software from their included software repositories. So in the circumstances when this stops being the case, I think sometimes people can feel betrayed. They think, "I thought this was supposed to be stable! Why didn't anyone fix this bug yet? Where's my long-term support?"

But Debian, Ubuntu, and Kubuntu never promised any level of reliability or absence of bugs. They promised that the version-locked software in their repos would receive security fixes for a certain number of years. Ubuntu and Kubuntu also offered a certain amount of non-guaranteed best-effort hardware compatibility improvements and non-security bug fixes.

That's it!

So it's important to understand what you're actually getting with an LTS-style OS. And maybe it's not for you. There are plenty of other options for people with different desires:

I want newer software

If you're a software developer or a technology enthusiast, you may want to get software on or closer to its developers' release schedules. This will give you a stream of new features, UI improvements, and fixes for bugs. In this case, the better option is a rapidly-updating OS like Arch Linux, openSUSE Tumbleweed, Fedora KDE, or one of their children.

The trade-off here is that you may have to live with some things that are currently working getting broken after updating. In other words, the bugs are unstable, unlike in an LTS OS where the bugs are stable.

I personally fall into this group, which is why I use a rapidly-updating OS and not an LTS OS.

I want fewer bugs

I think a lot of people choose an LTS OS to experience fewer bugs, but this is generally not a strength of the LTS product. When an LTS OS freezes on a specific set of software, all the bugs in those versions of the software are frozen, too. Unless the LTS OS provider fixes any of those bugs themselves or backports fixes for them, users will be exposed to them for the lifetime of the release.

With a rapidly-updating OS, when software developers fix bugs in their software, you'll get those bug-fixes quickly. As long as the software itself is becoming less buggy over time, a rapidly-updating OS shipping software close to its developers' release schedules will likewise become less buggy over time.

It's not all puppies and rainbows, though. A fast pace of change means more opportunities for those developers to accidentally introduce new bugs, and also for the introduction of integration issues: bugs caused by software being mis-configured or incompatible with other software. LTS OSs excel at minimizing integration issues between software, because a frozen set of software isn't a moving target for QA testing.

So in a lot of ways, this choice boils down to whether you're more bothered by software bugs or by integration issues.

I want better hardware support

If the manufacturer of your device didn't provide much or any Linux software support for it, a rapidly-updating OS is likewise a better option here. You'll quickly get all the components that improve hardware support, not just the parts in the kernel.

I want a true reliability guarantee

If time is money for you, this makes sense. And to get it, you'll need to pay for a commercially-supported operating system. For example, Canonical offers "Ubuntu Pro" with a level of support that includes the following:

Build with confidence with 24/7/365 phone and ticket support. Get prompt help when something breaks on any of the packages in the Ubuntu Main and Universe repositories, including the most widely used open source applications and toolchains. Our 24/7 plans now include SLAs not only for initial response times, but also for ongoing follow-up updates ensuring continuous visibility and faster remediation throughout the lifecycle of your support case.

Wow! Now that's support. It costs $300 per year for workstations (servers are over 5x as much).

Red Hat and SUSE offer similar services at similar prices.

And they aren't cheap! But if time is money, those prices may look pretty reasonable. And you'll get to talk to a perky and friendly person over the phone when you encounter a covered problem, and someone will to take direct responsibility for getting a fix delivered.

What about Flatpak and Snap?

In principle, these technologies allow an LTS-style OS to offer the best of both worlds: a stable base with apps updating more rapidly.

In practice, what you get is a mixing of both worlds. The base OS retains its LTS characteristics, while apps become rapidly-updating, giving you some exposure to breakage coming from new versions alongside more features, UI improvements, and fixes for existing bugs.

We're spoiled for choice in our ecosystem, which means everyone can find a free software operating system that matches their needs and desires. But you have to know what those needs and desires are, and also successfully map them to the available options! Hopefully this blog post has helped explain what the LTS-style operating systems offer, and who should use them.

23 May 2026 7:05pm GMT

This Week in Plasma: Xe Driver Support and Polishing Discover

Welcome to a new issue of This Week in Plasma!

This week the focus was squarely on polishing up Plasma 6.7 in preparation for release on June 16th. Bugs were squashed, user interfaces were improved, and amidst it all, a lovely community contribution added support for monitoring modern Intel GPUs. Check it all out:

Notable UI improvements

Plasma 6.7

Clearing the clipboard while any items are starred no longer asks if you want to clear the starred items as well; now they are never automatically cleared, and you have to do this manually, on the logic that if you starred those items, you probably want to keep them around! (Tobias Fella, plasma-workspace MR #6583)

When the Disks & Devices widget appears after you plug in a disk, it no longer briefly flashes with the notification icon. (Bohdan Onofriichuk, KDE Bugzilla #495141)

Plasma 6.8

When Discover prompts you to delete data and settings for a no-longer-installed Flatpak app, doing so now sends all that stuff to the trash rather than deleting it immediately and irreversibly. (Nate Graham, KDE Bugzilla #520220)

Discover asking you if you want to move data to the trash, instead of asking to delete to immediately

Re-arranged the sections on Discover's home page to put the "Editor's choice" section closer to the top. (Raresh Rus, discover MR #1333)

Discover showing “Editor’s Choice” section right below the most popular apps

Reduced the amount of visual jankiness in Discover's "overall progress" indicator UI during system updates. (Taras Oleksyn, KDE Bugzilla #510282)

Made the search on Discover's Updates page case-insensitive. (Tobias Ozór, discover MR #1328)

Notable bug fixes

Plasma 6.6.6

Fixed a case where Plasma could crash when you switched Activities using the Activity Pager widget. (Marco Martin, KDE Bugzilla #520065)

Worked around a Qt regression that made job progress notifications remain visible on screen until explicitly dismissed. (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Bugzilla #520120)

Fixed an issue that broke the setting to remember your approvals in the screencasting permission dialog. (David Redondo, KDE Bugzilla #517454)

Fixed an issue that mis-rendered non-default window decoration themes when using a scale factor below 100%. (Vlad Zahorodnii, KDE Bugzilla #520272)

Fixed an issue that broke Global Themes' ability to add and position widgets as expected. (Marco Martin, KDE Bugzilla #512005)

Plasma 6.7

Fixed some cases where Plasma could crash when plugging in or unplugging screens. (Marco Martin, KDE Bugzilla #468430)

Worked around a Qt issue that could sometimes make the crash reporter tool itself crash in a loop. (Harald Sitter, KDE Bugzilla #517353)

Fixed an issue that could make Discover sometimes crash when installing a Flatpak app from a downloaded .flatpakref file. (Tobias Fella, KDE Bugzilla #520371)

Fixed a case where Plasma could crash while a Weather Report widget was checking for weather updates. (David Edmundson, kdeplasma-addons MR #1051)

Fixed a bizarre issue that could make the Kickoff Application Launcher widget grow vertically on X11 immediately after opening it following a switch to an alternative widget and back right after login. (Harald Sitter, KDE Bugzilla #515116)

Strengthened the system to prevent gaps from appearing between the screens in a multi-monitor setup. (Xaver Hugl, KDE Bugzilla #507702)

Fixed an issue in the Global Theme creator feature that saved panel settings incorrectly. (Akseli Lahtinen, KDE Bugzilla #520489)

Fixed an issue in the Digital Clock widget that mis-colored the dots for calendar events on the previous month. (Young Lord, plasma-workspace #6587)

Fixed two pointer issues seen while zoomed in using KWin's Zoom effect: duplicated pointers while shaking to make them bigger, and pointers becoming visually de-synchronized while dragging things. (Xaver Hugl, KDE Bugzilla #489265 and KDE Bugzilla #513233)

Fixed an issue that could make Discover report different states in different pages for an app currently being installed or uninstalled. (Oliver Beard, KDE Bugzilla #520028)

Plasma 6.8

Fixed an issue that made it impossible to add an app to your favorites list immediately after un-installing and re-installing it. (Christoph Wolk, KDE Bugzilla #494542)

Frameworks 6.27

Fixed a visual glitch sometimes seen in Discover's sidebar when the app was launched. (Nate Graham, KDE Bugzilla #520337)

Notable in performance & technical

Plasma 6.7

Fixed a couple of memory leaks discovered in KWin. (Xaver Hugl, kwin MR #9235)

Plasma 6.8

Added support for the Intel Xe driver to the System Monitor app and widgets. (Hunter Hardy, KDE Bugzilla #512866)

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.

23 May 2026 12:00am GMT

22 May 2026

feedPlanet KDE | English

Web Review, Week 2026-21

Let's go for my web review for the week 2026-21.

Make your website or blog fediverse-ready

Tags: tech, fediverse, blog

It's not complicated, and a good thing to do.

https://stefanbohacek.com/blog/make-your-website-or-blog-fediverse-ready/


Dumb Ways for an Open Source Project to Die

Tags: tech, foss, community

Not sure it warranted the "dumb" mention in the title. Still it's likely a good idea to have a list of the ways projects can die.

https://nesbitt.io/2026/05/19/dumb-ways-for-an-open-source-project-to-die.html


On Google declaring war on the Web

Tags: tech, google, ai, machine-learning, gpt, attention-economy, knowledge

Ultimately, they just want people to stay on the pages they fully control and not have them visit anything out of their mall.

https://tante.cc/2026/05/20/on-google-declaring-war-on-the-web/


I don't think AI will make your processes go faster

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, copilot, engineering, processes, productivity

Good overview of why we don't see a speed up in development processes when AI tools are introduced. The bottlenecks don't magically get destroyed.

https://frederickvanbrabant.com/blog/2026-05-15-i-dont-think-ai-will-make-your-processes-go-faster/


Twelve Ways to Be Wrong About AI-Assisted Coding

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

Or why most of the studies we see out there can't be trusted. They're full of holes and flaws. We'd really know people who know what they do in humanities to conduct such studies to get a chance at a proper picture.

https://third-bit.com/2026/05/20/twelve-ways-to-be-wrong/


Misconceptions about the UNIX Philosophy

Tags: tech, unix, history, microservices

I agree with this short history tour. It's the composability which matters.

https://posixcafe.org/blogs/2024/01/05/0/


Shell Tool Testing

Tags: tech, tests, shell

A proof that you don't need much to write a test suite.

https://zork.net/~st/jottings/shell-tool-testing.html


Spork: A posix_spawn you can use as a fork

Tags: tech, unix, linux, processes, research

fork() doesn't want to die. But help is coming it seems. Maybe the day it disappears from kernels is "near".

https://dl.acm.org/doi/epdf/10.1145/3713082.3730396


C++26: More function wrappers

Tags: tech, c++

Time to retire std::function in new code.

https://www.sandordargo.com/blog/2026/05/20/cpp26-copyable-function


Scaling Rust codebases: Lessons learned organizing large projects and managing errors

Tags: tech, rust, architecture, complexity, pattern

Nice suggestions on how to structure larger Rust code bases. The proposed error handling is particularly neat and tidy. This is doable in other languages but tends to be more verbose.

https://kerkour.com/rust-organize-large-projects-code-error-handling


SIMD-accelerated integer-to-string conversion

Tags: tech, simd, performance

Really smart SIMD trick which packs a punch.

https://lemire.me/blog/2026/05/18/simd-accelerated-integer-to-string-conversion/


Dependency cooldowns are unfair; we should use phased rollouts instead

Tags: tech, security, supply-chain

This is a good point. I feel unease at the current trend pushing toward cooldowns. The proposed rollout scheme is much better and fairer.

https://illegalcode.net/rfcs/phased_rollouts.html


Stop Using Pull Requests

Tags: tech, codereview, pairing, mob-programming, trust, productivity

The title is a bit too much of a blanket statement. Still there's indeed a lovely no between pair programming and merge requests. If possible you should favour the former. Yet it rarely happens in practice, there are reasons for that.

https://a4al6a.substack.com/p/stop-using-pull-requests


organizational knowledge

Tags: tech, organisation, knowledge

Knowledge management is hard. It's almost never a tool problem despite what people claim.

https://jarche.com/2026/05/organizational-knowledge/


Three Tips for Succeeding as an Accidental Leader

Tags: tech, leadership, management, learning

The responsibilities drop on people before they're ready for it (I see it first hand regularly at customers). Such tips are thus welcome and helpful during the transition.

https://www.jrothman.com/newsletter/2026/05/three-tips-for-succeeding-as-an-accidental-leader/


Two facilitation methods starting with a single line: Actions|Results & +|Δ

Tags: facilitation, decision-making

Nice little facilitation formats. I'll try those for sure.

https://improvesomething.today/single-line-facilitation/


Three ways people respond to a problem (other than solving it)

Tags: problem-solving

Very good points. Solving problems is not necessarily what happens when they are identified.

https://improvesomething.today/responses-to-problems/


Bye for now!

22 May 2026 1:51pm GMT

Qt Extension 1.14.0 for VS Code Released

Qt Extension 1.14.0 for VS Code Released

We're excited to announce the release of version 1.14.0 of the Qt Extension for Visual Studio Code! This release introduces QML Live Preview with hot-reload capability, bringing real-time feedback directly into your editor.

22 May 2026 1:27pm GMT