KDE & Plasma users

Sorry, this is going to come across as a newbie rant... mostly because I just switched a few months ago. I'm not completely unfamiliar with Linux. I had to use Unix in college for some projects. I've dual-booted with Windows before. I use a Mac at work. I'm reasonably comfortable in the console, though I'm certainly no expert. I feel like what I'm about to talk about shouldn't be so confusing/unintuitive.

I'm running Kubuntu on an older laptop. I have a burnable DVD disc that may or may not be blank. The disc is old, scratched, and unlabeled, but I would like to see if anything is on it.

I press the eject button on my laptop's disc drive. The tray comes out. I insert the disc and close the tray. The system gets busy trying to read the disc, but eventually stops spinning. Nothing pops up. Dolphin doesn't show my disc drive in the "Devices" panel, or that there's anything in the drive. VLC says it can't read the disc.

Ok, fine. The disc is probably either empty, or it's too scratched to read and needs to be trashed, so I would like to remove it from my system. I push the eject button again, and... nothing happens. It's the same button I used to open the tray to insert the disc, but now it's unresponsive. I open Dolphin and confirm that it doesn't show that I even have a disc drive in the "Devices" panel (presumably because nothing's in it). I open the "Discs and Devices" section in the Notification tray, and the most I can get it to show is my hard drive. It's like my computer doesn't believe the DVD drive exists.

So, what do I have to do? I can open MakeMKV, and it has an Eject button that opens the tray. I'm sure plenty of other software has similar functionality. I can also open the terminal and type "eject", and the tray pops right open. Clearly, my system knows that there's a DVD drive, and it has the ability to open the tray.

Why doesn't the eject button work? Why doesn't Dolphin just always show the DVD drive? Why do I have to google "How to eject a dvd kubuntu"? What am I missing?

System:

Ubuntu 25.04

Drive: BD-RE BU40N (Firmware: 2024-04-23 13:47)

CPU: Intel Core i7-5500U CPU @ 2.40GHz

Memory: 16GB (2x 8GB SODIMM DDR3 Synchronous 1600 MHz)

Not sure why I get the impression...

🙃

Hello,

I have a fresh install of OpenSUSE Tumbleweed with KDE Plasma 6.3.5.

Every time I open an app which needs root privileges (such as myrlyn) I’m greeted by the KDE su window to enter my password. Even if I tick “Remember my password”, this does not have any effects, and the next time I’m asked for my password again.

Any idea on how to ensure the “Remember my password” setting in KDE su is honoured?

Thanks!

There's one old game that works better by chosing "Scaled by the system"; however this make other x11 apps look slightly blurry. Is it possible to either choose "Apply scaling themselves" and exclude one app from it, or exclude every other app from "scaled by the system", so it only affect this one game?

Overall I find Plasma 6 a big leap in quality but there are some things that bother me, it could be my ineptitude to find the solution, bugs, definite changes or because of using wayland, so I'd appreciate any clue:

1. I don't find the way to set autologin in system settings
2. I don't know how to put Kate as a system tray icon, it's not on the list of entries
3. If Kate or Okular are already open and I right click a document from Dolphin to open it, they do so but they stay in the background if they were there. The same happens if I open the file from the comand line, like kate doc.txt
4. meta+arrow_key tile the window according to the arrow key used. Doing the same again return the window back to the original position in Plasma 5 (or X11). Very handy. Doesn't happen anymore.

Probably I'm forgetting something else but solving those would be great.

I use maximized window gaps, which enforces window gaps on all windows except for exceptions you specify.

• By default it also applies to the lock screen showing black borders around it.
• The splash screen moves around after I login. Here’s a screenshot I got with ksplashqml --test`.

I went to Settings app > Windows Rules > Add New > Detect Window Properties, and clicking the window shows ksplashqml for the class name, but that doesn't work when I try adding it as an exception to maximized window gaps, other window class names exceptions work like slurp.

First few times I didn't put two and two together because I'm kind of an idiot. I started believing that something was wrong with my laptop battery when it would give me a critical battery shutdown notice while still above 80 percent.

Finally it dawned on me that it wasn't my laptop reaching critical battery, it was my wireless mouse triggering the shutdown notice.

I'm going to go ahead and presume that that's not supposed to be happening, but does anyone know what settings I would go into the change that?

I looked to see if there was options for different devices in the main battery UI, but couldn't find any.

The image on the right is how the settings app look on macOS 12. On macOS 13 (2022) it was changed to look more to the one on the left, with all the sections selectable in a sidebar and a smaller window. Many users have complained about it, saying that it sacrificed function for form and is part of making macOS more like iOS by mindlessly copying phone UIs onto computers which it isn't meant for. I think its alright, not terrible. And it's the norm with settings apps looking like that in Windows, KDE, Gnome, and some other DEs.

I have an issue with hints where I can’t disable the border. In the Kwin Debug Console, the hints window is actually a layer and shows up as KWin::LayerShellV1Window.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/28752270

The Kubuntu Team is happy to announce that Kubuntu 25.04 has been released.

Codenamed “Plucky Puffin”, Kubuntu 25.04 continues our tradition of giving you Friendly Computing by integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution.

The release features the latest KDE Plasma 6.3 desktop, KDE Gear 24.12.3, kernel 6.14, and many other updated applications and libraries.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/28743738

Every four months, the KDE community rolls out a new wave of app releases all at once.

These updates cover a wide range of needs. Whether you’re managing personal files on your laptop or overseeing servers located thousands of miles away, KDE offers powerful tools to help you stay in control. Need to troubleshoot someone’s system remotely from the comfort of your sofa? There’s an app for that, too. From creating short viral clips for social media to producing full-length documentaries, KDE’s creative tools have you covered. And when it’s time to unwind, you can count on KDE for enjoying music, movies, or a good book.

Keep reading to discover what’s new in KDE Gear 25.04…

Edit: None of the answers I got work so I went ahead and filed a bug in KDE bugzilla: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=502901

Neither CTRL Q or CTRL W work for me. I set a hotkey for the window operations menu in Settings app > Shortcuts > KWin > Window Operations Menu, but then pressing the close button in the context menu that shows, closes the window of the other window I was focused on and not the debugger.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/28505177

In the past few days there has been an uptick in patches merged for the LibreOffice 25.8 open-source office suite around "Qt Weld" that has been seeing an increasing number of patches over the past few months for enhancing the Qt toolkit integration.

LibreOffice developer Michael Weghorn has been pushing many patches for enhancing the Qt toolkit support with LibreOffice for its "Weld" theming interface.

Haven't looked too deeply into this before now because it's not a high high priority; more like a "would be nice." But has anyone found a touchscreen keyboard (like Maliit) that works on Wayland with non-kde apps. Maliit works with the kapps, but not anything else.

Switching to X11 to use a keyboard that does sort of work, and I lose the auto-rotation...

So it seems that we can't have both worlds unless someone knows more than I do (which I admit isn't hard to do)

I looked at KWin::Window on the Kwin scripting API page but didn’t find any ways to make a given window become maximized.

I did some looking and there doesn't seem to be one, unless you know of any. Ideally I want a modal file manager like Yazi: it's keys are highly inspired by vim with H J K L navigation (H & L for traversing directories), a visual mode for selecting files, and lots of commands and customization. The one thing its missing is a grid view to preview image files. None of the orthodox file manager seem to have one, including Krusader which I just looked at. I'd love to finally stop using the mouse for file management and could go with either a TUI or GUI manager.

Edit: I edited the script to take a screenshot asynchronously, get the region with slurp, and use magickto crop it. I also multiply the values from slurp 2x to account for the 200% display scaling I have.

  #!/bin/bash 

	die(){
    notify-send "$1"
    exit 1
  }
  cleanup(){
    [[ -n $1 ]] && rm -r "$1"
  }
  SCR_IMG=$(mktemp -d) || die "failed to take screenshot"
  trap "cleanup '$SCR_IMG'" EXIT

	spectacle -nbo "$SCR_IMG/scr.tiff" &
	region=($(slurp -b "#00000000" -c "#80808080" -w 2 -f "%w %h %x %y"))
	for i in "${!region[@]}" 
	do
		region[i]=$(expr ${region[i]} "*" "2")
	done
	magick "$SCR_IMG/scr.tiff" -crop "${region[0]}x${region[1]}+${region[2]}+${region[3]}" "$SCR_IMG/scr.tiff" 

	tesseract "$SCR_IMG/scr.tiff" "$SCR_IMG/scr" &> /dev/null || die "failed to extract text"
  wl-copy < "$SCR_IMG/scr.txt" || die "failed to copy text to clipboard"
  notify-send "Text extracted from image" "$(head -c 100 "$SCR_IMG/scr.txt")" || die "failed to send notification"
  exit

I'm using this script from HN* to select regions on the screen and copy their text, I took out the line with mogrify. It uses spectacle but it takes a moment before opening the UI, is it possible and would it be faster if Spectacle stayed open in the background? The slurp CLI starts instantly for me for selecting regions, I looked for command line screenshot tools to maybe use with it or has its own region support but didn't find any. Neither maim scrot and grim don't work on Plasma Wayland. I installed the ksnip flatpak but the option for rectangular regions doesn't show for me.

* The script:

  #!/bin/bash 
  # Dependencies: tesseract-ocr imagemagick 
  # on gnome: gnome-screenshot 
  # on kde: spectacle
  # on x11: xsel
  # on wayland: wl-clipboard

  die(){
    notify-send "$1"
    exit 1
  }
  cleanup(){
    [[ -n $1 ]] && rm -r "$1"
  }

  SCR_IMG=$(mktemp -d) || die "failed to take screenshot"

  # shellcheck disable=SC2064
  trap "cleanup '$SCR_IMG'" EXIT

  #notify-send "Select the area of the text" 
  if  which "spectacle" &> /dev/null
  then
    spectacle -n -b -r -o "$SCR_IMG/scr.png" || die "failed to take screenshot"
  else
    gnome-screenshot -a -f "$SCR_IMG/scr.png" || die "failed to take screenshot"
  fi

  # increase image quality with option -q from default 75 to 100
  mogrify -modulate 100,0 -resize 400% "$SCR_IMG/scr.png"  || die "failed to convert image"
  #should increase detection rate

  tesseract "$SCR_IMG/scr.png" "$SCR_IMG/scr" &> /dev/null || die "failed to extract text"
  if [ "$XDG_SESSION_TYPE" == "wayland" ]
  then 
    wl-copy < "$SCR_IMG/scr.txt" || die "failed to copy text to clipboard"
  else
    # xsel -b -i  < "$SCR_IMG/scr.txt" || die "failed to copy text to clipboard"
    xclip -selection clipboard -i < "$SCR_IMG/scr.txt" || die "failed to copy text to clipboard"  
  fi
  # Notify the user what was copied but truncate the text to 100 characters
  notify-send "Text extracted from image" "$(head -c 100 "$SCR_IMG/scr.txt")" || die "failed to send notification"
  exit  #!/bin/bash 
  # Dependencies: tesseract-ocr imagemagick 
  # on gnome: gnome-screenshot 
  # on kde: spectacle
  # on x11: xsel
  # on wayland: wl-clipboard

  die(){
    notify-send "$1"
    exit 1
  }
  cleanup(){
    [[ -n $1 ]] && rm -r "$1"
  }

  SCR_IMG=$(mktemp -d) || die "failed to take screenshot"

  # shellcheck disable=SC2064
  trap "cleanup '$SCR_IMG'" EXIT

  #notify-send "Select the area of the text" 
  if  which "spectacle" &> /dev/null
  then
    spectacle -n -b -r -o "$SCR_IMG/scr.png" || die "failed to take screenshot"
  else
    gnome-screenshot -a -f "$SCR_IMG/scr.png" || die "failed to take screenshot"
  fi

  # increase image quality with option -q from default 75 to 100
  mogrify -modulate 100,0 -resize 400% "$SCR_IMG/scr.png"  || die "failed to convert image"
  #should increase detection rate

  tesseract "$SCR_IMG/scr.png" "$SCR_IMG/scr" &> /dev/null || die "failed to extract text"
  if [ "$XDG_SESSION_TYPE" == "wayland" ]
  then 
    wl-copy < "$SCR_IMG/scr.txt" || die "failed to copy text to clipboard"
  else
    # xsel -b -i  < "$SCR_IMG/scr.txt" || die "failed to copy text to clipboard"
    xclip -selection clipboard -i < "$SCR_IMG/scr.txt" || die "failed to copy text to clipboard"  
  fi
  # Notify the user what was copied but truncate the text to 100 characters
  notify-send "Text extracted from image" "$(head -c 100 "$SCR_IMG/scr.txt")" || die "failed to send notification"
  exit

KDE has settings for shadows but they don't show on maximized windows (I have the maximize window gaps script installed). I'm wondering if there are any scripts that produce their own shadows.

Hi All, I've got a minor inconvenience problem that I'm wondering if there's a solution for out there. I have some plasma widgets that I keep on the far right edge of my screen (clock, CPU utilization, etc). I have my TV in my living room connected via a long HDMI cable that I'll use as a secondary display on occasion. When I do that, I have the scale set on the TV screen (I'm using Wayland) to 150% to make it more readable on the TV from the couch. After I'm done, I disable that secondary monitor and make my primary monitor active again, which has the scaling set back to 100%. After this scaling to 150% and back, the widgets that were on the far right of my screen are now sitting somewhat right of center but no longer on the edge of the screen (scaling to 150 moved them inwards). I'm wondering if there's a way to somehow "anchor" them so that they stay along the edge of the screen when scaling back down, so they always align with the edge? Appreciate any thoughts!

Edit: I got answers on the Fedora forum and used this command in my parallels VM and restarted: sudo grubby --update-kernel=ALL --args=video=Virtual-1:3456x2234@120.

I'm trying to get a custom resolution & refresh rate in KDE Wayland. I can get 120hz working on X11 by getting a modeline with cvt 4112 2572 120 and using xrandr commands, but how about Wayland? Perhaps be done with kscreen-doctor?

I installed this maximized window gaps Kwin script on KDE 6. It works fine but I'm wondering if there's a way to show shadows when windows are maximized.

TLDR: I want to be able to set specific window sizes and positions of the current window with hotkeys, as well as focus on specific apps with hotkeys.

I've made posts like this elsewhere as I've lately been really trying to figure out Linux. Anyway, right now KDE is very appealing since its very customizable and has a plugin to recreate Window 11's Mica effect.

First, I want an alternative to Rectangle Pro app on Mac, which let's you set many hotketys for changing the current window's size & position: like use up the left or right halves or thirds of the screen, or corners and taking up a quarter of the screen. You can also make custom window layouts and bind those to keys. I've been told to use a WM like Sway, but then I'd have to make my own DE from scratch.

Second, I want to focus on specifc apps with hotkeys. For instance, I'd want to press CTRL Shift Z to switch specifically to Zen Browser or open it if it isn't opened, and CTRL Shift O to open or switch to Obsidian. I only found two solutions for Linux (wmctrl and wlrctl), and none for KDE.