After months of intensive development, bug triage, and feature integration, the digiKam team is thrilled to announce the stable release of digiKam 9.0.0. This major version introduces groundbreaking improvements in performance, usability, and workflow efficiency, with a strong focus on modernizing the user interface, enhancing metadata management, and expanding support for new camera models and file formats.
digiKam 9.0.0 marks a significant milestone with the core code now fully ported to Qt 6.10.1 for the AppImage and macOS bundles, ensuring improved performance, security, and compatibility with modern operating systems. The Windows Qt6 bundle also benefits from the latest Qt 6.9.1 and KDE Frameworks 6.20.0.
This year I had the chance to attend my first ever FOSDEM. My main objective there was the
GCompris workshop in FOSDEM Junior track. It was an experimental one with the initiative
from the organizer since it was only the third year that this track existed.
The workshop had way more adult attendees interested in GCompris for their children than
children themselves. So, naturally, it turned more into a dev room than a workshop.
Me, together with the organizers came to a conclusion that GCompris isn't fit for the
FOSDEM Junior, at least not in the form of: short presentation -> hands free experience.
The FOSDEM, for me, was very overwhelming. The amount of people in one place as well as
having to choose from many different topics, navigating an unfamiliar city had me drained
by the end of the first day. Mostly because of that, on the second day I had my workshop
and attended only one talk.
Despite that, it was awesome to meet the people of KDE, experience solo travelling for the
first time and get to know the core of open source.
This was another week of focusing on bug-fixing and UI polishing. Not massively flashy stuff, but critical for the long-term stability of the platform. Check out the work:
Notable UI improvements
Plasma 6.6.2
The arrows in Discover’s “See More” buttons are now in the right place and point in the right direction for both left-to-right and right-to-left languages. (Nate Graham, discover MR #1275)
Plasma 6.6.3
The Panel Spacer Widget no longer appears in the widgets sidebar, because it only makes sense to put on panels, and there’s already a dedicated button to do that. (Tobias Fella, plasma-workspace MR #6376)
Allowed some labels in the Task Manager widget’s tooltips to become multi-line instead of eliding. (Nate Graham, plasma-desktop MR #3598)
Trying to save a color scheme with the name of an existing system color scheme no longer shows an accusatory and unclear error message; now it tells you you’ll need to choose a different name, and then prompts you to do so. (Akseli Lahtinen, plasma-workspace MR #6316)
Enabled the “Global Shortcuts” KRunner plugin by default. (Nate Graham, plasma-desktop MR #3590)
Notable bug fixes
Plasma 6.6.2
Fixed a bug that made KWin crash if you used the kscreen-doctor tool to create a custom modeline while already using a different custom modeline. (Vlad Zahorodnii, KDE Bugzilla #516452)
Spectacle no longer crashes when you try to share a rectangular region screenshot using KDE Connect. (Noah Davis, KDE Bugzilla #516717)
Fixed a regression that made bridged Ethernet networks show an inappropriate icon in the Networks widget. VLANs still show the wrong icon though; hopefully that’ll be fixed next week. Networking is complicated! (Nate Graham, KDE Bugzilla #516712)
Fixed a bug that made day names in the Digital Clock widget’s tooltip not be capitalized with certain languages. (Alessio Bonfiglio, plasma-workspace MR#6289)
Plasma 6.6.3
Fixed a case where KWin could crash when using the kscreen-doctor tool to change the resolution of a virtual screen in certain ways. (Xaver Hugl, KDE Bugzilla #517198)
Fixed a bug that could make Plasma crash on login with certain multi-monitor setups. (Dobry Nikolov, KDE Bugzilla #516937)
Fixed a regression that prevented certain monitors from automatically dimming at the right times. (Xaver Hugl, KDE Bugzilla #516867)
Fixed a regression that made Spectacle sometimes crash when quitting, instead of quitting cleanly. (Noah Davis, KDE Bugzilla #517064)
Fixed a regression that could cause long-presses on desktop widgets to unexpectedly trigger interactive controls on them. (Marco Martin, KDE Bugzilla #517040)
Fixed a somewhat common way that Plasma would quit (not crash, actually quit) with a Wayland protocol error when certain monitors woke from sleep. (Vlad Zahorodnii, KDE Bugzilla #507691)
Fixed a bug that made Plasma’s file transfer progress notifications claim that the total number of files was 0 in cases where the actual number was very very large. (Kai Uwe Broulik, plasma-workspace #6369)
Fixed a funny bug that made auto-hidden Plasma panels unexpectedly un-hide when the password dialog appeared while the “Dim Screen for Administrator Mode” effect was in use, which it is by default. (Vlad Zahorodnii, KDE Bugzilla #516864)
Frameworks 6.23.1
Worked around a Qt bug that was causing Plasma to repeatedly crash on login for some people. (David Redondo, KDE Bugzilla #514098)
Fixed a bug that caused KDE’s desktop portal implementation to crash when copying certain content in a remote desktop session. (David Edmundson, KDE Bugzilla #515465)
Fixed various inter-related issues with the app database that could make favorite apps disappear from launcher menus and the Task Manager widget under certain circumstances, including when using certain JetBrains apps in auto-start mode. (Harald Sitter, KDE Bugzilla #516426 and KDE Bugzilla #507838)
PulseAudioQt 1.8.0
Fixed a bug that could make Plasma crash when you tried to access certain audio devices’ profiles menus. (Harald Sitter, KDE Bugzilla #496067)
Notable in performance & technical
Plasma 6.6.2
Made the Global Menu widget more robust in the face of apps that lie about having any menus. (Christoph Wolk, plasma-workspace MR#6345)
Plasma 6.6.3
Made KWin’s screencasting feature more robust when using PipeWire 1.6.0 or newer, which imposes stricter requirements compared to earlier versions. (Conn O’Griofa, kwin MR #8939)
Plasma 6.7
Let the kscreen-doctor tool modify the value of screens’ AutoRotatePolicy key. (Xaver Hugl, libkscreen MR #291)
Made the kscreen-doctor tool capable of targeting the active screen, so you don’t need to look up its technical ID. Also made it possible to toggle HDR and wide color gamut support simultaneously. (Yossef Rostaqi, libkscreen MR #294)
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.
Would you like to help put together this weekly report? Introduce yourself in the Matrix room and join the team!
Beyond that, you can help KDE by directly getting involved in any other projects. 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.
You can also help out by making a donation! This helps cover operational costs, salaries, travel expenses for contributors, and in general just keeps KDE bringing Free Software to the world.
To get a new Plasma feature or a bug fix mentioned here
After implementing five different parallel programming models for the Mankala game engine's alpha-beta search, I discovered a fundamental limit: no matter how many cores I threw at the problem, there was a hard ceiling on performance. Our best implementation, OpenMP, achieved 2.73x speedup with 6 th…
Note that 6.0.0-beta3 has more issues, especially on Linux and Wayland, than 5.3.0-beta3. If you want to combine beta testing with actual productive work, it's best to test 5.3.0-beta3, since 5.3.0 will remain the recommended version of Krita for now.
To learn about everything that has changed, check the release notes!
5.3.0-beta3 Download
Windows
If you're using the portable zip files, just open the zip file in Explorer and drag the folder somewhere convenient, then double-click on the Krita icon in the folder. This will not impact an installed version of Krita, though it will share your settings and custom resources with your regular installed version of Krita. For reporting crashes, also get the debug symbols folder.
The Linux AppImage and the source tarballs are signed. You can retrieve the public key here. The signatures are here (filenames ending in .sig).
6.0.0-beta2 Download
Windows
If you're using the portable zip files, just open the zip file in Explorer and drag the folder somewhere convenient, then double-click on the Krita icon in the folder. This will not impact an installed version of Krita, though it will share your settings and custom resources with your regular installed version of Krita. For reporting crashes, also get the debug symbols folder.
A project that I had planned for quite some time came to fruition last year, now I finally found time to document the result. My livingroom sideboard looked messy and kind of boring while not blending in anymore with the updated style of my living room. I wanted to turn it into a striking centerpiece of the room. The plan was to install a sound-reactive lighting system. I wanted the light effects to be detailed and not disturbed by ambient sound in the living room, i.e. it sound not react to people’s voices, just the music playing.
My living room sideboard is an off-the-shelf product from IKEA that I bought many years ago. It didn’t have doors installed, but I was delighted that I could still buy matching doors with windows in them. To realize the light effects, I’ve installed frosted plexi glass inside the windows.
Getting technical…
To control the LEDs, I’m using an ESP32-based LED controller with a line-in module and an ADC (analog-digital converter). After some experimenting, I’ve found this board to work well. I’ve connected 6 WS2812B LED strips to 3 pins and installed them with an aluminium profile into the doors. The frosted windows and profiles diffuse the light nicely so you can’t make out individual LEDs really. On the software side, I’m using a sound-reactive port of the WLED project. WLED is Free and Open Source software, of course. Though its user interface can be a little unwieldy, it’s also very powerful and integrates nicely with homeassistant, so it can be controlled automatically.
Inside view
The ESP32, being a rather powerful dual-core microcontroller, can process the incoming audio signal on one core (using fast-fourier transformation) and compute complex LED effects on the other core. Rendering up to 200 frames per second to 2 times 210 LEDs is no problem while power consumption of just the controller stays well under 1W. Pretty impressive! Depending on the LED effects (number of LEDs lit up at a given time and their colors), the whole thing hardly ever reaches 10W of power consumption.
ESP32-based LED controller
Another functional goal of this project was to solve cooling issues of my amplifier once and for all. The amp would run really hot and shut off after playing at higher volume for some time. I installed a bunch of 12cm fans which suck air through the amplifier and blow it out on the backside. Both amp and and fans are connected to smartplugs. I turned to my homeassistant and set up an automation which turns the fans on whenever the amp’s power consumption reaches a certain level. This works really nicely, since the fans never spin at lower volumes (when you could hear them through the music) and keep everything cool and running stable at higher volume when it’s necessary — without human interaction.
Cooling system
Walnut finish
The outer shell of the sideboard is made of walnut wooden panels with an oil and varnish finish, thanks to my friend Joris. The oil gives it a darker look and accentuates the grain, matching the speaker system. The matte varnish finish (Skylt, highly recommended for its durability and natural look) allows me to sleep well even if people put their drinks on it.
Done and dusted
I love it when a plan comes together!
I’m really happy with the result. While I had thought it out for a long time already, it’s always a lot more impressive when you see the final result in action. The WLED firmware allows me to create interesting light effects. I can run the 3 doors as one, but also easily split them up into segments so each door panel renders its own effect. WLED has ca. 200 different LED effects, many of them react to sound. Each effect can be combined with one of 50 color palettes, some of the palettes are sound-reactive in their own right leading to a very dynamic display. One cool feature is that the processed sound data can be broadcast across the network (over UDP) and received by other WLED controllers, so I can have multiple LED displays in the house, each rendering their own effect to the music, creating a more immersive experience.
I'm half-way through the Season of KDE 2026 and wanted to share the journey so far.
I had subscribed to the kde-soc mailing list after I returned from IndiaFOSS'25, where I met KDE contributors who really encouraged me to join the community and told me that one can always learn while building. The first step, always, is to start. Then I got carried away with life until I saw "call to action" in my mailbox in January. It was about SoK'26. I had then recently set up Kubuntu and was in awe about what people can build out of passion and by collaborating with others. I felt mentorship was the way to get started. I explored the projects and found Task-3 under Lokalize as something that I can contribute to while learning new skills- programming in CPP, debugging, and exploring an old repo.
Here's everything i did before the season officialy began.
Before Proposal
I installed ==Lokalize== and reproduced the bug.
Cloned the repo. Used grep to find “Approve and go next” in codebase. Turned out EditorTab::gotoNextFuzzyUntr() is the origin of bug. I thought about "Approve and go prev" and tried that. It was buggy too!
kde-builder failed due to missing libraries. So after lot of fixes, i did ubuntu update to 25.10(has qt6). *Created a test branch and added debug log in forementioned method.
Spent more time understanding the repo, the files,classes and methods which were involved in the bug using debug logs, grep and manual look-over.
Wrote a few comments to document better.
Had an introductory call, was nice to know the contributors.
Week 2
Researched past commit to understand the intent of navigational shortcuts.
Added SPDX license headers( did not know it was being actively developed in GSOC too). Aided Kumud by sending an email to the KDE i18n mailing list regarding the cyclic traversal on entries for keyboard shortcuts in the Translation Units View. Typically, KDE applications don't use that, as followed from the replies and was not needed.
Had a group call for understanding rebase but i still mess up sometimes.
Week 3
While Kumud's implementation addressed gotoNextFuzzyUntr(), analyzed their approach to generalise it to make it work for gotoPrevFuzzyyUntr() and added a parameter to move in either direction for which a new Enum was used instead of magic numbers(they have a name for it T-T). I could see magic numbers used previously in the code and do get it why it isn't preferred.
Week 4
Continued with the week-3's work
Week 5
Worked on fixing other navigational shortcuts in editortab.cpp which implied generalising the function furthermore to take another parameter for entry state. StackOverflow is a saviour(Of course, after my mentor). Throughtout this time, it felt as if things were unravelling themselves to me. New bugs were found and worked upon. Looking back, I mostly improvised upon Kumud's solution but still got to learn a lot on the way.
Week 6
Will work on other bugs identified on the way or scout for new ones! See if I make past this which was primarily the task for SoK.
Glaxnimate 0.6.0 is out! This is the first stable release with Glaxnimate as part of KDE.
The biggest benefit of joining KDE is that now Glaxnimate can use KDE's infrastructure
to build and deploy packages, greatly improving cross-platform support. This allows
us to have releases available on the Microsoft Store and macOS builds
for both Intel and Arm chips.
But there is much more...
KDE-specific features
Glaxnimate now uses the KDE file recovery system making it more reliable.
Settings and styles also go through the KDE systems, which, among other things,
lets you choose from more color themes for the interface.
Translations are also provided by KDE. This makes it easier to keep other languages
up to date as Glaxnimate evolves. In fact, the number of available languages has increased
from 8 to 26!
The script console has also been enhanced with basic autocompletion making scripting easier.
Timeline
The timeline dock now allows effortless scrolling and provides buttons that make moving
to different keyframes, and adding and removing them easier too. This contributes
to making the animation workflow much smoother.
Hiding and showing layers from the timeline now interacts with the undo/redo system.
You can also quickly toggle keyframe easing without having to navigate menus. Just
hold down the Alt key and click on the timeline.
Format Support
SVG import and export has been re-worked, and precompositions
are now properly exported and animations improved. You can even export
an animation as a sequence of SVG frames.
Editing
We have improved the bezier editing tools, and included the ability to Alt-click
on bezier points to cycle between tangent symmetry modes.
The Reverse path action is now implemented and works for all shapes. This is mostly useful
when adding the Trim path modifier.
Bug Fixes
Version 0.5.4 included a significant refactoring of internal logic that introduced
several bugs. These have now have been fixed.
Packager Section
The source code tarballs are available from the KDE servers:
Rocky Linux throws its support behind KDE,
becoming our latest patron.
Rocky Linux is a stable, community-driven, and production-ready Linux
distribution designed to be fully compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
Rocky Linux powers clouds, supercomputers, servers, and workstations around
the world.
"Sustainable Open Source depends on great open-source communities supporting
each other" said Brian Clemens, Co-founder and Vice President of the Rocky
Enterprise Software Foundation. "We do our best to support our upstreams, and
backing KDE was an easy choice for us given the popularity of the Rocky Linux
KDE spin."
"As a user-first community, KDE creates solutions to address real-world needs"
said Aleix Pol, President of KDE e.V.. "We are excited to welcome Rocky Linux
as a KDE Patron and see KDE's software shine on Rocky Linux,
their enterprise-ready operating system."
Rocky Linux joins KDE e.V.'s other patrons: Blue Systems, Canonical, g10 Code,
Google, Kubuntu Focus, Mbition, Slimbook, SUSE,
Techpaladin, The Qt Company and TUXEDO Computers, who generously support
FOSS and KDE's development through KDE e.V.
ngraham
@pavankumarsg:matrix.org
GSoC
