Linux with X11 and now Wayland is for a long time the primary system on that Kate work happens.
Over the years it was, like most of the KDE applications, ported to various BSD variants.
Be it some mainstream Linux distribution like Fedora or a niche one like NixOS, Kate is available as binary package.
You love BSD?
From FreeBSD to OpenBSD, you can get a Kate package via your normal package system.
And in the normal case, you can just build it from source on your own, all needed patches should be in our repositories upstream.
If that is not the case for your system, please help to upstream them.
Below the current state of the master branch compiled on NixOS unstable with Wayland.
How to compile Kate on your own on a Unix like system and start to help to develop it can be found out here.
Windows
Since several years there are activities in the KDE community to provide our libraries and applications for Windows.
Even if that is a non-free platform, we can reach out to new users and developers that might later be then even interested to switch a full open platform.
Progress is slow, but steady.
We have Kate and some other applications in the official Windows Store and nightly build for more of them.
With reasonable effort you can develop Kate on Windows with Craft.
Below the current state of the master branch running on Windows 11 inside VirtualBox.
If you like to try that, use the nighly installer linked on the Kate website.
macOS
Beside Windows, the major other non-free platform Kate tries to support is macOS.
We have nighly build available for that and you can, like on Windows, develop Kate with the help of Craft.
Below the current state of the master branch running native on my M2 ARM Mac Mini.
Same as for Windows, if you like to try that, use the nighly installer for either ARM or Intel Macs linked on the Kate website.
Other Platforms
Naturally there are more than the above mentioned operating systems around.
Beside the mobile ones like Android and iOS that are not that interesting for Kate, many other desktop operating systems exist.
Even if the Kate team itself doesn’t put active work it them, that doesn’t mean Kate can’t run there.
Without any active work on our side, for example a Kate port for Haiku was done.
Some one-liner patches for that got even upstreamed.
If you work on some port of our stuff and need to upstream stuff, please contact us.
Even if you work on a non-mainstream system, as long as the patches are not too intrusive, we are interested to have them.
Help us!
Naturally the most of our developers are working on the Linux or some BSD.
That means the other systems are always in need of more people to help out, both on the programming and testing side.
For Kate, testing should be easy, grab a nighly build for Windows or macOS on the Kate website.
Or even better, get Craft running, that will make it easier to contribute, too.
One recent topic that needs love is the removal of DBus for Windows/macOS/Android and other systems that don’t use it normally.
If you are up to help with that, here that is coordinated.
The current state is already sufficient that the nightly builds of Kate no longer hang on e.g. macOS, but still some frameworks like KIO will need more work.
Just don’t get that wrong, DBus is great on the Linux or BSD systems that use it natively, but it is a pain on systems that have no notion of DBus and leads there to hangs or the spawning of unwanted processes.
Beside that, the usefulness is low there, as there are no services on the bus to communicate with anyways.
What does this do? In a nutshell it allows apps to tell the compositor when to display frames on the screen, reducing latency and graphical glitches. The effect should be particularly noticeable with NVIDIA GPUs, which only support this rendering style, and not having support for it on Wayland was the most common source of random graphical glitches and slowdowns.
This work was done by Xaver Hugl, and lands in Plasma 6.1. You can read more about it in a recent blog post he wrote on the topic!
In addition to that impactful but technical change, this was a week of many UI improvements and bug fixes as well:
UI Improvements
Improved the visual quality of cross-screen screenshots that Spectacle takes when using multi-screen setups where the screens have different scale factors (Noah Davis, Spectacle 24.05. Link)
Improved quality of blurs, pixelations, and shadows in Spectacle’s annotations (Noah Davis, Spectacle 24.05. Link)
KWrite now shows a hamburger menu by default instead of a traditional menu bar, and the hamburger menu has gained an assortment of curated actions on the top to speed up access to them (Nathan Garside and Christoph Cullmann, KWrite 24.05. Link 1, link 2, and link 3):
Just KWrite! Nothing has changed for Kate.
Filelight now throws fewer annoying modal dialog windows in your face: it now shows directory access errors using inline placeholder messages, and failures to add duplicate exclusion paths using small toasts/passive notifications (Han Young, Filelight 24.05. Link 1 and link 2)
In the “Get New [Thing]” dialogs, the warning shown at the top is now different and more warningy if the available content has the potential to run executable code on your system (David Edmundson and me: Nate Graham, Plasma 6.1 and Gear apps 24.05. Link 1 and link 2):
In Plasma’s traditional Task Manager widget, the threshold for showing any text is now smaller, so you’ll see text more often even at relatively narrow task widths. This is based on the idea that if you’re using this widget, it’s because you want to see text! (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 6.0.4. Link)
On Wayland, the Dialog Parent effect that dims parent windows when dialogs are active now temporarily disables the dimming when the dialog window is a color picker that’s currently picking a screen color (Ivan Tkachenko, Plasma 6.1. Link)
System Settings’ Virtual Desktops page has now adopted the common “controls on the header row” paradigm to increase the space available for content (Jakob Petsovits, Plasma 6.1. Link):
In Plasma’s Power and Battery widget, the controls and UI for blocking sleep and screen locking have moved from the header into the view, matching the location of other interactive controls and preventing the header from becoming super chunky when multiple apps are inhibiting sleep and screen locking (Natalie Clarius, Plasma 6.1. Link):
System Monitor now shows a tooltip with the full text when you hover over an elided piece of text in one of the table views (Joshua Goins, Plasma 6.1. Link)
Made the header message on System Settings’ File Search page frameless and border-touching, making use of new API created to enable this purpose. This API was also used for the message in the “Get new [thing]” dialog shown earlier. So expect to see more of this kind of thing in the coming weeks! (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 6.1. Link 1 and link 2):
Folder popups invoked from a Plasma panel can now be resized if you’d like more space to see everything in them (Ivan Tkachenko, Plasma 6.1. Link)
If you preferred the old style of app launching in Plasma’s traditional Task Manager widget whereby an app’s pinned launcher would disappear when launched, you can now get that back (Niccolò Venerandi, Plasma 6.1. Link)
Middle-clicking a desktop in KWin’s Overview effect no longer instantly removes it, because this made it too easy to accidentally destroy your layout (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 6.1. Link)
The radius of rounded corners throughout Breeze-themed UI elements has now been standardized at 5px, much better than the previous random assortment of corner radii that ranged generally from 2-5px, with some being as high as 8 or 16px! This is an easily bikeshedded topic, so please try to restrain yourselves; check out all the other screenshots in this post, which feature the change—I bet you thought they looked pretty good before I explicitly mentioned that the corner radius had increased, right!? (Akseli Lahtinen, Plasma 6.1 and Frameworks 6.2. Link)
Bug Fixes
In Dolphin’s Details view, navigating to a subdirectory no longer resets the current sort mode (Felix Ernst, Dolphin 24.02.2. Link)
Gwenview no longer inappropriately blocks sleep and screen locking when simply viewing an image (Daniel Strnad, Gwenview 24.02.2. Link)
Fixed a nasty bug in Spectacle that could cause the rectangular region overlay to get stuck on screen when taking a rectangular region screenshot right after a screen recording without quitting and re-launching Spectacle first (Noah Davis, Spectacle 24.05. Link)
Plasma’s Night Light feature no longer unintentionally connects to Mozilla Location Services to geolocate you for the purpose of figuring out the Night Light transition time when you don’t have that setting turned on (Natalie Clarius, Plasma 5.27.12. Link)
Plasma no longer crashes when you close the notification that gives you an opportunity to undo removing an Icon widget (Nicolas Fella, Plasma 6.0.4. Link)
Modal font dialogs in Plasma 6 are now ugly, but at least they work again; our previous styling approach caused them to end up non-interactive and has been reverted for now pending a better solution (Nicolas Fella, Plasma 6.0.4. Link)
Discover once again shows you everything you have installed on its “Installed” page—not just an assortment of packages that depended on what distro you were using (Harald Sitter, Plasma 6.0.4. Link)
When scrolling down in one app category on Kickoff and then switching categories, random items from the former category no longer sometimes appear inappropriately on the new page (David Redondo, Plasma 6.0.4. Link)
On Wayland, the color picker dialog no longer returns incorrect colors when an ICC profile is applied to the display (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 6.0.4. Link)
Fixed a strange issue whereby items in Plasma’s list view mode Folder View popups on a panel could only be highlighted when moving the cursor downwards, rather than upwards (Akseli Lahtinen, Plasma 6.0.4. Link)
Fixed a bug that made it possible, under certain circumstances, to drag a window completely off the screen (Yifan Zhu, Plasma 6.0.4. Link)
On Wayland, the clipboard menu that appears when you hit Meta+V no longer goes underneath windows set to always be on top (Tino Lorenz, Plasma 6.0.4. Link)
In KWin’s Overview effect, the thumbnails for inactive virtual desktops are now live, not static (David Redondo, Plasma 6.0.4. Link)
Fixed a problem creating new Wireguard VPNs (Stephen Robinson, Plasma 6.1. Link)
Keyboards are no longer sometimes shown as mice on System Settings’ Mouse page (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 6.1. Link)
Rapidly toggling the “Floating” setting for a Plasma panel on and off no longer sometimes causes the panel to get stuck in a position where it’s not floating, but also detached from the screen edge (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 6.1. Link)
Discover no longer mislabels apps that get removed from a Flatpak repo as being not installed when they are in fact still installed (Aleix Pol and Ivan Tkachenko, Plasma 6.1. Link)
Fixed a case where KDE apps could run out of memory when told to open certain types of malformed image files (Mirco Miranda, Frameworks 6.1. Link)
Fixed the most common crash in the Baloo file indexing service, with 113 duplicates as of the time of writing (Christoph Cullmann, Frameworks 6.2. Link)
Fixed a rare case where KIO could exhaust all memory while trying and failing to process HTTP requests under certain unusual circumstances (Harald Sitter, Frameworks 6.2. Link)
WebDAV files accessed through Dolphin or other KDE apps once again show the correct modification times (Fabian Vogt, Frameworks 6.2. Link)
Again 145 KDE bugs of all kinds fixed over the last week! Full list of bugs
Performance & Technical
After Qt changes regressed this, changing color schemes is once again nearly instant, giving the “blend changes” KWin effect enough time to provide a smooth transition between the colors (Kai Uwe Broulik, Frameworks 6.2 Link)
Files and folders on the desktop that are copied or dragged are now made available via the Portals system, so dropping them into sandboxed apps now works as expected (Karol Kosek, Plasma 6.0.4. Link)
…And Everything Else
This blog only covers the tip of the iceberg! If you’re hungry for more, check out https://planet.kde.org, where you can find more news from other KDE contributors.
How You Can Help
KDE has become important in the world, and your time and labor have helped to bring it there! But as we grow, it’s going to be equally important that this stream of labor be made sustainable, which primarily means paying for it. Right now the vast majority of KDE runs on labor not paid for by KDE e.V. (the nonprofit foundation behind KDE, which I am a board member for), and that’s a problem. We’ve taken steps to change this with paid technical contractors—but those steps are small due to limited financial resources. If you’d like to help change that, consider donating today!
Otherwise, visit https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved to discover other 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!
Hindi Translation of Cantor and KDE connect - Season of KDE 2024 This is the second and last blog for SoK 2024.
During the second half of Season of KDE, I translated Cantor and KDE connect in hindi. Cantor and KDE connect had about 1000 and 500 lines respectively.
In order to translate these softwares, I took reference from google translate and AI models to improve on my translation. Translation memory did a great job in finding duplicates and helped me to avoid translating the same words again.
It has been a very busy couple of weeks as we worked against some major transitions and a security fix that required a rebuild of the $world. I am happy to report that against all odds we have a beta release! You can read all about it here: https://kubuntu.org/news/kubuntu-24-04-beta-released/ Post beta freeze I have already begun pushing our fixes for known issues today. A big one being our new branding! Very exciting times in the Kubuntu world.
In the snap world I will be using my free time to start knocking out KDE applications ( not covered by the project ). I have also recruited some help, so you should start seeing these pop up in the edge channel very soon!
Now that we are nearing the release of Noble Numbat, my contract is coming to an end with Kubuntu. If you would like to see Plasma 6 in the next release and in a PPA for Noble, please consider donating to extend my contract at https://kubuntu.org/donate !
Test Kubuntu 24.04 Beta and Experience Innovation with KubuQA!
We’re thrilled to announce the availability of the Kubuntu 24.04 Beta! This release is packed with new features and enhancements, and we’re inviting you, our valued community, to join us in fine-tuning this exciting new version. Whether you’re a seasoned tester or new to software testing, your feedback is crucial to making Kubuntu 24.04 the best it can be.
To make your testing journey as easy as pie, we’re introducing a fantastic new tool: KubuQA. Designed with both new and experienced users in mind, KubuQA simplifies the testing process by automating the download, VirtualBox setup, and configuration steps. Now, everyone can participate in testing Kubuntu with ease!
This beta release also debuts our fresh new branding, artwork, and wallpapers—created and chosen by our own community through recent branding and wallpaper contests. These additions reflect the spirit and creativity of the Kubuntu family, and we can’t wait for you to see them.
Get Testing
By participating in the beta testing of Kubuntu 24.04, you’re not just helping improve the software; you’re becoming an integral part of a global community that values open collaboration and innovation. Your contributions help us identify and fix issues, ensuring Kubuntu remains a high-quality, stable, and user-friendly Linux distribution.
The benefits of joining our testing team extend beyond improving the software. You’ll gain valuable experience, meet like-minded individuals, and perhaps discover a new passion in the world of open-source software.
So why wait? Download the Kubuntu 24.04 Beta today, try out KubuQA, or follow our wiki to upgrade and help us make Kubuntu better than ever! Remember, your feedback is the key to our success.
Ready to make an impact?
Join us in this exciting phase of development and see your ideas come to life in Kubuntu. Plus, enjoy the satisfaction of knowing that you’ve contributed to a project used by millions around the world. Become a tester today and be part of something big!
Interested in more than testing?
By the way, have you thought about becoming a member of the Kubuntu Community? It’s a fantastic way to contribute more actively and help shape the future of Kubuntu. Learn more about joining the community.
Turns out I managed to squeeze reading here and there and have enough content for a regular review… So let’s go for my web review for the week 2024-15.
Fairbuds are Fairphone’s proof that we really could make better tiny gadgets | Ars Technica
Tags: tech, repair, sound, hardware
Another type of devices where clearly they could be repairable and batteries could be swappable if manufacturers would put care in the design. At least, Fairphone is showing it’s doable.
Software eco-design: investigating and reducing the energy consumption of software
Tags: tech, performance, energy, ecology, java, research
More work about eco-design of software. This is definitely welcome. I found this work a bit weak on the state of the art and the interview parts (10 people in the same company). But the field is so nascent that it’s to be expected I guess, PhD students have to do with what they have access to. Unsurprisingly this shows a great lack of proper tools to tackle the measurement problem. This thesis shows interesting prospects to reduce variations in measurements though, some of the proposed guidelines might help but cannot offset the hardware heterogeneity completely… The parts focusing on practical advices around Java use and deployment are interestingly easy to apply though. You need to take into account the context of your application to make the right choices of course.
Interesting take on why people see more in LLM based systems than there really is. The parallels with psychics and mentalists tricks are well thought out.
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, open-access, research
This is how it should be done. This one comes with everything needed to reproduce the results. This is necessary to gain insights into how such models work internally.
Wondering how one can design a coding assistant? Here is an in depth explanation of the choices made by one of the solutions out there. There’s quite some processing before and after actually running the inference with the LLM.
Looks like an interesting tool to analyze hard to reproduce bugs, especially when concurrency is involved. This could be useful to find the source of flaky tests as well.
Hopefully nobody is handling configuration by assuming the user will modify the source code or build scripts by hand. Unfortunately I still encounter it from time to time…
Good criteria to decide to pair or not. This is still not practiced enough. Maybe knowing when it’s best to reach out to pair will help get more into it.
This is my final blog about my experience participating in season of KDE 2024.
As part of my final term, I translated Tellico to hindi. Tellico contains 2070 statements with messages containing 1340 and docmessage containing 730 statements.
I used Lokalize application for the translation.
Here are some screenshots: Lokalize also has a glossary but its very limited for Hindi language. Commission for Scientific and Technical Terminology (https://cstt.education.gov.in/glossary-hindi-engineering-and-technology) and Fuel provides glossaries which can be used to expand Lokalize.
KEcoLab, a tool for measuring software energy consumption, needs robust testing to ensure its functionality after every code change. This blog post presents the work I did in Season of KDE 2024 implementing dedicated test builds using Kate test scripts to achieve this goal. By implementing a dedicated "test-build" and "integration" stage within the CI/CD pipeline, we can enhance KEcoLab's reliability and maintain confidence in its results.
Figure : Setting up CI test (image from Sarthak Negi published under a CC-BY-4.0 license).
Background
KEcoLab simplifies the process of analyzing KDE software's energy consumption through the CI/CD pipeline in Invent. This automation streamlines the measurement process, offering crucial insights for developers and helping projects seeking eco-certification. However, ensuring KEcoLab's continued effectiveness requires thorough testing after each code modification.
The Challenge
KEcoLab retrieves the package name from the merge request for testing purposes. However, this approach doesn't guarantee stability after code changes unrelated to specific packages. To address this, we propose a dedicated "test-build" stage within the CI/CD pipeline.
The Solution: Dedicated Test Builds
The proposed "test-build" stage leverages Kate test scripts located in the KEcoLab repository. These scripts will be instrumental in mimicking CI tests and validating KEcoLab's functionality.
Here's a breakdown of the proposed stages within the test build:
Stage: test-build
Tag: test-build
Function: This stage functions similarly to how the existing KEcoLab pipeline operates. However, instead of dynamically retrieving the package name, it will be hardcoded to org.kde.kate (as this is the specific package we're focusing on for testing).
Key Difference: This stage won't rely on files from the merge request. Instead, it will clone the KEcoLab repository to access the necessary Kate usage scenario files. This ensures we're testing against the latest codebase in the repository, regardless of specific merge requests.
Implementation: To improve code organization and maintainability, we've adopted a modular approach to CI/CD pipelines. We now have two dedicated YAML files:
.test-energy_measurement.yml: This file defines the stages for the CI test pipeline.
.energy_measurement.yml: This file contains the stages previously defined in .gitlab-ci.yml. All the code related to energy measurement testing has been shifted to this new file.
Both YAML files reside within the same directory for easy management. The main .gitlab-ci.yml file utilizes the include keyword to incorporate the stages from these dedicated files. This promotes modularity, improves readability, and reduces redundancy in the main pipeline configuration.
# Test-build stagetest-build:stage:test-buildimage:alpinetags:- EcoLabWorkerbefore_script:# Hardcode the package name to org.kde.kate- PACKAGE_NAME="org.kde.kate"script:# Add flathub remote if not exists- flatpak remote-add --user --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo# Install the specified package (org.kde.kate) from flathub- flatpak install --user $PACKAGE_NAME -y# Clone the KEcolab repository to access usage scenario files- git clone https://invent.kde.org/teams/eco/remote-eco-lab.git# Copy the kate usage scenario files from the cloned repository to the required location- cp remote-eco-lab/scripts/test_scripts/org.kde.kate/* scripts/test_scripts/org.kde.kate/rules:- if:$CI_PIPELINE_SOURCE == 'merge_request_event'
Stage: test-energy-measurement
This stage operates identically to the existing KEcoLab pipeline stage for energy measurement.
Stage: test-report
This stage also functions identically to the existing KEcoLab pipeline stage responsible for generating reports.
Future OutLook
Stage: integration test
We introduce a novel integration test
This stage aims to compare reports generated during the test build with previous reports. By utilizing the diff command, we can identify significant discrepancies between the reports. This helps us detect potential regressions or unintended changes in how KEcoLab measures energy consumption.
# This stage is for integration testsstage:Integration test# Jobs to be executed in this stagejobs:- run:# Replace with your actual script to run integration testsname:Run integration testsscript:your_test_script.sh# Diff reports job (assuming reports are stored in artifacts)- diff_reports:# Retrieve artifacts from previous jobstage:Integration testartifacts:paths:- reports/script:| # Install diff tools
apk add diffutils
# Get the latest reports from artifacts
report1=$(ls reports/*.html | sort -r | head -n 1)
report2=$(ls reports/*.html | sort -r | head -n 2)
Why it matters
Enhanced Stability: By focusing on a specific package (org.kde.kate) and utilizing the latest codebase from the KEcoLab repository, we ensure comprehensive testing across code changes, not just those within a particular merge request.
Catch Bugs Early: The integration test utilizing diff allows for the early detection of regressions or deviations in energy measurement behavior. This proactive approach helps maintain consistent and reliable results from KEcoLab.
Confidence in Every Change: Whenever someone contributes code, passing tests ensure those changes don't disrupt existing features. This builds trust and keeps development smooth.
Save Time, Be Awesome: Automating tests frees up valuable time for developers to focus on innovation. We can spend less time debugging and more time making KEcoLab even better!
Figure : CI testing (image from Sarthak Negi published under a CC-BY-4.0 license).
So, How Will It Work?
We have existing test scripts used for Kate, KDE's text editor. We'll first see if these can be adapted for KEcoLab. If needed, we'll create new tests specifically designed for KEcoLab's functionalities.
Here's the coolest part: these tests will become part of our CI/CD pipeline. Whenever someone submits code changes (a merge request), the pipeline will automatically run the tests. If everything passes, the changes are merged with manual approval by the maintainers. But if a test fails, it'll be like a flashing red light, prompting us to fix the issue before merging.
The proposed dedicated test build approach using Kate test scripts is a valuable addition to the KEcoLab CI/CD pipeline. This enhanced testing strategy helps ensure that KEcoLab continues to deliver accurate and reliable software energy consumption measurements, ultimately leading to more efficient and eco-friendly code.
Interested in Contributing?
By implementing dedicated CI-tests leveraging Kate's existing test scripts, we're taking a big step towards solidifying KEcoLab's stability and ensuring the accuracy of its software energy consumption measurements. This wouldn't be possible without the incredible support of the KDE community and my mentors @karan @joseph. Their dedication to open-source development is truly inspiring.
Want to See More? Head over to KEcoLab on invent.kde.org to explore the project, learn more about its development, and check out the merge request that sparked this advancement!
We're excited about this approach and would love to hear your thoughts! If you're interested in contributing to KEcoLab's development and helping make software development a more sustainable practice, you are always welcome. Together, we can make a real difference!
KDE today announces the release of KDE Frameworks 6.1.0.
KDE Frameworks are 83 addon libraries to Qt which provide a wide variety of commonly needed functionality in mature, peer reviewed and well tested libraries with friendly licensing terms. For an introduction see the KDE Frameworks release announcement.
This release is part of a series of planned monthly releases making improvements available to developers in a quick and predictable manner.
Qt for MCUs 2.5.3 LTS (Long-Term Support) has been released and is available for download.As a patch release, Qt for MCUs 2.5.3 LTS provides bug fixes and other improvements, and maintains source compatibility with Qt for MCUs 2.5.x. It does not add any new functionality.
cullmann
(Akseli Lahtinen, Plasma 6.1 and Frameworks 6.2. 
@sgmoore:kde.org
