Value for value. Donate!

We continue with the 7-day marathon of KDE versions as part of the celebration of the desktop environment project's 30th anniversary of its founding, featuring the fifth major release, KDE Plasma 5.0.0, which was released on July 15, 2014. This version is running on a July 18, 2014 snapshot build of KDE Neon GNU/Linux, which is the only downloadable bootable live CD I found that includes both KDE Plasma 5.0.0 and the KDE Plasma 5.0.x version series. The first versions of Linux distributions listed on DistroWatch that included a version of the KDE Plasma 5.x series were released with versions from the 5.1.x series, skipping 5.0.x. This was disappointing because there was at least one version of any Linux distribution—whether major, minor, or lesser-known—that included other x.0.x versions of the series according to my last check of DistroWatch. This release is particularly significant as it represents the first version after the KDE Software Compilation was split into KDE Frameworks and KDE Plasma.

We continue with the 7-day marathon of KDE versions with the fourth installment, which is considered the worst major KDE release in the history of the desktop environment, KDE 4.0.0. This version is showcased in a copy of Kubuntu GNU/Linux 7.10 containing this desktop environment release, which is the only downloadable bootable ISO image available for a Linux distribution with KDE 4.0.0, aside from KDE Four Live 1.0 (based on openSUSE 10.3) and the KDE spin of Fedora 9 Alpha. Although KDE 4.0.1, the first maintenance release of this series, was released on the same day (February 5, 2008), this ISO was compiled on January 29, 2008 and included KDE 4.0.0 instead. I found this version and uploaded it to the Internet Archive. Various inconsistencies in the behavior of this major release led Linus Torvalds, the creator of GNU/Linux, to describe it as a "disaster" and switch to GNOME. Consequently, many Linux distributions, except Fedora and openSUSE, skipped version 4.0 and continued to use 3.5, which was a more mature and stable KDE version at the time.

How's that for an announcement?

So, yeah: Happy Birthday to us 🎂! Today KDE is 30 years old! And, boy, do we have treats for you!

First up: Plasma 6.8 - 30th Anniversary Edition is here!

https://kde.org/announcements/plasma/6/6.8.0/

And it comes packed with new stuff.

Among other cool things, a new and improved remote desktop system, which is more performant comes with an exclusivity mode and shared clipboard; more calendars and keyboards for more cultures and languages; and better accessibility and usability features.

We're kicking off our traditional End of Year Fundraiser💸!

https://kde.org/fundraisers/yearend2026/

For the first day of our fundraiser, we are premiering the KDE documentary "A story of Free Software underdogs".

But of course there's more: look out for goodies, challenges, stories, never seen before art, adoptable stuff...

And get your new 5k 30th anniversary commemorative T-shirt.

Now available from

https://merch.kde.org/en-eur/products/the-5k-30th-anniversary-edition

Hey all!

I was at work, and walking by someone who had the macOS Sequoia "Macintosh" screen saver, and thought this could just as easily be replicated in KDE!

This sits in the background of the Lock Screen, everything is live (including the actual time that displays in the wallpaper, as that's an actual thing the "Macintosh" screen saver does). Elements and icons have been changed from Apple to KDE/Linux icons (and its easy to add your own).

More scenes will be coming soon, but here's the core list:

- KWrite with the KDE Manifesto being typed. Cursor clicks through different fonts and ruler spacings

- System Settings with a list of panels. The pointer changes the desktop pattern, blink rates, speaker volume, mouse tracking and key repeat, and opens the KDE menu.

- Control Center is an icon-only panel in the style of the System Settings, with its volume slider, pattern editor and circled menu-blink numbers.

- KCalc is the calculator in front of a Dolphin window.

- Icon Garden is a field of icons, including Tux and the KDE and Plasma logos, that dissolve into other icons.

github: https://github.com/Yosh145/retroplasma

KDE Store: WIP

This was tested using Fedora 44 and Plasma 6.7.5, please let me know if future/past versions don't work

Hey my KDE Kode of Konduct followers, welcome to the latest release of Wonderbrushed, and welcome to the latest version of Wonderbrushed, with... not that many new icons :| BUT, I have a fun surprise for all my fellow artists on this community, but ima tell you at the end, because social media algs reward me when people waste their time on my posts. First the changelogs:

Change-logs:

New Icons:

Creative:

• Aseprite
• LibreSprite
• PureRef
• New Audacity Icon
• OpenToonz

Browsers:

• Thorium
• Ungoogled Chromium
• Falkon
• qutebrowser

System:

• KCalc
• OpenRGB
• LocalSend
• EasyEffects

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed WiFi and Brightness icons not working
• Fixed Obsidian icon not working when installed with Flatpak

Wallpapers:

I've created Wonderbrushed's first, First-Party desktop wallpapers, Cookies, and as a part of a work-in-progress wallpaper pack, Solaris. ALSO, the surprise has something to do with wallpapers, so stay tuned.

LIFE: I have finally acquired a laptop that is actually not a potato with a horrible screen so I'm seeing colour in DCI-P3 for the first time. OLED!!!!!! Yaey! Also, this is my first post written in this laptop.

AND, The Big Announcement!!!

Wonderbrushed is holding its FIRST annual Wallpaper contest, where you can create wallpapers, and get a chance to get it included with the Wonderful Wonderbrushed Wallpaper Pack Add-on. And Discord members (def not marketing btw, but the discord also has fun perks like knowing the latest icons before the release, the ability to ask me anything, any time, and vote on variations of icons) get a Discord role so you can... flex on other people that you won. Yeah... Also, your name (and or Social Media Handle) is permanently placed in the Wonderbrushed Credits. Links to participate and the rules are down below.

Links:

Regular Stuff:

• GitHub Repo & (To download the pack and ask for new icons): https://github.com/Bhavneeth-Games/Wonderbrushed
• Progress Document (Read-Only): https://docs.google.com/document/d/11cmucEKU10CzprAu6dus4nY0vg-uqqjmq4IfRNkrbcI/edit?usp=sharing
• Recommendations Document (Legacy Document & will become Read-Only on the 23rd of Oct ): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pJRVsGnD2A6piIGx1AuWMM9Hve0UDZa99HjVQXT3BQU/edit?usp=sharing
• Style Guide: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1suU30NlEcVg74R7MSZQnHzhpNOgUpcx3V_MTzEaHD7A/edit?usp=sharing
• Discord Community: https://discord.gg/47x6Vvs5FD

The Competition:

• Rules (PLEASE READ THOROUGHLY): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tVxFq_IaH_lzGigtd7DlT7dAfYLvUACT9goVsJlJUlw/edit?usp=sharing
• Google Forms Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tVxFq_IaH_lzGigtd7DlT7dAfYLvUACT9goVsJlJUlw/edit?usp=sharing

Bye friends, and have fun ;)

I just want to maintain cohesion with my window decor.

We conclude the seven-day marathon covering various KDE versions as part of the celebration of the 30th anniversary of the KDE desktop environment's founding (despite my omission of versions 2.0, 4.0, and Plasma 5.0, and the delay of this post to today, the project's actual 30th anniversary, for personal reasons I prefer not to mention) with the October 13, 2026 snapshot of the development branch of KDE Plasma 6.9 (6.8.80 at the time of posting) on KDE GNU/Linux, which, along with KDE Neon, serves as the desktop environment's official GNU/Linux distribution (KDE Neon being a fork of Ubuntu GNU/Linux, while KDE GNU/Linux is a fork of Arch GNU/Linux), on VirtualBox 7.2.20, the latest version of the virtualizer at the time of this post.

Hi everyone,

Following the enthusiasm and feedback after our first alpha (v0.5.2), I'm thrilled to announce **Wayplank v0.6.1** — a major milestone delivering both the smart onboarding features introduced in v0.6.0 and the deep multi-compositor stabilization and bug squashing of v0.6.1!

For those discovering it for the first time, **Wayplank** is a lightweight, ultra-fast (~0.74s boot), monolithic native Wayland dock derived from the classic Plank/Docky codebase. It features a native multi-compositor HAL (**KDE Plasma/KWin**, **GNOME/Mutter**, and **Labwc/wlroots**) with **zero X11, zero XWayland, and zero desktop daemon dependencies**.

---

### 🚀 What's New Since v0.5.2 (Highlights from v0.6.0 & v0.6.1):

#### 🗂️ 1. Smart Out-Of-The-Box Onboarding (v0.6.0)

* **4 Smart English App Drawers**: On a clean startup or empty dock, Wayplank automatically discovers your installed apps and populates 4 Cairo-Dock style folder drawers (*Internet*, *Office*, *Media*, *Utilities/Games*).

* **Automatic Core Pinning**: Seamlessly detects and pins your default File Manager, Web Browser, Terminal Emulator, and Text Editor using FreeDesktop MIME fallback chains.

* **Accordion Docklets**: Collapses system docklets into a compact, space-saving master icon at rest with configurable hover/click expansion and retention logic.

* **Universal "Change Icon..." System**: Right-click any launcher, drawer, or docklet to search through 20,000+ theme icons or pick custom SVGs/PNGs with instant persistence and fallback safety.

* **Integrated In-App User Guide & Interactive Cheatsheet**: Accessible via right-click or `wayplank --help`.

#### 🖥️ 2. Multi-Monitor Hardware Brightness Synchronization (v0.6.1)

* **KWin DRM Hardware Control**: Solved the classic user-space D-Bus/PowerDevil limitation where external DDC/CI secondary monitors (DisplayPort/HDMI) were ignored due to i2c permissions. Wayplank now interfaces dynamically with KWin output management (`kscreen-doctor`), achieving atomic brightness control across all connected displays simultaneously.

#### ⚙️ 3. Holistic Global System Pressure Engine (v0.6.1)

* Replaced custom ad-hoc CPU/RAM cards with a **bottleneck-dominant combined system pressure metric** combining CPU, RAM, and physical Disk I/O contention:

$$\text{Pressure} = 0.60 \times \max(\text{CPU}, \text{RAM}, \text{Disk}) + 0.40 \times \text{mean}(\text{CPU}, \text{RAM}, \text{Disk})$$

* Rendered cleanly directly on Plank’s native numeric badge counter with real-time per-resource breakdown tooltips.

#### 🎨 4. Adaptive Dynamic Gtk+ Theme Engine & Legacy Plank Themes

* The **Gtk+** theme option is now an adaptive dynamic engine that samples real-time system accent colors, auto-detects dark/light desktop modes, and synthesizes modern frosted translucency on the fly.

* Full multi-tier search across `~/.local/share/plank/themes`, `~/.themes`, and `/usr/share/plank/themes` ensuring 100% backwards compatibility with legacy Plank themes.

#### 🧮 5. Refined Badges, DND & Desktop Ergonomics

* **Compact Scaled Badges with Units**: Docklet badges now scale proportionally (~34% of icon size) without obscuring underlying icons, featuring crisp units (`°C`, `°F`, `%`).

* **Robust Drag & Drop**: Dragging files onto app icons now correctly checks executable formats, handles 0-byte files, dispatches multi-file payloads, and prevents accidental dock pinning.

* **Calibrated Edge Pressure**: Defaults to a fluid 10px reveal threshold for effortless everyday unhiding, while toggling Pressure Mode activates a strict 1px edge barrier against accidental unhiding.

* **Live Layout Refresh**: Toggling "Show Unpinned" in Preferences now immediately synchronizes running compositor windows without requiring external window focus.

---

### 🧪 Compositor Validation Status (FAT)

* **KDE Plasma 6 (KWin Backend)**: 🟢 **100% PASSED** (All 40+ test points verified: multi-monitor, brightness, intellihide, accordion, DND).

* **GNOME 48 (Mutter Backend)**: 🟡 Ongoing validation.

* **Labwc / wlroots**: 🟡 Ongoing validation.

---

### 📦 Installation & Download

* **GitHub Repository**: [https://github.com/sergiomelas/WayPlank\](https://github.com/sergiomelas/WayPlank)

* **Debian / Ubuntu / Pop!_OS / Mint** (pre-built package):

```bash

# Download wayplank_0.6.1_amd64.deb from the repository build folder or release page:

sudo dpkg -i build/wayplank_0.6.1_amd64.deb

wayplank --replace &

This is already a known bug, so that's no mystery.

But I'm wondering why this is a problem with Qt and/or KDE apps specifically. It's definitely not a general flatpak issue, since non-Qt apps seem to handle this just fine.

Does anyone know what the cause of this is? I ask mostly out of curiosity I guess, since it's been driving me batty for quite a while and it'd at least be nice to know what's going on.

U looks good despite your age

Okular has a vi mode it seems. I was going through a document and I had to press arrow keys again and again. This frequent movement of hand was slowing me down. I just thought to myself only if it had a vi mode and then just casually pressed 'J' and it moved. The page moved! It is really nice.

I few months ago I posted a picture of some custom folder icons I use (they're all based on the Fluent theme, though I think they are generic enough to fit into other icon themes as well). By popular request I made a Github page where I share all these icons, and in the meantime I've made 115 of them!

In the Github repository you can see the preview of all icons in light and dark mode, and below that they are neatly organised into categories like 'System', 'Media', 'Writing', 'Archiving', 'Gaming', 'Linux Distros', and even some experimental ones with colours, patterns and pop culture references.

I'm sharing 5 pictures here:

1. overview of all icons in dark mode
2. same in light mode
3. example of what a Documents folder could look like in Dolphin
4. screenshot of some of the functional categories on Github
5. example of what some decorative/experimental folder designs look like in bulk

To use them, download the ones you want (or zip them all) and add them to your icon theme. The location might differ for your current theme, but mine are stored in ~/.local/share/icons/"your-theme-name"> scalable > places'.

Comments and suggestions are welcome!

In this list, i want all of the folders which don't have media items in them to be solid blue folders so that they look like this

I've tried setting a custom icon and choosing "Folder" and it doesn't work. I also tried setting the custom icon to "Folder - Blue" and it just makes a blue outlined version of the same empty hollow folder icon.

Please this is driving me INSANE. I never want to see these outlined hollow folder icons again.

Dolphin version 26.08.1
This is something that suddenly started happening a few days ago. If I open or hover over a file (which is a type that has preview enabled), its thumbnail/preview is saved as a png directly in my home directory

Hi all,

Many people use and love the classic CatWalk plasmoid created by Yuri Saurov. However, it is showing its age: it hasn't been updated in a while, and despite using SVG graphics, it is blurry on HiDPI screens.

I have created a new fork called CatWalk Neo which fixes this issue by switching from KSvg.SvgItem to Kirigami.Icon which is HiDPI-aware. This ensures pixel-perfect sharpness even with fractional scaling. I also added two new configuration options:

1) It is now possible to display the icon to the left or to the right of the CPU utilisation text.

2) It is now possible to draw the cat icon in the colour of your choice when CPU utilisation exceeds a certain threshold (the threshold is also user-configurable).

You can get it from here: https://github.com/SpinningVinyl/CatWalkNeo

No AI assistance was used in making those changes.

I found this gem on Resonite the other day and I was wondering who the artist was. I tried searching it on Kagi, Google Images, TinyEye, Bing, my own fediverse instance...but nothing! I seriously cannot find where this is from and would super appreciate if anyone knows anything about this one. Thanks!

Is there a way to quickly toggle all animations and effects to save power?