Let’s go for my web review for the week 2025-20.

“Google wanted that”: Nextcloud decries Android permissions as “gatekeeping”

Tags: tech, android, google, nextcloud, syncing

Again, Google doing its thing to protect its advantage… In the end it’s the users who loose control.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/05/nextcloud-accuses-google-of-big-tech-gatekeeping-over-android-app-permissions/

Rampant AI Cheating Is Ruining Education Alarmingly Fast

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, teaching, learning, criticism

This is I think the most worrying consequences of this current hype. What happens when you get a whole generation which didn’t learn anything related to their culture? Is Idiocracy the next step? How close are we? At least, it will have made very obvious the problems with how our education system evolved the past twenty years (if not more).

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/openai-chatgpt-ai-cheating-education-college-students-school.html

If AI is so good at coding … where are the open source contributions?

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

Such contributions still don’t exist. Or their quality is so abyssal that they waste everyone’s time. Don’t fall for the marketing speak.

https://pivot-to-ai.com/2025/05/13/if-ai-is-so-good-at-coding-where-are-the-open-source-contributions/

Stack overflow is almost dead

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

Looks like the writing is on the wall indeed… The paradox is that an important training corpus for LLMs will disappear if it dies for good. Will we see output quality lower? Or ossification of knowledge instead?

https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/stack-overflow-is-almost-dead/

AI Is Like a Crappy Consultant

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

Unsurprisingly it works OK when it’s about finding syntax errors you made or about low stakes mechanical work you need to repeat. The leash has to be very short.

https://lukekanies.com/writing/ai-is-like-a-crappy-consultant/

In 2025, venture capital can’t pretend everything is fine any more

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, business, economics

It looks like desperate times for the venture capitalists behind the AI bubble…

https://pivot-to-ai.com/2025/05/03/in-2025-venture-capital-cant-pretend-everything-is-fine-any-more/

On Stochastic Parrots, commonly referred to as AI

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

A short collection of links (some already seen somewhere else in the review) which altogether draw a stark picture of the LLM industry.

https://kuchenmampfer.de/en/posts/2025/05/on-stochastic-parrots-commonly-referred-to-as-ai/

Introducing oniux: Kernel-level Tor isolation for any Linux app

Tags: tech, networking, linux, tor, tools, privacy

Nice new tool from the Tor project. Looks like it’ll make it really easy to push traffic to Tor from the command line.

https://blog.torproject.org/introducing-oniux-tor-isolation-using-linux-namespaces/

On the Brokenness of File Locking

Tags: tech, linux, filesystem

It is indeed in a weird state on Linux to say the least. Make sure to follow the links there, they lead to more precise resources.

https://0pointer.de/blog/projects/locking.html

Lock-Free Rust: How to Build a Rollercoaster While It’s on Fire

Tags: tech, multithreading, atomics, rust

Not a huge fan of the writing style. Still this gives a good idea of what you have to deal with when you’re trying to build lock free data structures. Here it’s illustrated with Rust, but it’s not Rust specific.

https://yeet.cx/blog/lock-free-rust/

Writing that changed how I think about PL

Tags: tech, programming, language, compiler

Looks like a good list of pointers to understand languages and compilers… More reading ahead!

https://bernsteinbear.com/blog/pl-writing/

Initialization in C++ is bonkers

Tags: tech, c++, programming

Yes… definitely is too complex. This standard seriously needs a pass of simplification, I’m not at all convinced profiles would be enough to help for cases like this.

https://blog.tartanllama.xyz/initialization-is-bonkers/

Strong Units Conversions - Fluent C++

Tags: tech, c++, type-systems

This is one of the perks of a strong type system. You can ensure that you don’t mess up your units.

https://www.fluentcpp.com/2017/05/26/strong-types-conversions/

Plain Vanilla

Tags: tech, web, frontend, html, css, javascript

Looks like a good resource for modern web development without frameworks.

https://plainvanillaweb.com/

(t,i,x,y) => “creative code golfing”

Tags: tech, graphics, mathematics

Good reminder of all the nice animations you can do with a few dots and a couple of simple equations.

https://tixy.land/

Naked objects

Tags: tech, software, architecture, object-oriented, ddd

Didn’t know this kind of architectural pattern had a name. Interesting. I wouldn’t recommend it in any context though, but one more metaphor to reason with.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_objects

From GOOD to GREAT software engineer — How does the journey of growth look like?

Tags: tech, leadership, learning, knowledge, communication

Quite some good advice in here. I like being around people who proactively communicate, mind the quality of the communication and look for new things to work on. Who wouldn’t?

https://andrewwinnicki.medium.com/from-good-to-great-software-engineer-what-does-the-journey-of-growth-and-love-look-like-db0a38897d3c

Remote versus Co-located Work

Tags: tech, remote-working, team, organization, agile, productivity

Good summary of the different possible options around remote work.

https://martinfowler.com/articles/remote-or-co-located.html

Cost and Time are not Irrelevant

Tags: tech, agile, estimates, business

Or why estimates need to happen in one way or another.

https://ronjeffries.com/xprog/articles/kate-oneal-cost-and-time-are-not-irrelevant/

When Consultants Should Fire their Client

Tags: tech, business

There are indeed cases where you don’t want to hurt your reputation…

https://ozar.me/2014/09/consultants-fire-client/

Bye for now!

Here are the new modules available in the Plasma 6.4 beta:

• aurorae
• kwin-x11

Since Akademy 2024, input handling improvements have been one of three KDE Goals with myself as a co-instigator. You may be wondering why you didn't see a series of dedicated blog posts on this topic, which I had hoped to write. Instead of taking accountability for a longer absence from Planet KDE, here's a quick recap of what's noteworthy and exciting right now.

Input improvements in KDE Plasma 6.4

Plasma 6.4 is scheduled to be released on June 17, 2025. The "soft feature freeze" is now in effect, which means we pretty much know which major changes will be included, only polish and bug-fixing work remains. On the input front, you can look forward to some quality of life improvements:

Nicolas Fella added an option to use a graphics drawing tablet in "Mouse" mode, also known as "relative mode". This allows you to use the stylus on your drawing tablet like you would use a finger on a laptop's touchpad.

Joshua Goins keeps updating his Art on Wayland website to keep track of current and past drawing tablet improvements. For this release, the Drawing Tablet settings page will now ask for confirmation after re-calibrating your device. He also added a visualization of pen buttons to the settings page, to make it clear which button you're configuring:

Xaver Hugl added a 3-finger pinch gesture for the desktop zoom accessibility feature, which is in addition to Ctrl+Meta+scroll or Meta-"+" / Meta-"-".

Nicolas Fella also implemented the accessibility feature called MouseKeys on Wayland. This lets you move the mouse pointer using numpad keys, and can be enabled in the Accessibility settings page.

Sebastian Parborg added an option to set "move file" as the default drag & drop behavior. This applies across all KDE software. By default, dropping a file in a different folder will continue to ask if it should be moved, copied or linked.

Christoph Wolk in particular just keeps fixing tons of bugs, including many input handling improvements. He's been tackling keyboard navigation issues, scrolling bugs, mouse hover, pasting, in all kinds of widgets and settings and apps. The list just goes on, here are some links from just the last two or so months: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. (There's more but you get the gist.)

Of course others are also actively fixing issues, like Akseli Lahtinen for custom tiling keyboard shortcuts and Dolphin file renaming. I'm frankly not able to keep up with everyone's contributions, but keep following This Week in Plasma to learn about the most notable ones.

I myself don't have much to show for Plasma 6.4. All my hopes for personally making an impact are staked on future work. I did, however, ask some very nice people if they're open to mentor projects within GSoC 2025. It appears this might pay off.

Funding for input handling improvements

Nate Graham keeps pointing out that we need more paid developers working on KDE software. Here are some popular ways to make this happen:

• Donate to KDE e.V. to help with important infrastructure and engineering work
• Get paid by companies like Valve, or governments, that want to use & improve KDE tech
• Pay yourself with your hard-earned retirement income, then work on what you think is most important
• Apply for grants from public benefit foundations and corporate initiatives

On that last bullet point, we recently received some nice funding commitments.

Google is perhaps best known for its repeated abuse of market power, getting convicted for huge fines only to do it again in a slightly different form. They also run a program called Google Summer of Code (GSoC), which is more positive. Every year, numerous students receive a stipend to write Free & Open Source code over the summer, to the benefit of organizations like KDE, mentored by existing developers from the community. On May 8, Google announced the accepted projects for this year. KDE was assigned 15 student projects across a variety of apps and infrastructure efforts. One of these is particularly relevant to our Input Goal.

Starting in June, Yelsin 'yorisoft' Sepulveda will work on improving game controller support in KWin. Yelsin jumped right into the community by asking great questions on Matrix, learned about KDE development by getting several changes merged into Angelfish (KDE's mobile-friendly web browser), and already published an introductory blog post with more details about the project. We're excited to mentor Yelsin and get one of the oldest open Plasma bugs fixed in the process.

NLnet Foundation is an organization that supports open software, open hardware, open data and open standards. At Akademy 2024, Jos van den Oever of NLnet held a talk and encouraged KDE contributors to apply for funding there and elsewhere. Unlike many other granting organizations, NLnet allows individuals to apply for comparatively small grants with very limited bureaucracy, between 5,000 and 50,000 EUR for first-time applicants. Last year, they already supported various improvements in accessibility and drawing tablet support in Plasma.

Natalie Clarius and I applied to NLnet following Akademy 2024. Our project would make multi-touch gestures configurable through System Settings, as well as implement stroke gestures (a.k.a. mouse gestures) for Plasma on Wayland. In April this year, NLnet approved this project together with many other open source initiatives. We've seen a lot of user requests for this functionality, so I'm happy to work on upstreaming this functionality going forward. We're currently ramping up our efforts - stay tuned for actual merge requests and UI designs.

What's also great is InputActions by taj-ny, which is a third-party plugin for KWin that provides customization for multi-touch gestures via text file. Its next release should include stroke gesture support as well. I'm glad that my prototype from last year was useful as a starting point for this. Getting code into upstream KWin and System Settings requires a different approach though, so it still makes sense for the NLnet project to go ahead.

NLnet approved a second KDE-related grant in the same batch, for Accessible KDE File Management by diligent Dolphin maintainer Felix Ernst. In addition to targeted improvements for Dolphin, this project will also benefit the KDE-wide Open/Save dialog, as well as settings for editing shortcuts. Felix with prior experience in accessibility and (obviously) Dolphin is ideally suited for this work.

You may be able to get NLnet funding too. Primary requirements:

• Expertise in a given area of the KDE codebase that you want to improve.
• Patience to sit down and write a detailed project plan.
• Flexibility to wait for up to half a year for confirmation.

Note: Like all such foundations, NLnet has some favorite topics including mobile, accessibility, or federated internet infrastructure. If you're interested in this kind of funding for KDE work, feel free to ask me about more details.

Input at the Plasma Sprint

In late April I dropped by at the recent Plasma Sprint 2025 in Graz, which you may have seen in other posts on Planet KDE already. Among many other topics, we briefly discussed the direction of further input-related developments.

Previously, Xuetian Weng (a.k.a. csslayer, the long-term maintainer of the fcitx5 input method framework) proposed a unified way to manage keyboard layout, input methods, and other input related tools. The gist of the proposal is that each input method (IM) would be associated to a keyboard layout in System Settings. In the linked issue, he argues that this is a better fit for Plasma than the approaches of other platforms for configuring language, layout and input methods. I briefly presented Xuetian's proposal at the Sprint and there was a general consensus that this is a sensible way forward.

There was a question about how to deal with devices that don't have a keyboard connected to begin with. We considered some options and compared our thoughts with the actual keyboard hot-plugging behavior of a sprint attendees' Android phone. Same conclusion either way: each connected keyboard should correspond to a separate layout/IM selection, and the absence of a keyboard will likewise correspond to its own input method. Multiple input devices can be supported by switching configurations upon key-press or (dis)connect events. If we can implement this, it should turn out more versatile and still simpler than Plasma's current settings.

We also discussed the virtual keyboard prototype plasma-keyboard and its most important blockers for getting included in Plasma Desktop / Plasma Mobile. It looks like the major concerns have been captured in the issue queue already, so what's needed now is a developer to buckle down and fix them one by one. Also, testing in more languages.

KDE Needs You!

Lots of movement overall. That said, not all of these plans have someone actively working on it. We really do need more hands on deck if we want the Input Goal proposal to be a smashing success. If you are interested to work with the community on input handling, stipend or not, we can help you to help KDE. Drop by in #kde-input:kde.org on Matrix if you need mentorship to guide your contributions, MR reviews to get your patches landed, or any other kind of support.

Here's a small selection of efforts that would really benefit from your development chops:

• Test and improve plasma-keyboard so we can ship it with Plasma.
• Make Xuetian's proposal for unified keyboard layout and input method settings a reality. This can be split into smaller tasks:
  • Settings page changes
  • Quick-switching between input methods
  • Adapting fcitx5
• Pave the way for speech-to-text, emoji input, and other small input helpers.
• Confirm and/or fix any bug from this long list.
• Anything input-related that excites you!

Let's get these gaps filled. Until next time. And don't forget to drop by at Akademy 2025 in Berlin for more Input Goal discussions!

Introduction

Hello! I’m Azhar, a Computer Science student who loves open-source development and contributing to KDE. This summer, I’m excited to be working on the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) project at KDE Community to integrate more KDE libraries into OSS-Fuzz.

While KDE already has some libraries integrated into OSS-Fuzz, such as KArchive, KImageFormats, and KCodecs, there are many more libraries that could benefit from this integration. The goal of this project is to expand the coverage of OSS-Fuzz across KDE libraries, making them more secure and reliable.

What is OSS-Fuzz?

OSS-Fuzz is a SaaS by Google to automatically find bugs and vulnerabilities in open-source projects through fuzz testing. Fuzzing involves feeding random or unexpected data into a software to uncover vulnerabilities that might otherwise go unnoticed. OSS-Fuzz continuously runs fuzz tests on the integrated open-source projects, reporting any crashes or issues found. This helps maintainers identify and fix bugs quickly, improving the overall quality of the software.

As of May 2025, OSS-Fuzz has helped identify and fix over 13,000 vulnerabilities and 50,000 bugs across 1,000 projects.
Source: OSS-Fuzz GitHub repository

Image from OSS-Fuzz GitHub repository, licensed under Apache 2.0.

Project Goals

The main goal of this project is to integrate more KDE libraries into OSS-Fuzz. This involves:

1. Identifying libraries: Analyzing the existing KDE libraries and identifying those that would benefit from OSS-Fuzz integration.
2. Creating fuzz targets: Writing fuzz targets for the identified libraries. A fuzz target is a specific function or API that will be tested with random data.
3. Integrating with OSS-Fuzz: Setting up the integration with OSS-Fuzz, including creating Dockerfile and a build script.
4. Testing and debugging: Running the fuzz tests and debugging any issues that arise during the process.

The objective is to integrate as many as KDE libraries possible into OSS-Fuzz by the end of the GSoC period, thereby enhancing the overall security and reliability of KDE software.

Initial Libraries

The following libraries have been identified for initial integration into OSS-Fuzz:

KFileMetaData

KFileMetaData is a library for reading and writing metadata in files. It supports various file formats, including images, audio, and video files. KFileMetaData is used by Baloo for indexing purposes. This means that many files may be processed by KFileMetaData without the user’s knowledge, making it a critical library to fuzz.

KMime

KMime is a library to assist handling MIME data. It provides classes for parsing MIME messages. KMime is used by various KDE applications, including KMail. This again means that the library may process malformed or unexpected data without the user’s knowledge.

KDE-Thumbnailers

KDE has many thumbnailer libraries, such as KDE-Graphics-Thumbnailers. These libraries are used to generate thumbnails for various file formats, including images, videos, and documents. These thumbnailers are used by Dolphin/KIO to generate previews of files and can be exposed to untrusted data.

Conclusion

Integrating KDE libraries into OSS-Fuzz is an important step towards improving the security and reliability of KDE software. Expanding OSS-Fuzz coverage to more libraries will help KDE maintainers quickly identify and fix bugs before they become problems for users.

KIO (KDE Input/Output) is what allows KDE applications to transparently and asynchronously access files, both local and over the network. It also provides many of the user interfaces for manipulating files, such as the Places panel, Open/Save dialog, folder properties, new file menu, and many more. The other day I went through some of its dialogs and gave them a slight overhaul.

When clicking an executable file, it confirms whether to really run it. In case of text-based programs, like shell scripts, it further offers to open it in the default application (usually a text editor). Previously it merely asked “What do you wish to do with this file?”. Now it actually includes the application icon, name, and type of file, to let you make an informed decision. While this might seem redundant, it’s possible that you are launching it from a place other than the file manager where the file might not in fact be just behind the dialog. In my opinion, it also makes it a lot nicer looking.

Including the name of the application that will open the file (e.g. “Open with Kate”, similar to the download finished notification) makes it a lot clearer what button will launch the file and what will just view it. For some reason I’ve always had a hard time picking the right option without thinking about it first – a mere “Open” felt somewhat ambiguous here.

The dialog that lets you pick a file name for a new file or folder received similar treatment and now displays the file type icon. It’s a nice visual touch that lets you know what the item you’re about to create is going to look like. More importantly, though, it now offers a selection of folder colors and icons! This way you can assign a custom icon to a folder as you’re creating it. This makes the fact that this is possible a lot more obvious.

It additionally remembers whether you expanded the icon section. If you use the feature, you’ll get it right then and there, and if you don’t, it shouldn’t bother you. It further keeps track of what custom icons you have picked, if any, so that over time the list will contain all the folder icons that you commonly use. We’re also considering to add a context menu entry to quickly assign colors and icons after the fact, implementing a long-standing feature request.

Finally, the Open/Save file dialog provided by the XDG Desktop Portal (typically used by your web browser and Flatpak applications) are properly modal to their parent application. Qt 6.8 brought support for the XDG Dialog protocol that enables windows be marked as modal. However, Qt only used it if the dialog’s parent window was in the same application. I fixed that for the upcoming Qt 6.10 (luckily it’s allowed to mark a dialog as modal without a parent window and then assign one afterwards) but in order to get this issue resolved for our users right now, I adjusted KWindowSystem to use XDG Dialog, too, when running a more contemporary Qt version.

Leaving the subject of dialogs, a while ago I added a busy indicator to the Places panel while devices are being (un)mounted. It now also shows while the trash is being emptied, should there be lots of stuff in it that takes a while to get rid of. The Trash widget in Plasma does so, too. While at it, I fixed bringing a running Dolphin instance to the front when clicking the Trash widget placed in a panel.

Last but not least, KIO finally prevents the system from going to sleep while copying or moving files!

Kdenlive 25.04.1 is now available, containing several fixes and improvements. Fixed bugs and improvements include :

• Fix effect stack layout that sometimes prevented accessing some parameters
• Fix a crash when loading many clips and switching project profile
• Further speed increase for audio thumbnails generation
• Reduce memory usage of the automask feature, allowing to create masks for longer clips

It is nice to note that these two last changes were made by Balooii, a new Kdenlive contributor!

See the full changelog below.

Welcome to a new issue of "This Week in KDE Apps"! Every week we cover as much as possible of what's happening in the world of KDE apps.

Creative Applications

Krita Digital Painting, Creative Freedom

Wolthera van Hövell continued to work on text rendering this week. She made the text rendering mode editable, so now it's possible to switch between text rendering optimizing speed, legibility, or geometric precision, and an automatic mode (link). She also fixed a bug where the resource system was slow because font metadata was not erased when removing the font (link).

Maciej Jesionowski improved the performance of the status bar by optimizing a function called in the hot path (link).

Kdenlive Video editor

Balooii optimized the process of downloading the online resource thumbnails. Kdenlive now downloads the thumbnails in parallel and converts them to pixmaps directly in memory (link). They also sped up audio thumbnail generation by 2.5x (link)!

Balooii also fixed some misalignment of the monitor tools which were caused by some rounding errors (link).

Travel Applications

KTrip Public transport navigator

Volker Krause and Carl Schwan worked on the departure page of KTrip, redesigning it completely and fixing a few bugs (link 1, link 2, link 3 and link 4).

Social Applications

NeoChat Chat on Matrix

James Graham ported the message delegate from QML to C++ to reduce the memory usage of the timeline (link) and reworked the implementation of the hover actions (link).

Office Applications

Calligra Sheets Spreadsheet

Pierre Ducroquet fixed the SEARCH function (link) and a crash when decoding some formulas (link).

Utilities

Barcode Scanner Scan and create QR-Codes

Salvo Tomaselli optimized the battery usage of Qrca by stopping the camera on mobile devices when the Qrca is in the background (link). He also made Qrca remember the last device used (link).

…And Everything Else

This blog only covers the tip of the iceberg! If you’re hungry for more, check out Nate's blog about Plasma and be sure not to miss his This Week in Plasma series, where every Saturday he covers all the work being put into KDE's Plasma desktop environment.

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 just keep KDE bringing Free Software to the world.

To get your application mentioned here, please ping us in invent or in Matrix.

Hello KDE Community!

My name is Yelsin 'yorisoft' Sepulveda. I'm an engineer with experience in DevOps, Site Reliability, and Cloud Computing. I joined KDE as part of the GSoC application process early last month and have been contributing to a few projects ever since. Miraculously, my GSoC proposal has been selected! Hallelujah! Which means over this summer I'll be working on implementing game controller input recognition into KWin.

About the Project

Currently, applications directly manage controller input, leading to inconsistencies, the inability of the system to recognize controller input for power management, and unintentionally enabling/disabling "lizard mode" in certain controllers. This project proposes a solution to unify game controller input within KWin by capturing controller events, creating a virtual controller emulation layer, and ensuring proper routing of input to applications. This project aims to address the following issues:

• System Power Management: KWin lacks controller input recognition, preventing activity reporting and causing premature system sleep.
• "Lizard Mode": When KWin opens a file descriptor for certain gaming controller devices (like the Steam Controller and Steam Deck Controller), this disables those controllers' lizard mode (keyboard and mouse input emulation), since the controller detects that a program is now handling input?even if KWin isn't actively using it.
• Decentralized Input Handling: Individual application input handling results in inconsistent input parsing and limited remapping capabilities.

Project Goals

The primary goals of this project are to:

• Enable KWin to capture and process game controller input events.
• Implement a virtual controller emulation layer within KWin.
• Route physical controller input 1:1 to emulated devices, including haptics.
• Prevent system sleep during active controller use.
• Manage "lizard mode" for compatible controllers.
• Establish a foundation for future features: global remapping, haptics settings, and advanced Wayland protocols.

About Me

I often spend my time surfing the internet learning new things, spending quality time with family and friends, or picking up new hobbies and skills-such as music! You could say I'm someone who likes to jump between multiple hobbies and interests. As of late, I'm learning a new snare solo and how to build an online brand.

I started my career as a DevOps Engineer and SRE where I learned tools like Jenkins, Docker, and Terraform. I then transitioned to a Solutions Architect role where I worked with many different cloud technologies and helped other companies design their cloud architecture. I am relatively new to contributing to open-source projects but have been an avid user of Linux and open-source tools for over 4 years, and am committed to learning and growing in this community. Check me out on GitHub.

Google Summer of Code (GSoC) is a training/mentorship program that allows new contributors to open source to work on projects for 175 to 350 hours under the guidance of experienced mentors.

KDE will mentor fifteen projects in this year's Google Summer of Code.

Merkuro/Akonadi

Merkuro is a modern groupware suite built using Kirigami and Akonadi. Merkuro provides tools that allow you to manage your contacts, calendars, todos, and soon email messages.

This year, the focus is on making Merkuro more viable on mobile. Pablo will work on removing the QtWidgets dependency from the Akonadi background processes, which will reduce RAM consumption. Shubham Shinde will port some configuration dialogs to QML, making them easier to use on Plasma Mobile. This project will be mentored by Aakarsh MJ, Claudio Cambra, and Carl Schwan.

NeoChat

NeoChat is KDE's Matrix chat client.

Sakshi Gupta will work on adding video call support to NeoChat using LiveKit. This work is mentored by Tobias Fella and Carl Schwan.

KDE Linux

KDE Linux is a new distribution the KDE Community is developing.

Desh Deepak Kant will work on a new website for the project. Derek Lin will develop a Virtual Machine Manager named Karton, and Akki Singh will port the ISO Image Writer project to QML. These projects will be mentored by Harald Sitter, Tobias Fella, and Nicolas Fella.

Plasma

Good news for gamers: Yelsin Sepulveda will work on improving game controller support in KWin. This work will be mentored by Jakob Petsovits and Xaver Hugl.

Cantor

Cantor is a frontend for many mathematical tools and languages.

Nanhao Lv will work on integrating KTextEditor as the default text editor, replacing the current custom editor. Zheng JiaHong will add support for Python virtual environments to the Python backend. These projects are mentored by Alexander Semke and Israel Galadima.

Security

Azhar Momin will work on adding more KDE libraries to OSS-Fuzz to help identify bugs and security issues through fuzzing. This project is mentored by Albert Astals Cid.

Kdenlive

Kdenlive is KDE's video editor.

Ajay Chauhan will work on enhancing timeline markers by supporting range-based markers while maintaining backward compatibility. This project is mentored by Jean-Baptiste Mardelle.

Krita

Krita is an outstanding digital painting application.

Ross Rosales will develop a floating action bar for managing layers. This work is mentored by Emmet O'Neill.

GCompris

GCompris is an educational suite containing many activities.

There is work in progress to also include a management GUI for teachers to create custom datasets. Ashutosh Singh will work on implementing the UI to manage several existing activities. Johnny Jazeix and Emmanuel Charruau will mentor this project.

Mankala

Srisharan V S will add AI opponents to the Mankala game. This project is mentored by Benson Muite.

Mentorship Portal

Anish Tak will work on improving the mentorship.kde.org website. This project is mentored by Paul Brown and Farid Abdelnour.