KDE Plasma 6.5 improves in many areas - TUXEDO Computers

A few days ago, the KDE community released Plasma 6.5 — the last major update of the year. With this release, the developers have truly hit their stride: Plasma 6.5 brings improvements across the entire desktop environment. Here’s a look at the highlights of the new version.

Design Adjustments

A desktop’s design is usually the first thing users notice. Here, the developers have responded to long-standing community requests and fixed an inconsistency. Previously, when using the Breeze theme, KDE application windows were rounded at the top but square at the bottom. With Plasma 6.5, they now have rounded corners all around, giving the interface a uniform look.

Another design change can be configured in System Settings under Language & Time » Day-Night Cycle. This feature dynamically adjusts the desktop theme and wallpaper to the time of day. The system determines your location automatically via Geoclue 2 using GPS, cell tower triangulation, or IP-based geolocation, or you can enter your coordinates manually. Based on that, Plasma calculates sunrise and sunset times and switches themes and wallpapers from light to dark and back.

Discover Gets Smarter

Discover, KDE’s app store, now supports the installation of hardware drivers directly from your distribution’s repositories. This means that if you connect new hardware to your TUXEDO device and need drivers, the graphical interface can now handle it for you. Proprietary drivers are listed as optional installations, and users are informed about their licensing status. Discover has also been optimized for better performance; it launches faster and now provides a more consistent experience managing Flatpak apps and their permissions.

Flatpak over HTTPS

Flatpak over HTTPS adds another layer of convenience to Discover. It allows you to install Flatpak packages not only from configured repositories but also directly from simple HTTPS URLs. This makes installing Flatpaks from external sources much easier as there is no need to manually run Flatpak commands in the terminal. Discover automatically takes care of resolution, download, and installation, including necessary permissions and dependencies.

 In System Settings, under Security & Privacy » Application Permissions, the page for managing permissions of Flatpaks, and now, to a limited extent, classic programs under Wayland has also been expanded.

Wayland Protocols

Speaking of Wayland: two new protocols expand functionality that was previously unavailable in Wayland sessions. The first, still experimental, is the Overlay Planes, which is actually a collection of several protocols aimed at reducing GPU cycles and power consumption. It allows compositors such as KWin, Mutter, or wlroots-based ones to know when certain content, like videos or overlays, can be displayed directly on hardware overlay planes instead of being composited via the GPU. This is especially useful for video players, which can now output video frames directly on overlay layers.

The second new protocol is Pointer Warp. It provides an interface that allows applications to programmatically move the mouse pointer to a specific position relative to a Wayland surface. This feature is particularly relevant for games, which often need to reposition the cursor without physical mouse movement.

Improved Accessibility

Accessibility has long been a key focus for Plasma, ensuring that users with impairments are included. Plasma 6.5 continues that tradition: the zoom effect now follows the text input cursor, and several tweaks improve readability, reduce flicker, and add visual cues for sound events. Additionally, a new option in the color correction filters introduces a grayscale mode that desaturates all on-screen colors — helpful for users with color vision deficiencies.

Odds and Ends

The oldest resolved bug report in this Plasma release dates back to 2003 and concerns the clipboard. Clipboard entries can now finally be marked as favorites with a star, allowing them to be stored permanently if desired. There’s also support for synchronizing clipboard text between client and server in remote sessions. Another convenience for remote setups: you no longer need to create a separate remote desktop account, as  your existing user account now works there as well. Digital artists will be pleased to hear that touch rings and sliders on graphic tablets are now fully configurable in Plasma 6.5.

Availability in TUXEDO OS

Many of you are no doubt eagerly waiting for Plasma 6.5 to arrive in TUXEDO OS. The update requires significant effort, as it depends on building the minimum required Qt version 6.9 and additionally Qt 5 before we can begin integrating Plasma 6.5.x, KDE Frameworks, and KDE Gear. As a result, it will still take a few weeks before you’ll find the new version in your updates. But rest assured: by then it will be thoroughly tested and free of early quirks.