KDE.news 

<figure class="topImage">
    <a href="https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.19/plasma-5.19-2.png" data-toggle="lightbox">
        <img src="https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.19/plasma-5.19-2.png" height="450" width="800" style="width: 100%; max-width: 800px; height: auto;" alt="Plasma 5.19 Beta" />
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    <figcaption>KDE Plasma 5.19 Beta</figcaption>
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<p>Thursday, 14 May 2020.</p>

<p>It's time to test the beta release for <a href="https://kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.18.90">Plasma 5.19</a>!</p>

<p>In this release, we have prioritized making Plasma more consistent, correcting and unifying designs of widgets and desktop elements; worked on giving you more control over your desktop by adding configuration options to the System Settings; and improved usability, making Plasma and its components easier to use and an overall more pleasurable experience.</p>

<p>Read on to discover all the new features and improvements of Plasma 5.19…</p>

<h2 id="desktop">Plasma Desktop and Widgets</h2>

<figure class="float-right text-right">
    <a href="https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.19/sensors.png" data-toggle="lightbox">
        <img src="https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.19/sensors.png" class="border-0 img-fluid" width="242"  alt="Rewritten System Monitor Widgets" />
    </a>
    <figcaption>Rewritten System Monitor Widgets</figcaption>
    <br />
    <a href="https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.19/system-tray-applets.png" data-toggle="lightbox">
        <img src="https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.19/system-tray-applets.png" class="border-0 img-fluid" width="242"  alt="Consistent System Tray Applets" />
    </a>
    <figcaption>Consistent System Tray Applets</figcaption>
    <br />
    <a href="https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.19/user-avatars.png" data-toggle="lightbox">
        <img src="https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.19/user-avatars.png" class="border-0 img-fluid" width="242"  alt="Completely New User Avatars" />
    </a>
    <figcaption>Completely New User Avatars</figcaption>
    <br />
    <a href="https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.19/multi-device-switching-ui.png" data-toggle="lightbox">
        <img src="https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.19/multi-device-switching-ui.png" class="border-0 img-fluid" width="242"  alt="More consistent appearance for switching the current audio device" />
    </a>
    <figcaption>More consistent appearance for switching the current audio device</figcaption>
</figure>

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<h2 id="systemsettings">System Settings</h2>

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    <video width="350" height="240" autoplay="true" loop>
        <source src="https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.19/krunner.webm" type="video/webm" />
    </video>
    <figcaption>Full System Settings App Is Now Launching</figcaption>
    <br />
    <a href="https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.19/redesigned-kcms.png" data-toggle="lightbox">
        <img src="https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.19/redesigned-kcms.png" class="border-0 img-fluid" width="350"  alt="Redesigned Settings Pages" />
    </a>
    <figcaption>Redesigned Settings Pages</figcaption>
</figure>

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<h2 id="kinfocenter">Info Center</h2>

<figure class="float-right text-right">
    <a href="https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.19/kinfocenter.png" data-toggle="lightbox">
        <img src="https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.19/kinfocenter.png" class="border-0 img-fluid" width="350"  alt="Redesigned Info Center" />
    </a>
    <figcaption>Redesigned Info Center</figcaption>
</figure>

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<h2 id="kwin">KWin Window Manager</h2>

<figure class="float-right text-right">
    <a href="https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.19/recoloured-icons.png" data-toggle="lightbox">
        <img src="https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.19/recoloured-icons.png" class="border-0 img-fluid" width="249" alt="Icon Recoloring in the Titlebar" />
    </a>
    <figcaption>Icon Recoloring in the Titlebar</figcaption>
</figure>

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<h2 id="discover">Discover</h2>

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    <a href="https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.19/discover.png" data-toggle="lightbox">
        <img src="https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.19/discover.png" class="border-0 img-fluid" width="350"  alt="Flatpak Repository Removal in Discover" />
    </a>
    <figcaption>Flatpak Repository Removal in Discover</figcaption>
</figure>

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<h2 id="ksysguard">KSysGuard</h2>

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<a href="https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.18.5-5.18.90-changelog.php">Full Plasma 5.19 Beta changelog</a>

by Akhil K Gangadharan and Valorie Zimmerman

The KDE Community welcomes our students for Google Summer Of Code 2020!

We are so grateful to the GSoC program for offering this opportunity to the KDE Community and our students. By the end of the summer, we hope that each of these students will be a confident KDE Developer, happy with their summer of work, and looking forward to supporting their code and newfound friends far into the future.

Akademy 2020 is getting closer and the KDE Community is warming up for its biggest yearly event. If you are working on topics relevant to KDE, this is your chance to present your work and ideas to the community at large.

KDE e.V. is very happy to welcome KONTENT GmbH as one of our supporting members.

We from KONTENT are Linux enthusiasts since our beginning, back in the 90s. So KDE was at anytime a well known, high quality brand for us. It was just a matter of time that we would get in closer contact to the community. This moment has come now, and we are very proud of it. Maybe in the future we can not just help in financial matters, but also in an inspiring way.

Uli Klinkhammer, CEO of KONTENT GmbH

Read More

The conference is expected to draw hundreds of attendees from the global KDE Community. Participants will showcase, discuss and plan the future of the Community and its technology. Members from the broader Free and Open Source Software community, local organizations and software companies will also attend.

Plasma Bigscreen main menu.

Plasma Bigscreen is KDE's user interface for big TV screens.

Plasma Bigscreen powers the interface on a Single Board Computer and uses the Mycroft AI voice assistant to provide a Smart TV platform. Plasma Bigscreen will deliver not only media-rich applications, but also traditional desktop applications redesigned to fit the Bigscreen experience.

By Niccolo Venerandi

On the 20th of February, our first video contest finished and winners were decided by a panel of judges.

This was the first time we run a video contest and we were really excited to see how much the community got involved, the quality of the videos and the onboarding effect that this contest would have.

Something that may have slipped you by: Back in November, the German Federal Office for Information Security approved Gpg4KDE and Gpg4win for the transmission and processing of national classified information.

In recent decades, Free and open source software (FOSS) has increasingly been the enabling factor for advances in areas we probably aren’t even aware of. If software is still spreading around the world, FOSS had already spread through the software world. All of that is only possible because of striving communities that push solutions forward with an amazing flow of continuous passion and love for nice technology, open knowledge, and supporting people. KDE is not any different - we have all been involved in such a lovely addiction for 23 years.

FOSDEM is one of the world's largest Free software conferences and was held last weekend in Brussels. There were hundreds of talks and videos are available for most of them. KDE had a stall there and KDE contributors delivered three talks spread between different devrooms.