Kubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa and 21.10 Impish Indri continue to be supported.
Users of 21.04 can follow the Kubuntu 21.04 to 21.10 Upgrade instructions.
Should for some reason your upgrade be delayed, and you find that the 21.04 repositories have been archived, instructions to perform a EOL Upgrade can be found on the Ubuntu wiki.
Up to today, Okular would kind of error out when opening a PDF file that contains a signature field that was unsigned (think like the old space in paper forms saying "sign here")
It would tell you "document is signed but can't be properly validated"
And that was it, you couldn't do much with the signature. When you tried to "see" it all the fields would be default like "Signed at 1 Jan 1970", etc.
With the new code we properly detect that there are unsigned signatures and we offer to sign them when interacting with it
In my Keyboard Fun post from last year I talked a bit about my interest in mechanical keyboards.
Since then, I played around with a few more keyboards/switches/keycaps/…
Interesting enough, beside the actual hardware, naturally there is some software component to all these keyboards, too.
Whereas most commercial keyboards still come with proprietary firmware, there is the trend within the keyboard enthusiast scene to go for open-source firmware.
This allows you to properly update the firmware even from your Linux machine and do proper configuration of e.g. the keymap, too.
I supports a mass of keyboards out of the box already and is actively extended by both volunteers and some companies.
That means it is deployed not only on main stream products but even in more exotic projects like the “I improve my vintage and modern Model M keyboards” by Eric S. Raymond.
VIA
Whereas QMK provides the open-source firmware part and you can do close to everything with it that is possible, given the features your hardware actually has, it is hard for simple task like “I want that my key x does y”.
Naturally you can change the keymap in your QMK port and compile & flash.
But even I would call this a sub-optimal workflow, given a lot of commercial offerings at least provide some GUI to do this on the fly.
For sure, it is an Electron based monster, but it provides a cross-platform UI for QMK based keyboards that allow on the fly configuration of at least the common things, like keymaps.
And it provides trivial things like testing all your keys, which is not that unneeded, given I was too dumb to properly install all my hot-swap switches ;)
VIA UI
Actual Keyboard?
Naturally, after this talk about the software side, all this makes no sense without an actual keyboard using it.
As I use the German ISO layout for typing, I am more limited on product choices than e.g. people using the ANSI layout.
It is really frustrating that where ever you look for some cool keyboard project, in many cases no ISO variant is available.
And yes, I don’t want to switch to ANSI, I like to have my umlauts easily accessible and I can’t swap all keyboards I need to use at work with ANSI variants, others would be not amused.
Therefore, if you are in need of some ISO layout keyboard, you might be interested in the information below.
If you use ANSI, ignore all this, there are masses of ANSI keyboards out there to buy, with QMK, too.
I have done no great research how the keyboard I did choose compares to them, for ISO there were not that many available contenders that were 75%, hot-swap and QMK ready.
After some trial and error I went with a Keychron Q1 75% keyboard.
It is available in ISO layout, unfortunately only as bare bone kit, that means you must buy your own switches and keycaps.
It naturally comes already with factory installed QMK, nice, above the VIA screenshot was actually from this board on my Linux machine.
For switches, I went with some BOX Navy switches, they are very heavy but have a nice click ;)
Even my office neighbor is happy with the sound and hasn’t yet attacked me.
I won’t link random reviews of them, you can search for that yourself if you are interested.
In any case, yes, they are HEAVY, really, you can believe that from the reviews.
And they are loud, but in no bad way.
For keycaps, yeah, same issue with the German ISO layout, there are not many sets that are available.
At work I now have some SA profile set from Signature Plastics, they are able to produce sets with proper legends and no missing German keys, unlike some other vendors I tried (and yes, I tried it with cheap vendors, it seems not to be trivial at all print all the proper German keys at all and not just forget them in the package…).
Funny enough, shipping from US did take 4 weeks, even with air express, USPS seems to be not the fasted variant of travel.
If others play with the idea to buy there, I must confess the quality is really good, but they are expensive, if you don’t require exotic layouts like German, I would rather go with some cheaper sets, for US ANSI even the cheapest I tried out were ok, without obvious faults.
sting all your keys, which is not that unneeded, given I was too dumb to properly install all my hot-swap switches ;)
Keychron Q1 Ice Cap Keycaps
If you look a bit more around on the picture you will see I have still my good old Nokia rubber ducky, a sole survivor from the time Nokia owned Qt :P
And no, I don’t use a Mac, that is just one we use for our compile farm.
At home I went with some MT3 profile set without any legends, that is really cheap and funny enough did take only 4 days from US to Germany with standard UPS.
Keychron Q1 MT3 /dev/tty Keycaps
:=) And no, no second Nokia ducky at home.
So far, the Q1 works nicely, both at work and at home.
Having the exact same layout and switches in both places really helps to get used to it.
Using VIA works nicely, too.
So far I have not flashed any updated QMK version, therefore no experience how well that works in practice.
I actually even learned a bit more about my use of the different keys.
On the work picture you still see on the right the page up/down buttons (with Fn key => home/end).
At home I already reprogrammed that to home/end (with Fn key => page up/down), as I use that far more often during editing whereas the page up/down stuff just rarely in the terminal.
Actually, I didn’t know I would miss these two keys until they were no longer easy accessible ;=)
Feature: Skrooge uses now the LC_MONETARY environement variable to use the specific locale for currency format
Get it, Try it, Love it...
Grab Skrooge from your distro's packaging system. If it is not yet included in repositories, go get it from our website, and bug your favorite distro for inclusion.
Get Involved
To enhance Skrooge, we need you ! There are many ways you can help us:
Contact us, give us your ideas, explain us where we can improve...
Can you design good interfaces ? Can you code ? Have webmaster skills ? Are you a billionaire looking for a worthy investment ? We will be very pleased in welcoming you in the skrooge team, contact us !
Regressions in the Plasma 5.24 beta (which I have not mentioned here because they never got released, and there would be so many of them that it would make your head spin and your eyes would gloss over!)
General bugs not related to those
I think everyone should find something to like here! So let’s take a look:
A few were found to be already fixed recently and will be available in the next release, or caused by upstream or downstream issues (many of which are also already fixed in the next release). The following were fixed in KDE code this week:
Breeze-themed menu items in QtQuick-based apps now become bigger and more tappable when you’re in Tablet Mode (Me: Nate Graham, Frameworks 5.91):
NOTE FOR PEOPLE WHO HATE WHITESPACE: This is only in Tablet Mode! Only in Tablet Mode! Not in regular mode! You won’t ever have to see this density reduction! So don’t complain about it!
And yes, there is indeed a bit more fat we can trim here, which will be happening shortly
Kate, KDevelop, and other KTextEditor-based apps now automatically detect the whitespace style of files you open, so you’ll never again have the experience of opening a file that uses tabs instead of spaces and you hit the tab key and it inserts spaces and you only notice this later when you run git diff on your changes and see that you’ve ruined the whitespace (Waqar Ahmed, Frameworks 5.91)
Keep in mind that this blog only covers the tip of the iceberg! Tons of KDE apps whose development I don’t have time to follow aren’t represented here, and I also don’t mention backend refactoring, improved test coverage, and other changes that are generally not user-facing. If you’re hungry for more, check out https://planet.kde.org/, where you can find blog posts by other KDE contributors detailing the work they’re doing.
How You Can Help
If you’re a developer, check out our 15-Minute Bug Initiative. Working on these issues makes a big difference quickly!
Otherwise, have a look at https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved to discover ways to be part of a project that really matters. Each contributor makes a huge difference in KDE; you are not a number or a cog in a machine! You don’t have to already be a programmer, either. I wasn’t when I got started. Try it, you’ll like it! We don’t bite!
The beta of Plasma 5.24 has been released and as such people running Manjaro ARM with Plasma Mobile might want to test it out.
So here's a step by step guide on how add update your system to beta 5.24. Reversing this is not easy and is not covered by this guide.
Download and Flash a Manjaro ARM Plasma Mobile stable image if you are not already on an up-to-date stable version that you don't mind breaking. I recommend the latest factory image.
Switch it to use testing branch with sudo pacman-mirrors -aS testing.
After you are done setting it up add this above the [core] section in your /etc/pacman.conf: [kde-testing] Server = https://kdebuild.manjaro.org/kde-testing/$arch
When the above is added you should be able to download the new database by running: sudo pacman -Syy If it mentions kde-testing, then it worked.
The last thing to do is now to actually update the system. Do that by running: sudo pacman -Syu
Reboot the phone afterwards and it should now show Plasma 5.23.90 inside Settings -> Information.
Currently KRunner does not provide any usage information itself, there
is only an bit of documentation on the user base wiki. Back in the KDE4 days KRunner had
help button, but fundamental changes in the architecture meant that the code could not simply be ported to the current version.
Since the help system required reimplementation, it was decided to implement it as a plugin for KRunner's powerful plugin infrastructure.
This plugin produces results when one types ? or help. To make this more discoverable a button is added, which
puts the text ? in the search field.
By having it as a plugin it is reusable in every case KRunner is used,
for example the KWin overview effect, the Application Launcher or the Plasma-Mobile search.
But it is not only under the hood different from the KDE4 version – there
are quite a few changes to improve the usability:
For example only one usage example is displayed for each runner. This way one
can get a better overview over the different runners.
Also, runners can display their description instead of the first possible usage.
For example the sessions-runner can log out, suspend, switch user or reboot the PC. This would be too much information for the simple overview. Which is why the description is shown instead.
If the plugin has a configuration module, you can launch it as an action.
Otherwise you would have needed to click the configure button on the left, search for the runner and
then click the configure button for the specific runner.
When one click on of a match or selects it and presses enter, a detailed page of all the available usages of this runner is displayed:
Here you get all the available usage information displayed.
For getting a better overview, the queries are marked in bold.
Internally, this uses the styled text from Qt and every runner which has multiline text can utilize this feature.
When one runs one of the matches, the suggested query gets put in the KRunner search field.
The placeholder text is selected so that you can immediately overwrite it with your query, still get a little hint what the runner expects.
Hopefully you like this feature and can be even more productive with KRunner :–)
Excellent deep dive in how GPS works. It goes all the way down to the signal processing. It’s really nice to see how many layers of complexity this technology carries.
The Linux App Summit (LAS) of 2022 will be held in Rovereto, a picturesque city at the foot of the Italian Alps.
Whether you are a company, journalist, developer, or user interested in the ever-growing Linux app ecosystem, LAS will have something for you. Scheduled for April, LAS 2022 will be a hybrid event, combining on-site and remote sessions, including talks, panels and Q&As.
The call for papers will open soon, and the registrations shortly after.
The Linux App Summit (LAS) brings the global Linux community together to learn, collaborate, and help grow the Linux application ecosystem. Through talks, panels, and Q&A sessions, we encourage attendees to share ideas, make connections, and join our goal of building a common app ecosystem. Previous iterations of the Linux App Summit have been held in the United States in Portland, Oregon and Denver, Colorado, as well as in Barcelona, Spain.
Rovereto is an old Fortress Town in Northern Italy at the foot of the Italian Alps. It is located in the autonomous province of Trento and is the main city of the Vallagarina district.
The city has several interesting sites including:
The Ancient War Museum
A castle built by the counts of Castelbarco
The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento
Rovereto's economy revolves around wine, coffee, rubber, and chocolate. The town was acknowledged as a “Peace town” in the 20th century and is also the location of important palaeontological remains, such as dinosaur footprints in the surrounding area.
TSDgeos
@strit:matrix.org
alex1701c
Since the help system required reimplementation, it was decided to implement it as a plugin for KRunner's powerful plugin infrastructure.
This plugin produces results when one types 
By having it as a plugin it is reusable in every case KRunner is used,
for example the KWin overview effect, the Application Launcher or the Plasma-Mobile search.
Otherwise you would have needed to click the configure button on the left, search for the runner and
then click the configure button for the specific runner.
