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The KDE Project released today the KDE Applications 20.12 open-source software suite as a major update bringing numerous new features and improvements across most of the included KDE apps.
First, the major new changes as KDE Applications 20.12 introduces a new app called KDE Itinerary, which acts as a digital travel assistant for storing all the information you need while on the go. The information it can provide includes timetables and locations for trains, airplanes or buses, as well as hotel or event bookings.
In addition, KDE Itinerary lets you import data from several sources, such as your email client, give you suggestions for local public transport, and provide you with train and coach station layout maps. The app will soon arrive in the software repositories of your favorite distro using the KDE Plasma desktop environment.
Second, the major new features as the Kontact all-in-one personal information manager received a new plugin for simultaneously configuring the settings of multiple email folders, support for the EteSync secure, end-to-end encrypted and privacy-aware sync service for calendars, contacts, notes, and tasks.
Moreover, Kontact now offers an improved user experience for synchronizing your Google account, support for additional smart card types, such as PIV cards, for the Kleopatra certificate manager, as well as LZMA compression support for Akonadi.
The Dolphin file manager received full touch support and a revamped interface to make it easier to navigate navigate your files and folders with the address bar built into the toolbar. Additionally, the file manager now shows entries for the Music, Pictures, and Videos folders by default and screenshots taken with Spectacle in the list of recent documents.
The Konsole terminal emulator received support for displaying HTML color previews as tooltips, a vertical line to mark column 80 or any other column, support for opening URLs and files, as well as a new setting for creating a shortcut to peek back at your command line when running commands that use the full terminal.
The Konversation chat app received support for downloading nick icon themes from store.kde.org, the ability to delete channel history, the ability to display the capabilities of the server on connect, support for version 3.2 of the IRC protocol, support for SASL authentication mechanisms in CAP LS, and znc.in/self-message capability.
KDE Connect is now faster when downloading conversations and offers a thumbnail preview of the conversation’s list when the most-recent message contains an attachment. The Spectacle screenshot app now features an editor for adding arrows, freehand drawing, text, or smilies to your screenshots.
Also improved is the Elisa music player, which now lets you choose the view you want to see at startup and change the color scheme to something different than the system-wide color scheme, as well as the Gwenview image viewer, which now comes with a new option to stop videos from automatically playing in browse mode.
Furthermore, the Ark archive manager received support for Zstd (ZStandard) compressed archives, Kate text editor gets an a new “Open with” menu item in its file browser’s context menu, KAlarm personal alarm utility can now use the system notifications for displaying alarm messages and lets you name alarms for easier identification.
Last but not least, KDE Applications 20.12 improves KDE’s Nextcloud and Owncloud wizards with overhauled visuals in the Online Accounts page under System Settings, and the Filelight disk usage analyzer app, which received support for saving the current view as an SVG file.
Of course, there are also numerous other smaller improvements and dozens of bug fixes to improve the overall experience of your favorite KDE apps. For more details, you can check out the full changelog.
Meanwhile, keep an eye on the stable software repositories of your favorite GNU/Linux distribution for the KDE Applications 20.12 packages (hint: it’s already in Arch Linux). KDE Applications 20.12 will be supported until March 2021 with three maintenance updates.
Last updated 3 years ago
