The KDE Plasma 6 MegaRelease has landed - TUXEDO Computers

The wait is over. The KDE developers published the MegaRelease Plasma 6 on February 28, 2024. After almost exactly ten years, the KDE desktop is switching to a new major version of the underlying GUI toolkit Qt. This new major version first appeared at the end of 2020 as Qt 6.0. Shortly afterward, the KDE developers began preparing the migration to the new platform, which has now been delivered with the MegaRelease.

The current version is Qt 6.6, on which Plasma 6, Frameworks 6 and KDE Gear 24.02 are based as components of this release, which have now been published together for the first time. This was preceded by alpha and beta versions as well as two release candidates before the developers were satisfied with the state of the software.

Overall, the underlying motto for Plasma 6 can be described as “careful renovation”. Great importance was attached to catering for beginners and newcomers in such a way that they can quickly get to grips with the new Plasma desktop, despite the excessive configuration options that Plasma offers.

Plasma 6 with TUXEDO OS

As a user of TUXEDO OS, you will be able to enjoy the new desktop earlier than users of most distributions. We have been testing and integrating the new code since the first alpha version in November 2023.

TUXEDO OS 3 will therefore not be too long in coming. It has not yet been decided whether we will offer you Wayland as the standard session from the outset or whether we will stick with X11 for the time being.

Wayland in Plasma 6 is generally in good condition and almost on a par with X11 in terms of functionality. Only with the proprietary NVIDIA drivers can there still be problems that impair the workflow. As many of our notebooks offer NVIDIA as an option, the decision as to whether Wayland or X11 is still pending.

New standards

Plasma 6 breaks with some traditions and uses the opportunity of a new major version to adapt some standards. One change that immediately catches the eye is the change in click behavior. While single-clicking was previously the default behavior for opening files and folders, the developers have now switched to double-clicking.

Files and folders are now selected with a single click and opened with a double click. The decision was discussed at length; the double click is intended to offer users switching from other platforms and desktops a familiar behavior right from the start. As usual with KDE, the setting can already be changed on the start page of the system settings.

From X11 to Wayland

Ideally, another major changeover should be less conspicuous. This is the switch from the X11 display server to the new Wayland display protocol. X11 was designed 40 years ago and is no longer up to date in many areas, especially when it comes to security. It is also overloaded with functions that have long since moved to other places. For touchpads, the switch to Wayland means that tap-to-click behavior is now activated by default.

You can set your preference for Wayland or X11 in the SDDM login manager by clicking at the bottom left.

Two main versions per year

Another change concerns the release cycle. As soon as Plasma 6 has stabilized, there will only be two main releases per year instead of the previous three. The timing of these releases will be co-ordinated with the major distributions that ship Plasma, so that Kubuntu, openSUSE Leap and Fedora with its KDE spin can ship their own releases with the latest version of Plasma.

The new cycle also relieves the KDE Visual Design Group (VDG), which now only has to develop two designs per year instead of three. In addition to these drastic changes, the desktop has been revised in many places and freed from ballast.

New background image

As you would expect, Plasma 6 comes with a new background image that marks a departure from the wallpaper style of Plasma 5. If you are not happy, you can also change your wallpaper via the system settings. Select whether you want to change the background image for a specific screen or all connected displays and whether you prefer a still image or a slideshow.

Floating control bar

Since version 5.25, Plasma has offered an optional floating control bar, which is located at the bottom of the screen by default. With Plasma 6, this bar is floating by default.

At the same time, the settings dialogue of the bar has been completely revised and is now much more intuitive to use. The context menu of the desktop is also clearer, as some options have been moved to the settings of the toolbar. You can access the settings by right-clicking on a free area of the bar and selecting Start editing mode.

Another practical change is the scrollbars. If you click in their progression, the system now scrolls to the clicked position. The application switcher, which can be accessed via Alt+Tabulator and scrolls through all open applications, has also been revised and now uses the Thumbnail Grid as a basis.

The Breeze theme is still used for Plasma 6. However, it has been reworked to give it a more modern look, with fewer frames and more uniform spacing. For the revised Overview effect, the Overview and Desktop Grid effects have been combined and the touchpad gestures massively improved.

Color management

Plasma in the standard Wayland session now offers partial support for High Dynamic Range (HDR). On supported monitors and in supported software, this gives you richer and deeper colors for your games, videos and visual creations.

Define a separate ICC profile for each screen and Plasma will adjust the colors accordingly. Applications are still limited to the sRGB color space, but the developers are working on increasing the number of supported color spaces in the future. Further improvements in support will follow soon.

To improve the accessibility of Plasma, support for color blindness correction filters has also been added to better assist users with protanopia, deuteranopia or tritanopia.

System settings revised

The system settings have been improved, reorganized, made more user-friendly and less convoluted than before. On many settings pages, the buttons have been moved to the toolbar to improve consistency with the other applications and create more space for the actual content.

The system sounds of Plasma have been given a new theme called Ocean, which replaces the previous sound theme Oxygen. You can find the setting under Colors & Themes » System Sounds.

Newly issued

If you were already involved with KDE 4, then you will remember the rotating desktop cube with which you could impress your Windows-using friends. Now it’s back and can be activated in the system settings under Workspace Effects. For it to work, at least three virtual workspaces must also be created under Window Management.

Once you have switched on the effect using the key combination Meta+C, use the left and right arrow keys to control the cube. A click on the Enter key or the space bar switches to the currently displayed desktop, a click on Esc ends the effect.

Plasma 6 Technical Preview

To give you the opportunity to familiarize yourself with the new features of Plasma 6, we are providing you with an ISO image with Plasma 6 as a technical preview. The code of this preview may still contain minor errors. We have therefore deactivated the installer. With the download we attached a README with the known issues.