09 Mar 2026
Planet KDE | English
Kdenlive 25.12.3 released
The last maintenance release of the 25.12 series is out with the usual batch of stability fixes and workflow improvements. Highlights include small interface refinements such as better dock widget behavior, improved shortcut handling in fullscreen mode, logically grouped marker menu items, and a new option to disable timeline effects in the hamburger menu. The release also brings improvements to multistream clip handling and ripple editing, as well as fixing small memleak in the render widget and a crash in the curve editor. See the changelog below for more details.
The macOS versions will be available at a later time due to technical issues while generating the packages.
Kdenlive needs your support
Our small team has been working for years to build an intuitive open source video editor that does not track you, does not use your data, and respects your privacy. However, to ensure a proper development requires resources, so please consider a donation if you enjoy using Kdenlive - even small amounts can make a big difference.
For the full changelog continue reading on kdenlive.org.
09 Mar 2026 8:00am GMT
08 Mar 2026
Planet KDE | English
This Week in KDE Apps
New Glaxnimate release, source mode in Marknote and S3 support in Dolphin
Welcome to a new issue of "This Week in KDE Apps"! Every week (or so) we cover as much as possible of what's happening in the world of KDE apps.
Office Applications
Marknote Write down your thoughts
It's been a busy week in Marknote again. Valentyn Bondarenko extensively reworked tables to fix rendering issues (office/marknote MR #143 and office/marknote MR #169).
Valentyn Bondarenko also added a new dialog to add note links more easily (office/marknote MR #161) and added subtle animations to various parts of the UI (office/marknote MR #162 and office/marknote MR #168).
Shubham Shinde extended the search function of Marknote to also be able to replace text (office/marknote MR #154).
Siddharth Chopra added a source mode to Marknote, for people who prefer to edit Markdown using a plain text editor (office/marknote MR #118).
Carl Schwan improved the context menu, making it appear directly underneath the button and fixing some accessibility issues (office/marknote MR #166).
Finally, there was quite a bit of polish and refactoring done by the whole team in preparation for the release planned next week.
KMyMoney Personal finance manager based on double-entry bookkeeping
Ralf Habacker added a way to list all your unsaved reports and to delete multiple reports at the same time (office/kmymoney MR #322).
PIM Applications
Merkuro Calendar Manage your tasks and events with speed and ease
Yuki Joou redesigned the schedule view to be less crowded and more concise (pim/merkuro MR #573).
Yuki made it possible to set a start date also for tasks and not only for events (pim/merkuro MR #611). She also fixed the sort button state in the todo view (pim/merkuro MR #612), among other various small issues (pim/merkuro MR #579, pim/merkuro MR #609, pim/merkuro MR #610).
Zhora Zmeikin fixed a crash when editing or creating a new event (pim/merkuro MR #608).
Merkuro Mail Read and write emails
Yuki Joou also worked on Merkuro Mail and fixed various issues when sending emails (pim/merkuro MR #615).
Merkuro Contact Manage your contacts with speed and ease
Finally, Yuki added a way to copy phone numbers from a contact book entry easily (pim/merkuro MR #614).
KMail A feature-rich email application
Albert Astals Cid refactored how temporary files are stored so they are no longer stored in /tmp. This mostly helps in case multiple users use the same machine (pim/messagelib MR #334).
Kleopatra Certificate manager and cryptography app
Thomas Friedrichsmeier changed the font used by plain text email signatures in the Kleopatra and GpgOL.js email viewers to be monospaced, as many signatures depend on that (pim/mimetreeparser MR #91).
Creative Applications
Glaxnimate Vector Animation Editor
This week we celebrated the first release of Glaxnimate as part of KDE. Welcome to the family! The big highlights of this release are better integration with KDE in terms of theming, improvements in the animation timeline, and better SVG export and import. Read more in the full announcement.
In the development branch, Mattia Basaglia continued to improve Glaxnimate. This includes a brand new rendering engine based on ThorVG (graphics/glaxnimate MR #84). This means the rendering is now hardware accelerated, which is faster than the old QPainter-based renderer. Additionally, Mattia improved the backend (graphics/glaxnimate MR #86) and built an experimental WASM renderer based on it for the web (graphics/glaxnimate MR #87).
Multimedia Applications
KPhotoAlbum KDE image management software
Randall Rude updated the documentation (graphis/kphotoalbum MR #73).
Developers Applications
Kate Advanced text editor
Leia uwu fixed Kate so that when renaming a file, any open tabs with this file will also be updated accordingly (utilities/kate MR #2043).
KDevelop Featureful, plugin-extensible IDE for C/C++ and other programming languages
Martin Bednar added support for noexcept in the autocompletion model of KDevelop (kdevelop/kdevelop MR #858).
Network Applications
NeoChat Chat on Matrix
James Graham continued working this week on improving and polishing the new rich text editor in NeoChat (network/neochat MR #2730, network/neochat MR #2729, network/neochat MR #2722, ...)
Joshua Goins disabled the search feature in encrypted rooms as the server is not able to search in them (network/neochat MR #2724).
Kaidan Modern chat app for every device
Melvin Keskin improved the usability of the emoji picker and mentioning participants in a group chat (network/kaidan MR #1522).
System Applications
Dolphin Manage your files
Albert Mkhitaryan added keyboard shortcut support for service menu actions (system/dolphin MR #1167). So now you can assign a shortcut to the context menu actions provided by other applications or user scripts. See doc
Nicolai Sehrt added an option for forcing all tabs in Dolphin to have the same width (system/dolphin MR #1154). Méven Car also updated Dolphin so that, by default, tab widths are automatically determined by their title length (system/dolphin MR #1170).
Méven Car also centered most settings pages to be a bit more consistent with System Settings (system/dolphin MR #1192).
Nekto Oleg improved support for the S3 protocol in KIO-enabled applications like Dolphin. While S3 is commonly associated with Amazon Web Services (AWS), the implementation now also supports custom endpoints and is no longer limited to AWS-compatible services (network/kio-s3 MR #7, network/kio-s3 MR #8 and network/kio-s3 MR #9). Additionally, a new System Settings page makes it possible to configure multiple S3 providers at the same time (network/kio-s3 MR #9 and network/kio-s3 MR #10).
…And Everything Else
This blog only covers the tip of the iceberg! If you're hungry for more, check out This Week in Plasma, which covers all the work being put into KDE's Plasma desktop environment every Saturday.
For a complete overview of what's going on, visit KDE's Planet, where you can find all KDE news unfiltered directly from our contributors.
Get Involved
The KDE organization has become important in the world, and your time and contributions have helped us get there. As we grow, we're going to need your support for KDE to become sustainable.
You can help KDE by becoming an active community member and getting involved. 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. There are many things you can do: you can help hunt and confirm bugs, even maybe solve them; contribute designs for wallpapers, web pages, icons and app interfaces; translate messages and menu items into your own language; promote KDE in your local community; and a ton more things.
You can also help us by donating. Any monetary contribution, however small, will help us cover operational costs, salaries, travel expenses for contributors and, in general, keep KDE continue bringing Free Software to the world.
To get your application mentioned here, please ping us in invent or in Matrix.
08 Mar 2026 7:20am GMT
digiKam 9.0.0 is released
Dear digiKam fans and users,
After months of intensive development, bug triage, and feature integration, the digiKam team is thrilled to announce the stable release of digiKam 9.0.0. This major version introduces groundbreaking improvements in performance, usability, and workflow efficiency, with a strong focus on modernizing the user interface, enhancing metadata management, and expanding support for new camera models and file formats.
New Features and Major Changes
General Updates and Porting
digiKam 9.0.0 marks a significant milestone with the core code now fully ported to Qt 6.10.1 for the AppImage and macOS bundles, ensuring improved performance, security, and compatibility with modern operating systems. The Windows Qt6 bundle also benefits from the latest Qt 6.9.1 and KDE Frameworks 6.20.0.
08 Mar 2026 12:00am GMT
07 Mar 2026
Planet KDE | English
FOSDEM 2026
FOSDEM 2026
This year I had the chance to attend my first ever FOSDEM. My main objective there was the GCompris workshop in FOSDEM Junior track. It was an experimental one with the initiative from the organizer since it was only the third year that this track existed.
The workshop had way more adult attendees interested in GCompris for their children than children themselves. So, naturally, it turned more into a dev room than a workshop.
Me, together with the organizers came to a conclusion that GCompris isn't fit for the FOSDEM Junior, at least not in the form of: short presentation -> hands free experience.
The FOSDEM, for me, was very overwhelming. The amount of people in one place as well as having to choose from many different topics, navigating an unfamiliar city had me drained by the end of the first day. Mostly because of that, on the second day I had my workshop and attended only one talk.
Despite that, it was awesome to meet the people of KDE, experience solo travelling for the first time and get to know the core of open source.
07 Mar 2026 12:00pm GMT
This Week in Plasma: Polish and Stability
Welcome to a new issue of This Week in Plasma!
This was another week of focusing on bug-fixing and UI polishing. Not massively flashy stuff, but critical for the long-term stability of the platform. Check out the work:
Notable UI improvements
Plasma 6.6.2
The arrows in Discover's "See More" buttons are now in the right place and point in the right direction for both left-to-right and right-to-left languages. (Nate Graham, discover MR #1275)
Plasma 6.6.3
The Panel Spacer Widget no longer appears in the widgets sidebar, because it only makes sense to put on panels, and there's already a dedicated button to do that. (Tobias Fella, plasma-workspace MR #6376)
Allowed some labels in the Task Manager widget's tooltips to become multi-line instead of eliding. (Nate Graham, plasma-desktop MR #3598)
Plasma 6.7
Trying to save a color scheme with the name of an existing system color scheme no longer shows an accusatory and unclear error message; now it tells you you'll need to choose a different name, and then prompts you to do so. (Akseli Lahtinen, plasma-workspace MR #6316)
Enabled the "Global Shortcuts" KRunner plugin by default. (Nate Graham, plasma-desktop MR #3590)
Notable bug fixes
Plasma 6.6.2
Fixed a bug that made KWin crash if you used the kscreen-doctor tool to create a custom modeline while already using a different custom modeline. (Vlad Zahorodnii, KDE Bugzilla #516452)
Spectacle no longer crashes when you try to share a rectangular region screenshot using KDE Connect. (Noah Davis, KDE Bugzilla #516717)
Fixed various issues with Plasma's remote desktop server when accessed from a client running Microsoft Windows. (Nicolas Blackburn, krdp MR #148, krdp MR #149, krdp MR #150, and krdp MR #151)
Fixed a regression that made bridged Ethernet networks show an inappropriate icon in the Networks widget. VLANs still show the wrong icon though; hopefully that'll be fixed next week. Networking is complicated! (Nate Graham, KDE Bugzilla #516712)
Fixed a bug that made day names in the Digital Clock widget's tooltip not be capitalized with certain languages. (Alessio Bonfiglio, plasma-workspace MR#6289)
Plasma 6.6.3
Fixed a case where KWin could crash when using the kscreen-doctor tool to change the resolution of a virtual screen in certain ways. (Xaver Hugl, KDE Bugzilla #517198)
Fixed a bug that could make Plasma crash on login with certain multi-monitor setups. (Dobry Nikolov, KDE Bugzilla #516937)
Fixed a regression that prevented certain monitors from automatically dimming at the right times. (Xaver Hugl, KDE Bugzilla #516867)
Fixed a regression that made Spectacle sometimes crash when quitting, instead of quitting cleanly. (Noah Davis, KDE Bugzilla #517064)
Fixed a regression that could cause long-presses on desktop widgets to unexpectedly trigger interactive controls on them. (Marco Martin, KDE Bugzilla #517040)
Fixed two visual glitches affecting on/off switches in Plasma when using non-default Plasma styles. (Filip Fila, KDE Bugzilla #504116 and KDE Bugzilla #516542)
Plasma 6.7
Fixed a somewhat common way that Plasma would quit (not crash, actually quit) with a Wayland protocol error when certain monitors woke from sleep. (Vlad Zahorodnii, KDE Bugzilla #507691)
Fixed a bug that made Plasma's file transfer progress notifications claim that the total number of files was 0 in cases where the actual number was very very large. (Kai Uwe Broulik, plasma-workspace #6369)
Fixed a funny bug that made auto-hidden Plasma panels unexpectedly un-hide when the password dialog appeared while the "Dim Screen for Administrator Mode" effect was in use, which it is by default. (Vlad Zahorodnii, KDE Bugzilla #516864)
Frameworks 6.23.1
Worked around a Qt bug that was causing Plasma to repeatedly crash on login for some people. (David Redondo, KDE Bugzilla #514098)
Fixed a bug that caused KDE's desktop portal implementation to crash when copying certain content in a remote desktop session. (David Edmundson, KDE Bugzilla #515465)
Fixed various inter-related issues with the app database that could make favorite apps disappear from launcher menus and the Task Manager widget under certain circumstances, including when using certain JetBrains apps in auto-start mode. (Harald Sitter, KDE Bugzilla #516426 and KDE Bugzilla #507838)
PulseAudioQt 1.8.0
Fixed a bug that could make Plasma crash when you tried to access certain audio devices' profiles menus. (Harald Sitter, KDE Bugzilla #496067)
Notable in performance & technical
Plasma 6.6.2
Made the Global Menu widget more robust in the face of apps that lie about having any menus. (Christoph Wolk, plasma-workspace MR#6345)
Plasma 6.6.3
Made KWin's screencasting feature more robust when using PipeWire 1.6.0 or newer, which imposes stricter requirements compared to earlier versions. (Conn O'Griofa, kwin MR #8939)
Plasma 6.7
Let the kscreen-doctor tool modify the value of screens' AutoRotatePolicy key. (Xaver Hugl, libkscreen MR #291)
Made the kscreen-doctor tool capable of targeting the active screen, so you don't need to look up its technical ID. Also made it possible to toggle HDR and wide color gamut support simultaneously. (Yossef Rostaqi, libkscreen MR #294)
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.
07 Mar 2026 12:00am GMT
06 Mar 2026
Planet KDE | English
KDE Gear 26.04 branches created
Make sure you commit anything you want to end up in the KDE Gear 26.04 releases to them
Next Dates:
- March 12 2026: 26.04 Freeze and Beta (26.03.80) tarball creation
- March 13 2026: 26.04 Beta (26.03.80) release
- March 26 2026: 26.04 RC (26.03.90) tarball creation
- March 27 2026: 26.04 RC (26.03.90) Release
- April 9 2026: 26.04 tarball creation
- April 10 2026: 26.04 packages released to packagers
- April 16 2026: 26.04 Release
https://community.kde.org/Schedules/KDE_Gear_26.04_Schedule
06 Mar 2026 9:45pm GMT
Web Review, Week 2026-10
Let's go for my web review for the week 2026-10.
A new California law says operating systems need to have age verification
Tags: tech, law, surveillance
The stupid idea of age verification keeps spreading with ridiculous laws…
System76 on Age Verification Laws
Tags: tech, surveillance, law
Those dangerous and stupid laws keep popping out unfortunately. This is clearly a slippery slope as shown from the New York bill… We need to push back or the demands will keep growing. Let's hope Free Software communities won't try to preemptively comply, this would be short sighted and self-sabotage.
https://blog.system76.com/post/system76-on-age-verification
Ex-Meta lobbyist put in charge of EU's digital rules
Tags: tech, europe, law, politics, gafam
What could possibly go wrong? This is really a weird appointment.
Breaking Free
Tags: tech, quality, law
Is Norway about to become one of the first countries to become serious about enshittification? Will more follow? This would be welcome.
https://www.forbrukerradet.no/breakingfree/
AI Translations Are Adding 'Hallucinations' to Wikipedia Articles
Tags: tech, wikipedia, ai, machine-learning, gpt, quality
This is concerning, hopefully the amount of issues which get through will be limited.
https://www.404media.co/ai-translations-are-adding-hallucinations-to-wikipedia-articles/
Text is king
Tags: tech, reading, culture, history, social-media
Yes there's a dip, but this piece presents compelling evidence that it's not the death of literacy we're sometimes screaming at. It is also a love letter to reading and writing.
https://www.experimental-history.com/p/text-is-king?ref=DenseDiscovery-378
prek: ⚡ Better pre-commit, re-engineered in Rust
Tags: tech, version-control, git, tools, quality
This looks tempting. I guess I'll try this one instead of pre-commit when I get the chance.
qman: A more modern man page viewer for our terminals
Tags: tech, documentation, unix, tools, command-line
Didn't know about this one. Looks like a nice alternative to the venerable man command.
Message Passing Is Shared Mutable State
Tags: tech, multithreading, reliability
Interesting piece which challenges the shared-memory vs. message-passing dichotomy. It message passing indeed gets rid of data races but nothing more. Of course this is nice already, but that doesn't mean you can't have the other families of concurrency bugs creeping in.
https://causality.blog/essays/message-passing-is-shared-mutable-state/
fast-servers
Tags: tech, server, services, performance
We got options beyond poll() nowadays.
https://geocar.sdf1.org/fast-servers.html
Rust zero-cost abstractions vs. SIMD
Tags: tech, rust, optimisation, simd
Yes, Rust like C++ comes with zero cost abstractions. Still they can get in the way of some compiler optimisations. This is an interesting case preventing vectorisation.
https://turbopuffer.com/blog/zero-cost
Hardware hotplug events on Linux, the gory details
Tags: tech, kernel, systemd, hardware
Wondering how udev communicates with the kernel? And then broadcast events? This covers the basics.
https://arcanenibble.github.io/hardware-hotplug-events-on-linux-the-gory-details.html
Log messages are mostly for the people operating your software
Tags: tech, logging
A reminder that logs are not for the developers first but for operation.
https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/programming/LogMessagesAreForOperation
Nobody Gets Promoted for Simplicity
Tags: tech, engineering, complexity, management
Rampant complexity in software is also a management issue. Are we sure we're rewarding the right things?
https://terriblesoftware.org/2026/03/03/nobody-gets-promoted-for-simplicity/
Go Beyond the Test Pyramid: Test Desiderata 2.0
Tags: tech, tests, tdd
It's been a while that I started to consider the test pyramid as fairly limiting for our thinking about tests. The dimensions proposed here give a more comprehensive model to reason about.
https://coding-is-like-cooking.info/2026/02/go-beyond-the-test-pyramid-test-desiderata-2-0/
Use the Mikado Method to do safe changes in a complex codebase
Tags: tech, refactoring, legacy
You probably want to complete this with a higher level plan if the goal is a larger modernization. That being said, it's a good approach for mid-level to small goals you'd want to tackle.
https://understandlegacycode.com/blog/a-process-to-do-safe-changes-in-a-complex-codebase/
The Eternal Promise: A History of Attempts to Eliminate Programmers
Tags: tech, programming, history, ai, machine-learning, copilot
This fantasy regularly comes back. Yet, the tools evolve, might improve some things but the core difficulties of programming don't change. At each hype cycle our industry over promises and under delivers, this is unnecessary.
https://www.ivanturkovic.com/2026/01/22/history-software-simplification-cobol-ai-hype/
Yes, and…
Tags: tech, programming, engineering, ai, machine-learning, gpt
Very good essay on why the developer profession is not going away. On the contrary we need to double down on essential skills and put in the work. This is long overdue anyway.
https://htmx.org/essays/yes-and/
I'm a philosopher who tries to see the best in others - but I know there are limits
Tags: philosophy, trust
Interesting point, looking for agency seems like a good criteria. It highlights it's not a simple test though. I'd add that trust matters and that's built over time.
Bye for now!
06 Mar 2026 11:10am GMT
05 Mar 2026
Planet KDE | English
What's new in QML Tooling in 6.11, part 1: QML Language Server (qmlls)
The latest Qt release, Qt 6.11, is just around the corner. This short blog post series presents the new features that QML tooling brings in Qt 6.11, starting with qmlls in this part 1. Parts 2 and 3 will present newly added qmllint warnings since the last blog post on QML tooling and context property configuration support for QML Tooling.
05 Mar 2026 8:57am GMT
Third beta for Krita 5.3 and Krita 6.0
Today we're releasing the third beta of Krita 5.3.0 and Krita 6.0.0.
The bug-squashing continues, We received 63 bug reports in total, of which we managed to resolve 8 for this release, making a total of 22 fixed bugs. Beyond that, the manual has been updated for 5.3 and 6.0, complete with dark theme!
Please keep testing and reporting!
Note that 6.0.0-beta3 has more issues, especially on Linux and Wayland, than 5.3.0-beta3. If you want to combine beta testing with actual productive work, it's best to test 5.3.0-beta3, since 5.3.0 will remain the recommended version of Krita for now.
To learn about everything that has changed, check the release notes!
5.3.0-beta3 Download
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.
-
64 bits Windows Installer: krita-x64-5.3.0-beta3-setup.exe
-
Portable 64 bits Windows: krita-x64-5.3.0-beta3.zip
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.
- 64 bits Linux: krita-5.3.0-beta3-x86_64.AppImage
MacOS
Note: minimum supported MacOS may change between releases.
- MacOS disk image: krita-5.3.0-beta3-signed.dmg
Android
Krita on Android is still beta; tablets only.
Source code
See the source code for 6.0.0-beta3
md5sum
For all downloads, visit https://download.kde.org/unstable/krita/5.3.0-beta3/ 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).
6.0.0-beta2 Download
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.
-
64 bits Windows Installer: krita-x64-6.0.0-beta3-setup.exe
-
Portable 64 bits Windows: krita-x64-6.0.0-beta3.zip
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.
- 64 bits Linux: krita-6.0.0-beta3-x86_64.AppImage
MacOS
Note: minimum supported MacOS may change between releases.
- MacOS disk image: krita-6.0.0-beta3-signed.dmg
Android
No Krita 6.0.0 for Android for now. Please use the 5.3.0-beta3 APKs.
Source code
md5sum
For all downloads, visit https://download.kde.org/unstable/krita/6.0.0-beta3/ 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).
05 Mar 2026 12:00am GMT
KDE Gear 25.12.3
Over 180 individual programs plus dozens of programmer libraries and feature plugins are released simultaneously as part of KDE Gear.
Today they all get new bugfix source releases with updated translations, including:
- kdeconnect: Fix clicking on plugin's row doesn't change plugin's status (Commit, fixes bug #514923)
- neochat: Don't scroll the timeline when reacting to messages (Commit, fixes bug #515306)
- umbrello: Fix crash when deleting a complete scene (Commit, fixes bug #516457
Distro and app store packagers should update their application packages.
- 25.12 release notes for information on tarballs and known issues.
- Package download wiki page
- 25.12.3 source info page
- 25.12.3 full changelog
05 Mar 2026 12:00am GMT
04 Mar 2026
Planet KDE | English
Sound-reactive Sideboard
A project that I had planned for quite some time came to fruition last year, now I finally found time to document the result. My livingroom sideboard looked messy and kind of boring while not blending in anymore with the updated style of my living room. I wanted to turn it into a striking centerpiece of the room.
The plan was to install a sound-reactive lighting system. I wanted the light effects to be detailed and not disturbed by ambient sound in the living room, i.e. it sound not react to people's voices, just the music playing.
My living room sideboard is an off-the-shelf product from IKEA that I bought many years ago. It didn't have doors installed, but I was delighted that I could still buy matching doors with windows in them.
To realize the light effects, I've installed frosted plexi glass inside the windows.
Getting technical…
To control the LEDs, I'm using an ESP32-based LED controller with a line-in module and an ADC (analog-digital converter). After some experimenting, I've found this board to work well. I've connected 6 WS2812B LED strips to 3 pins and installed them with an aluminium profile into the doors. The frosted windows and profiles diffuse the light nicely so you can't make out individual LEDs really.
On the software side, I'm using a sound-reactive port of the WLED project. WLED is Free and Open Source software, of course. Though its user interface can be a little unwieldy, it's also very powerful and integrates nicely with homeassistant, so it can be controlled automatically.
The ESP32, being a rather powerful dual-core microcontroller, can process the incoming audio signal on one core (using fast-fourier transformation) and compute complex LED effects on the other core. Rendering up to 200 frames per second to 2 times 210 LEDs is no problem while power consumption of just the controller stays well under 1W. Pretty impressive! Depending on the LED effects (number of LEDs lit up at a given time and their colors), the whole thing hardly ever reaches 10W of power consumption.
Another functional goal of this project was to solve cooling issues of my amplifier once and for all. The amp would run really hot and shut off after playing at higher volume for some time. I installed a bunch of 12cm fans which suck air through the amplifier and blow it out on the backside. Both amp and and fans are connected to smartplugs. I turned to my homeassistant and set up an automation which turns the fans on whenever the amp's power consumption reaches a certain level. This works really nicely, since the fans never spin at lower volumes (when you could hear them through the music) and keep everything cool and running stable at higher volume when it's necessary - without human interaction.
Walnut finish
The outer shell of the sideboard is made of walnut wooden panels with an oil and varnish finish, thanks to my friend Joris. The oil gives it a darker look and accentuates the grain, matching the speaker system. The matte varnish finish (Skylt, highly recommended for its durability and natural look) allows me to sleep well even if people put their drinks on it.
I love it when a plan comes together!
I'm really happy with the result. While I had thought it out for a long time already, it's always a lot more impressive when you see the final result in action.
The WLED firmware allows me to create interesting light effects. I can run the 3 doors as one, but also easily split them up into segments so each door panel renders its own effect. WLED has ca. 200 different LED effects, many of them react to sound. Each effect can be combined with one of 50 color palettes, some of the palettes are sound-reactive in their own right leading to a very dynamic display.
One cool feature is that the processed sound data can be broadcast across the network (over UDP) and received by other WLED controllers, so I can have multiple LED displays in the house, each rendering their own effect to the music, creating a more immersive experience.
04 Mar 2026 10:50am GMT
03 Mar 2026
Planet KDE | English
Glaxnimate 0.6.0
Glaxnimate 0.6.0 is out! This is the first stable release with Glaxnimate as part of KDE.
The biggest benefit of joining KDE is that now Glaxnimate can use KDE's infrastructure to build and deploy packages, greatly improving cross-platform support. This allows us to have releases available on the Microsoft Store and macOS builds for both Intel and Arm chips.
But there is much more...
KDE-specific features
Glaxnimate now uses the KDE file recovery system making it more reliable.
Settings and styles also go through the KDE systems, which, among other things, lets you choose from more color themes for the interface.
Translations are also provided by KDE. This makes it easier to keep other languages up to date as Glaxnimate evolves. In fact, the number of available languages has increased from 8 to 26!
The script console has also been enhanced with basic autocompletion making scripting easier.
Timeline
The timeline dock now allows effortless scrolling and provides buttons that make moving to different keyframes, and adding and removing them easier too. This contributes to making the animation workflow much smoother.
Hiding and showing layers from the timeline now interacts with the undo/redo system.
You can also quickly toggle keyframe easing without having to navigate menus. Just hold down the Alt key and click on the timeline.
Format Support
SVG import and export has been re-worked, and precompositions are now properly exported and animations improved. You can even export an animation as a sequence of SVG frames.
Editing
We have improved the bezier editing tools, and included the ability to Alt-click on bezier points to cycle between tangent symmetry modes.
The Reverse path action is now implemented and works for all shapes. This is mostly useful when adding the Trim path modifier.
Bug Fixes
Version 0.5.4 included a significant refactoring of internal logic that introduced several bugs. These have now have been fixed.
Packager Section
The source code tarballs are available from the KDE servers:
URL: https://download.kde.org/stable/glaxnimate/0.6.0
Source: glaxnimate-0.6.0.tar.xz
Signed by: 97B71AA02D63EA6C5C44C23B962AC48EF0501F0B Julius Künzel julius.kuenzel@kde.org
03 Mar 2026 1:20pm GMT
Rocky Linux becomes KDE's newest Patron
Rocky Linux throws its support behind KDE, becoming our latest patron.
Rocky Linux is a stable, community-driven, and production-ready Linux distribution designed to be fully compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Rocky Linux powers clouds, supercomputers, servers, and workstations around the world.
"Sustainable Open Source depends on great open-source communities supporting each other" said Brian Clemens, Co-founder and Vice President of the Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation. "We do our best to support our upstreams, and backing KDE was an easy choice for us given the popularity of the Rocky Linux KDE spin."
"As a user-first community, KDE creates solutions to address real-world needs" said Aleix Pol, President of KDE e.V.. "We are excited to welcome Rocky Linux as a KDE Patron and see KDE's software shine on Rocky Linux, their enterprise-ready operating system."
Rocky Linux joins KDE e.V.'s other patrons: Blue Systems, Canonical, g10 Code, Google, Kubuntu Focus, Mbition, Slimbook, SUSE, Techpaladin, The Qt Company and TUXEDO Computers, who generously support FOSS and KDE's development through KDE e.V.
03 Mar 2026 12:00am GMT
KDE Plasma 6.6.2, Bugfix Release for March
Tuesday, 3 March 2026. Today KDE releases a bugfix update to KDE Plasma 6, versioned 6.6.2.
Plasma 6.6 was released in February 2026 with many feature refinements and new modules to complete the desktop experience.
This release adds a week's worth of new translations and fixes from KDE's contributors. The bugfixes are typically small but important and include:
03 Mar 2026 12:00am GMT
02 Mar 2026
Planet KDE | English
SOK2026: Porting energy measurement scripts of KEcoLab to Wayland
About me #
Hi Everyone ,I am Hrishikesh Gohain a third year undergraduate student in Computer Science & Engineering from India. For the past few weeks I have been working as a Season of KDE mentee with my mentors Joseph P. De Veaugh-Geiss ,Aakarsh MJ and Karanjot Singh. This post summarizes the work I have done until Week 5.
About KEcoLab #
KDE Eco is an ongoing initiative by the KDE Community that promotes the use and development of Free , Open Source and Sustainable Software. KEcoLab is a project that allows you to measure energy consumption of your software through ci/cd pipeline using a remote lab.It also generates a detailed report which can further be used to document and review the energy consumed when using one's software and to obtain Blue Angel eco certification.
About the SOK Project #
The Lab computer on which the software runs for testing was migrated to Fedora 43 recently, which comes with Wayland by default. Writing Standard Usage Scenario scripts, which are needed to emulate user behavior, was previously done with xdotool, but that will not work on Wayland. My work so far has been to port the existing test scripts to a Wayland-compatible tool. For those who want to contribute test scripts to measure their own software , the current scripts can be taken as a reference. My next tasks are to prepare new test scripts to measure energy usage of Plasma Desktop Environmen itself.
Work done so Far #
Week 1 #
In the first week I studied the Lab architecture and how testing of software is done using KEcoLab. The work done by past mentees as part of SOK and GSoC was very helpful for my research which you can read here , here and here. I also set up access to the lab computers through SSH. RDP access had some issues which were solved with the help of my mentors. To replicate the lab environment locally, I set up a Fedora 43 Virtual Machine so that I can test scripts under the same Wayland environment as the lab PC. I also documented and published a blog about the project and shared with my university community to promote the use of Free and Open Source Software and how it relates to sustainability.
Week 2 and Week 3 #
I communicated with my mentors and other community members to decide the new wayland compatible tool. After evaluating different options, we decided to use:
- ydotool: for key press, mouse clicks and movements (works using the uinput subsystem)
- kdotool : for working with application windows (focusing, identifying window IDs, etc.)
A combination of tools was required to meet all our requirements. To help future contributors, I published my first blog on Planet KDE explaining how to set up and use ydotool and kdotool . I also imported the repositories into KDE Invent for long term compatibility and wrote setup scripts for easier installation and configuration. These tools did not work out of the box and I had to make some workarounds and setup before usage which i documented in the blog.
Week 4 and Week 5 #
During these weeks, along with my mentors, I installed and set up the required tools on the Lab PC. I then ported the test scripts of Okular from xdotool to ydotool and kdotool and did testing on my local machine first. Currently, the CI/CD infrastructure through which these scripts run on the Lab PC is temporarily broken due to the migration to Fedora 43. Once these issues are fixed, we will test the new Wayland compatible scripts on the actual lab hardware and compare the results with previous measurements.
Next Steps #
I will be working on measuring energy usage of Plasma Desktop Environment itself. It will be more challenging than measuring a normal software application because Plasma is not a single process. It is made up of multiple components such as KWin (compositor), plasmashell, background services, widgets, and system modules. All of these together form the desktop experience.
Unlike normal applications like Okular or Kate, Plasma is always running in the background. So we cannot simply "open" and "close" it like a normal app. Because of this, some changes may be required in the current way of testing using KEcoLab.
To properly design the Standard User Scenario (SUS) scripts for Plasma, I will discuss closely with my mentors and also seek feedback and suggestions from the Plasma community. Defining what should be considered a "standard" usage pattern will require careful discussion and community input.
Lessons learned #
It has been a very amazing journey till now. I learned how to make right choices of tools/software after properly understanding the requirements instead of directly starting implementation.
Thank You Note #
I'd like to take a moment to thank my mentors Aakarsh, Karanjot, and Joseph. I am also thankful to the KDE e.V. and the KDE community for supporting us new contributors in the incredible KDE project.
KEcoLab is hosted on Invent. Are you interested in contributing? You can join the Matrix channels Measurement Lab Development and KDE Eco and introduce yourself.
Thank you!
02 Mar 2026 4:30pm GMT
This Month in KDE Apps
A lot of progress in Marknote and Drawy, a new homepage for Audiotube, and a rich text editor in NeoChat
Welcome to a new issue of "This WeekMonth in KDE Apps"! Every week (or so) we cover as much as possible of what's happening in the world of KDE apps.
It's been a while since the last issue, so I'll try my best to summarize all the big things that happened recently.
Office Applications
Marknote Write down your thoughts
A lot happened in Marknote. We released version 1.4.0 of Marknote, which contains a large number of bug fixes. It also includes a few new features. Siddharth Chopra implemented undo and redo in the sketch editor office/marknote MR #91 and Valentyn Bondarenko made it possible to drag and drop images inside Marknote office/marknote MR #90. Valentyn has also been busy fixing many bugs and improving the stability of Marknote.
In the development branch even more happened. Shubham Shinde added a note counter to the notebook sidebar indicating the number of notes in each notebook office/marknote MR #110. Additionally, Shubham implemented text search inside a note office/marknote MR #109; drag-and-drop support for moving notes between notebooks office/marknote MR #111; internal wiki links between notebooks office/marknote MR #115; a table of contents panel office/marknote MR #112; and a button to copy the whole note content office/marknote MR #108.
Valentyn Bondarenko further improved the drag-and-drop support for images, which now supports multiple images at once office/marknote MR #104; made image loading async office/marknote MR #99; ported some custom FormCardDelegates to the newer standardized delegates now available in Kirigami Addons office/marknote MR #144 office/marknote MR #122; added support for code blocks office/marknote MR #146 and block quotes office/marknote MR #142; significantly improved support for tables office/marknote MR #143; and delivered an even bigger list of bug fixes, code refactoring, and UI polish.
A new release should follow soon :)
Drawy Your handy, infinite brainstorming tool
Drawy saw a massive wave of improvements and new features this month. Prayag delivered a major UI overhaul that includes a new hamburger menu graphics/drawy MR #295; improved zoom and undo/redo controls graphics/drawy MR #193; and a more uniform appearance across the app. He also improved the saving mechanism to correctly remember the last used file graphics/drawy MR #345.
Laurent Montel was busy expanding the app's core capabilities, implementing a brand-new plugin system to make adding new tools much easier graphics/drawy MR #352; Laurent also added a color scheme menu to switch themes graphics/drawy MR #372, and introduced the ability to customize keyboard shortcuts.
Nikolay Kochulin greatly enhanced how you interact with content, adding support for styluses with erasers and the ability to export your finished canvas to SVG graphics/drawy MR #258; Nikolay also made bringing media into Drawy a breeze by adding support for copying and pasting items, pasting images directly graphics/drawy MR #285, and dragging and dropping content straight onto the canvas graphics/drawy MR #322.
Finally, Abdelhadi Wael polished the visual experience by making the canvas background automatically detect and respect the system's current light or dark mode theme graphics/drawy MR #380.
Okular View and annotate documents
Jaimukund Bhan added a setting to open the last viewed page when reopening a document graphics/okular MR #1324.
Ajay Sharma made it possible to open embedded file attachments in Okular graphics/okular MR #1312.
Travel Applications
KDE Itinerary Digital travel assistant
Carl Schwan modernized some dialogs to be more convergent using Kirigami Addons' ConvergentContextMenu pim/itinerary MR #413.
As always, there were also improvements in terms of ticket support. Carl Schwan improved support for Hostel World, GetYourGuide, and FRS ferries. Volker Krause improved support for FCM flights and French TER. Tobias Fella added support for Gomus annual tickets.
Volker Krause also posted a blog post about all the other improvements in the Itinerary/Transitous ecosystem.
PIM Applications
Akonadi Background service for KDE PIM apps
We removed support for Kolab. If you are using Kolab with KMail, you will need to reconfigure your account with a normal IMAP/DAV account pim/kdepim-runtime MR #154.
We also switched the default database backend to SQLite for new installations pim/akonadi MR #311.
Merkuro Calendar Manage your tasks and events with speed and ease
Zhora Zmeikin fixed a crash when editing or creating a new incidence (25.12.3 - pim/merkuro MR #608).
Yuki Joou fixed various small issues in Merkuro Calendar (25.12.3 - pim/merkuro MR #610, pim/merkuro MR #611, pim/merkuro MR #609, pim/merkuro MR #579).
Merkuro Mail Read and write emails
Carl Schwan added basic support for displaying travel reservations in the mail view pim/mimetreeparser MR #90.
Creative Applications
Kdenlive Video editor
Swastik Patel and Jean-Baptiste Mardelle added support for showing animated previews in the transition list (26.04.0 - multimedia/kdenlive MR #816).
Multimedia Applications
Photos Image Gallery
Valentyn Bondarenko added support for the standard zoom-in and zoom-out shortcuts in Photos (26.04.0 - graphics/koko MR #267).
Kasts Podcast application
Bart De Vries refactored the sync engine to be a bit more efficient (26.04.0 - multimedia/kasts MR #315 multimedia/kasts MR #305).
AudioTube YouTube Music app
Carl Schwan added a home and explore pages to Audiotube (multimedia/audiotube MR #179) and ported the convergent context menu to the standardized one in Kirigami Addons.
Utilities Applications
Kate Advanced text editor
Leia uwu added a way to clear the search history (26.04.0 - utilities/kate MR #2044).
KomoDo Work on To-Do lists
Akseli Lahtinen released Komodo 1.6.0 utilities/komodo MR #72. This release adds Markdown-style inline links, fixes some parsing issues, and removes the monospace font from tasks.
Clock Keep time and set alarms
Micah Stanley added a lockscreen overlay for the timer utilities/kclock MR #244 and improved the existing one for the alarms utilities/kclock MR #243.
Network Applications
NeoChat Chat on Matrix
James Graham rewrote the text editor of NeoChat to be a powerful rich text editor (network/neochat MR #2488). James also marked threading as ready, and this feature is no longer hidden behind a feature flag (network/neochat MR #2671); improved the avatar settings (network/neochat MR #2727); and, as always, delivered a lot of polishing all around the place.
Joshua Goins improved the messaging around various encryption key options (network/neochat MR #2687).
Tokodon Browse the Fediverse
Aleksander Szczygieł fixed replying to posts with multiple mentions (network/tokodon MR #796).
System Applications
Journald Browser Browser for journald databases
Andreas Cord-Landwehr introduced a common view for system and user unit logs (system/kjournald MR #79).
Supporting libraries
Kirigami Addons 1.12.0
Carl Schwan released Kirigami Addons 1.12.0.
George Florea Bănuș added some missing description and trailing properties to a few of the FormCard delegate components (libraries/kirigami-addons MR #421, libraries/kirigami-addons MR #410). Carl Schwan made the configuration dialog modal (libraries/kirigami-addons MR #419). Hannah Kiekens fixed the templates for KAppTemplate (libraries/kirigami-addons MR #434). Volker Krause made the date and time picker locale-aware and fixed some issues with RTL layouts (libraries/kirigami-addons MR #431).
…And Everything Else
This blog only covers the tip of the iceberg! If you're hungry for more, check out This Week in Plasma, which covers all the work being put into KDE's Plasma desktop environment every Saturday.
For a complete overview of what's going on, visit KDE's Planet, where you can find all KDE news unfiltered directly from our contributors.
Get Involved
The KDE organization has become important in the world, and your time and contributions have helped us get there. As we grow, we're going to need your support for KDE to become sustainable.
You can help KDE by becoming an active community member and getting involved. 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. There are many things you can do: you can help hunt and confirm bugs, even maybe solve them; contribute designs for wallpapers, web pages, icons and app interfaces; translate messages and menu items into your own language; promote KDE in your local community; and a ton more things.
You can also help us by donating. Any monetary contribution, however small, will help us cover operational costs, salaries, travel expenses for contributors and, in general, keep KDE continue bringing Free Software to the world.
To get your application mentioned here, please ping us in invent or in Matrix.
02 Mar 2026 12:01pm GMT