KDE ⚙️ Gear 24.08
Akademy 2024 Edition
Thursday, 22 August 2024
Every 4 months, KDE releases a long list of new versions of applications all at the same time.
With KDE's yearly Akademy event right around the corner, KDE ⚙️ Gear 24.08 is out today and comes loaded with a rich collection of updated applications from social media managers to storage monitors, and from terminal emulators to travel assistants, all offering exciting new improvements and features.
Let's take a look at just a few of the refreshed applications coming to your desktop in the next few days.
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Manage
Many of the new features in Dolphin are designed to make it easier to access and manage files and folders that require administrative privileges. Visual cues, wizards to help install needed software, and menu options to elevate your privileges make it easier than ever to use Dolphin as a superuser.
New usability features include:
- A new "Move to New Folder…" option that pops up when right-clicking a file, allowing you to create a folder and copy the file into it all in one go.
- Double-clicking the view background that triggers the "Select All" action by default.
Filelight is a complementary application to Dolphin, and can be installed directly from Dolphin by clicking the down arrow in the lower right corner of the main window.
Filelight helps visualize how much space your files and folders are taking up. Version 24.08 comes with a friendlier home page, and the Windows version (available from the Microsoft Store) has been redesigned to improve its overall appearance.
Konsole 24.08 also comes with a brand new usability enhancement: if you need to bookmark something important in a long output, double-click the scroll bar to set a position marker. You can then quickly scroll back and locate it later.
Create
Kdenlive is KDE's professional video editor, and this new release is all about the curves.
You can now use the brand new keyframe curve editor to customize effects, and easing methods (Cubic in/out and Exponential in/out) for fades.
To make things easier, we've redesigned the effects stack widget and improved the Transform effect, which now lets you select clips directly from the monitor. It also comes with a new grid, and improved design and behavior for the handle.
Travel
Coming to Akademy 2024? Don't forget to install the updates for Itinerary and Kongress and make your journey easy.
Itinerary is KDE's travel assistant. It lets you plan and manage your trips, providing an overview of where you need to be and when. It keeps boarding passes, tickets, and health certificates all in one place, and the latest version adds more details, including seat information displayed directly in the timeline.
Once you arrive at your destination, it's time to fire up Kongress so you don't miss any of the sessions or activities. Kongress now makes things easier by providing indoor maps of the venue, so you not only know when and what's going on, but also where.
Both Itinerary and Kongress work on desktop and laptop computers and most mobile devices.
Communicate
NeoChat is KDE's client for the Matrix chat system — and KDE's official way of chatting. Version 24.08 increases your safety by allowing you to preemptively block invites from unknown users not in any rooms with you.
Tokodon not only helps you read and post on Mastodon, but also manage your own server. Speaking of which, the version being released today can notify you of sign-ups on your server for better user management.
For posting, you can easily attach images from the internet, quote other posts and pop out the text editor to comfortably compose your toot.
When reading, Tokodon 24.08 supports scrolling up whole screenfuls of posts using the PageUp and PageDown keys.
Develop
Whether you want to help KDE implement features and fix bugs, or develop the next killer app, KDE's advanced text editor Kate has you covered.
Kate 24.08 improves its document formatting plugin with better support for bash, d, fish, Nix config, opsi-script, QML and YAML files. In related news, the Language Server Protocol (LSP) feature adds support for the Gleam, PureScript, and Typst languages.
If you're working on a CMake-based project, the Project and Build plugin now allows you to open the build directory and get both files and targets.
Surf
Falkon is KDE's full-featured web browser. The new release implements many bug fixes and optimizations that make surfing the web with Falkon smoother, easier and safer.
A new feature in 24.08 allows you to customize things that affect privacy and functionality on a site-by-site basis. Say you don't mind JavaScript on one site because the authors are trustworthy and it actually provides useful functionality, but you want to block it elsewhere for security reasons. You can now configure this in Falkon's Settings.
And all this too…
- Okular — KDE's eco-certified document reader — improves compatibility for fillable forms in PDF documents, gets a makeover for Windows, and adds a more usable zoom feature.
- PlasmaTube — a player for watching online videos from popular sites on your desktop — adds an option to block sponsored sections in videos.
- Elisa — our elegant music player — gets a "Play this next" feature, and allows resizing of the sidebar and playlist panes.
Full changelog here
Where to get KDE Apps
Although we fully support distributions that ship our software, KDE Gear 24.08 apps will also be available on these Linux app stores shortly:
If you'd like to help us get more KDE applications into the app stores, support more app stores and get the apps better integrated into our development process, come say hi in our All About the Apps chat room.
Note that packages of this release might not be available on all distributions at the time of this announcement. Package download wiki page
Compiling KDE Gear
The complete source code for KDE Gear 24.08.0 may be freely downloaded. Instructions on compiling and installing are available from the KDE Gear 24.08.0 Info Page.
About KDE
KDE is an international technology team that creates free and open source software for desktop and portable computing. Among KDE's products are a modern desktop system for Linux and UNIX platforms, comprehensive office productivity and groupware suites and hundreds of software titles in many categories including Internet and web applications, multimedia, entertainment, educational, graphics and software development. KDE software is translated into more than 60 languages and is built with ease of use and modern accessibility principles in mind. KDE's full-featured applications run natively on Linux, BSD, Windows, Haiku, and macOS.
Trademark Notices.
KDE® and the K Desktop Environment® logo are registered trademarks of KDE e.V..
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All other trademarks and copyrights referred to in this announcement are the property of their respective owners.
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