23 - Primetime Release

Hey there! Welcome back!

This last year has been a whirlwind to say the least, but we have remained dedicated to bringing an updated LineageOS based on Android 16 to the masses!

We’ve been hard at work rebasing all of our changes and features since Android 16’s release in June. Android 16’s first release mainly contained iterative improvements and some UI/UX refinements, but due to our previous efforts adapting to Google’s UI-centric adjustments in Android 12 through 14, we were able to rebase onto Android 16’s code-base faster than anticipated. Yes you read that right: We’re early this year!

Other components have complicated our release and security patching efforts, but we’ll get to that shortly.

Google’s Patch Cadence, and LineageOS Going Forward

Firstly, what even is an ASB? Or a QPR?

• ASB (Android Security Bulletin) – Google’s monthly roundup of newly fixed security vulnerabilities across the Android ecosystem. Distributed as a list of patches and security branch updates for older but still supported Android versions, with the current version tagged monthly. These updates let projects like ours and OEMs stay aligned with Google’s security baseline.
• QPR (Quarterly Platform Release) – Mid-cycle updates to a given Android version, landing every few months. QPRs bring not just security fixes but also bug fixes, performance improvements, and feature changes (like Material 3 Expressive in 16 QPR1).

Okay, why are you telling me this?

You’ll notice we are choosing to release LineageOS 23.0, and not 23.1. That’s because it’s based on Android 16’s initial release (what we’ll call QPR0), even though QPR1 has already rolled out to Pixels. The catch? Google never pushed QPR1’s source to AOSP. They’ve said it’ll come “in the coming weeks” (source), but right now only contracted partners have access. And to answer the immediate question, the likelihood that any custom ROM will ever be a contracted Google partner is near 0.

On top of that, Google’s handling of ASBs has shifted (source). July was empty for the first time since the program began, August had a single patch, and September omitted patches for several listed vulnerabilities, with fixes shared privately to partners under embargo. The result is that AOSP security updates are no longer released in full on a monthly basis. Instead, only vulnerabilities deemed “high risk” (i.e. actively exploited in the wild) will be published by Google in the monthly ASBs, and even then, the underlying patches are often not made public immediately.

On a quarterly cadence, Google now issues larger security bulletins that include patches for vulnerabilities originally discovered in prior months. These quarterly bulletins coincide with QPRs (Quarterly Platform Releases), which bundles those security fixes together with feature updates, but have so far not been pushed to AOSP at the time of release.

This is why you’ve seen the LineageOS 22.2 security patch level remain reflective of August well into September.

In short: this cadence is now the norm, and we need to adapt.

And I heard that Google stopped pushing Pixel source?

Yes, Google has pulled back here too. Pixel kernels are now only offered as history-stripped tarballs, available privately on request, with no device trees, HALs, or configs. Thanks to projects like CalyxOS, Pixels will likely remain well supported, but they’re no longer guaranteed “day one” devices for LineageOS. Pixel devices are now effectively no easier to support than any other OEM’s devices.

In short, this just makes things harder, not impossible.

How does this affect LineageOS? And me?

It means we adapt. Instead of waiting indefinitely for QPR1’s source, we’re shipping 23.0 now on “QPR0”, with the publicly available ASB patches applied, and we’ll only attest to a security patch level once we have access to all of its fixes. When QPR1 (and future QPRs) eventually land in AOSP, we’ll merge or rebase as appropriate.

This does mean some features (like Material 3 Expressive) aren’t here yet. But it ensures users get timely builds, the most complete security fixes we can legally access, and a clear path forward without being stuck in limbo.

This will likely be the expected norm for Android 17 and beyond, so expect more .0 releases in the future!

TL;DR:

• Google no longer pushes monthly tags and patches to AOSP; and most fixes/security patches are now pushed quarterly, if at all.

• Security patch levels may occasionally lag: we only increment them once all patches are public.

• LineageOS 23.0 is based on Android 16 “QPR0” because QPR1’s source isn’t public yet.

  • Because of this some headline features (like Material 3 Expressive) will come later, once sources drop.

• Pixel support continues, but with reduced source access, they’re no longer guaranteed, let alone on day one.

Legacy Devices

The bad news extends a bit further here, though it’s less surprising than the earlier sections.

Google’s increased reliance on newer eBPF features has made supporting devices with older Linux kernels increasingly difficult. Android 16 “QPR0” “requires Linux 5.4 and above, and at the time of writing, the necessary features have only been properly backported as far back as 4.14.

Unfortunately, LineageOS 22.2 still supports many devices running 4.4 and 4.9. As of now, no complete backports of the required features exist for these kernels. The silver lining is that, unlike the massive device loss we saw moving off LineageOS 18.1, these versions could be salvaged if someone were to take on the work of adapting the backports. If you do succeed, please reach out to devrel(at)lineageos.org, we’d be happy to review it!

We’re currently targeting only shipping kernels that have 1:1 eBPF backports to make them feature equivalent to Linux 5.4 from here on out to avoid compatibility issues.

Back to the Good Stuff!

• Security patches from September 2024 to August 2025 have been merged to LineageOS 20 through 23.0.

• SeedVault and Etar have both been updated to their newest respective upstream version, with multiple fixes having been sent back to the relevant upstream repos!

• WebView has been updated to Chromium 140.0.7339.51.

• Contributor demon000 (Cosmin Tanislav) has started work on an awesome set of tools to assist maintainers in device bringups from scratch! They’re still in-progress, but are staged to make a lot of our efforts significantly easier and more streamlined - so stay tuned! Maybe a rare non-yearly blog post? ;)

• Contributor 0xCAFEBABE has extended support for various VirtIO configurations (QEMU/crosvm/UTM/libvirt, etc.) targets! Though these aren’t supported officially, there is an awesome, comprehensive guide for building and utilizing these targets on the Wiki. There is even a newer one allowing you to run LineageOS in a UTM virtual machine on an Apple Silicon Mac!

• Contributor 0xCAFEBABE has added support for Cuttlefish targets!

• Contributor 0xCAFEBABE has extended support for devices booting Android on the mainline Linux kernel! This will allow us to in theory boot LineageOS on almost all devices supported by the Linux kernel. It’s in early phases, but very promising, with several successful device ports already available on the LineageOS GitHub organization! Check the search term “mainline” on the organization’s search bar.

• LineageOS is now nearly Android.mk free! Google announced their move from make to soong many years ago, pushing developers to migrate from Android.mk to Android.bp, and has started blocking Android.mk in many locations of the source tree. * While converting these is a seemingly simple task - in practice it involved countless hours of converting conditional checks, regression testing, and thousands of individual patches. As of this writing, LineageOS introduces less than 10 Android.mk files at a platform level, and many of these are in the process of being converted. In short - we’re ready for when Google kills support for Android.mk. * 0xCAFEBABE also created a build target for converting from mk to bp, a WIP feature to assist developers in migrating to soong!

• Both the Charging Control, and Fast Charge Control features have received many updates and improvements.

• A new set of ringtones and alarms from Plasma Mobile have been included.

Application Updates

LineageOS isn’t just about the OS itself: our suite of core apps continues to evolve as well. This cycle brings some major improvements:

Aperture (Camera)

Our camera app, Aperture, has been rewritten from the ground up. The rewrite makes the app much easier to maintain, while also bringing new features:

• Support for JPEG Ultra HDR, RAW, and simultaneous RAW+JPEG capture.
• A redesigned notification island with dynamic colors, and new indicators (JPEG Ultra HDR, RAW, battery, thermal throttling).

Keep your system updated (or keep updating the app if you’re using the app standalone), since we plan to introduce more features and improvements over time (believe it or not, nowadays the only obstacle is Google’s CameraX library, which has slowed down the development of certain components which we use in Aperture). We do have some plans to overcome this though.

Twelve (Music Player)

Our music player, Twelve, didn’t need a full overhaul this year, but it did get some polish and some new features:

• Added a “Play random songs” button for quicker library playback.
• Updated the Now Playing screen with playback statistics (for the nerds and audiophiles out there).
• Added the ability to rescan the local media store, so newly added music shows up without needing a reboot.
• Expanded Jellyfin integration, including suggestions, favorites, and better thumbnail handling.
• Added MIDI playback support.

New App, Again?

We’re excited to debut Catapult, our brand-new custom launcher for Android TV. Catapult is built with the same principles we bring to the rest of LineageOS: clean, simple, functional design, with thoughtful user experience at its core.

Why build a new launcher? For years, Android TV and Google TV users have been stuck with preloaded launchers that aggressively push advertising and recommendations users can’t control. Catapult changes that. It strips away the clutter, gives you back your home screen, and lets you decide what belongs front and center.

With Catapult, you get a fast, intuitive interface that focuses on your apps and your content: no forced feeds, no “sponsored” rows, just a launcher that works the way you expect.

We’re also planning to add more features in the future, you’ll see them appear as you keep your device up to date, stay tuned!

Extended QEMU-Based Virtual Machine Support

LineageOS has long been a favorite for developers and tinkerers, and with 23.0 we’ve expanded support for virtualized environments. Thanks to extended QEMU integration spearheaded by developer 0xCAFEBABE, it’s now easier than ever to run LineageOS in VMs for testing, debugging, or just exploration. This means developers can spin up consistent environments on their desktops without needing dedicated hardware, and testers can reproduce tricky issues with greater reliability. Whether you’re validating patches or just curious to see how LineageOS runs under the hood, the tooling is smoother and more accessible.

If interested, take a look on the Wiki. You can run LineageOS via libvirt on Linux/Windows, and on an Apple Silicon Mac with UTM.

Additionally, LineageOS now supports Cuttlefish build configurations, which are similar to the emulator family of targets, but has extra emulated peripherals, so as to act more like a real device! You can view a list of all the differences here.

Mainline Kernel Support

Another big milestone in 23.0 is our improved support for devices running Linux mainline kernels.

While Android has historically relied on heavily modified vendor kernels, the ecosystem is shifting toward mainline for long-term stability and maintainability.

With 23.0, developer 0xCAFEBABE has spearheaded an effort to extend compatibility for devices capable of booting the mainline Linux kernel, and we’ve made it easier for maintainers to bring their devices closer to upstream with inheritable common trees. The end result? For now, nothing, but in the future, we will hopefully be able to boot Android on almost any device that is supported by the mainline Linux kernel.

This effort should help keep devices alive well past the point where their proprietary components stop working with newer Android releases.

See the following repos if interested! (1, 2, 3, 4)

Careful Commonization

Several of our developers have worked hard on SoC-specific common kernels to base on that can be merged on a somewhat regular basis to pull in the latest features/security patches to save maintainers additional effort.

Go check them out and consider basing your device kernels on them!

Supported SoCs right now are:

| SoC (system-on-chip) | Kernel Version | Android Version | |

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| | Qualcomm MSM8998/MSM8996 | 4.4 | 13, 14, 15 | | Qualcomm MSM8953 | 4.9 | 13, 14, 15 | | Qualcomm SDM845 | 4.9 | 13, 14, 15 | | Qualcomm SM8150 | 4.14 | 13, 14, 15, 16 | | Qualcomm SDM660 | 4.19 | 13, 14, 15, 16 | | Qualcomm SM8250 | 4.19 | 13, 14, 15, 16 | | Qualcomm SM8350 | 5.4 | 13, 14, 15, 16 | | Qualcomm SM8450 | 5.10 | 13, 14, 15, 16 | | Qualcomm SM8550 | 5.15 | 13, 14, 15, 16 | | Qualcomm SM8650 | 6.1 | 14, 15, 16 | | Qualcomm SM8750 | 6.6 | 15, 16 |

Moreover, many legacy devices require interpolating libraries that we colloquially refer to as “shims” - these have long been device and maintainer managed, but this cycle we have decided to commonize them to make the effort easier on everyone and not duplicate effort!

You can check it out here and contribute shims that you think other devices may need or add additional components to additional shims and compatibility layers provided via Gerrit!

Deprecations

Overall, we feel that the 23.0 branch has reached feature and stability parity with 22.2 and is ready for initial release.

We will allow new LineageOS 21 submissions to be forked to the organization, but we will no longer allow newly submitted LineageOS 21 devices to ship.

LineageOS 23.0 will launch building for a decent selection of devices, with additional devices to come as they meet the requirements specified by the Charter and are made ready for builds by their maintainer.

Upgrading to LineageOS 23.0

To upgrade, please follow the upgrade guide for your device by clicking on it here and then on “Upgrade to a higher version of LineageOS”.

If you’re coming from an unofficial build, you need to follow the good ole’ install guide for your device, just like anyone else looking to install LineageOS for the first time. These can be found at the same place here by clicking on your device and then on “Installation”.

Please note that if you’re currently on an official build, you DO NOT need to wipe your device, unless your device’s wiki page specifically dictates otherwise, as is needed for some devices with massive changes, such as a repartition.

Download portal

While it has been in the making for quite a while and already released two years ago, it’s still relevant to this blog post. Our download portal has been redesigned and gained a few functional improvements:

• Dark mode
• Downloads of additional images (shown for all devices but not used on all of them, read the instructions to know which ones you need for your device’s installation!)
• Verifying downloaded files (see here) - if you go with any download not obtained from us, you can still verify it was originally signed by us and thus untampered with

A reminder: Follow the LineageOS Wiki to the letter! If an image is listed on the download portal that the wiki doesn’t ask you to use, ignore it! It is likely there so the maintainer can point power-users at it if needed.

Wiki

The LineageOS Wiki has also been expanded over the years and now offers, in addition to the known and tested instructions for all supported devices, some improvements:

• The device overview allows filtering for various attributes you might be interested in a device (please note that choosing a device only based on that list still does not guarantee any device support beyond the point of when you chose it)
• The device overview now lists variants of a device and other known marketing names in a more visible way, also allowing for different device information and instructions per variant to be shown
• The installation instructions have been paginated, giving users less chance to skip a section involuntarily

In addition to that we’d like to take this time to remind users to follow instructions on their device’s respective Wiki Page given the complexity introduced by AOSP changes like System-As-Root, A/B Partition Scheme, Dynamic Partitions, and most recently Virtual A/B found on the Pixel 5 and other devices launching with Android 11, the instructions many of you are used to following from memory are either no longer valid or are missing very critical steps. As of 16.0, maintainers have been expected to run through the full instructions and verify they work on their devices. The LineageOS Wiki was recently further extended, and maintainers were given significantly more options to customize their device’s specific installation, update, and upgrade instructions.

Developers, Developers, Developers

Or, in this case, maintainers, maintainers, maintainers. We want your device submissions!

If you’re a developer and would like to submit your device for officials, it’s easier than ever. Just follow the instructions here.

The above also applies to people looking to bring back devices that were at one point official but are no longer supported - seriously - even if it’s not yet completely compliant, submit it! Maybe we can help you complete it.

After you submit, within generally a few weeks, but in most cases a week, you’ll receive some feedback on your device submission; and if it’s up to par, you’ll be invited to our communications instances and your device will be forked to LineageOS’s official repositories.

Don’t have the knowledge to maintain a device, but want to contribute to the platform? We have lots of other things you can contribute to. For instance, our apps suite is always looking for new people to help improve them, or you can contribute to the wiki by adding more useful information & documentation. Gerrit is always open for submissions! Once you’ve contributed a few things, send an email to devrel(at)lineageos.org detailing them, and we’ll get you in the loop.

Also, if you sent a submission that didn’t get a response in the last few months, please follow up, we’ve swapped providers again!

Generic Targets

We’ve talked about these before, but these are important, so we will cover them again.

Although we’ve had buildable generic targets since 2019, to make LineageOS more accessible to developers, and really anyone interested in giving LineageOS a try, we’ve documented how to use them in conjunction with the Android Emulator/Android Studio!

Additionally, similar targets can now be used to build GSI in mobile, Android TV configurations, and Android Automotive making LineageOS more accessible than ever to devices using Google’s Project Treble. We won’t be providing official builds for these targets, due to the fact the user experience varies entirely based on how well the device manufacturer complied with Treble’s requirements, but feel free to go build them yourself and give it a shot!

Please note that Android 12 (and by proxy all later Android versions) diverged GSI and Emulator targets. Emulator targets reside in lineage_sdk_$arch, while GSI targets reside in lineage_gsi_$arch.

Additionally, experimental targets now exist for QEMU-based virtual machine software (libvirt, UTM, etc). Instructions on building and utilizing these targets can be found on the Wiki.

Translations

Bilingual? Trilingual? Anything-lingual?

If you think you can help translate LineageOS to a different language, jump over to our wiki and have a go! If your language is not supported natively in Android, reach out to us on Crowdin and we’ll take the necessary steps to include your language. For instance, LineageOS is the first Android custom distribution that has complete support for the Welsh (Cymraeg) language thanks to its community of translators.

Please, contribute to translations only if you are reasonably literate in the target language; poor translations waste both our time and yours.

Build roster

Added 23 devices

| Device name | Wiki | Maintainers | Moved from | |

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| | F(x)tec Pro¹ X | pro1x | BadDaemon, bgcngm, mccreary, npjohnson, qsnc, tdm | 22.2 | | Fairphone 4 | FP4 | mikeioannina | 22.2 | | Fairphone 5 | FP5 | mikeioannina | 22.2 | | Google Pixel 4a 5G | bramble | mikeioannina | 22.2 | | Google Pixel 5 | redfin | mikeioannina | 22.2 | | Google Pixel 5a | barbet | mikeioannina | 22.2 | | Lenovo Z5 Pro GT | heart | themard, optionaltoast | 22.2 | | Lenovo Z6 Pro | zippo | Lucchetto, themard, einargednochsson | 22.2 | | Motorola defy 2021 | bathena | Deivid Ignacio Parra, Francisco Sanchez | 22.2 | | Motorola edge 20 | berlin | npjohnson, SGCMarkus | 22.2 | | Motorola edge 2021 | berlna | SyberHexen | 22.2 | | Motorola edge 30 fusion | tundra | themard, electimon | 22.2 | | Motorola edge 30 neo | miami | marcost2 | 22.2 | | Motorola edge 30 | dubai | themard, sb6596, Demon000 | 22.2 | | Motorola edge 40 pro / Motorola moto X40 / Motorola edge+ (2023) | rtwo | sgcmarkus, themard | 22.2 | | Motorola moto e7 plus / Lenovo K12 | guam | Rajin Gangadharan, Deivid Ignacio Parra | 22.2 | | Motorola moto g 5G - 2024 | fogo | mikeioannina | 22.2 | | Motorola moto g power 2021 | borneo | Syed Fawwaz Hussain (Fazwalrus), Deivid Ignacio Parra | 22.2 | | Motorola moto g stylus 5G (2022) | milanf | AnierinBliss | 22.2 | | Motorola moto g stylus 5G | denver | Vivekachooz | 22.2 | | Motorola moto g10 / Motorola moto g10 power / Lenovo K13 Note | capri | Deivid Ignacio Parra, Sultanahamer | 22.2 | | Motorola moto g200 5G / Motorola Edge S30 | xpeng | themard, rogers2602 | 22.2 | | Motorola moto g30 / Lenovo K13 Pro | caprip | mikeioannina | 22.2 | | Motorola moto g32 | devon | Dhina17, mikeioannina | 22.2 | | Motorola moto g34 5G / Motorola moto g45 5G | fogos | mikeioannina | 22.2 | | Motorola moto g42 | hawao | Dhina17, mikeioannina | 22.2 | | Motorola moto g52 | rhode | Dhina17, mikeioannina, tomoms | 22.2 | | Motorola moto g82 5G | rhodep | AnandSuresh02, sevenrock | 22.2 | | Motorola moto g84 5G | bangkk | mikeioannina | 22.2 | | Motorola moto g9 play / Motorola moto g9 / Lenovo K12 Note | guamp | DelightReza, Deivid Ignacio Parra | 22.2 | | Motorola moto g9 power / Lenovo K12 Pro | cebu | Deivid Ignacio Parra | 22.2 | | Nothing Phone (2) | Pong | chandu078 | 22.2 | | Nubia Mini 5G | TP1803 | ArianK16a, npjohnson | 22.2 | | OnePlus 11 5G | salami | bgcngm | 22.2 | | OnePlus 12R | aston | inferno0230 | 22.2 | | OnePlus 7 Pro / OnePlus 7 Pro (T-Mobile) | guacamole | LuK1337, Tortel | 22.2 | | OnePlus 7 | guacamoleb | shantanu-sarkar | 22.2 | | OnePlus 7T / OnePlus 7T (T-Mobile) | hotdogb | LuK1337 | 22.2 | | OnePlus 7T Pro | hotdog | qsnc | 22.2 | | OnePlus 8 / OnePlus 8 (T-Mobile) | instantnoodle | jabashque | 22.2 | | OnePlus 8 Pro | instantnoodlep | LuK1337 | 22.2 | | OnePlus 8T / OnePlus 8T (T-Mobile) | kebab | LuK1337, mikeioannina | 22.2 | | OnePlus 9 / OnePlus 9 (T-Mobile) | lemonade | mikeioannina, tangalbert919, ZVNexus | 22.2 | | OnePlus 9 Pro / OnePlus 9 Pro (T-Mobile) | lemonadep | LuK1337, bgcngm, mikeioannina | 22.2 | | OnePlus 9R | lemonades | mikeioannina | 22.2 | | OnePlus 9RT | martini | mikeioannina, basamaryan | 22.2 | | OnePlus Nord CE 2 Lite 5G | oscaro | Vivekachooz | 22.2 | | OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite 5G / OnePlus Nord N30 5G | larry | Vivekachooz | 22.2 | | OnePlus Nord CE4 | benz | inferno0230 | 22.2 | | OnePlus Pad 2 Pro / OnePlus Pad 3 | erhai | LuK1337, bgcngm | 22.2 | | Realme 10 Pro 5G | luigi | Vivekachooz | 22.2 | | Realme 9 Pro 5G / Realme 9 5G / Realme Q5 | oscar | Vivekachooz | 22.2 | | Samsung Galaxy A21s | a21s | DaemonMCR | 22.2 | | Samsung Galaxy F62 / Samsung Galaxy M62 | f62 | Linux4 | 22.2 | | Samsung Galaxy Note10 5G | d1x | Rocky7842, Linux4 | 22.2 | | Samsung Galaxy Note10 | d1 | Linux4 | 22.2 | | Samsung Galaxy Note10+ 5G | d2x | Linux4 | 22.2 | | Samsung Galaxy Note10+ | d2s | Linux4 | 22.2 | | Samsung Galaxy S10 5G | beyondx | Linux4 | 22.2 | | Samsung Galaxy S10 | beyond1lte | Linux4 | 22.2 | | Samsung Galaxy S10+ | beyond2lte | Linux4 | 22.2 | | Samsung Galaxy S10e | beyond0lte | Linux4 | 22.2 | | Samsung Galaxy S20 FE / Samsung Galaxy S20 FE 5G | r8q | ata-kaner | 22.2 | | Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 10.4 2020 (LTE) | gta4l | chrmhoffmann | 22.2 | | Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 10.4 2020 (Wi-Fi) | gta4lwifi | chrmhoffmann | 22.2 | | Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite (LTE) | gta4xl | haggertk, Linux4 | 22.2 | | Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite (Wi-Fi) | gta4xlwifi | Linux4, haggertk | 22.2 | | Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 (LTE) | gts7l | bgcngm | 22.2 | | Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 (Wi-Fi) | gts7lwifi | bgcngm | 22.2 | | Solana Saga | ingot | mikeioannina, npjohnson, tomoms | 22.2 | | Sony Xperia 1 II | pdx203 | hellobbn | 22.2 | | Sony Xperia 1 III | pdx215 | hellobbn | 22.2 | | Sony Xperia 1 V | pdx234 | hellobbn | 22.2 | | Sony Xperia 10 IV | pdx225 | LuK1337, jmpfbmx | 22.2 | | Sony Xperia 10 Plus | mermaid | LuK1337 | 22.2 | | Sony Xperia 10 V | pdx235 | jmpfbmx, LuK1337 | 22.2 | | Sony Xperia 10 | kirin | LuK1337 | 22.2 | | Sony Xperia 5 II | pdx206 | kyasu, hellobbn | 22.2 | | Sony Xperia 5 III | pdx214 | kyasu, hellobbn | 22.2 | | Sony Xperia 5 V | pdx237 | kyasu, hellobbn | 22.2 | | Sony Xperia XA2 Plus | voyager | LuK1337 | 22.2 | | Sony Xperia XA2 Ultra | discovery | LuK1337 | 22.2 | | Sony Xperia XA2 | pioneer | LuK1337, jmpfbmx | 22.2 | | Xiaomi 12 Pro | zeus | Adrianyyy, ArianK16a | 22.2 | | Xiaomi 12 | cupid | Adrianyyy, ArianK16a | 22.2 | | Xiaomi 12S Pro | unicorn | Adrianyyy, ArianK16a | 22.2 | | Xiaomi 12S Ultra | thor | Adrianyyy, ArianK16a | 22.2 | | Xiaomi 12S | mayfly | Flower Sea | 22.2 | | Xiaomi 12T Pro / Xiaomi Redmi K50 Ultra | diting | Adrianyyy, ArianK16a | 22.2 | | Xiaomi 13 Pro | nuwa | Minus | 22.2 | | Xiaomi 13 | fuxi | lolipuru | 22.2 | | Xiaomi Mi 9T / Xiaomi Redmi K20 (China) / Xiaomi Redmi K20 (India) | davinci | ArianK16a | 22.2 | | Xiaomi Mi A3 | laurel_sprout | Skyblueborb | 22.2 | | Xiaomi POCO F5 (Global) / Xiaomi POCO F5 (India) / Xiaomi Redmi Note 12 Turbo | marble | Adrianyyy, ArianK16a | 22.2 | | Xiaomi POCO F5 Pro / Xiaomi Redmi K60 | mondrian | Adrianyyy, ArianK16a | 22.2 | | Xiaomi Redmi 12C / Xiaomi Redmi 12C NFC / Xiaomi POCO C55 | earth | surblazer | 22.2 | | Xiaomi Redmi 3S / Xiaomi Redmi 3X / Xiaomi Redmi 4 (India) / Xiaomi Redmi 4X / Xiaomi Redmi Note 5A Prime / Xiaomi Redmi Y1 Prime | Mi8937 | 0xCAFEBABE | 22.2 | | Xiaomi Redmi 4A / Xiaomi Redmi 5A / Xiaomi Redmi Note 5A Lite / Xiaomi Redmi Y1 Lite | Mi8917 | 0xCAFEBABE | 22.2 | | Xiaomi Redmi 7A / Xiaomi Redmi 8 / Xiaomi Redmi 8A / Xiaomi Redmi 8A Dual | Mi439 | 0xCAFEBABE | 22.2 | | Xiaomi Redmi K60 Pro | socrates | WenHao2130 | 22.2 | | Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro / Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro (India) / Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro Max (India) | sweet | basamaryan, danielml3 | 22.2 | | Xiaomi Redmi Note 10S / Xiaomi Redmi Note 10S NFC / Xiaomi Redmi Note 10S Latin America / Xiaomi POCO M5s | rosemary | surblazer | 22.2 | | Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 Pro | violet | 0xCAFEBABE | 22.2 | | Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 / Xiaomi Redmi Note 8T | ginkgo | Skyblueborb, mikeioannina, programminghoch10 | 22.2 |

Added 22.2 devices

| Device name | Wiki | Maintainers | Moved from | |

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| | ASUS ZenFone 8 | sake | DD3Boh, mikooomich | 20 | | ASUS Zenfone 5Z (ZS620KL) | Z01R | ThEMarD | 22.1 | | LG Style3 | style3lm | rtx4d | | | LG Velvet | caymanslm | rtx4d | | | Motorola moto g 5G / Motorola moto one 5G ace | kiev | basamaryan, Jleeblanch, SyberHexen, Vivekachooz | 22.1 | | Motorola moto g 5G plus / Motorola moto one 5G | nairo | ItsVixano, Ivanmeler, SyberHexen, zlewchan | 22.1 | | Nokia 6.1 (2018) | PL2 | npjohnson | 22.1 | | Nokia 7 plus | B2N | Tuan Anh | | | Nokia 8 | NB1 | Tuan Anh | 21 | | Nothing Phone (1) | Spacewar | zlewchan, ko_ko_konb | 22.1 | | Nubia Red Magic 5G (Global) / Nubia Red Magic 5G (China) / Nubia Red Magic 5S (Global) / Nubia Red Magic 5S (China) | nx659j | zlewchan | 20 | | Nubia Red Magic Mars | nx619j | Cyborg2017, rtx4d | 22.1 | | Nubia Z17 | nx563j | BeYkeRYkt | 21 | | Nubia Z18 | nx606j | Cyborg2017, rtx4d | 22.1 | | OnePlus 12 | waffle | chandu078 | | | OnePlus 5 | cheeseburger | qsnc | 22.1 | | OnePlus 5T | dumpling | qsnc | 22.1 | | OnePlus Nord N20 | gunnar | tangalbert919 | | | OnePlus Nord N200 | dre | tangalbert919 | 21 | | Samsung Galaxy A52 4G | a52q | Simon1511 | 22.1 | | Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G | a52sxq | Simon1511 | 22.1 | | Samsung Galaxy A72 | a72q | Simon1511 | 22.1 | | Samsung Galaxy A73 5G | a73xq | Simon1511 | 22.1 | | Samsung Galaxy M52 5G | m52xq | Simon1511 | 22.1 | | Samsung Galaxy Tab A 8.0 (2019) | gtowifi | lifehackerhansol | 21 | | Vsmart Joy 3 / Vsmart Joy 3+ | casuarina | Tuan Anh, nhglong | | | Xiaomi Black Shark | shark | rtx4d, tdrkDev | 22.1 | | Xiaomi MIX Fold 2 | zizhan | Adrianyyy, ArianK16a | | | Xiaomi Mi 11i / Xiaomi Redmi K40 Pro / Xiaomi Redmi K40 Pro+ / Xiaomi Mi 11X Pro | haydn | ikeramat | 22.1 | | Xiaomi Mi 8 Explorer Edition | ursa | bgcngm | 22.1 | | Xiaomi Mi 8 Pro | equuleus | bgcngm | 22.1 | | Xiaomi Mi 8 | dipper | infrag | 22.1 | | Xiaomi Mi MIX 2S | polaris | bgcngm | 22.1 | | Xiaomi Mi MIX 3 | perseus | bgcngm, rtx4d | 22.1 | | Xiaomi Mi Note 10 / Xiaomi Mi Note 10 Pro / Xiaomi Mi CC9 Pro | tucana | SanyaPilot | | | Xiaomi POCO F1 | beryllium | bgcngm, warabhishek | 22.1 | | Xiaomi POCO X3 NFC | surya | Shimitar, TheStrechh, ikeramat | 21 | | Xiaomi POCO X3 Pro | vayu | SebaUbuntu | 20 | | ZTE Axon 9 Pro | akershus | rtx4d, tdrkDev | |

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Welcome to a new issue of This Week in Plasma!

This week more work was poured into making Plasma 6.5 the best and most stable release ever. I know I write that a lot, but I feel like we get better at it every time, and this time it feels like that’s the case here too as well.

Our bug triaging team has basically finished getting through Plasma’s bug report backlog, allowing them and developers to focus on the known and fixable issues. And fix they did! This week there were just tons and tons of bug fixes. Among them were the #2 and #3 most common Plasma crashes, and we also identified the #1 most common crash as being caused by 3rd-party code.

This kind of concerted bug-fixing may not be the most glamorous work, but it makes a big difference to the overall quality of the product!

Notable UI Improvements

Plasma 6.5.0

You can now activate the Sleep, Shut Down, and Restart (etc.) buttons in Kickoff using the Enter key in addition to the spacebar. (Julius Zint, link)

Plasma 6.6.0

The Breeze icon theme now has reversed versions of the “Send” icon (which normally looks like a little paper plane flying to the right), and uses them in notifications when using a right-to-left language, like Arabic or Hebrew. (Farid Abdelnour and Nate Graham, link)

Improved the randomness of randomly-ordered wallpaper slideshows. (Sebastian Meyer, link)

Notable Bug Fixes

Plasma 6.4.6

Fixed an issue that could make KWin crash when trying to look at a device’s orientation sensor. (Xaver Hugl, link)

Fixed the current second most common Plasma crash, which could happen when using a Weather Report widget displaying information from the Environment Canada source. (Ismael Asensio, link)

Fixed a very annoying issue that made graphical vector content copied in apps like Inkscape and LibreOffice Draw get unnecessarily and destructively rasterized when pasting them. (Fushan Wen, link)

Fixed an issue that made screen colors not look quite right (or at least not as intended) when playing HDR videos. (Xaver Hugl, link)

Plasma 6.5.0

Fixed a case where KWin could crash when dragging files or folders from Dolphin. (Vlad Zahorodnii, link)

Fixed another case where KWin could crash. (Vlad Zahorodnii, link)

Fixed a case where Plasma could crash when you tried to create a new folder inside a sub-folder popup from a Folder View widget or a folder on the desktop. (Akseli Lahtinen, link)

Fixed a case where KDE’s XDG portal implementation could crash. (David Redondo, link)

Fixed an issue that made text copied to the clipboard in an XWayland-using app get lost when the window focus changed immediately afterwards. (Vlad Zahorodnii, link)

Fixed an issue that could make automatic screen rotation not work properly. (David Edmundson, link)

Fixed an issue that could make XWayland-using apps flicker a bit on some screens with some GPUs. (Xaver Hugl, link)

Fixed a weird issue in that could make the CPU and memory usage skyrocket after you used KRunner to search for certain specific things and then pressed the Page Up key. (Harald Sitter, link)

When you turn on automatic login and a message appears telling you to change your wallet to have en empty password so that it will automatically unlock, the button you can click to do so once again works. (David Edmundson, link)

Fixed a couple of labels that didn’t display localized text properly. (Nicolas Fella and Nate Graham, link 1 and link 2)

Fixed an issue that made desktop icons jump around when you moved a panel to an adjacent screen edge. (Akseli Lahtinen, [link](https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-desktop/-/merge Requests /)

Fixed a funny issue that made newly-created panels inherit some of their initial sizing settings from the most-recently-created panel, rather than using the default settings. (Fabian Vogt, link)

Fixed an issue in System Monitor that made it impossible to re-select table columns after clearing the selection by clicking in the empty area below the table. (Arjen Hiemstra, link)

Frameworks 6.20

Fixed the current third most common Plasma crash, which could happen when changing themes. (Arjen Hiemstra, link)

Fixed an issue that made the external link icon look weird in GTK apps when using the Breeze icon theme (David Redondo, link)

Other bug information of note:

• 1 very high priority Plasma bug (same as last week). Current list of bugs
• 29 15-minute Plasma bugs (up from 28 last week). Current list of bugs

Notable in Performance & Technical

Plasma 6.4.5

Substantially reduced KWin’s CPU usage while playing full-screen video. (Someone amazing in KWin, link)

Plasma 6.5.0

Improved the speed with which Discover fetches Flatpak information while starting up, improving launch speed and responsiveness in many cases. (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, link)

Information about the size of the folder selection dialog is now stored in the state config file, not the settings config file. This helps keep the settings file from changing when transient states change, making it easier to version-control your config files. (Nicolas Fella, link)

How You Can Help

KDE has become important in the world, and your time and contributions have helped us get there. As we grow, we need your support to keep KDE sustainable.

You can help KDE by becoming an active community member and getting involved somehow. Each contributor makes a huge difference in KDE — you are not a number or a cog in a machine! You don’t have to be a programmer, either; many other opportunities exist, too.

You can also help us by making a donation! A monetary contribution of any size will help us cover operational costs, salaries, travel expenses for contributors, and in general just keep KDE bringing Free Software to the world.

Welcome to a new issue of This Week in Plasma!

This week we released the second beta of Plasma 6.5, and there are a lot of fixes in it! This week also sees some great bug fixes, as well as a number of UI improvements related to language and time.

Notable UI Improvements

Plasma 6.5.0

When you’re using your system in a language that’s not English, you can now find Emojis in the Emoji Selector window by searching for their English names, in addition to the names in your primary language. (Kai Uwe Broulik, link)

Week numbers shown in Plasma’s various calendars have now been italicized to distinguish them from day numbers. (Akseli Lahtinen, link)

Plasma 6.6.0

Made multiple UI improvements to the time zone chooser map that’s visible in a few places: you can now zoom in and out farther, the map zooms in a more predictible way, there’s no more blurry text, and the borders of the clickable areas now perfectly map the borders drawn on the map. (Niccolò Venerandi, link 1, link 2, and link 3)

When using a right-to-left language like Arabic or Hebrew, Plasma will now show reversed versions of the audio icons in various places when the icon theme contains them — and the Breeze icon theme now does. (Farid Abdelnour and Nate Graham, link 1, link 2, link 3, link 4, and link 5)

Notable Bug Fixes

Plasma 6.4.6

Discover’s automatic shutdown/restart feature now allows apps with unsaved changes to prompt you to save first, preventing potential data loss. (Nate Graham and Aleix Pol Gonzalez, link)

Fixed an issue preventing the message about other users being logged in when you try to restart or shut down from appearing. (Nate Graham, link)

Fixed an issue preventing Flatpak apps from being able to create launchers using the Dynamic Launcher portal. (Nicolas Fella, link)

Fixed an issue that made the Applications table on System Monitor’s main page blurry with certain scale factors. (Arjen Hiemstra, link)

Removing the background of widgets in System Monitor now visually adjusts them to the color scheme properly. (Arjen Hiemstra, link)

Timestamps are now shown as expected for print jobs in the print queue. (Mike Noe, link)

The numbers in Plasma’s Timer widget now visually adjust to the color scheme properly. (Marco Martin, link)

When you’ve got Discover set up to prioritize apps from distro repos over Flatpak and/or Snap, searching for apps no longer inappropriately prioritizes the Flatpak or Snap versions. (Akseli Lahtinen, link)

Ampersands now appear correctly in text that shows up in the context menus of Task Manager tasks. (Marco Martin, link)

Fixed an issue that made the Media Player widget display filenames containing certain characters incorrectly. (Conor Smith, link)

Dragging a desktop widget partially off of a screen edge no longer makes the visualization of its position disappear. (Akseli Lahtinen, link)

Plasma 6.5.0

Fixed a case where DIscover could crash while quitting. (Aleix Pol Gonzales, link)

Fixed an issue in Discover that made it sometimes fail to display reviews properly for certain apps. (Akseli Lahtinen, link)

Fixed several issues with the Application Dashboard launcher: now it closes on focus loss like other launchers, doesn’t resize itself inappropriately if it’s open when the screen resolution, scale, or geometry changes, and no longer fails to pre-select items for many types of search results. (Niccolò Venerandi, link 1, link 2, and link 3)

Fixed an issue with the desktop grid view of KWin’s Overview effect that made it not show windows on inactive virtual desktops when using an unrelated non-default option. (Marco Martin, link)

Fixed a few sources of visual glitches when dragging items on the desktop when using a fractional scale factor. (Akseli Lahtinen, link)

If you’ve got a misbehaving screen that connects and disconnects multiple times when plugged in (screens suck), you’ll no longer see multiple system notifications about this. (Kai Uwe Broulik, link)

Using a font with a very tall baseline (for example, with many Arabic fonts) no longer makes text overflow out of the grid items on the Add Widgets sidebar. (Niccolò Venerandi, link)

The Reset button on System Settings’ Date & Time page now resets the current time zone too, if it’s been changed at all. (Niccolò Venerandi, link)

Removed Spectacle’s “Show capture instructions” option, because it didn’t do anything anymore after we removed the giant text field in the rectangular region UI in Plasma 6.4. (Nate Graham, link)

Frameworks 6.19

Fixed a case where Plasma would crash when asked to display certain malformed themes. (Marco Martin, link)

Fixed the “Delete oldest files from the trash” option for how to handle a full trash. (Pan Zhang, link)

Fixed an issue that made it impossible to paste text containing “file:///%E2%80%9D into a Sticky Note widget. (Akseli Lahtinen, link)

Other bug information of note:

• 1 very high priority Plasma bug (down from 2 last week). Current list of bugs
• 28 15-minute Plasma bugs (up from 27 last week). Current list of bugs

Notable in Performance & Technical

Plasma 6.4.6

Fixed an issue that made Plasma consume CPU time for no reason while the Networks widget is visible in the active part of the System Tray, until the first time the System Tray popup is opened. (Fabian Vogt, link)

Plasma 6.5.0

The time that Discover last notified you about updates is now stored in the state config file, not the settings config file. This is part of the meta-project to move rapidly-changing information out of config files so you can version-control them more easily. (Nicolas Fella, link)

Plasma 6.6.0

Old stale config data about ancient panels no longer clutters up your Plasma config file; it’s now deleted as intended. (Nicolas Fella, link)

Slightly improved the speed and memory efficiency of opening the Sticky Note widget’s context menu. (Kai Uwe Broulik, link)

Frameworks 6.19

Fixed an issue that made System Monitor render graphs when not visible, wasting resources. (Arjen Hiemstra, link)

How You Can Help

KDE has become important in the world, and your time and contributions have helped us get there. As we grow, we need your support to keep KDE sustainable.

You can help KDE by becoming an active community member and getting involved somehow. Each contributor makes a huge difference in KDE — you are not a number or a cog in a machine! You don’t have to be a programmer, either; many other opportunities exist, too.

You can also help us by making a donation! A monetary contribution of any size will help us cover operational costs, salaries, travel expenses for contributors, and in general just keep KDE bringing Free Software to the world.

To get a new Plasma feature or a bugfix mentioned here, feel free to push a commit to the relevant merge request on invent.kde.org.

Welcome to a new issue of This Week in Plasma!

This week the Plasma team really really really focused on bug fixing and UI polishing, in preparation for the Plasma 6.5 release next month.

So far relatively few regressions have been reported, so either we’ve done a really good job of fixing them or keeping Plasma generally stable, or people aren’t reporting enough bugs!

While I’d love to believe it’s the former, let me take the opportunity to request more bug reports! KDE Linux is a great way to test, and other distros also have their own package repos you can switch to for beta releases. Give it a try! I’d say the Plasma 6.5 beta is really quite good. And as a reminder, here’s what’s in it.

Notable New Features

Plasma 6.5.0

The colorblindness correction filters now feature a grayscale mode you can use to desaturate all the colors on the screen, or remove them entirely! (Leah B. link)

Notable UI Improvements

Plasma 6.5.0

On System Settings’ Bluetooth page, the on/off switch now remains where it is after you interact with it. (Berk Elyesa Yıldırım, link)

When setting up a slideshow wallpaper, you can now click on the the entire grid item for each image to toggle it on or off, instead of having to aim for the tiny checkbox in the corner. (David Redondo, link)

Everything that lets you quickly see what’s on the desktop now consistently uses the term “Peek at desktop”. (Nate Graham, link)

When your system is out of inotify watches, and you fix it by clicking on the “fix it” button on the notification alerting you to the issue, the notification now goes away after it’s fixed. (Kai Uwe Broulik, link)

The Show Activity Manager widget now has a sane upper icon size limit, so it’s no longer ridiculously massive on really thick panels. (Niccolò Venerandi, link)

Modernized the Add Connection dialog on System Settings’ Networks page a bit. (Nate Graham, link)

Plasma 6.6.0

Improved the way cross-app activation happens on Wayland in a variety of ways. (Vlad Zahorodnii, link 1, link 2, link 3, link 4)

Improved the UI of the Colorblindness Correction feature on System Settings’ Accessibility page. (Nate Graham, link)

System Settings’ Application Permissions page now shows Flatpak apps’ technical ID instead of their version number (because it’s not very useful there), and you can select and copy the text, too. (Nate Graham, link)

Notable Bug Fixes

Plasma 6.4.6

Fixed a bug that could allow apps or websites that send notifications to make Plasma display the contents of file:///dev/urandom or other technical files, which could make the system bog down or crash. (David Edmundson, link)

Fixed a case where System Monitor could crash when you tried to save a customized graph as a new preset. (David Redondo, link)

Fixed two cases where the KMenuEdit app could crash: one when sorting items, and another when given a malformed .desktop file. (Nicolas Fella, link 1 and link 2)

Manually saving your session no longer breaks the Shut Down, Restart, and Log Out buttons in the Kickoff Application Launcher and other similar launcher menus. (David Edmundson, link)

Fixed a recent regression that made some maps apps not appear as options on System Settings’ Default Applications page. (Sune Vuorela, link)

Fixed a bug that broke the mouse button re-binding UI. (David Redondo, link)

Adding or removing images on System Settings’ Wallpapers page now activates the “Apply” button as expected. (Nate Graham, link)

Fixed a bug that made the Expand buttons on System Settings’ Shortcuts page sometimes get pushed partially out of view. (Nate Graham, link)

Plasma 6.5.0

Fixed a case where the session manager could crash when there were multiple logout notifications. (David Edmundson, link)

Certain misbehaving screens no longer trigger an infinite loop of connections and disconnection sounds after they go to sleep. (Akseli Lahtinen, link)

Fixed a bug that could cause RDP clients to show a black screen when connected to Plasma’s build in RDP server. (Jaxk Xu, link)

Fixed a bug that sometimes made it impossible to turn off the screen reader via its Meta+Alt+S keyboard shortcut (Sebastian Sauer, link)

Fixed multiple issues related to dragging widgets and rubberband selection rectangles on the desktop and in standalone Folder View widgets. (Akseli Lahtinen and Marco Martin, link 1 and link 2)

Fixed bug that made press-and-hold with a touchscreen to right-click unreliable on the Kickoff Application Launcher. (Marco Martin, link)

Fixed a few visual glitches in the panel configuration dialog when using the system with a right-to-left language like Arabic or Hebrew. (Niccolò Venerandi, link)

While in Plasma’s edit mode, dragging System Monitor widgets from the desktop to the panel or back no longer forces them into “Text Only” mode. (Marco Martin, link 1 and link 2)

The wallpaper grid now displays the wallpaper previews in the correct alphabetical order based on the visible title you can see. Previously it was sorting based on the filename, not the user-visible title. (David Redondo, link)

The weather widget now shows an apropriate icon for the “Hazy” weather condition from weather stations using the BBC weather provider. (Ismael Asensio, link)

Fixed a bug that could cause the activity and wallpaper switching shortcuts to be mis-named on System Settings’ Shortcuts page. (Nicolas Fella, link 1 and link 2)

Fixed a bug that could sometimes cause some misbehaving apps to end up with no app icon on their windows’ titlebars. (David Redondo, link)

Other bug information of note:

• 2 very high priority Plasma bugs (same as last week). Current list of bugs
• 27 15-minute Plasma bugs (same as last week). Current list of bugs

…But this is because we fixed a bunch and then added more as the result of bug triage! A Plasma developer’s work is never done.

Notable in Performance & Technical

Plasma 6.5.0

Dragging widgets on top of other widgets no longer bogs down the system with an amount of lag proportional to the refresh rate of the mouse used to drag it. Now it’s always nice and smooth. (Akseli Lahtinen, link)

How You Can Help

KDE has become important in the world, and your time and contributions have helped us get there. As we grow, we need your support to keep KDE sustainable.

You can help KDE by becoming an active community member and getting involved somehow. Each contributor makes a huge difference in KDE — you are not a number or a cog in a machine! You don’t have to be a programmer, either; many other opportunities exist, too.

You can also help us by making a donation! A monetary contribution of any size will help us cover operational costs, salaries, travel expenses for contributors, and in general just keep KDE bringing Free Software to the world.

To get a new Plasma feature or a bugfix mentioned here, feel free to push a commit to the relevant merge request on invent.kde.org.

Some of you have probably seen the blog post a few months ago about how GNOME is more strongly depending on systemd. The changes mentioned there have landed into the latest stable versions of the mentioned software (GNOME 49) and do affect us. In particular, the main culprit is the removal of the non-systemd fallback code in gnome-session. This makes it currently impossible to launch gnome-shell/mutter on a non-systemd system. A fairly straightforward patch of using elogind, like what was previously done, no longer works either.

Since we don't have the time or interest to write a new non-systemd codepath for gnome-session, this means that all support for gnome-based desktops has to be dropped. In particular, the affected packages would be gnome-session, gnome-shell, mutter, and gnome-settings-daemon. For now, the old versions are still in the repos but because there is so much intertwining between other gtk/gnome packages, there is no guarantee they actually work and will later be removed from our repos.

Standalone gnome applications will still continue to be packaged, but it is simply not feasible anymore to support gnome desktops without systemd.

Libreboot is a coreboot distribution (coreboot distro), in the same way that Debian is a Linux distribution. Libreboot provides free, open source (libre) boot firmware based on coreboot, replacing proprietary BIOS/UEFI firmware on specific Intel/AMD x86 and ARM based motherboards, including laptop and desktop computers. It initialises the hardware (e.g. memory controller, CPU, peripherals) and starts a bootloader for your operating system (OS). Linux and BSD are well-supported.

Libreboot has, as of today, become an official member project within SPI, or more formally, Software in the Public Interest. Libreboot's project page is here:

https://www.spi-inc.org/projects/libreboot/

Software in the Public Interest (SPI) is a non-profit corporation in New York, which provides legal and fiscal infrastructure for Free Software projects. They assist projects in the handling of administrative tasks, money and so on, allowing those projects to focus on the thing that matters most: the code.

Organisations like SPI are vital for the health of the entire Free Software movement, and I'm extremely grateful to SPI for accepting Libreboot!

I contacted them earlier in 2025, around the time I attended FOSDEM 2025 in Belgium.

Here is the resolution from SPI's board meeting on 14 July 2025, where Libreboot was officially accepted as a member project:

https://www.spi-inc.org/corporate/resolutions/2025/2025-07-14.js.1/

SPI holds their board meetings on IRC. Here is the public IRC log of the board meeting, in which the above resolution was accepted unanimously:

https://www.spi-inc.org/meetings/logs/2025/2025-07-14.txt

SPI then contacted me with their invitation, based on this resolution, and I accepted their invitation!

Going forward, I will be using Libreboot's SPI membership for several things, such as:

• Accepting donations from the public, to provide funding for Libreboot; this includes things like research/development costs (buying hardware and equipment mostly, for porting to Libreboot and for testing).
• Paying for project expenses - I'll likely start using it to pay for e.g. domain name renewals, hosting, and so on, in the future. I currently pay these expenses myself.
• Legal assistance; for example if Libreboot ever wants to use contractors in the future to work on things, that sort of thing. And of course, if Libreboot generally ever needs help with legal documents.
• In general, if the project ever has much larger expenses in the future, SPI can also manage whatever assets Libreboot needs it to.

SPI is one of the oldest fiscal sponsor organisations specifically for Free Software projects, and one of the biggest there is. For example, they sponsor the Debian Linux project!

Here are some examples of other, major Free Software projects that they support:

• https://www.spi-inc.org/projects/archlinux/
• https://www.spi-inc.org/projects/debian/
• https://www.spi-inc.org/projects/ffmpeg/
• https://www.spi-inc.org/projects/libreoffice/
• https://www.spi-inc.org/projects/openssl/
• https://www.spi-inc.org/projects/openzfs/

Libreboot is a lifelong passion of mine (I am its founder and lead developer), but the problem it has always had is that it's basically just me; I rely heavily on help from the various upstream projects that Libreboot uses, and from contributors to Libreboot. A number of people have made major contributions to Libreboot over the years.

But the problem was always that Libreboot didn't have formal infrastructure in place, until today. This, more generally, is why I sought to join SPI. I had considered creating my own Libreboot Foundation many years ago, and this is still a possibility, but it's easier for a smaller project like Libreboot to lean on organisations like SPI instead.

So basically, where I once funded Libreboot entirely by my own means, SPI will now provide an official, organised way to do so - and I anticipate that this will mean Libreboot can gain greater funding and support as a result. I'm expecting great things! Libreboot always had a strong future, but SPI membership now makes that future even stronger.

At the time of this article, the SPI-based donations page for Libreboot has not yet been set up, but it will be online in the near future.

Once again, I would like to thank SPI for accepting Libreboot! Libreboot will be able to achieve great things, with SPI's help, and I'm very much looking forward to the future.

Thank you! And to my readers: watch this space.

Welcome to a new issue of This Week in Plasma!

This week, KDE contributors from around the world are traveling to Akademy, KDE’s annual conference. I myself am on a train right now as I write these words (though hopefully not still there when you read them), on my way to meet with fellow KDE people for a week of working, planning, and social bond strengthening! Expect a light report next Saturday, or none at all.

Nevertheless, this week, folks managed to be productive anyway. We’ve got a new feature, some UI improvements, bug fixes, efficiency Improvements… the works!

Notable New Features

Plasma 6.5.0

The “Flatpak Permissions” page in System Settings has grown into a more general “Application Permissions” page by additonally letting you configure settings related to the XDG portal system, such as taking screenshots, accepting remote control requests, and more! (David Redondo, link)

Implemented support for the XDG Wallpaper portal, which allows portal-using apps to requests to change the desktop and lock screen wallpaper. (David Redondo, link)

Notable UI Improvements

Plasma 6.5.0

The focus stealing prevention settings on System Settings’ Window Behavior page now do sensible things on Wayland. At one end, “Extreme” requires a valid activation token for every focus request. On the other end, “None” ignores them completely, allowing every activated window to immediately take focus. The default setting is “Low”, which should result in fewer failed activations now, while still not letting apps go nuts and steal focus all the time. (Xaver Hugl, link 1 and link 2)

System Settings’ Day/Night Cycle page (which is where the Night Light timing settings moved to) now lets you enter times in AM/PM style, if that’s what the rest of your system shows and uses. (Vlad Zahorodnii, link)

You’re no longer required to manually create a remote desktop account for remote-desktop purposes; now your existing user account works as expected, and you can just supply its credentials to the client app. (David Edmundson, link)

Discover is now more verbose about what it’s doing while fetching updates, so it doesn’t seem stuck and you can tell which source is being slow and gumming up the works. (Aleix Pol Gonzelez, link)

Improved keyboard navigation in the Kicker Application Menu widget when no apps are marked as favorites. (Christoph Wolk, link)

The monospace font you choose on System Settings’ Fonts page is now synced to GTK apps. (Reilly Brogan, link)

System Settings’ Tablet page now warns you if you try to use it to configure a tablet that’s being managed by a custom user-space tablet driver, because these can conflict and produce odd results. (Joshua Goins, link)

Frameworks 6.18

Improved the visuals of how toolbars load themselves in various Kirigami-using apps and System Settings pages. (Marco Martin, link)

Notable Bug Fixes

Plasma 6.4.5

Improved the reliability with which screen settings are chosen and restored. (Xaver Hugl, link)

Plasma 6.5.0

The Night Light feature no longer somewhat distorts the colors in screenshots and screen recordings. (Xaver Hugl, link)

Fixed an issue in KWin that caused dragging-and-dropping items in Firefox’s bookmarks sub-menus to not work properly. (Vlad Zahorodnii, link 1 and link 2)

Fixed an issue in KWin’s Zoom effect that caused the cursor to use the wrong shape when it passed over a zoomed-in area of an XWayland-using app that would normally use a different cursor shape. (Xaver Hugl, link)

Frameworks 6.18

Fixed a case where various Kirigami-using apps and System Settings pages could crash under certain circumstances. (Nicolas Fella, link)

Fixed an issue in draggable list items throughout Kirigami-using apps and System Settings pages that prevented them from being dragged upwards in a way that would require scrolling the view. (M. Sadık Uğursoy, link)

Fixed an issue that prevented the “File already exists!” dialog from appearing when you try to rename a file on the desktop to have the same name as another file there. (Pan Zhang, link)

Other bug information of note:

• 4 very high priority Plasma bugs (same as last week). Current list of bugs
• 26 15-minute Plasma bugs (same as last week). Current list of bugs

Notable in Performance & Technical

Plasma 6.5.0

Added support for “Underlays”, which promise to improve efficiency in GPUs that support it. (Xaver Hugl, link)

Made KWin’s blur effect per-view, which looks better when screencasting. (Xaver Hugl, link)

How You Can Help

KDE has become important in the world, and your time and contributions have helped us get there. As we grow, we need your support to keep KDE sustainable.

You can help KDE by becoming an active community member and getting involved somehow. Each contributor makes a huge difference in KDE — you are not a number or a cog in a machine! You don’t have to be a programmer, either; many other opportunities exist, too.

You can also help us by making a donation! A monetary contribution of any size will help us cover operational costs, salaries, travel expenses for contributors, and in general just keep KDE bringing Free Software to the world.

To get a new Plasma feature or a bugfix mentioned here, feel free to push a commit to the relevant merge request on invent.kde.org.

Steven Deobald has been in the post of GNOME Foundation Executive Director for the past four months, during which time he has made major contributions to both the Foundation and the wider GNOME project. Sadly, Steven will be leaving the Foundation this week. The Foundation Board is extremely grateful to Steven and wish him the very best for his future endeavors.

The Executive Director role is extremely diverse and it is hard to list all of Steven’s contributions since he has been in post. However, particular highlights include:

• energetic engagement with the GNOME community, including weekly updates focused on the Foundation’s support of GNOME development, and attention to topics of importance to our contributors, such as Pride Month and Disability Pride

• the creation of a new donations platform, which included both a new website, detailed evaluation of payment processors, and a strategy for distributing donations to GNOME development

• a focus on partner outreach, including attending UN Open Source Week, adding postmarketOS to our Advisory board, and the creation of a new Advisory Board Matrix channel, alongside many conversations with partner organisations

• internal policy and documentation work, particularly around spending and finances

• the addition of new tooling to augment policies and documentation, such as an internal Foundation Handbook and vault.gnome.org

• assistance with the board, including recruiting a new treasurer and vice-treasurer

We are extremely grateful to Steven for all this and more. Despite these many positive achievements, Steven and the board have come to the conclusion that Steven is not the right fit for the Executive Director role at this time. We are therefore bidding Steven a fond farewell.

I know that some members of the GNOME community will be disappointed by this decision. I can assure everyone that it wasn’t one that we took lightly, and had to consider from different perspectives.

The good news is that Steven has left the Foundation with a strong platform on which to build, and we have an energetic and engaged board which is already working to fill in the gaps left by his departure. I’m confident that the Foundation can continue on the positive trajectory started by Steven, with a strong community-based executive taking the reins.

To this end, the board held its regular annual meeting this week, and appointed new directors to key positions. I’ve taken over the president’s role from Rob McQueen, who has now joined Arun Raghavan as one of two Vice-Presidents. The Executive Committee has been expanded with the inclusion of Arun and Maria Majadas (who is our new Chair). We have also bolstered the Finance Committee, and are looking to create new groups for fundraising and communications.

Steven has been very helpful in working on a smooth transition, and our staff are continuing to work as normal, so Foundation operations won’t be affected by these management changes. In the near future we’ll be pushing forward with the fundraising plans that Steven has set out, and are hopeful about being able to provide more financial support for the GNOME project as a result. If you want to help us with that, please get in touch.

Should you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out to president@gnome.org.

On behalf of the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors,

– Allan

Welcome to a new issue of This Week in Plasma!

This week saw huge improvements to the Plasma clipboard, KRunner, and drawing tablet support — not to mention a bunch of UI improvements in Discover, and plenty more, too! So without further ado…

Notable New Features

Plasma’s clipboard now lets you mark entries as favorites, and they’ll be permanently saved so you can always access them easily! This is very useful when you find yourself pasting the same common text snippets all the time. The feature request was 22 years old; this may be a new record for oldest request ever implemented in KDE! (Kendrick Ha, link)

Plasma now lets you configure touch rings on your drawing tablet! (Joshua Goins, link)

Discover now lets you install hardware drivers that are offered in your operating system’s package repos! (Evan Maddock, link)

KRunner and KRunner-powered searches can now find global shortcuts! (Fushan Wen, link)

Notable UI Improvements

Plasma 6.5.0

KRunner and KRunner-powered searches now use fuzzy matching for applications. (Harald Sitter, link)

Improved the way Discover presents error messages to be a bit more user-friendly and compliant with KDE’s Human Interface Guidelines. (Oliver Beard and Nate Graham, link 1 and link 2)

Discover now lets you write a review for apps that don’t have any reviews yet. (Nate Graham, link)

On operating systems using RPM-OSTree (like Fedora Kinoite), there’s no longer an awkward red icon used in the sidebar and other places you’d expect black or white icons. (Justin Zobel, link)

KDE Gear 25.12.0

Opening a disk in KDE Partition Manager from its entry in Plasma’s Disks & Devices widget no longer mounts the disk, which is annoying since you’ll then have to unmount it in the app before you can do anything with it. (Joshua Goins, link 1 and link 2)

Notable Bug Fixes

Plasma 6.4.5

Fixed a critical issue that could cause the text of a sticky note on a panel to be permanently lost if that panel was cloned and then later deleted. This work also changes handling for deleted notes’ underlying data files: now they’re moved to the trash, rather than being deleted immediately. Should be a lot safer now! (Niccolò Venerandi, link 1 and link 2)

Fixed a very common KWin crash when changing display settings that was accidentally introduced recently. (David Edmundson, link)

Made a few strings in job progress notifications translatable. (Victor Ryzhykh, link)

Fixed an issue that could allow buttons with long text to overflow from System Monitor’s process killer dialog when the window was very very small. (Nate Graham, Link)

Fixed an issue in the time zone chooser map that would cause it to not zoom to the right location when changing the time zone using one of the comboboxes. (Kai Uwe Broulik, link)

The warnings shown by System Settings’ Fonts page in response to various conditions will now be shown when you adjust all the fonts at once, not only when you adjust one at a time. (Nate Graham, link)

Plasma 6.5.0

Fixed a case where Plasma could crash while you were configuring the weather widget. (Bogdan Onofriichuk, link)

Fixed an issue that could cause System Settings to crash while quitting when certain pages were open. (David Redondo, link)

Plasma is now better at remembering if you wanted Bluetooth on or off on login. (Nicolas Fella, link)

Panels in Auto-Hide, Dodge Windows, and Windows Go Below modes will now respect the opacity setting. (Niccolò Venerandi, link)

Frameworks 6.18

Fixed an issue that caused Plasma to crash when dragging files from Dolphin to the desktop or vice versa when the system was set up with certain types of mounts. (David Edmundson, link)

Other bug information of note:

• 4 very high priority Plasma bugs (down from 5 last week). Current list of bugs
• 26 15-minute Plasma bugs (down from 27 last week). Current list of bugs

Notable in Performance & Technical

Plasma 6.5.0

Implemented support for “overlay planes” on single-output setups, which have the potential to significantly reduce GPU and power usage for compatible apps displaying full-screen content. Note that NVIDIA GPUs are currently opted out because of unresolved driver issues. (Xaver Hugl, link)

Implemented support for drag-and-drop to and from popups created by Firefox extensions, and presumably other popups implemented with the same xdg_popup system, too. (Vlad Zahorodnii, link)

Fixed an issue that would cause V-Sync to be inappropriately disabled in certain games using the SDL library. (Xaver Hugl, link)

Undetermined release date

The annotating feature in Spectacle has been extracted into a re-usable library so that it can also be used in other apps in the future! Such integration is still in progress (as is working out a release schedule for the git repo that the library lives in now), but you’ll hear about it once it’s ready! (Noah Davis and Carl Schwan, link)

How You Can Help

KDE has become important in the world, and your time and contributions have helped us get there. As we grow, we need your support to keep KDE sustainable.

You can help KDE by becoming an active community member and getting involved somehow. Each contributor makes a huge difference in KDE — you are not a number or a cog in a machine! You don’t have to be a programmer, either; many other opportunities exist, too.

You can also help us by making a donation! A monetary contribution of any size will help us cover operational costs, salaries, travel expenses for contributors, and in general just keep KDE bringing Free Software to the world.

To get a new Plasma feature or a bugfix mentioned here, feel free to push a commit to the relevant merge request on invent.kde.org.