KDE Connect

The new frameworks also fix an issue where opening a text file or script did not give you an option to just open the file in a text editor.

And there's also a bug fix for KDE Connect, where it could grab one hundred percent of one of your CPU cores.

That will no longer be the case.

Nothing huge in there, but performance improvements that will apply to virtually every KDE app out there are always welcome.

And this week we've got Brave touting the fact that they might very well be the best browser So we'll look into that.

We also have KDE and GNOME firing on all cylinders with Plasma 6.8, with KDE Linux, with KDE Connect, with the GNOME 51 release candidate and a bunch of stuff.

We also have CERN moving from Red Hat to Debian, a move that is potentially massive for them and very interesting to look at.

And of course, we've got a ton of other stuff.

Who could have predicted that the X11 codebase was not easy to evolve without causing massive regressions? I don't think anyone could have seen that coming, especially not all the developers who worked on it for decades and decided to create Wayland instead of evolving the actual codebase.

No one could have predicted that, probably.

Now back to KDE, KDE Connect's redesign is ready for testing, at least on Android.

It is a full redesign of the application, with a new main menu that now separates devices more clearly, with actions you can do on them, there's also a better pairing overlay when you request pairing between a computer and a phone, shortcuts to often used features are available under each device's name, more info on which connections are used are also showing up, There's a big pair new device button in the bottom right corner.

I've seen some really cool things.

I mean, actually, I just recently installed KDE Connect for interacting with my phone.

And I had like, now I'm like kicking myself.

Why hadn't I done that sooner? Because it's, I thought for my head, I thought there was gonna be so many more dependencies on KDE to run that and it doesn't.

The post describes a project called Tether, which aims to bring more features of Apple devices, such as iMessage, SMS notifications, contact sync, file transfer, clipboard sharing, and OTP autofill to Linux systems.

The developer built Tether to fill gaps left by other tools like KDE Connect, focusing on security, Bluetooth integration, and proper functionality.

It uses Bluetooth and web extensions to sync messages, transfer files, and autofill OTPs with a particular breakthrough in Bluetooth protocol understanding that made direct iMessage and SMS support possible.

The goal is to make Tether accessible for Linux users with iPhones with community contributions encouraged.

In the comments, the community was largely supportive of the project and appreciated its features over existing options like KDE Connect.

Many users discussed the technical challenges of Bluetooth and interoperability with Apple's ecosystem, with some mentioning that Tether's approach is more direct and functional than previous proxy-based solutions.

There was debate about licensing, with some users expressing concern about copyleft licenses and others noting the importance of open-source licenses for interoperability.