The folks at GNU/Linux València are organizing a Game Jam focused on Free Software Desktop Games.
You can see the details here: https://itch.io/jam/lliurejam
Maybe we could take the opportunity to try to revive a bit the very very very dormant KDE Games community?
Though we have the basic games covered already so someone would have to come up with an idea of what to do first :D
Online publication of the documentation for many KDE applications has been updated to docs.kde.org. Tellico’s current handbook can be found there.
A surprising long time passed since my last status update about KJournald. So it’s time again to shed some light on the recent changes.
KJournald is a KDE project that provides graphical browsing UI for journald log databases. For those who never heard the term “journald”, journald is the system logging service of systemd and it is found in most modern Linux systems. This means, in the journald databases one can find all the system log messages about important incidents happening on a system, which make it very important for system admins but also for all technical users who want to analyze when something is not working correctly on their systems.
The kjournald-browser provides a Qt and Kirigami based UI to efficiently browse and filter those logs (note: there exist different tools for that, even systemd provides its own command line tool “journalctl”). The focus of kjournald-browser are the following use cases:
Since my last blog post, the kjournald-browser application became part of the regular KDE gear releases and nowadays is packages by e.g. Fedora and Suse; unfortunately, it is still not packaged on Debian or Ubuntu yet — if you want to do it and need support please reach out to me! At the moment, also the packaging as Flatpak application on Flathub is ongoing. But already since a long time though, the KDE Flatpak nightly builds provide the latest state of the app.
With the last major release 25.12.0, a few new cool features were added:
One feature was slightly too late for this release, but is already ready for the next:
Since 2026 is still young, there are a few features on the roadmap of this year. The two most important ones in my opinion are:
A short but sweet note to say I am coming out of my short retirement to help with snaps again. My time is extremely limited, however we are working hard on getting snaps on CI and I have some newer snaps in –beta trickling in for testing. You must install kf6-core24 from beta as well to test them ( this will likely break older kde snaps in the process so beware. ) This is slow going as I work on them during my hour lunch at day job and spare stolen moments. KDE is coming up on its 30th birthday!!! How cool is that!
I 
KDE
Like my work? Consider a donation. Thank you!
DonateWelcome to a new issue of This Week in Plasma!
Let’s thank Lubos Krystynek, Rafal Krawczyk, and John Veness for stepping up to help with this week’s issue. Thanks, guys!
This week, the first car running KWin won the “Car of the Year” award. Yes, really — KDE in the car! Here’s KDE’s Victoria Fischer talking about it at Qt World Summit 2023:
Almost all of these posts end with “KDE has become important in the world…” and I think this is a good reminder that it’s true, not just some empty platitude. KDE is important. And all of you building or using KDE’s software are important, too.
But KDE is not only important to cars; we’re incredibly important to computers! And on that subject, some really nice features and user interface improvements landed for the upcoming Plasma 6.6 release. The hard feature freeze is coming up soon, at which point we’ll move into full bug-fixing and polishing mode.
But until then, enjoy some juicy new goodies! Check it out:
You can now save your current visual settings as a new global theme! (Vlad Zahorodnii, plasma-desktop MR #6097)
Added a “Forget device” action to the Bluetooth system tray widget, allowing users to remove paired devices without opening System Settings. (Andrew Gigena, KDE Bug #434691)
You can now search for processes in System Monitor based on their full command-line invocation when the “Command” column is visible. (Alexey Rochev, KDE Bug #448331)
On supported systems, the logout screen now mentions when the system will restart into a different operating system or boot option after it reboots. (Nikolay Kochulin, plasma-workspace MR #5469)
The Power and Battery widget now tells you what specific power management actions apps are blocking, instead of assuming that they’re all blocking both sleep and screen locking. (Jakob Petsovits, KDE Bug #418433)
System Settings’ Thunderbolt page now hides itself when the device doesn’t support Thunderbolt. (Alexander Wilms, plasma-thunderbolt MR #47)
When there are many windows open, the Task Manager widget will now scroll to the active one when you open its window thumbnail list. (Christoph Wolk, KDE Bug #499716)
Notifications no longer waste space showing the same icon in two places. (Kai Uwe Broulik, plasma-workspace MR #6151)
Spectacle now remembers the size (and on X11, also the position) of its main window across launches. (Aviral Singh, KDE Bug #499652)
Made multiple UI improvements to the “Configure Columns” dialog in System Monitor. (Arjen Hiemstra, plasma-systemmonitor MR #405)
In the Weather Report widget, when a weather station isn’t reporting the current wind speed, the widget now says it doesn’t know the wind speed, rather than claiming it’s “calm”. (Tobias Fella, kdeplasma-addons MR #969)
The Kickoff Application Menu widget now does a better job of handling a huge number of favorite apps. Now the favorites column eventually becomes scrollable, instead of letting icons overlap. (Christoph Wolk, KDE Bug #424067)
You can now find System Settings’ Wallpaper page by searching for “desktop background” and some other related terms. (Shubham Arora, plasma-workspace MR #6152)
Made it possible to see more items at once in the “Get New [thing]” dialogs. (Nate Graham, frameworks-knewstuff MR #380)
Open/Save dialogs now use relative-style date formatting for recent dates and times, which matches how Dolphin shows them. (Méven Car, frameworks-kio MR #2103)
Folders that show thumbnails of their contents now refresh the thumbnail immediately when any of those files are removed. (Akseli Lahtinen, KDE Bug #497259)
Fixed a strange issue that broke key repeat only in the Brave web browser. (Nicolas Fella, KDE Bug #513637)
Fixed an issue that could make the panel configuration dialog appear on the wrong screen with certain panel and screen arrangements. (Aleksey Rochev, plasma-workspace MR #6140)
Fixed two issues with the “Show Alternatives” popup: one that made it get cut off outside of the screen area for widgets positioned on certain areas of the desktop, and another that made it not disappear when it lost focus. (Aleksey Rochev, KDE Bug #511188 and KDE Bug #511187)
Fixed an issue that made Plasma quit when you disconnected the last screen. (Xaver Hugl, KDE Bug #513003)
Fixed an issue with the Applications table on System Monitor’s Overview page being blurry with certain scale factors. We had already previously fixed this, but it turned out there were more remaining cases where it still happened, so this should take care of the rest! (Arjen Hiemstra, KDE Bug #445759)
Implemented support in Plasma for the up-and-coming oo7 Secret Service provider. (Marco Martin and Harald Sitter, plasma-workspace MR #6109)
Fixed a hilarious issue that caused the wallpaper to bounce a tiny bit with certain fractional scale factors on secondary screens using direct scan-out while on a very recent kernel version. (Xaver Hugl, KDE Bug #513277)
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.
You can help KDE by directly getting involved. 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.
For example, helping out to write these posts is warmly appreciated. Anyone interested in getting involved should check out the evolving documentation on the topic.
You can also help out by making a donation! This helps cover operational costs, salaries, travel expenses for contributors, and in general just keep KDE bringing Free Software to the world.
To get a new Plasma feature or a bugfix mentioned here, feel free to push a commit to the relevant merge request on invent.kde.org.
Let’s go for my web review for the week 2026-02.
Tags: tech, foss, community, ecosystem, github
Github is definitely entrenched by now. Students and beginners hardly look for projects outside of it. Sad state of affair.
https://ploum.net/2026-01-05-unteaching_github.html
Tags: tech, cloud, business, hardware, rust
Wondering what’s on the mind of people working on an hyperscaler? This podcast and its transcript gives good insights.
https://filtra.io/rust/interviews/scaleway-jan-26
Tags: tech, gaming, culture
An odd but interesting article. When a journalist randomly discovers that his wife is the best Tetris player in the world.
https://archive.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2007/08/19/bizarro_world/
Tags: tech, email, security, privacy, politics, gafam
Email encryption is indeed still an open issue. There’s no fix in sight for it. It’s mostly a lack of political will though, so none of the big players are going to change anything.
https://soatok.blog/2026/01/04/everything-you-need-to-know-about-email-encryption-in-2026/
Tags: tech, system, linux, flatpak, graphics
Interesting point… What to do when there’s no good option in the application runtime for the needed graphics drivers and kernel combination?
https://blog.sebastianwick.net/posts/flatpak-graphics-drivers/
Tags: tech, functional, programming, type-systems, learning
Functional programming is made scary due to its jargon. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
https://cekrem.github.io/posts/functors-applicatives-monads-elm/
Tags: tech, python, performance
A very comprehensive view of Python memory consumption and the speed of common operations. Some of the numbers are higher than I expected.
https://mkennedy.codes/posts/python-numbers-every-programmer-should-know/
Tags: tech, rust, failure, debugging, monitoring, logging
Error handling is still not a properly solved problem in my opinion. At least the Rust community discusses the topic quite a bit. This is good inspiration for other ecosystems as well I think.
https://fast.github.io/blog/stop-forwarding-errors-start-designing-them/
Tags: tech, embedded, rust
Looks like an interesting framework for embedded projects.
Tags: tech, rust, performance, design, multithreading
More interesting design ideas in uv. Didn’t know about the dashmap crate they’re using here it looks like a nice one too.
https://codepointer.substack.com/p/uv-oncemap-rust-pattern-for-running
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, copilot, architecture, complexity
This looks like an interesting way to frame problems. It can give an idea of how likely they can be tackled with LLMs. It also shows that the architecture and the complexity greatly matter.
https://www.giladpeleg.com/blog/getting-real-with-llms
Tags: tech, programming, complexity, design
OK maybe a longer piece than it should be. Still the idea is interesting. Clearly you want to mind the O(n) coupling in this context.
https://blog.ploeh.dk/2026/01/05/coupling-from-a-big-o-perspective/
Tags: tech, learning, tests, tdd
Indeed, the terminology has been greatly confused. I think I’ll die on this particular hill though. I think it’s important to name things properly. That said the trick of going through a verb might just work?
https://coding-is-like-cooking.info/2026/01/we-need-to-stop-calling-everything-a-mock/
Tags: tech, processes, metrics, data
Interesting short article. Shows the use of DORA metrics and process behavior charts. This is a good way to test hypothesis and see the impact of processes changes or introduction of new practices. It needs to be done over time and be patient of course.
https://www.infoq.com/articles/DORA-metrics-PBCs/
Tags: management, organisation, team
Good questions to consider to gauge how you work. Can improve the organisation if you really get to the bottom of it.
https://www.congruentchange.com/improve-your-work-system/
Tags: tech, complexity, satire, funny
This is a very nice satire website about the problems in our industry. Want to work in a resume driven context? Here is how!
Tags: science, biology
The biology of trees is just fascinating. And there’s so much we still don’t know about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHJIhxZEoxg
Bye for now!
QtNat is a lightweight C++ library built with Qt 6 that simplifies NAT port mapping using UPnP (Universal Plug and Play). It is designed to help developers easily expose local services to external networks without requiring manual router configuration for users.
By leveraging UPnP, QtNat automatically communicates with compatible routers to create port forwarding rules at runtime. This makes it particularly useful for peer-to-peer applications, multiplayer games, remote access tools, and any software that needs reliable inbound connectivity behind a NAT.
QtNat provides a simplified API to do all steps automatically: discovery and mapping. This has been tested on my local device. Feel free to test it and improve it.
TSDgeos
@sgmoore:kde.org
obiwan_kennedy
UpnpNat nat;
QObject::connect(&nat, &UpnpNat::statusChanged, [&nat, &app]() {
switch(nat.status())
{
case UpnpNat::NAT_STAT::NAT_IDLE:
case UpnpNat::NAT_STAT::NAT_DISCOVERY:
case UpnpNat::NAT_STAT::NAT_GETDESCRIPTION:
case UpnpNat::NAT_STAT::NAT_DESCRIPTION_FOUND:
break;
case UpnpNat::NAT_STAT::NAT_FOUND:
nat.requestDescription();
break;
case UpnpNat::NAT_STAT::NAT_READY:
nat.addPortMapping("UpnpTest", nat.localIp(), 6664, 6664, "TCP");
break;
case UpnpNat::NAT_STAT::NAT_ADD:
qDebug() << "It worked!";
app.quit();
break;
case UpnpNat::NAT_STAT::NAT_ERROR:
qDebug() <<"Error:" <<nat.error();
app.exit(1);
break;
}
});
nat.discovery();
Basically, we need to know if there is a upnp server around. To do so, we send an M-SEARCH request on the multicast address.
Here is the code:
#define HTTPMU_HOST_ADDRESS "239.255.255.250"
#define HTTPMU_HOST_PORT 1900
#define SEARCH_REQUEST_STRING "M-SEARCH * HTTP/1.1\n" \
"ST:UPnP:rootdevice\n" \
"MX: 3\n" \
"Man:\"ssdp:discover\"\n" \
"HOST: 239.255.255.250:1900\n" \
"\n"
void UpnpNat::discovery()
{
setStatus(NAT_STAT::NAT_DISCOVERY);
m_udpSocketV4.reset(new QUdpSocket(this));
QHostAddress broadcastIpV4(HTTPMU_HOST_ADDRESS);
m_udpSocketV4->bind(QHostAddress(QHostAddress::AnyIPv4), 0);
QByteArray datagram(SEARCH_REQUEST_STRING);
connect(m_udpSocketV4.get(), &QTcpSocket::readyRead, this, [this]() {
QByteArray datagram;
while(m_udpSocketV4->hasPendingDatagrams())
{
datagram.resize(int(m_udpSocketV4->pendingDatagramSize()));
m_udpSocketV4->readDatagram(datagram.data(), datagram.size());
}
QString result(datagram);
auto start= result.indexOf("http://");
if(start < 0)
{
setError(tr("Unable to read the beginning of server answer"));
setStatus(NAT_STAT::NAT_ERROR);
return;
}
auto end= result.indexOf("\r", start);
if(end < 0)
{
setError(tr("Unable to read the end of server answer"));
setStatus(NAT_STAT::NAT_ERROR);
return;
}
m_describeUrl= result.sliced(start, end - start);
setStatus(NAT_STAT::NAT_FOUND);
m_udpSocketV4->close();
});
connect(m_udpSocketV4.get(), &QUdpSocket::errorOccurred, this, [this](QAbstractSocket::SocketError) {
setError(m_udpSocketV4->errorString());
setStatus(NAT_STAT::NAT_ERROR);
});
m_udpSocketV4->writeDatagram(datagram, broadcastIpV4, HTTPMU_HOST_PORT);
}
The whole goal of the discovery is to get the description file from the server with all available devices and services.
The result is stored in m_describeUrl.
Simple request using QNetworkAccessManager.
void UpnpNat::requestDescription()
{
setStatus(NAT_STAT::NAT_GETDESCRIPTION);
QNetworkRequest request;
request.setUrl(QUrl(m_describeUrl));
m_manager.get(request);
}
Your physical network device may act as several Upnp devices. You are looking for one of these device type:
Those type are followed with a number (1 or 2), It is the Upnp protocol version supported by the device.
void UpnpNat::processXML(QNetworkReply* reply)
{
auto data= reply->readAll();
if(data.isEmpty()) {
setError(tr("Description file is empty"));
setStatus(NAT_STAT::NAT_ERROR);
return;
}
setStatus(NAT_STAT::NAT_DESCRIPTION_FOUND);
/*
Boring XML parsing in order to find devices and services.
Devices:
constexpr auto deviceType1{"urn:schemas-upnp-org:device:InternetGatewayDevice"};
constexpr auto deviceType2{"urn:schemas-upnp-org:device:WANDevice"};
constexpr auto deviceType3{"urn:schemas-upnp-org:device:WANConnectionDevice"};
Services:
constexpr auto serviceTypeWanIP{"urn:schemas-upnp-org:service:WANIPConnection"};
constexpr auto serviceTypeWANPPP{"urn:schemas-upnp-org:service:WANPPPConnection"};
*/
m_controlUrl = /* Most important thing to find the controlUrl of the proper service.*/
setStatus(NAT_STAT::NAT_READY);
}
Sending a request is just sending HTTP request with the proper data.
I use inja to generate the http data properly.
This is the inja template.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<s:Envelope
xmlns:s="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
s:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/">
<s:Body>
<u:AddPortMapping
xmlns:u="{{ service }}">
<NewRemoteHost></NewRemoteHost>
<NewExternalPort>{{ port }}</NewExternalPort>
<NewProtocol>{{ protocol }}</NewProtocol>
<NewInternalPort>{{ port }}</NewInternalPort>
<NewInternalClient>{{ ip }}</NewInternalClient>
<NewEnabled>1</NewEnabled>
<NewPortMappingDescription>{{ description }}</NewPortMappingDescription>
<NewLeaseDuration>0</NewLeaseDuration>
</u:AddPortMapping>
</s:Body>
</s:Envelope>
Then, let’s create a json object with all data. As final step, we need to create a request, set its data, and then post it.
void UpnpNat::addPortMapping(const QString& description, const QString& destination_ip, unsigned short int port_ex,
unsigned short int port_in, const QString& protocol)
{
inja::json subdata;
subdata["description"]= description.toStdString();
subdata["protocol"]= protocol.toStdString();
subdata["service"]= m_serviceType.toStdString();
subdata["port"]= port_in;
subdata["ip"]= destination_ip.toStdString();
auto text= QByteArray::fromStdString(inja::render(loadFile(key::envelop).toStdString(), subdata));
QNetworkRequest request;
request.setUrl(QUrl(m_controlUrl));
QHttpHeaders headers;
headers.append(QHttpHeaders::WellKnownHeader::ContentType, "text/xml; charset=\"utf-8\"");
headers.append("SOAPAction", QString("\"%1#AddPortMapping\"").arg(m_serviceType));
request.setHeaders(headers);
m_manager.post(request, text);
}
The reply has no error, it worked, the status changes to NAT_ADD. Otherwise, the status changes to error.
void UpnpNat::processAnswer(QNetworkReply* reply)
{
if(reply->error() != QNetworkReply::NoError)
{
setError(tr("Something went wrong: %1").arg(reply->errorString()));
setStatus(NAT_STAT::NAT_ERROR);
return;
}
setStatus(NAT_STAT::NAT_ADD);
}
Don’t hesitate to test it on your own device. Just to validate, it works everywhere. Any comment or change request, please use Github for that.
Friday, 9 January 2026
KDE today announces the release of KDE Frameworks 6.22.0.
This release is part of a series of planned monthly releases making improvements available to developers in a quick and predictable manner.
December was quite an eventful month for me, with over 4,000 km travelled by train. This was in part caused by the holidays and visiting family, but also by the KDE PIM sprint in Paris and the 39th Chaos Communication Congress.
From the 12th to the 14th of December, I was in Paris. It was actually my first time there for more than a day trip, so I arrived a day earlier to explore the city a bit. I went on a walk across the city with Tobias and Nicolas, and I took some photos.
The weekend was also very productive. We advanced our goal of making KMime a proper KDE Framework; made Message-IDs in emails more privacy-conscious; and discussed various important topics such as the retirement of the Kolab resource and the switch to SQLite as the default backend for Akonadi.
Huge thanks to enioka Haute Couture for having us in their office in Paris.
The sprint being in Paris also allowed me to afterward go visit my grandma, 350 km further south of Paris, so this was particularly convenient.
Another event I went to was 39c3, which is the third year in a row that I attended, and this year again we had an assembly as part of the Bits und Bäume umbrella, thanks to Joseph.
I love the vibe of this event. It’s not very dry or only tech-focused, but also has a big artistic and political aspect to it. And while the number of attendees is very large, at the same time it’s very chill and I don’t feel overwhelmed, unlike at FOSDEM.
At the KDE assembly, we met a lot of interested users, some GNOME friends, and since a bunch of KDE devs were there, we managed to work on a few productive things, like switching the map backend from Itinerary to MapLibre.
And this year, I even managed to go on national TV for a few seconds to speak about Nextcloud. My German grandma called me the day afterward, very happy to have seen me.
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:
Distro and app store packagers should update their application packages.
