When I joined KDE in 1999 I already thought of it as a mature project. I used the KDE desktop every day, and I was delighted with what it could do and how it felt. I had no idea that this would be one of the most impactful decisions of my life, or where it would lead me.
Today we are celebrating the 30th anniversary of the original announcement of KDE. The project is still alive and kicking. I still use it every day, just like millions of other people. Not only because it's great software, but because of the values it embodies.
KDE stands for freedom and being able to shape your own destiny. As the KDE vision says: "A world in which everyone has control over their digital life and enjoys freedom and privacy." While I originally joined for the technology, this is what made me stay.
One of my favorite pictures illustrating the spirit of the community is the group picture of Akademy in Dublin in 2006. Brilliant people having fun working towards a shared purpose of digital freedom.
KDE gets a wonderful present for its birthday. The KDE documentary is premiering today. It tells the story of the founding, the rapid early development, and the license conflicts. How it became a solid product used by many people, and then put it all at risk with KDE 4. How we learned from that and turned it into this extremely resilient and lively community it still is today. I'm happy I could contribute to this story, and that I'm one of the people telling it in the documentary.
For me, KDE shaped my career and my life, and gave me the opportunity to grow and learn. It led to things I would never have expected when I started: my code running on millions of computers, talking to hundreds of developers at conferences, sitting at the negotiation table with Nokia in Helsinki, consulting as an expert in the German parliament. And much more.
Today, KDE is maybe stronger than ever. We reached a lot of new users with the Steam Deck. The Sovereign Tech Fund is investing more than a million euros in KDE. With the strategic goals the community set this year, we are addressing enterprise, documentation, and styling. It shows how much the project has matured, beyond what I could ever have imagined. It also shows in its contributors. While contributors leave over time, new generations come in every year and keep the community growing over the long run, combining stability and rejuvenation.
I'm proud and grateful. Proud of what the KDE community achieved. Grateful that I could be part of this amazing group of people. A team nobody could have hired.
KDAB have just published a video featuring me talking about design, QML, and something I keep coming back to: what happens when the tools we use to make software become more capable, while the interfaces we build with them seem to get increasingly predictable?
This started with me playing around with QML, trying to see how far I could push some ideas about the look and behaviour of an interface.
Things that are perhaps a little excessive, things that might be annoying in everyday use, things that are difficult to justify in a design review. The sort of things you might want to try before somebody with more of a brain than you explains why you shouldn't.
And its something I have been thinking about for some time, the place we leave for this kind of work, particularly in open source.
OSS has a rather unusual relationship with creativity. We can inspect how things work, modify them, share our experiments, and build on each other's work. There is room for someone to follow an idea simply because it interests them, it does not require a market research, there is no need to demonstrate that it will appeal to the largest possible audience before writing the first line of code or in my case drawing the first squigly line in inkscape.
And yet, sometimes our projects can be surprisingly cautious about appearance. We globaly spend a great deal of effort making software coherent and predictable, which is understandable and a good thing when you have to maintain it for years and support a wide range of users. But those concerns can also make it difficult to explore alternatives. The existing conventions gradually become the boundaries of what we consider reasonable. Trust me I was that guy shooting down what I believed were bad ideas. because of all the work that it would create, or because it was just 2 insane etc....
BUT
Now as a designer, I find that a little frustrating. Especially when the technology itself offers so many possibilities. I don't expect every application to become an animated art installation, and I certainly don't want every interaction to demand my attention (expect the ones I create ;)) . But I'd like to see more people curious about what an interface could be, rather than starting from what an interface is supposed to look like.
Which brings me to OxygenLabs.
We started a new repository under KDE in the playground area, intended as a space for exploring visual ideas and seeing where they lead.
What interests us is the willingness to put care into visual details, to explore a particular character or mood, and to take the appearance of software seriously enough to question the usual answers.
We would like OxygenLabs to give that process somewhere to happen. Not every piece of work needs to arrive as a finished feature, actually the opposite and not every experiment needs to graduate into a product. Sometimes it is useful just to make something, live with it for a while, and find out what you learn from the experience.
For now it just has 2 things I was playing with, one of them a request people have for a long time to be able on only use colourful icons . on the plasma panel via giving the icons KCM area a specific configure option per theme...
Anyway, that's the thinking behind it. The video goes into some of the questions that led me here, and OxygenLabs is a small, practical way of exploring them.
Have a look at both, and let me know what you think. I'm curious to see what comes out of this.
Plasma 6.8 is released on a very special day: KDE’s 30th birthday. Today we celebrate three decades of the KDE community providing the world’s greatest free and open-source software.
Plasma 6.8 is no exception, offering enhancements across much of the user experience and beneath the surface.
6.8 is all about launching Plasma into the future: adding changes you’ll notice right away, combined with major but subtle improvements designed to set the stage for decades of service to come.
Dive in and find out what the desktop environment of tomorrow looks like!
Watch the KDE Documentary The Story of Free Software Underdogs, tonight, October 14th at 19:00 CEST.
A script element has been removed to ensure Planet works properly. Please find it in the original post.
A script element has been removed to ensure Planet works properly. Please find it in the original post.
Improvements you can use today
Better accessibility
Part of our continued effort to bring digital control to everyone, a new “dwell clicker” feature can send a mouse click when the pointer stops moving. Designed especially for users with mobility issues, an external app is no longer required to use your system in this way; now it’s built right in!
Serving more users worldwide
Plasma 6.8 gains support for the Bikram Sambat calendar in the Digital Clock, and the Amharic language in the on-screen keyboard. These are just two more additions of the dozens incorporated into Plasma over recent versions in our effort to make Plasma a truly universal desktop.
Bikram Sambat calendar
Amharic on-screen keyboard
System monitoring
Gain an extreme level of control over your system with Plasma’s System Monitor. In Plasma 6.8, you can assign compute-intensive tasks to only the CPUs of your choosing from directly within the monitor, and keep your machine running smoothly.
You can also monitor your VRAM more easily, as it now shows the load as an easy-to-read percentage.
Remote desktop
We’ve invested a great deal of time into polishing the experience provided by Plasma’s built-in remote desktop server. In Plasma 6.8, you’ll be able to enjoy the following improvements — with more in the pipeline:
Much better performance and quality that prioritizes latency and responsiveness by adapting to slow networks and rapidly-updating screen content.
Exclusive mode optionally locks the server’s screen and provides the client with a virtual screen that exactly matches its window size.
Bi-directional clipboard synchronization makes it easier to exchange content between the server and client.
These features will only take effect in remote desktop client apps that support them.
Screen casting and recording
Spectacle can now optionally include both system audio and microphone input in its screen recordings, making it possible to narrate a recording or accurately record everything that’s going on.
Plasma’s screen sharing portal dialog lets you create a virtual screen to share, instead of an existing display. In Plasma 6.8, you can now specify the resolution of the virtual screen instead of being limited to only 1920 × 1080.
In addition, the quality of screen recordings and screencasts has been improved.
Nicer-looking third-party app windows
We’ve added support for window rules that add desktop shadows, outlines, and rounded corners to client-side-decorated windows that can’t provide these visual niceties themselves. Plasma 6.8 ships with one such rule for Steam, making it feel more at home in Plasma.
BeforeAfter
Window management
We’ve added new global shortcuts to help power users manage their open windows with the Task Manager widget. By pressing Meta + Ctrl + Page Up or Page Down, you can cycle between the previous and next tasks. By also holding Shift, you can move the active task backwards and forwards.
Setting the stage for decades to come
Theming
Four months ago, Plasma 6.7 included an alpha release of the new Union theming system, demonstrating its ability to style Qt Quick applications.
Plasma 6.8 builds on this with a beta release of Union, including not only refinements for Qt Quick theming, but also the ability to style Qt Widgets applications! This includes KDE’s more traditional desktop applications, such as Dolphin, Kate, and Konsole.
Dolphin themed with Union’s Breeze style. Can you tell the difference?
While Union is not quite ready to be used by default, Plasma 6.8 brings it ever closer to being a single source of truth for styling all of KDE’s products, and more. To learn more about the current state of Union, read the blog posts from Arjen and Akseli.
To try Union, ensure the union package is installed (name may differ depending on your distribution), apply “Breeze (Union)” in System Settings → Colors & Themes → Application Style, then restart your apps or the system.
Apps are expected to look nearly identical to how they do with the traditional Breeze theme. If you’ve found a Union-specific issue, please report it.
If you’re interested in experimenting with creating your own Union style, you can find out more in Union’s documentation.
Wayland
30 years is an impressive milestone for a community like KDE. But even older is the venerable X Window System (or “X11”), first released in 1984! After 42 years of faithful service, support for starting X11 sessions in Plasma is being retired, in conjunction with full adoption of the newer Wayland system.
Compared to X11, Wayland offers better support for modern screens and graphics cards, and is actively developed.
The small number of individual apps that still require X11 will continue to work via the “XWayland” compatibility layer.
KDE applications will continue to support X11 for the foreseeable future.
Performance, colors, and graphics
As part of the backend improvements included in Plasma 6.8, we’ve made changes to help Plasma load faster and use less memory. Discover’s update notifier now uses less memory, too.
With KWin, NVIDIA GPUs now use triple buffering by default, and all users will have better-looking HDR when using an ICC color profile. We’ve also added support for the HLG transfer function, which means that certain media and applications that did not previously work in HDR are now working as expected.
But that’s not all…
Plasma 6.8 is chock-full of smaller changes, including:
A new kscreenctl tool makes managing displays from the command-line easier and also offers the potential for scripting and automation.
Kup, the KDE backup tool, has been polished up and is now released as a part of Plasma.
We have added EAP-TTLS authentication support for StrongSwan VPNs.
You can enable and disable auto-starting apps without having to delete and recreate their entries.
Use the arrow keys to move screens pixel-by-pixel in Display Configuration.
The system shows a warning notification when trying to print using an unavailable printer.
Copying secrets such as passwords to the clipboard now clarifies why they are not included in history.
Emojis in the Emoji Selector can now be shown at different sizes.
…and countless bug fixes and small tweaks to make Plasma better than ever!
The second maintenance release of the 26.08 series is out with the usual batch of stability fixes and workflow improvements. Highlights include improved project handling and ability to set the frame count to start at 1 in the Dynamic Text filter which is useful for animation workflows. This release also fixes several issues in proxy clips, titles, and audio levels.
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.
This year’s edition of International Calligraphy Festival Keralam was yet another great experience, consisting of workshops, demonstrations and talks surrounding calligraphy & typography, much like the last time. Eminent calligraphers of about a dozen scripts shared their expertise and experience.
Pictures of a sample collection of the calligraphy works at the exhibition below.
For my talk, I presented the historical evolution of Malayalam script from rock inscriptions to the digital age, and how the vigilant volunteer community reclaimed the script with its rich conjuncts and conjoined reph/matra shapes, and made all the foundational digital technologies openly available for public good.
Many type designers, companies and enthusiasts were also at the 4-day programme, enabling lot of productive hallway talks as well. A recurring question was the usage of Open Font License, which I hope to have helped to clarify.
The most useful feedback after the talk came from a good friend, who pointed that my slides didn’t do enough justice to the body of work we’ve done (particularly as open-source); and helped me walk through some possible improvements. I did make some of those changes, and the slides (created using TeX) are made available.
This allowed us to remove all the expected fail marks which were still present on some of the tests.
With this QA safety net in place, we’ve been working on landing long-needed improvements around DAV support. For instance, it’s been migrated away from KIO to use QNetworkAccessManager leading to a large performance boost. Further performance enhancement is expected from the work to port the DAV Akonadi resource to ObserverV3 allowing batching of some operations.
IMAP4rev2 and WebDAV-Push
The work on QRESYNC support in the IMAP Akonadi resource has been completed, providing a very nice boost to email syncing by making it faster, and drastically reducing the network bandwidth used for a sync. This pretty much concluded the work on the IMAP4rev2 upgrade of our stack.
This allows us to move to the next step which is integration of the various components involved and the addition of new end-to-end tests to validate the whole chain.
An interesting side effect of this work has been the need to implement support for DAV sync-tokens, which is supported by most servers. This will simplify calendar syncs even if your server doesn’t support WebDAV-Push. We expect it to improve the syncing of calendars in a similar way to the improvements with emails we’ve experienced with QRESYNC.
This work is not completed yet, with a few merge requests still in flight. But expect next year’s release to fly for syncing IMAP and DAV.
Security
Plasma’s security infrastructure received a great deal of work in Q3. Much of it is non-flashy, but rather intended to shore up and modernize the foundations. As part of that work, Plasma’s lock screen gained a more flexible system that supports multiple authentication methods being configured and made available in different combinations:
Work is now ongoing to apply this feature to Plasma Login Manager, and share more security infrastructure between them.
Recoverability
Work began on adding a “safe mode” to Plasma, wherein you’ll be able to log into a dedicated troubleshooting environment that offers tools to help you get back to a working session.
This work is all in progress, with parts expected to start landing in Q4.
Work also began to remove blocking file access calls in KDE software, so that network shares accessed via mounts (FUSE or otherwise) are less likely to cause freezes and hangs — starting with Dolphin.
Data integrity
Q3 also saw a significant amount work on the topic of data integrity, from multiple angles.
First, the kio-snapshot service built in Q2 received a large amount of technical and user interface polish to make it a practical and reliable tool for users whose systems take Btrfs snapshots.
The Baloo file indexing system was also made aware of Btrfs snapshots — specifically, how to not index them!
And because the concept of “free space” can be somewhat fuzzy on snapshotted filesystems, work is ongoing to surface information in more comprehensible ways, starting with KDE’s Filelight app.
Leveraging this expanded use of KConfigXT, the team created a GUI config editor app that offers system administrators the ability to graphically visualize and change configuration options. This app is still a work in progress, but shows the promise and potential of fully adopting schema-based configuration.
Account Autoconfig
On the PIM side, work to ease setup is moving towards exposing the new facilities to the user. Indeed, the KAccountAutoconfig library is almost feature-complete with one patch still to go through review.
Once it’s merged, we’ll start the process of moving the library to KDE Frameworks, and then begin integrating it into KOnlineAccounts and the individual PIM apps. We already have a prototype port of kmail-account-wizard to use this new library — a good first use of this library to prove it works properly.
Kontact Flatpak
Last but not least, work on the Kontact Flatpak integration with Plasma has started, and we’re currently scoping out requirements. The dependency chain between Plasma and the PIM stack will be completely reworked: it will be D-Bus based, and we’re working on defining the interfaces.
Attending Akademy 2026 definitely helped, as we got interesting input during the PIM BoF on the direction to take. This will lead to options which might benefit more contexts than the desktop, and so hopefully one day help Plasma Mobile as well.
Stay tuned for more details when the implementation work will be underway.
Looking forward
User-facing work has begun! We anticipate that this will continue in Q4 of 2026. And we’re very grateful for the Sovereign Tech Agency’s investment in KDE that made this possible!
Great news for the community! The integration of QML Quick Editor into Qt Creator is now 100% complete. The plugin is officially available, bringing native workflow integration directly to your development environment. Give it a try, and let us know what you think!
Features:
Designed as an all-in-one QML code editor, this extension allows you to quickly prototype and test QML snippets without the overhead of creating a full project. Simply edit your code and preview the visual output instantly inside Qt Creator—speeding up your UI experimentation and debugging workflow.
This week, Plasma contributors put the finishing touches on Plasma 6.8, which is due to be released early next week, on October 14th.
A lot of the work was behind the scenes, and that’s why this week’s update may look a bit light. But nevertheless, here’s the bigger stuff that we thought was worth reporting on specifically:
Notable UI improvements
Plasma 6.8
When the Weather Report widget isn’t able to fetch any weather data, its tooltip now explains this, rather than being a tiny empty square. (Christoph Wolk, kdeplasma-addons MR #1154)
Improved keyboard navigation using arrow keys in KRunner. (Christoph Wolk, milou MR #110)
Plasma 6.9
You can now disable the notification that Spectacle shows when it begins recording the screen. (Kai Uwe Broulik, spectacle MR #596)
System Settings’ Printers page now asks you to check your firewall when it can’t find any network printers. (Mike Noe, KDE Bugzilla #526465)
The virtual desktop thumbnails in KWin’s Overview effect are now more harmonious and visually pleasing. (Abdallah Hammad, kwin MR #10036)
When using upower-1.91.4 or later, if your keyboard doesn’t have a backlight or doesn’t support controlling its backlight via software, the Brightness & Color widget will no longer show a spurious control for it anyway. (Tristyn Russelo, KDE Bugzilla #525916)
Plasma 6.8
Discover’s feature to automatically apply updates now always works for Flatpak apps. (Tobias Fella, KDE Bugzilla #519082)
Fixed key repeat with the Slow Keys accessibility feature. (Vlad Zahorodnii, KDE Bugzilla #523419)
Fixed an issue that could cause lags and stutters when tiling windows while using certain NVIDIA GPUs with the proprietary NVIDIA drivers. (Xaver Hugl, KDE Bugzilla #522424)
Fixed a case where Qt-based apps using blur could crash when a tooltip disappeared while you were typing. (Anton Karasev, KDE Bugzilla #522547)
Country flags used to distinguish keyboard layouts now look better when using a scale factor over 100%. (Zhora Zmeykin, kguiaddons MR #235)
Notable in performance & technical
Plasma 6.9
You can now control the brightness level of backlit keyboards that are connected after login. (Tristyn Russelo, powerdevil MR #691)
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
Qt 6.11, a temporary ruler assistant, and more. Read on for a look at development news and the Krita-Artists forum's featured artwork from last month.
Krita 5.3.4.1 Released
The hotfix release Krita 5.3.4.1 contains a single regression fix, for a bug that caused assigning display profiles to not work. This is important for color management. (change by Nicholas LaPointe)
Developments in Krita Plus
Qt 6.11.0
The Krita 6 builds now use version 6.11.0 of the Qt framework instead of 6.8.0. While work was done to avoid regressions, please report any new issues you find. On the other hand, this update may fix some bugs as well. (change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
Touch Input Refactor
Dmitry has rewritten touchscreen and trackpad gesture support. This adds support for trackpad gestures to Krita 6 on Wayland, as well as some fixes. (change)
Developments in Krita Next
Temporary Straight Ruler Action
New actions which temporarily create a Ruler assistant and snap brushstrokes to it called "Temporary Straight Ruler" have been added to Canvas Input. The Normal version is assigned to V+Left Click by default, which was previously assigned by default to Activate Line Tool, and the Snapped Angle version that snaps to 15 degree angles is assigned to Shift+V+Left Click by default. (change, by Ayanami Kaine)
Brushtip Export Dialog Fixes
The predefined brushtip chooser's create Stamp and Clipboard brushtip dialogs have been combined into a single "Create New" dialog that reuses the GBR/GIH brushtip export dialog. This makes sure they all share the same features, with the GBR/GIH export dialog gaining the Preserve Alpha option and the Create New brushtip dialog gaining the dimensions/ranks settings and Velocity animated mode. This also fixes creating a brushtip from an image in the clipboard. (bug; change by Freya Lupen)
Scripting API Additions
The scripting API has gained new features. Freya added signals to the Canvas class for changes in the canvas's state such as zoom or rotate (change). The functions View.brushPosition to get the live brush position and Node.paintPolylineStroke to paint brushstrokes on a node using artifical input sensor values such as pressure and tilt from the new class StrokePoint were added by Moritz Staudinger (change 1, change 2).
For October's theme, last month's winner has chosen "Costume / Disguise". The optional challenge is to fit your artwork into a non-rectangular shape. Will such a costume show or disguise what's in one's heart?
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
Krita Plus (Stable, 5.3.5/6.0.5-prealpha):
File Formats: KRZ: Don't warn on export that .krz won't save guides, because it does save them. (change, by Carsten Hartenfels)
General: Recolor the Support Krita icon and add the Manual icon to the welcome page. Add icons for Document Info, System Info, various animation frame actions, isolate group/layer, brush option slider, increase/decrease property. (change 1, change 2, change 3, change 4, change 5, change 6, change 7 by Arkady Flury)
Krita Next (Unstable, 5.4.0/6.1.0-prealpha):
Transform Tool: Fix an issue calculating whether Perspective transforms are valid. (change by Dmitry Kazakov)
Input: Fix horizontal scrollwheel shortcuts not working. (change by Dmitry Kazakov)
Layers: Allow changing the filter on an existing filter layer or mask in its Properties. (change by Moritz Staudinger)
Animation: Make sure the change frame action keyboard shortcuts work even if the current layer is not animated, and don't conflict with the Pan Tool's shortcuts. (bug; change by Iris Hormoviti, Dmitry Kazakov)
Animation Curves Docker: Disable left-click scrolling in the animation curves docker, as it's erratic. The scrollbar should be used instead. (bug; change by Carsten Hartenfels)
General: Improve hex color inputs to update when the text changes, and trim leading and trailing whitespace from color text pasted into it. (change by Luna Lovecraft)
Canvas Input: Allow the Mirror View action to be assigned to a touch gesture input. (change by zemus 00)
Recorder Docker: Allow the selection tools and the Freehand Path Tool, Crop Tool, Text Tool, and Move Tool to be recorded, by capturing the frames in a way that doesn't rely on locking the image. (change by Luna Lovecraft)
File Formats: PSD: Save and load the collapsed state of layer groups and the locked state of layers in PSD files. (change 1, change 2 by Igor Wect, Damien Picard)
Gradient Tool: Add Bayer Matrix dithering options to the Gradient Tool. The previous Dither checkbox is now the Blue Noise dithering option. (change by Jakub Nowakowski)
Python Plugins Manager: Show plugin status information including any errors in a tab alongside the manual. Also, allow broken plugins to be disabled. (change by Freya Lupen)
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 (5.3.5/6.0.5 prealpha): Linux Qt6Qt5 — Windows Qt6Qt5 — macOS Qt6Qt5 — 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 Qt6Qt5 — Windows Qt6Qt5 — macOS Qt6Qt5 — Android arm64 Qt5 – Android arm32 Qt5 – Android x86_64 Qt5
Proving Rust Web Application Correctness with Lean 4
Tags: tech, safety, formal-verification, rust
As usual with such provers the model is fairly constraining. But nowadays it seems to start being usable in more cases. Deriving the Lean code from the source code is nice too.
A bit of an advertisement for the author’s book but the advice makes sense. The strangler fig pattern indeed works at smaller scales. Grow the new API first, test it, then port.
pinheiro
obiwan_kennedy
