Akademy

Kieryn and Kai play "This or that #KDE app?" at #Akademy2026

Kieryn and Kai play "This or that #KDE app?" at #Akademy2026

#Akademy2026 attendees convey ("konvey"?) in one word what #KDE means to them.

Birds of a Feather (BoF) Wrap-up of Thursday, 24 September

Birds of a Feather (BOF) Wrap-up of Tuesday, 22 September

BoF Wrap-up of Monday, 21 September

https://media.ccc.de/v/kde2026-47-modernizing_kde_print_manager_for_the_future_of_linux_printing

The Linux printing ecosystem is currently undergoing one of its biggest architectural transitions in decades. Since the CUPS 2.2.x series, printing has increasingly moved toward IPP-native and driverless workflows, allowing applications to print directly to discovered IPP print destinations without requiring manually created print queues, PPD files, or vendor-specific driver filters.

With the upcoming transition to CUPS 3.x, legacy printer drivers and classic PPD-based queue creation will be removed entirely from CUPS itself. Non-driverless printers will instead require Printer Applications that expose printers through modern IPP interfaces. These changes significantly affect desktop printing infrastructure and require desktop environments to adapt to more dynamic, asynchronous, and network-oriented workflows.

This talk explores the ongoing modernization work in KDE Print Manager to prepare for these changes. It covers the migration away from older synchronous request handling, improvements to UI responsiveness and request lifecycle management, and the architectural challenges involved in modernizing mature desktop infrastructure software while maintaining compatibility with existing workflows.

The session will also provide an overview of how KDE Print Manager interacts with CUPS and the broader Linux printing stack, discuss the implications of the CUPS 3.x transition for KDE and Linux desktops, and highlight future directions for modern desktop printing infrastructure.

Whether you are interested in KDE internals, Linux desktop architecture, or the future of printing on Linux systems, this talk offers insight into the engineering challenges and design decisions involved in preparing KDE Print Manager for the next generation of Linux printing.

Tarun Srivastava has started the work voluntarily in the end of 2024, continued it as Google Summer of Code 2025 project for OpenPrinting (his final report) and is currently working on its completion in the Google Summer of Code 2026. His main mentor is Mike Noe, responsible for the printing support in KDE, and additional mentors are Till Kamppeter, co-founder and lead of OpenPrinting, and Nico Fella.

More about OpenPrinting:

Mike Noe, Till Kamppeter, Tarun Srivastava

#kde2026

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

https://media.ccc.de/v/kde2026-10-still_breathing_the_past_present_and_future_of_oxygen

By examining its past, its present restoration, and its potential future, this presentation contextualizes Oxygen, the flagship theme of the KDE 4 era, within the broader questions it raises for KDE as a project.

We argue two things about Oxygen: that it carries genuine historical and artistic value, and that KDE's continued stewardship of the theme reflects something important and positive about our community. Namely that KDE Plasma is a user's desktop, one that is willing to prioritize user choice over narrow cost-benefit development logic.

In recognition of both Oxygen’s value and in line with the values of KDE, Oxygen has been undergoing an active restoration effort. We present the state of that work: what has been accomplished, what obstacles were encountered, and what dilemmas arise when preserving a theme of this kind. Here we also take the very positive user feedback received as a signal that there is clear demand for designs rooted in the very principles Oxygen is rooted in.

The future certainly does not involve redesigning the Oxygen that was, but it does carry the potential of its evolution into the Oxygen that will be, new modern Oxygen's, built on the same principles, of pushing the boundaries of what we do in the design space in OSS. This work also opens a larger question about what KDE wants to offer in terms of theming infrastructure and available themes. Our position is that preserving the original Oxygen is worthwhile in its own right, and that working on its evolution can be beneficial for bettering the new theming infrastructure, as fostering the next generation of OSS designers.

Filip Fila, Nuno Fernandes Pinheiro

#kde2026

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

https://media.ccc.de/v/kde2026-41-report_of_the_board

In this session the board will report on the activities of KDE e.V. over the past year.

Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Carl Schwan, David Redondo, Eike Hein, Lydia Pintscher

#kde2026

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

https://media.ccc.de/v/kde2026-46-activities_bof

Activities are a very powerful, yet heavily under-appreciated (and under-explained) feature of Plasma.

In this lightning talk I would like to convince you why they are cool and to join us in the Activities BoF to discuss how both Activities themselves and KDE’s messaging/documentation/onboarding about them could be improved.

Matija Šuklje

#kde2026

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/