According to The How-To Geek, the KDE community has released Gear 25.12, a major update to its application suite. This release brings a substantial list of quality-of-life enhancements to core apps like the Dolphin file manager and the Kate text editor. Key improvements include Dolphin now hiding temporary folders from the system trash and Kate gaining better Git branch visualization. The KDE Itinerary travel app has smarter journey planning with new data extractors, and the Photos viewer gets modern gesture controls. These updates are available now for users of the KDE Plasma desktop and various GNU/Linux distributions.
Dolphin Gets Smarter
Look, file managers are boring. Until they’re not. And the tweaks to Dolphin here are the kind of thing you don’t know you need until you have them. The temporary folder trash thing is a perfect example. How many times have you cleaned out a temp directory, only to have it clutter your actual trash? It’s a tiny fix, but it shows someone is actually thinking about the user’s workflow. The new “hide” option in the context menu is even better. Basically, it lets you declutter your view without moving or deleting config files. For developers or anyone who tinkers with their system, that’s a huge win for sanity.
Kate For Coders
Kate’s updates are squarely aimed at developers, and they’re thoughtful. Improved Git support, especially showing the latest activity on branches, is one of those features that seems obvious in hindsight. It saves you a terminal command, which is always a plus. But here’s the thing: the bracketed paste support for piping text? That’s a deep-cut feature for terminal power users that prevents weird formatting issues. It’s not flashy, but it prevents mistakes. I think it signals that KDE is serious about keeping Kate relevant against heavyweights like VS Code, by doubling down on being a powerful, integrated tool for the Plasma environment.
Polishing The Suite
The updates to the other apps feel like KDE is sanding down the rough edges across its entire ecosystem. Photos getting proper gesture controls finally makes it feel modern—it was jarring to use a touchpad or touchscreen with it before. KDE Itinerary adding a currency converter and altitude display? That’s just smart for a travel app. Even the little things, like Falkon’s quick adblock toggle or Konqueror’s better PDF export, matter. They add up to a feeling that the whole desktop environment, not just the shell, is being actively refined. For enterprises or developers who rely on a stable, integrated suite of tools, this consistent polish is probably more important than any single flashy feature.
What It All Means
So, is this a world-changing release? No. But that’s not the point. The point is that the open-source desktop is in a phase of relentless refinement. KDE Gear 25.12 is a collection of answers to the question, “What small thing annoys you about your daily apps?” The focus is on removing friction. For the user, it just makes everything feel a bit smoother and more considered. For the broader Linux ecosystem, it shows that the big desktop environments aren’t just competing on looks or initial features, but on the depth and quality of the entire application experience. You should update when your distro pushes it. You probably won’t be blown away, but you’ll definitely notice things just… working better.
