Recently the release of a new update of "KDE Applications 20.04.2" was presented in which in this June update a series of improvements were consolidated for a few applications and that does not present new functions or relevant changes.
For those who are still unfamiliar with KDE Applications, we can tell you that these are a set of compatible applications and libraries designed by the KDE community, which are mainly used in Linux-based operating systems, but mostly of these applications are cross-platform and are released on a common launcher.
Formerly the KDE application package it was part of the KDE software build.
Examples of featured applications in the package include Dolphin file manager, Okular document viewer, Kate text editor, Arky Konsole terminal emulator file tool among others.
What's new in KDE Applications 20.04.2
In total, as part of the update, versions of more than 120 programs, libraries and plugins were released.
This new update version of KDE Applications 20.04.2 includes the Kup backup software, previously developed as an independent project.
In KDE Applications 20.04.2, a new version of Kup 0.8 is proposed, in which adds behavior when saving rsync backups when only one directory is selected, options are added to define an exception list file, support is added for the third version of Bup utility metadata (the Bup utility is used in Kup to save versioned backups using rsync, which so far only supports working with Python 2, but a port for Python 3 is already being developed).
Another change of this new version is that Elisa music player has been updated, whose developers are trying to implement the recommendations for visual design of media players developed by the KDE VDG working group.
Of the recent changes to Elisa's code base, highlights the implementation of streaming support to devices on the local network using UPnP DLNA. DLNA support will be included in the next major release, only bug fixes are introduced in version 20.04.2.
On the other hand, the popular graphics editor "Krita" developed for artists and illustrators, improved support for Android tablets and Chromebooks. The Krita build for Android is hosted on Google Play.
The version for tablets is still a variant of the usual version for desktop systems: the adaptation of the interface for control from touch screens has not yet been carried out, but the assembly is already quite adequate for the initial experiments.
The presentation of the first beta version of the KIO universal fuse of the KIO module, that allows you to mount directories from external servers (SSH, SAMBA, FTP, WebDav) or from files (TAR, GZip, BZip2, etc.), and work with them as usual in local directories in Dolphin.
KMail has improved HTML markup generation when adding HTML signatures to a message.
And it is also mentioned that the KDE community has joined the KDE Homebrew project, which creates KDE application packages for macOS and places them in the Homebrew directory. A total of 106 packages were prepared, of which 67 libraries and 39 applications, including Kate, Dolphin and KDevelop.
If you are interested in learning more about this new KDE Applications 20.04.02 released update, you can check the full changelog in the original release. The link is this.
Try KDE Applications 20.04.02
Finally, this new update will be arriving gradually to the different Linux distributions, so if it is not yet available for your distribution, you should have a little patience.
Although also, if you already want to test the changes of this update different components can be tested separately with the help of the technology of Flatpak packages.
The only requirement is that you have the added support in your distribution.