14 DAY TRIAL // The KDE Project announced the monthly update of their KDE Frameworks 5 open-source software stack, a collection of over 70 add-on libraries for Qt 5 providing a wide range of common functionality.
KDE Frameworks 5.40.0 is here as the latest stable release of the software stack used in Linux-based operating systems that want to offer their users support for KDE apps, and it looks like it brings over 80 bug fixes and improvements across various of the included components.
Among the highlights, we can mention that KDELibs 4 support was enhanced with support for OpenSSL 1.1.0 in the KSSL library, HTTPS support is now used for all KDE URLs, improved recognition of WPS Office presentations, support for categories in KfilesPlacesView, as well as better support for the Wayland display server.
Support for the Flatpak universal binary format was added to the KWindowSystem component, NetworkManagerQt's Security8021xSetting gain support for "domain-suffix-match," and Kirigami mobile and convergent UI framework now supports older Qt 5.7 versions for syntax.
KDE Frameworks 5.40.0 coming soon to a GNU/Linux distro near you
KDE Frameworks 5.40.0 fixes numerous other smaller issues discovered since last month's KDE Frameworks 5.39.0 release, improving components like Baloo, Breeze icons, KArchive, KCMUtils, KConfigWidgets, KCoreAddons, KFileMetaData, KIO, KInit, KGlobalAccel, KNewStuff, KNotification, and KService.
The Plasma Framework, KPackage Framework, KTextEditor, KWidgetsAddons, KXMLGUI, QQC2StyleBridge, and Sonet components were also improved, and you can study the full changelog attached below if you're curious to know what exactly was fixed in this release.
In the meantime, you should watch the software repositories of your favorite GNU/Linux distribution for the KDE Frameworks 5.40.0 packages, and update your installations as soon as they're available. Arch Linux and KDE Neon users appear to be the first to get KDE Frameworks 5.40.0, but it's also coming soon to other rolling distros, such as OpenSuSE Tumbleweed.