This year’s Akademy was in Berlin at the Technical University of Berlin. The experience, as usual, was amazing. Unlike in previous years, there was a huge emphasis on styling, unification, and graphical work. This whole wave of talks was invigorating.
As a side note, this year our A/V was vastly improved and this should make it much easier for our contributors and viewers online to see and understand what we did. As part of the organization, I will help process these recordings and make sure they are awesome.
Once again I spoke on the progress with the design system. This year’s talk focused on our progress on icons. Definitively, one of the lengthiest pieces of work coming from the Foundations portion of the design system.
One thing to note, and after much discussion during Akademy, we have aligned more properly on the way that we should work in light of the addition of the design system.
In our current process, we use GIT as the source for our icons. Anyone can download and apply the icons on their Plasma system. However, this process is not quite geared toward designers. After all, all icons located in the repo are exported icons. They are one-layer graphics that only function with node work. If a designer needed to work with these assets, they would have to likely recreate them to gain the appropriate shape control needed to make desired changes.
This leads to overhead work and style inconsistencies. Above all, it leads to a state where the real source of the icon doesn’t exist unless we dig through each individual computer where the icon was developed.
With the use of applications like PenPot or Figma, that question is resolved. Users are able to download an asset library owned by the design team at Plasma. The source is protected but it’s also distributed in away that doesn’t affect the master copies. If changes are needed, change requests can be submitted to master and the design team can decide to apply those changes or not.
Effectively, this means a change in the way that icons are stored. Moving the work from Git to PenPot/Figma seems like the best choice.
This requires communication, habit changes, risk management, etc. While I am speaking of this right now, we are “not” changing our current process to obtain Breeze icons from its repo. However, it means more information will come in the future as we develop a more effective way to work with a design system.
I am so excited to see the progress done in Union, and even more excited to start passing on design system components into Union to see how they fare against the newly created engine. Union is also under heavy development. I encourage you to watch Arjen Hiemstra’s presentation at Akademy when it’s published.
When this happens, this would be the second set of graphical controls that are executed via Union. I am sure many challenges lay ahead but I feel energized by it. I am sure we are on our way to resolving long-standing design and development issues that have slowed us down.
As a result of this year’s Akademy, I created a set of action items for myself that I have to review to be able to continue. One major item for me is to develop our master component source in PenPot. Even though Ocean icons are not 100% executable in PenPot, other assets like buttons, sliders, progress bars, inputs, etc are executable. I will dedicate the time to create these items and leave Figma for components behind, shedding also any legacy branding coming from the design system sources and only focusing on what we need for Ocean styles.
With that, Akademy has been a thrill. I go home energized and happy for what we have accomplished. All this while keeping a vibrant community and a vibrant free desktop system for all Linux users.
Once again, all KDE nerds had their yearly gathering around somewhere in the world.
We call this gathering Akademy and this year it was in Berlin.
I don't really have anything in-depth to share, except for my first talk I had.
I spent a lot of time listening to talks and chilling at BoFs. Since I was with my wife,
we also went around Berlin looking for fun things, such as the Aquarium at the zoo.
We arrived around ~13.00 at Berlin airport and spent some time getting to
our hotel. After a good nap, we went to the welcome event, where I
had a nice hotdog and chatted with various folks.
It was a bit of a blur, I was so sleepy. But I do remember having fun.
Also I was super happy that our planes were finally on time this year, unlike last time...
Day 2
I arrived to Akademy venue around 9:30 and spent the whole day going to talks
and taking notes of said talks. I will share those notes later in the post.
I also had a lot of discussions with other KDE devs about Union and the like.
Day 3
I spent so much time just being anxious about my talk, so that I don't remember much else.
I rushed the talk a bit due to worrying it would take too long, I tend to go "hummmm" a lot..
So I forgot to mention two bits:
The cosplay in the intro slide is what I wish I wore for the talk.. :D
We should warn newcomers about any of the possible negativity their contributions may gather.
Other than that, it went fine I think.
Later in the evening we visited c-base and it was really
cool looking hackerspace. Though I was already out of any energy at that point, we left a bit early.
First we went to the aquarium, which was fun. We saw very cool sharks and other huge fish there.
I did not even know Koi fish could grow that big.
We also saw a lot of different lizards, toads and insects. I tried my best to
befriend the iguana in there... But I don't think they spoke Finnish.
We then also had a korean sandwich, I bought myself a pair of new cool pants and we visited
a Lego store.
Later in the evening, I went to a dinner with my coworkers, which was really fun.
Day 5
Went to more Akademy BoFs. One of the more interesting ones was the BoF around KDE Linux
so we chatted about it and any related issues with it.
I also went to a BoF around KIO + Sandboxing, to see what we can do to make tools that depend on
KIO work better in sandboxed environment, such as Flatpaks.
Sadly I don't have much notes from either, since they were rather speedy and I missed parts of
them all because I was busy tinkering on my KomoDo app.
Day 6
On the last day, we had a scavenger hunt in the morning and then went to a game museum.
I was so exhausted that I couldn't even think of walking around Berlin anymore, so I
just joined the game museum part. It was rather cool and I spent some time playing various
arcade games they had set up.
There was also some "PainGame" that was basically pong but with pickups that would cause
actual pain to the other player. The players had to hold their hand on some panel that would
heat up, cause electric shocks and whip the hand with some plastic bit.
Well I tried it and pulled my hand off the moment I felt it heating up. I already had enough
anxiety at the moment, didn't need to contribute more to it.
After a pizza at a nice little pizza place, we went back to hotel and slept.
The next morning we went to a plane at 5 am and were soon back home.
Ramblings and thoughts
Berlin is not a good place for me to go to. It's very loud, uh.. fragrant and there's a lot
of things moving constantly.
My nerves were constantly shot. I kept constantly looking around for bad shit to happen,
I could not relax at all. I managed to mask
it to the best of my abilities, but that just drained me further.
So, uh, sorry anyone who thought I was rather hard to approach. I was just constantly anxious.
Akademy itself was really nice and people there were really friendly and fun, but Berlin
just was too much for me.
I also really enjoyed every single talk and BoF I went to!
I just can't deal with big cities well, I suppose.
Next year I will have to limit the time I'm traveling, preferably ~4 days or so.
Anything more is out of my limits.
Still, looking forward to where it will be next year. :)
Thanks for reading, I know there wasn't much actual knowledge in this blogpost, but maybe
you liked my talk and/or my notes.
Since the ninth of October 2025’s “Big Tent” comments by frame.work about how they don’t care whether the people they sponsor are racist and transphobic, my happiness with my 12 has dropped below zero. Don’t buy frame.work, people.
Since 2023 my laptop situation has been pretty awful… I had two laptops (okay, I admit, that doesn’t sound that awful), a Windows Lenovo Yoga laptop and an Apple Macbook Pro. Powerful machines, of course, but the Yoga has a ghastly keyboard that’s that prone to double registering single keypresses, and way worse touchpad. The touchpad was so bad that the touch screen was really necessary. The Macbook Pro is fast, has nice hardware, a nice screen (no touch, though…) but: it runs MacOS. And the Yoga runs Windows. First 11, now 10, because 11 is torture.
Also… The Yoga is my Windows Krita dev and test device, the Macbook is my macOS dev and test device.
I wanted a laptop for myself. For watching videos, doing some sketching, writing RPG write-ups, managing my own stuff.
So, when Framework announced the Framework 12 I started getting interested: small, cute, colorful, not a build system powerhouse, but nice enough specs, touch screen, pen enabled, enough memory possible. And cute. I pre-ordered on, in bubble-gum with a lavender keyboard. Yeah, it clashes. I love it, it’s so colorful. I also knew I would love the upgradability, repairability, extensibility, and the looks. ‘Cause it’s cute.
Some months after ordering, it arrived, last Monday. I was in hospital, after getting my SRS operation (succesful, recovery is going better than expected!), but today, I was home, and even groggy from recovery, I managed to put it together and install KDE Neon on it. It’s that easy to assemble the colorful, cute self-assembly version of the Framework 12. Fun, too.
And when I was installing Neon (I might switch later on, I don’t need to be too stable here, this one is mine, and it’s for fun!) I noticed something.
Something weird and unexpected.
The keyboard really is GOOD. It’s got good travel, it feels good, it invites typing. They keys have the right texture, and so has the palm rest. It’s the best laptop keyboard I’ve used in ages, and yes, that includes the Macbook Pro M2. If only for the keyboard, I’d buy it again.
The touchpad, too. Colorful, clearly demarcated from the palm rest, giving good feedback — it’s in every way that counts better than the Yoga’s touchpad. And there’s still a touch screen for when my four year trained reflexes take over. The screen is bright, clear and sharp. The resolution isn’t the highest, but then, this is 12″, so it is fine.
The plastic casing feels very solid, too. Sure, it’s not thin enough to shave with, like the Yoga or a Macbook Air, but then, I’ve already had laser treatment, so shavability isn’t an issue anymore.
Such a relief from all the black and grey hardware that has been surrounding me for years.
The Ars Technica reviewer said “Sure, it’s cute and functional, but for the money you can get better specs”. Look… “Cute and functional” is a unique selling point if there’s ever one: is there any other laptop on the market that provides that? Better specs might mean faster whatever, but… It is perfectly functional. And cute, that too.
During this year’s Akademy in Berlin, I gave a talk about the awesome features & usecases of Clazy.
Afterwards, I also talked with Ivan Čukić and the topic of maintainership. Sérgio Martins was the original author and long
time maintainer. Ivan took over the role for a while, but since I became quite active in the project, he thought it would be a good idea for me to be the official maintainer.
I am very honored that he transferred maintainership of Clazy to me. I’ll do my best to continue pushing the project forward.
Also thanks to Sérgio and Ivan for their previous work and KDAB for supporting it. Also thanks to all the other people who have contributed so far!
In case you want to get started in Clazy development, your contributions are welcome! Feel free to reach out to me if you have issues with getting started :)
I’ve just returned from this year’s Akademy in Berlin. Unfortunately, I couldn’t attend the entire conference that is still ongoing but the weekend of talks and welcome and social events have been magnificent. I’ve also meet a couple of fellow KDE hackers that I haven’t seen in a decade.
Lichthof at TU Berlin, just outside our conference rooms
Friday afternoon I arrived at Berlin Hauptbahnhof on an ICE that was, I kid you not, punctual to the minute. That of course meant there wasn’t much interesting to collect for KDE Itinerary. Nevertheless, I took an ODEG regional train to the hotel and tried to gather as much data from its onboard Wifi portal as I could from my phone between Hauptbahnhof and Alexanderplatz. Turns out: they use GraphQL for their live status website. While KPublicTransport has facilities for GraphQL, any other operator we support just polls a URL that yields a JSON feed. Therefore, a lot more work and testing is needed in order to support ODEG in KDE Itinerary’s live status page.
The welcome event at Schleusenkrug was fun and the weather was a lot better than anticipated. I was very glad I did pack a pair of shorts after all! Saturday the conference started with an interesting keynote on digital sovereignty. As always it was quite difficult to choose which of the parallel tracks to attend. I enjoyed Saturday’s “Lessons Learned” presentation on Plasma. Next, I was skeptical about the use of CSS in the Union styling effort (particular with me having had to deal with Qt CSS in Qt Widgets and GTK 3 CSS lately) but the current state looks fairly promising. The lightning talks on KPublicAlerts and Clazy were another personal highlight.
Don’t forget your room number with Itinerary
During every conference, there’s some real world improvements to be made in our software stack. For instance, annoyed by the fact that I couldn’t just right-click a Wifi network in order to change its settings, I added functionality in ExpandableListItem to also show its expandable actions in a context menu. There was also an issue with the network connectivity monitor (what tells you that you need to log into a captive portal) sending spurious notifications about limited connectivity when in fact it was just losing connection before the laptop went to sleep. Finally, KDE Itinerary now lets you add a description to a hotel reservation so you can note down your room number and/or door key code. Unfortunately, Schema.org has no dedicated fields for that yet.
Sunday, I attended a talk on how to deal with negative feedback. I think many of us have unfortunately been in the situation where we were proud about a change or feature we made and then were almost burnt out by negative feedback and harassment on the internet. Another important presentation put emphasis on the fact that maintainers don’t grow on trees and how to make sure a project remains alive even when the original author had to move on with life. This evening’s social event took place at c-base. It’s a hacker space that cosplays as a fictional crashed space station. How cool is that?! While we were down low near the Spree, I could still grab a glimpse of the lunar eclipse that happened that evening. I hope you could, too.
On Monday, I made my way back home. Thanks to everyone involved in organizing this conference and the sponsors to make this event happen! I am looking forward to seeing you all again soon!
This year, 2025, the KDE Community held its yearly conference in Berlin, Germany.
On the way I reinstalled FreeBSD on my Frame.work 13 laptop in another attempt
to get KDE Plasma 6 Wayland working. Short story: yes, KDE Plasma 6 Wayland on
FreeBSD works.
This time I followed the instructions from thesaigoneer on Codeberg. It
did not feel different from any previous attempt of mine.
However, it did work instead of hang, so that’s an important difference.
Here is my summary of those instructions:
Install FreeBSD 14.3 from the ISO
Change the package repositories to the latest branch
Install pkg install pkg and then update the base system with freebsd-update
Install the graphics drivers, pkg install drm-kmod
After logging in in text mode, run the script and enjoy a modern KDE Plasma desktop with
your favorite desktop operating system (that’s FreeBSD, you know) underneath.
For everyone else, let me briefly explain: KDE Linux is a new operating system intended for daily driving that showcases Plasma and KDE software in the best light, and makes use of modern technologies.
KDE Linux uses Arch packages as a base, but it’s definitely not an “Arch-based distro!” There’s no package manager, and everything except for the base OS is either compiled from source using KDE’s kde-builder tool, or Flatpak. Sounds weird, huh?! We’ll get to that later.
Harald has been leading the charge to build KDE Linux, assisted by myself, Hadi Chokr, Lasath Fernando, Justin Zobel, and others. We’ve built it up to an Alpha release that’s officially ready for use by QA testers, KDE developers, and very enthusiastic KDE fans.
What’s in the Alpha release?
Today we’re releasing KDE Linux’s Testing Edition. This edition provides unreleased KDE software built from source code; a preview of what will become the next stable release.
In practice, we’re being quite conservative, and it’s already pretty darn stable for daily use. In fact, I’ve had KDE Linux on my home theater PC for about six months, and it’s been on my daily driver laptop for one month. Since then, I’ve done all my KDE development on it, as well as everything else I use a laptop for. It really does work. It’s not a toy or a science experiment.
KDE Linux running on an HTPC, a 2 year-old laptop, and a 10-year old laptop — all pretty much flawlessly
Since KDE Linux offers unreleased, in-progress software, you’ll probably notice some bugs if you use it. Good, that’s the point of the testing edition! Report those bugs so we can fix them before they end up shipping to people using released software.
But where to?
If the bug appears to be caused by KDE Linux’s design or integration, use invent.kde.org. Ignore the scary red banner at the top of the page.
If the bug appears to be in a piece of KDE software itself, like Plasma or Dolphin (such that it would eventually manifest on other operating systems as well), use bugs.kde.org.
So if this is an Alpha release, what’s known to be broken?
User experience papercuts in Flatpak KDE apps and updating the system using Discover
We’d love your help getting these and other topics straightened out!
Just what the world needs, another Linux distro…
A sentiment I have in the past expressed myself.
However, there’s a method to our madness. KDE is a huge producer of software. It’s awkward for us to not have our own method of distributing it. Yes, KDE produces source code that others distribute, but we self-distribute our apps on app stores like Flathub and the Snap and Microsoft stores, so I think it’s natural thing for us to have our own platform for doing that distribution too, and that’s an operating system. I think all the major producers of free software desktop environments should have their own OS, and many already do: Linux Mint and ElementaryOS spring to mind, and GNOME is working on one too.
Besides, this matter was settled 10 years ago with the creation of KDE neon, our first bite at the “in-house OS” apple. The sky did not fall; everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.
Speaking of KDE neon, what’s going on with it? Is it canceled? If not, doesn’t this amount to unnecessary duplication?
KDE neon is not canceled. However it has shed most of its developers over the years, which is problematic, and it’s currently being held together by a heroic volunteer. KDE e.V. has been reaching out to stakeholders to see if we can help put in place a continuity or transition plan. No decision has yet been made about its future.
While neon continues to exist, KDE Linux therefore does represent duplication. As for unnecessary? That I’m less sure about that. Harald, myself, and others feel that KDE neon has somewhat reached its limit in terms of what we can do with it. It was a great first product for KDE to distribute our own software and prepare the world for the idea of KDE in that role, and it served admirably for a decade. But technological and conceptual issues limit how far we can continue to develop it.
We wanted KDE Linux to be super safe by default, providing guardrails and tools for rolling back when there are issues.
For example, KDE Linux preserves the last few OS images on disk, automatically. Get a bad build? Simply roll back to the prior one! It’s as easy as pie too; they show up right there on the boot menu:
It’s like being able to roll back to an older kernel, but for the whole OS.
To make this possible, KDE Linux has an “immutable base OS”, shipped as a single read-only image. Btrfs is the base file system, Wayland is the display server, PipeWire is the sound server, Flatpak gets you apps, and Systemd is the glue to hold everything together.
We also wanted to settle on a specific KDE software development story, with the OS built in the same way we compile our software locally — using kde-builder and flatpak-builder. This should minimize differences between dev setups and user packages that cause un-reproducible bugs (yes, this means we would love for you to use the Flatpak versions of KDE software!). There are genuine benefits for KDE developers here.
If these technologies aren’t your cup of tea, that’s fine. Feel free to ignore KDE Linux and continue using the operating system of your choice. There are plenty of them!
Why an immutable base OS? Isn’t that really limiting?
In some ways, yes. But in other ways, it’s quite freeing.
In my opinion, the traditional model of package management in the FOSS world has been one of our strongest features as well as our most bitter curse. A system made of mutable packages you can swap out at runtime is amazing for flexibility and customization, but terrible for long-term stability. I guarantee that every single person reading these words who’s used a terminal-based package manager has used it to blow up their system at least once. C’mon, admit it, you know it’s true! And in some distros, even using the GUI tools can get you into an unbootable state after an upgrade. If this has never happened to you on a traditional mutable Linux distro… I don’t believe you!
The pitfalls for non-experts are nearly infinite, their consequences can be showstopping, and the recovery procedures usually involve asking an expert for help. No expert around? Back to Windows.
Over the past 30 years, many package-based operating systems have made improvements to their own system-level package management tools to smooth out some of these sharp edges, but the essence of danger remains. It’s inherent in the system.
So in KDE Linux, we take on that risk and do the system-level package management for you, delivering a complete OS all in one piece. If it’s broken, it’s our fault, not yours. And then you’ll roll back to the previous build, yell at us, and we’ll fix it.
By delivering the OS in a complete image-based package, we can perform safe updates by simply swapping out the old OS image for the new one. There’s no risk of a “half-applied update” or “local package conflicts”, or anything like that. It’s also super-fast (once the new OS image is downloaded, that is), unlike the “offline update” system used by PackageKit, where you have to wait minutes on boot following an update. Those issues don’t exist on KDE Linux.
Wait… if the whole system is one piece and you can’t change it, how do you install new software?
Well, only the base OS in /usr is immutable; /etc is writable for making system-level config changes, and your entire home folder is of course yours to do what you want with, including installing software into it. So that’s what you do: use Discover to get software, mostly from Flathub at this point in time, but Snap is also technically supported and you can use snap in a terminal window (support in Discover may arrive later).
That’s fine for apps in Flathub and the Snap Store, but what about software not available there? What about CLI tools and development libraries?
Containers offer a modern approach: essentially you download a tiny tiny Linux-based OS into a container, and then you can install whatever that OS’s own package management system provides into the container. KDE Linux ships with support for Distrobox and Toolbx.
That’s right, after trashing package management, now I’m endorsing package management! The difference? This is user-level packaging and not system-level packaging. System-level packaging is what’s dangerous. Take away the danger by doing it in your home folder, and you regain almost all of the benefits, with almost none of the risks.
AppImage apps work too.
Homebrew also works; it’s an add-on system-level package manager that allows you to download tons of stuff you might want for power user and development purposes. Note that Homebrew packages are not segregated, so they can override system libraries and present problems. This should be considered an experts’ tool.
Compiling anything you want from source code is also possible — provided the dependencies are available, and Homebrew or containers can be used for this.
Finally, there’s nothing stopping folks from making command-line tools available via Flathub or another 3rd-party Flatpak repository. Some are already there. So this could be a potential avenue of improvement too.
But as you can see, the story here is fragmented, with a menu of imperfect options rather than a single unified approach. That’s a valid critique, and it’s something that needs more work if we want an obvious default choice here.
That’s not enough power! I want to change the base OS!
Actually I lied. There’s another option for developers and super power users, one that does allow intermingling stuff: you can use systemd-sysext to overlay files of your choice on top of the base OS.
It’s a really cool tool you might not be aware of. I’ve started using it in KDE Linux to overlay my built-from-source KDE software on top of the base system for development and testing purposes, and it’s just been a super great experience. Way better than compiling stuff to a prefix in $HOME. No more weird random DBus and Polkit failures or stale file conflicts.
Now, this is quite a bit riskier as you can destabilize the OS itself by overlaying broken parts on top of working parts. But undoing any such changes is super simple, since, again, it’s all self-contained. That’s gonna be a common theme here.
However, I think the better answer for “I want to change the base OS” is “please get involved with developing KDE Linux!” That way if your changes are amazing, the whole world can benefit from them, and the burden of maintaining them over time can be shared with others.
Still not enough power! I need to be able to swap out kernel modules and base packages at runtime!
Wow, you really are sounding like an OS developer. Maybe you want to help us develop KDE Linux? The OS could benefit tremendously from your skills and experience!
That said, there’s some truth to the idea that an immutable OS like KDE Linux isn’t the best choice for doing this kind of really low-level development or system optimization. That’s fine; there are hundreds of other traditional Linux-based operating systems out there that can serve this purpose.
If your goal really is to build your own OS for your own personal or commercial purposes, it’s hard to go wrong with Arch Linux; it’s one of the tools we used to build KDE Linux, in fact. In a lot of ways it’s more of an OS building toolkit than it is an OS itself.
If it’s all Flatpak and containers and stuff, does it really showcase Plasma and KDE software in the best light? Really?
Well, we’re kind of cheating a bit here. A couple KDE apps are shipped as Flatpaks, and the rest you download using Discover will be Flatpack’d as well, but we do ship Dolphin, Konsole, Ark, Spectacle, Discover, Info Center, System Settings, and some other System-level apps on the base image, rather than as Flatpaks.
The truth is, Flatpak is currently a pretty poor technology for system-level apps that want deep integration with the base system. We tried Dolphin and Konsole as Flatpaks for a while, but the user experience was just terrible.
So for the Alpha release, these apps are on the base OS where they can properly integrate with the rest of the system. There’s no reason to torture people with issues that we know won’t be fixed anytime soon!
Other apps not needing as as deep a level of system integration are fine as Flatpaks right now, and we’re engaging with Flatpak folks to see how we can push the technology forward to work better for the deep integration use cases.
This is because one of KDE Linux’s other goals is to be a test-bed for bringing new technologies to KDE. Our software that behaves awkwardly when sandboxed or run on a filesystem other than Ext4 represents something for us to fix, because those technologies aren’t going away. We need to be embracing that future, not ignoring it. KDE Linux both helps and forces us to do it.
This should be exciting. New technology is fun! You get to help guide the future. Let’s not get caught up yelling at clouds here!
I’m a KDE developer. Why should I migrate to KDE Linux, and how does KDE development work?
Forget the haters, this project is cool! How can I help?
Great! For starters, install it on your computers. We’re looking to get more feedback from daily drivers. The Matrix room is a great place to get in touch with us.
And finally, help spread the news! If you couldn’t tell, I’m really excited about this project, and I think a lot of other folks will be as well… once they hear about it!
This week, KDE contributors from around the world are traveling to Akademy, KDE’s annual conference. I myself am on a train right now as I write these words (though hopefully not still there when you read them), on my way to meet with fellow KDE people for a week of working, planning, and social bond strengthening! Expect a light report next Saturday, or none at all.
Nevertheless, this week, folks managed to be productive anyway. We’ve got a new feature, some UI improvements, bug fixes, efficiency Improvements… the works!
Notable New Features
Plasma 6.5.0
The “Flatpak Permissions” page in System Settings has grown into a more general “Application Permissions” page by additonally letting you configure settings related to the XDG portal system, such as taking screenshots, accepting remote control requests, and more! (David Redondo, link)
Implemented support for the XDG Wallpaper portal, which allows portal-using apps to requests to change the desktop and lock screen wallpaper. (David Redondo, link)
Notable UI Improvements
Plasma 6.5.0
The focus stealing prevention settings on System Settings’ Window Behavior page now do sensible things on Wayland. At one end, “Extreme” requires a valid activation token for every focus request. On the other end, “None” ignores them completely, allowing every activated window to immediately take focus. The default setting is “Low”, which should result in fewer failed activations now, while still not letting apps go nuts and steal focus all the time. (Xaver Hugl, link 1 and link 2)
System Settings’ Day/Night Cycle page (which is where the Night Light timing settings moved to) now lets you enter times in AM/PM style, if that’s what the rest of your system shows and uses. (Vlad Zahorodnii, link)
You’re no longer required to manually create a remote desktop account for remote-desktop purposes; now your existing user account works as expected, and you can just supply its credentials to the client app. (David Edmundson, link)
Discover is now more verbose about what it’s doing while fetching updates, so it doesn’t seem stuck and you can tell which source is being slow and gumming up the works. (Aleix Pol Gonzelez, link)
Improved keyboard navigation in the Kicker Application Menu widget when no apps are marked as favorites. (Christoph Wolk, link)
The monospace font you choose on System Settings’ Fonts page is now synced to GTK apps. (Reilly Brogan, link)
System Settings’ Tablet page now warns you if you try to use it to configure a tablet that’s being managed by a custom user-space tablet driver, because these can conflict and produce odd results. (Joshua Goins, link)
Frameworks 6.18
Improved the visuals of how toolbars load themselves in various Kirigami-using apps and System Settings pages. (Marco Martin, link)
Notable Bug Fixes
Plasma 6.4.5
Improved the reliability with which screen settings are chosen and restored. (Xaver Hugl, link)
Plasma 6.5.0
The Night Light feature no longer somewhat distorts the colors in screenshots and screen recordings. (Xaver Hugl, link)
Fixed an issue in KWin that caused dragging-and-dropping items in Firefox’s bookmarks sub-menus to not work properly. (Vlad Zahorodnii, link 1 and link 2)
Fixed an issue in KWin’s Zoom effect that caused the cursor to use the wrong shape when it passed over a zoomed-in area of an XWayland-using app that would normally use a different cursor shape. (Xaver Hugl, link)
Frameworks 6.18
Fixed a case where various Kirigami-using apps and System Settings pages could crash under certain circumstances. (Nicolas Fella, link)
Fixed an issue in draggable list items throughout Kirigami-using apps and System Settings pages that prevented them from being dragged upwards in a way that would require scrolling the view. (M. Sadık Uğursoy, link)
Fixed an issue that prevented the “File already exists!” dialog from appearing when you try to rename a file on the desktop to have the same name as another file there. (Pan Zhang, link)
Added support for “Underlays”, which promise to improve efficiency in GPUs that support it. (Xaver Hugl, link)
Made KWin’s blur effect per-view, which looks better when screencasting. (Xaver Hugl, link)
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.
You can help KDE by becoming an active community member and getting involved somehow. 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, too.
You can also help us by making a donation! A monetary contribution of any size will help us cover operational costs, salaries, travel expenses for contributors, and in general just keep KDE bringing Free Software to the world.
The 2025 edition of KDE's annual community gathering starts today. Unforunately circumstances mean i won't be attending BUT i was fortunate enough to attend my first ever Akademy last year. Indeed, that is one whole year ago but neurodivergent scriptophobia and a incredible ability to procrastinate have kept me from writing about it, until now.
Attending talks and sprints was certainly a blast from the past, not that I had ever attended another tech based conference before. It certainly brought back memories of campus life in my late teens studing anthropolgy/socialogy. The real hightlight being able to meet fellow attendees for the time in person, all of whom I had only ever previously chatted to in matrix rooms before.
Over the past year we've continued to provide the community with regular package updates from KDE neon and many aspects of how we release packages has changed but this probably deserves it's own post on the neon blog. Aside from this i've immersed myself in the innards of KDE's sysadmin tooling whilst helping with the roll out of the shiny new ephemeral vm builders that fellow antipode Ben has lovingly crafted. Will definitely use this new tech as a foundation to help automate not only Snap publishing, but also Flatpak's and appimage's. After all, in KDE it's all about the apps !!
I'd like to thank everyone in the community who have been so welcoming and supportive, the KDE e.v. for helping me attend last years event and wish all this years attendees a fantastic experience. Cheers !!
On Android apps need special permissions to access certain things like the camera
and microphone. When the app tries to access something that needs special permission for the first time
you will prompted once and afterwards the permission can be removed again in the app settings. For sandboxed apps on desktop as done by flatpak or snap for example the situation is similar.
Such apps can’t access all systems services, instead they have to through xdg-desktop-portal which
will show a dialog where the user can grant permission to the app. Unfortunately we lacked
the “configure permissions” part of it which means granted permissions disappear
into the void and pre-authorization is not possible. This changes with Plasma 6.5 which
will include a new settings page where you can configure application permissions!
Features
Main view showing Application Permissions
The main view after selecting an application shows all the permissions you can configure.
The ones at the top are controlled by simple on/off switches and are turned on by default –
applications are currently allowed to do those things by the portal frontend except when
explicitly denied.
The settings that follow are a bit more interesting, you can configure if application
requests to do those things or not. Additionally the “Always Ask” setting will make it so
that a dialog is always shown when the app tries to take a screenshot for example.
The default state for these settings after you install an app is “Ask Once”, a dialog
will be shown and depending on if you click yes or no future requests are allowed or denied.
The Location setting is a bit special as it allows configuring the accuracy with which
the current location is fetched.
Configuring saved screen cast and remote desktop sessions
Finally you can configure screen cast and remote desktop sessions that the app
is able to restore in the future. Here you can see exactly what the application is able to record
and control and revoke those permissions. The Plasma specific override for remote control
can also be enabled here.
A Note on Non-Sanboxed Apps and X11
For non-sandboxed (“host”) apps only a subset of settings will be shown. The reason is simple:
Some portals just forward a request from the application to another service. Denying
host apps access to such portals would either have no effect as they are not using
the portal in the first place or can always talk to the service directly anyway.
However some things such as recording screen contents or sending fake input events
always require that these apps use the portal because they are simply not possible
through other means so these settings will be shown. On Wayland anyway – on X11 everything
can do everything. Even so these settings will also be shown on X11 if you are using an app
that uses the portal to do these things.
Outlook
Of course as we implement new portals support for these will also be added here
if suitable. For existing portals permission support can be added – preferably upstream.
One such system is currently in development for the input capture portal. If you
think there is a portal dialog that can be hooked up to a permission system which
currently isn’t please file a bug report and we can investigate it.
anditosan
alex1701c
@kbroulik:kde.org
And in some distros, even using the GUI tools can get you into an unbootable state after an upgrade. If this has never happened to you on a traditional mutable Linux distro… I don’t believe you!
We’re looking to get more feedback from daily drivers. The 
