Dear fans of music & open source music players,
in preparation of the upcoming Amarok 3.3 release, a second beta release (3.2.82) has been prepared.

This time, the most important change is the new GStreamer-based audio backend. This enables a number of features that weren't available on Qt6 Phonon backends, and likely also provides a more reliable audio experience in general. In addition to audio system work, e.g. more safeguards have been set up around collection scanning code to prevent some potential database issues. More details on changes are listed in the ChangeLog.

These come in addition to the previous beta 1 changes (Qt6 only, database update). Please note that due to the database update in beta 1, downgrading from 3.3 betas is not directly possible, and returning to pre-3.3 versions requires the database (at ~/.local/share/amarok/mysqle/) to be manually backed up beforehand.

Additionally, there isn't an official release with Qt6 support of liblastfm available yet (needed for last.fm support). To enable last.fm functionalities, one needs to use a library version built from e.g. sources at https://github.com/Mazhoon/liblastfm/tree/81e8f9dc16a0a18fe9a066d51c2071086326670b

The Amarok 3.3 beta 2 source tarball is available on download.kde.org and it has been signed with Tuomas Nurmi's GPG key. In addition to the source code, it is likely that some distributions will provide beta packages. The various nightly git builds provided by various splendid packagers should also provide a way of using the beta changes and participating in the testing.

Happy listening!

Those of you upgrading to Plasma 6.4.1 (released yesterday) may notice a more substantive change than the type we typically make in bug-fix releases: The “highlight window” effect for Task Manager thumbnails is now off by default. This is the effect that makes other windows fade out when you hover over a window’s thumbnail.

Why did we turn it off? Because we discovered that with certain window arrangements and mouse movements, the current implementation could potentially cause full-screen flickering at greater than 3 Hz, which is potentially capable of triggering seizures in sensitive people.

Now, this is very unlikely. You’d need to open multiple full-screen windows of the same app, hover over their task to show thumbnails for them, move the pointer over one of the thumbnails, and then move it rapidly across all the others.

…Unlikely, but not impossible! And until and unless we can fix the effect to not be so flickery with this specific usage, it’s safer to keep it off. Furthermore, even for people who aren’t photosensitive, it’s currently a really unpleasant visual effect.

This work was done as a part of KDE’s recent accessibility push, and specifically the focused effort to make Plasma fully compliant with new EU accessibility regulations. Work is currently going on at all levels of the software stack, with multiple people involved and multiple sponsors funding it — both KDE e.V. itself, and also outside firms and institutions. If you’d like to see more of this kind of thing, donating to KDE e.V. is always a great idea, as it allows KDE e.V. itself to support an even larger amount and proportion of it.

There seems to be a bit of a doom-and-gloom vibe about accessibility in our community lately, but hopefully it’s clear that not only does KDE care, but it puts its money where its mouth is on this topic! Maybe we’re not 100% there yet, but we’re pointed in the right direction and motivated to continue accelerating towards it.

At Qt, we often say it's not just about building software—it's about building something that matters. And when you talk to people who’ve spent years in the craft, you realize it's also about finding the right tools, the right community, and the freedom to create. In this Qt Journey series, we highlight stories from developers, designers, and engineers around the world who have made Qt part of their professional lives. 

The latest updates to qmlformat, Qt's own tool for formatting of QML files, bring two practical improvements: configurable line breaking and automatic import sorting. These features enhance code readability and maintainability, making them valuable additions worth highlighting.

Plasma's upcoming first-run experience is coming along nicely.

After a bunch of research and discussions we settled on continuing / fixing up the KISS project (KDE Initial System Setup) for the new First Run Experience (FRE) / Out-Of-Box Experience (OOBE). It was in a sort of half finished state.

Since then has been a bunch of work on it such as:

• Getting it to compile and run
• Whole bunch of fixes, cleanup, and polish to the UI, UX, and code/developer experience
• Implemented the ability to actually create the new user (you could enter a name and password, but it was all basically placeholder GUI previously)
• Added language selection front/back ends
• Added basic build / run instructions to the README
• Added ECM logging
• Cleaned up the debug output which made changes more difficult
• Added basic CI (thanks Nico!)
• Added keyboard layout selection front/back ends

That last one was more difficult than expected.. turns out keyboard layouts can be quite complex!

First came some refactoring of the keyboard layouts KCM from plasma-desktop so we could reuse some of the existing, complex functionality. Then adapting a UI/UX appropriate for the FRE. Investigating things like keyboard models, detecting defaults, mapping language to keyboard layout, etc..

Then taking the results of the user choice and figuring out how to apply that both to the system as a default (systemd-localed dbus call) as well as to the running Plasma session (setting the value manually in the kxkbrc keyboard settings file).

As is often the case with software development, that succinct summary belies the massive amount of work it took to get there! 😅 💪

With that work completed, we have most of what is needed for a minimum viable product!

Next up:

• Granting authentication without a user prompt
  • Plan: special user with sysusers.d and a polkit rule
• Running automatically on first boot & in live sessions
  • Plan: systemd unit seems promising, but more research is needed
• Improve documentation
  • Especially related to building & running without kde-builder
• Think about the name
  • I am not thrilled with the KISS acronym personally 🤷‍♀️

There is also obviously a lot of improvements and polish that can be made, but for now here is a preview of the FRE:

These past few week’s my focus was on exploring input device detection and event handling mechanisms in Linux, with a particular emphasis on game controllers and their potential integration into KWin. I also spent time reading through KWin’s input-related source code to understand how it currently manages devices, and began reviewing documentation for various Linux input subsystems—including evdev, HID, and /dev/input/jsX in order to evaluate which layer would provide the most reliable and straight forward support for integrating controller recognition. The time was mostly spent learning how to use different libraries, tools and creating virtual controller prototype.

Tools, Libraries, and Concepts Used

libevdev

libevdev is a library for handling evdev devices. It provides a higher-level interface over /dev/input/event* and abstracts much of the complexity of input event parsing.

evdev is the generic input event interface. This is the preferred interface for userspace to consume user input, and all clients are encouraged to use it.

-The kernel development community.

libevdev can be used to:

• Detect physical game controllers.
• Read input events (e.g., joystick, buttons).
• Create virtual input device and write/forward events to it from physical game controller.

Useful functions:

• libevdev_new(), libevdev_set_fd(int fd, struct libevdev **dev): for opening physical devices.
• libevdev_next_event(struct libevdev *dev, unsigned int flags, struct input_event *ev): for polling events.
• libevdev_get_id_*(const struct libevdev *dev): to query device meta data.

uinput (User Input Subsystem)

I used the Linux uinput subsystem to create a virtual input device that mirrors a physical controller input. uinput is what allows us to make a virtual controller out of any evdev device by:

• Opening a file discriptor for the input device that will be emulate (i.e. have it input event forwarded).
• Forwarding the inputs from a evdev interface device to /dev/uinput (or /dev/input/uinput).
• uinput then creates a new node to expose the virtual device as a evdev interface device in /dev/input/event*

From here the idea is that KWin or any other system component can treat the virtual controller as if it were an ordinary HID device.

uinput is a kernel module that makes it possible to emulate input devices from userspace. By writing to /dev/uinput (or /dev/input/uinput) device, a process can create a virtual input device with specific capabilities. Once this virtual device is created, the process can send events through it, that will be delivered to userspace and in-kernel consumers.

-The kernel development community.

Useful functions:

• libevdev_uinput_create_from_device(const struct libevdev *dev, int uinput_fd, struct libevdev_uinput **uinput_dev):
  For creating a uinput device based on the given libevdev device.
• libevdev_uinput_get_devnode (struct libevdev_uinput *uinput_dev):
  Return the device node representing this uinput device.
• libevdev_uinput_write_event (const struct libevdev_uinput *uinput_dev, unsigned int type, unsigned int code, int value): Post an event through the uinput device.

Tools used:

• libevdev-uinput.h for management of uinput devices via libevdev.
• /dev/uinput opened with correct permissions.
  • Ensuring the current user is in the input group.
  • Verifying that the uinput kernel module is loaded (using modprobe uinput). Some distros (Ubuntu/Kubuntu) have it built in, not loaded as module, thus modprobe uinput command won't log anything.
  • Opening /dev/uinput with O_WRONLY | O_NONBLOCK flags using open(), and ensuring no EPERM or EACCES errors were returned.
  • Optional: Run program as sudo user.

force feedback detection/support

Using ioctl(fd, EVIOCGBIT(EV_FF, ...)) and tools like fftest, I examined:

• How to query a device’s force feedback (FF) capabilities to figure out which effects are supported (e.g., rumble, sine wave).
• How to upload ff effects to physical game controller and test rumble motors.
  • This was key to understanding haptic capability support on physical devices.

To enable force feedback, you have to:

have your kernel configured with evdev and a driver that supports your device.

make sure evdev module is loaded and /dev/input/event* device files are created.

Testing & Validation

• Used evtest and fftestto test evdev devices and understand their capabilities - sudo evtest /dev/input/eventX.
• Used those same tools to test virtual devices creating using uinput -
  sudo fftest dev/input/eventX. uinput creates a node device in dev/input/eventX for the virtual input.
• Prototype logs validate that a virtual device can be created and events can properly be written to a that virtual device using libevdev.

Takeaways

• Using libevdev and libevdev-uinput we can access physical controllers, create virtual controller and read/write low-level input events.
• Understanding of the permission requirements to open /dev/input/* and /dev/uinput (use udev rules or run as root).
• Tools to test:
  • evtest and fftest (from input-utils)
  • udevadm info --name=/dev/input/eventX --attribute-walk
    • Shows the device hierarchy - how the device is connected to PC and any parent device it connects to.
• Built a minimal proof-of-concept C++ program that routes an evdev devices input 1:1 to a virtual controller (via uinput).
• Not all controllers support all force feedback types; some failed with EINVAL during upload.
• libevdev does not handle FF upload directly — this remains kernel-level and typically involves ioctl().

References and Documentation

• Linux Input Subsystem Documentation (kernel-level overview of evdev, HID, uinput, etc.)
• evdev interface documentation (from the kernel source)
• uinput: User-level input device emulation
• Force Feedback programming on Linux (FF effect types and ioctl usage)
• libevdev (Userspace abstraction for evdev devices)

Tuesday, 24 June 2025. Today KDE releases a bugfix update to KDE Plasma 6, versioned 6.4.1.

Plasma 6.4 was released in June 2025 with many feature refinements and new modules to complete the desktop experience.

This release adds a week’s worth of new translations and fixes from KDE’s contributors. The bugfixes are typically small but important and include:

This is a recipe post. For an event I needed to make brownies for 100 people, so this time I decided to write down what I was doing, so that they would be sort-of-consistent. I even weighed things.

Melt (e.g. in the microwave):

• 200g pure chocolate (Jumbo store brand is acceptable in the Netherlands)
• 130g margarine (Blue Band)

Stir in:

• 150g sugar (e.g. brown basterd sugar for extra flavor)
• pinch of salt (this is one I often forget)

Mix in:

• 4 eggs (one by one, and use an electric mixer; run it long, so that the batter becomes glossy)
• 70g cocoa powder
• 60g flour

In the oven at 180℃ for 35 minutes or so. Optionally, add pecans.

This recipe is based on my interpretation of “Jamie Oliver Brownies”, which are all over the net – the original version is kind of picky, and what I do here works repeatedly in my kitchen.

You might have noticed that Plasma keyboard shortcuts have been changing recently with the aim to have everything KWin/Plasma be Meta+Something.

Now, I tend to redefine most of the default shortcuts, so this didn’t affect my workspace directly, but I liked the idea to have different modifiers used depending on the category of /thing/ for which I’m creating a shortcut.

An additional aim I had is to have a common shortcut ‘body’ for equivalent actions in different categories, in order to more easily build muscle memory with my new shortcuts.

Categories that I have are:

1. system (Plasma and such)
2. terminal application (Konsole, Kitty)
3. terminal multiplexer (TMux)
4. specific application (Firefox, Vim, …)

And these are the modifiers I’m trying out:

1. system: Meta+Anything and Alt+Special keys
2. terminal application: Ctrl+Shift+Anything
3. terminal multiplexer: nothing special yet, just the Ctrl+d as the leader
4. specific application:
   • working with tabs: Ctrl+Anything
   • other shortcuts: Alt+Normal keys

So, for example, the ; and ' as the shared shortcut /bodies/ mean the following in different categories:

1. Meta+; and Meta+' – switch to next and previous window (I’m using Krohnkite for tiling, so this is not like Alt+Tab, but moving through the visible tiled windows);
2. Ctrl+Shift+; and Ctrl+Shift+' – would mean switch to next and previous panes in the terminal application (I’m not using this yet, as I don’t tend to use split views in terminal except in TMux);
3. Ctrl+d ; and Ctrl+d ' – move to next and previous panes in TMux;
4. Alt+; and Alt+' – move to next and previous panes in an application (currently only in Vim and Neovim).

So far, the approach seems to work Ok. I’ve quickly got accustomed to the new window/pane navigation shortcuts.

The main problem are the programs that don’t allow changing shortcuts (Firefox for example) or don’t allow creating shortcuts with some key combinations (using Ctrl+; in Vim or Neovim does not work, while it works with Alt).

Because of those limitations, the modifiers are not as clear cut as they ideally would be. Ideally, each category would have its own single modifier, instead of, for example, having a mix of Alt and Ctrl in the /specific application/ category, and using a modifier combination like Ctrl+Shift for the /terminal application/.

I’ve also redefined all my Plasma and KWin shortcuts to be location-on-keyboard-based, but more on that later.