News, Tutorials, Howtos for Ubuntu Linux
Amarok, the free open-source KDE music player, released new 3.3 version on Tuesday, named “Far Above the Clouds”.
Amarok is one of the oldest Linux music player started in 2003. It’s revived in last year with port to Qt5 and KF5. By releasing v3.3, Amarok is now ported to Qt6/KF6, while Qt5/KF5 support has been dropped.
For KDE Plasma users, the new 6.4 release of this Linux desktop environment is out today!
Except the major 6.0, KDE Plasma usually rolls out new feature releases every 4 months. And Plasma 6.4 is the new update since February, which improved color rendering, tablet support, and the built-in screenshot tool.
Want to try out the Plasma 6.4 desktop in Ubuntu? Here’s how to do the job in (K)Ubuntu 25.04 and/or (K)KUbuntu 25.10.
Plasma 6.4 is the next feature version that will be released on 17 June. KDE announced the first beta of this release in last week. And, KUbuntu developer team has made it into PPA for testing purpose.
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Want to round corners of windows in KDE Plasma Desktop? Here’s a KWin effect can do the job in recent Plasma desktop from v5.27 to v6.3.
There was a ShapeCorners KWin/5 effect can do the job to enable rounded window corners, which however discontinued. What I’m going to introduce is KDE-Rounded-Corners, a fork of ShapeCorners with optimization and recent Plasma desktop support.
Just a week since the last release, KDE announced the second maintenance update for the Plasma 6.3 Desktop.
Plasma 6.3.2 added support for fractional scaling with denominator of 120. According to this page, the appropriate denominator for the scale is 120. However, Display Configuration previously only allowed 5% increments. In the new release, it supports setting a scale of e.g., 174.167% (209/120).
KDE announced the first maintenance update for Plasma 6.3 just a week after it was originally released.
As you may know, Plasma 6.3 introduced new feature to resize or move the area of drawing tablet. However, some Linux Distributions are NOT supported due to outdated libinput library. The new release updated the UI to better handle the un-supported cases.
KDE Plasma announced new major 6.3 release today. See what’s new in the release of this popular Linux Desktop Environment.
First, the new Plasma 6.3 introduced “Clone Panel” option in panel configuration dialog, allowing to quickly make a copy of current panel with same settings and applets, and place in one of other 3 screen edges.
Plasma 6.3 Clone Panel
For KDE users on Ubuntu 22.04, meaning KUbuntu 22.04, Ubuntu Studio 22.04, etc, the latest Plasma Desktop 5.27 (5.27.11) now is available to upgrade through PPA.
KDE Plasma Desktop 5.27 was originally released in February. After more than 8 months of work, it has received 9 bug-fix updates and finally made into PPA for Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.
Plasma 5.27 features new window tiling system, that can be enabled “System Settings > Workspace Behavior > Desktop Effects“. It allows to Shift + dragging to tile windows, and Super (Windows logo) + T to edit tiling mode.
The release also features new Welcome dialog, allowing to learn about new features and how to tweak settings, etc, swipe gestures for volume and playback control in Media Player widget, power usage monitor detection for NVIDIA GPUs, new command activate “Do Not Disturb” mode.
For those who to install KDE’s Elisa music player, the official flatpak (containerised software package) is available for most Linux desktops including Ubuntu 18.04 and Ubuntu 16.04.
Elisa is a music player developed by the KDE community that strives to be simple and nice to use. We also recognize that we need a flexible product to account for the different workflows and use-cases of our users.
We focus on a very good integration with the Plasma desktop of the KDE community without compromising the support for other platforms (other Linux desktop environments, Windows and Android).
We are creating a reliable product that is a joy to use and respects our users privacy. As such, we will prefer to support online services where users are in control of their data.
Open terminal either via Ctrl+Alt+T keyboard shortcut or by searching for ‘terminal’ from application launcher. When it opens, run following commands one by one:
1. First install Flatpak framework if not exist (For Ubuntu 16.04, add the PPA first):
sudo apt-get install flatpak
2. Then add the flathub repository:
flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
3. Finally install the Elisa music player:
flatpak install flathub org.kde.elisa
Once successfully installed, open the music player from application launcher and enjoy!
To remove the Flatpak package, simply run command in terminal:
flatpak uninstall org.kde.elisa
You may also remove the KDE platform runtime (sandboxed) via command:
flatpak uninstall org.kde.Platform
The first bug-fix release for KDE Plasma 5.12 LTS was released a day ago. And it can be installed in (K)Ubuntu 17.10 via PPA.
Plasma 5.12.1 adds a one week’s worth of new translations and fixes from KDE’s contributors. The bugfixes are typically small but important and include:
Kubuntu backports PPA has just built the packages for (K)ubuntu 17.10.
1. Open terminal via Ctrl+Alt+T or by searching for “Terminal” from start menu. When it opens, run command to add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports
Type in your password when it prompts and hit Enter.
2. Then upgrade your system to get the latest Plasma Desktop via either Update Manager or command:
sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade
After the upgrade process has completed, and assuming everything went well, reboot your computer.
For non-Kubuntu user, you may first install the kubuntu-desktop package either from Ubuntu Software or by running below command before doing the upgrade.
sudo apt update && sudo apt install kubuntu-desktop
How to Uninstall:
To undo the changes and restore to the stock version of Plasma Desktop in your main Ubuntu repository, purge the PPA via command:
sudo apt install ppa-purge && sudo ppa-purge ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports
