KDE Plasma 5.23 Desktop Released

The release of the custom KDE Plasma 5.23 shell is available , built using the KDE Frameworks 5 platform and the Qt 5 library using OpenGL / OpenGL ES for rendering acceleration. You can evaluate the work of the new version through the Live build from the openSUSE project and the build from the KDE Neon User Edition project . Packages for various distributions can be found on this page .

The release is timed to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the project – on October 14, 1996, Matthias Ettrich announced the creation of a new free desktop environment aimed at end users, not programmers or system administrators, and able to compete with the commercial ones available at that time. products such as CDE. The GNOME project, which had similar goals, appeared 10 months later. The first stable release of KDE 1.0 was released on July 12, 1998, KDE 2.0 was released on October 23, 2000, KDE 3.0 on April 3, 2002, KDE 4.0 on January 11, 2008, KDE Plasma 5 in July 2014.

Key improvements:

The Breeze theme has redesigned buttons, menu items, radio buttons, sliders, and scroll bars. To improve the convenience of working with touch screens, the size of the scroll bars and control bars (spinbox) has been increased. Added a new loading indicator, designed in the form of a rotating gear. Implemented an effect that highlights widgets touching the panel edge. Background blur is provided for widgets located on the desktop.

Significantly redesigned code with the implementation of the new Kickoff menu, improved performance and eliminated interfering errors. The ability to choose between showing the available programs in the form of a list or a grid of icons is provided. Added a button to pin an open menu to the screen. On touchscreens, holding down a tap now opens the context menu. Provided the ability to customize the display of buttons for session management and shutdown.

When switching to tablet mode, the icons in the system tray are enlarged to simplify operation from touch screens.

The interface for displaying notifications provides support for copying text to the clipboard using the Ctrl + C key combination.

The applet with the implementation of the global menu is made more like a regular menu.

Provided the ability to quickly switch between power profiles: “energy saving”, “high performance” and “balanced settings”.

In the system monitor and widgets for displaying the state of the sensors, the display of the average load indicator (LA, load average) is provided.

The widget for working with the clipboard is provided with storing the last 20 elements and ignoring the selected areas for which the copy operation has not been explicitly performed. It is possible to delete selected items in the clipboard by pressing the Delete key.

The volume control applet implements the separation of applications that play and record sound.

Added display of additional details about the current network in the network connection control widget. Provided the ability to manually set the speed for the Ethernet connection and disable IPv6. Added support for additional protocols and authentication settings for connections via OpenVPN.

In the media player control widget, the album cover is always shown, which is simultaneously used to form the background.

Expanded the logic of wrapping the text of thumbnail names in the Folder View mode – labels with text in the CamelCase style are now wrapped like in Dolphin along the border of words not separated by a space.

Improved interface for configuring system parameters. The Feedback page provides a report of all the information previously sent to the KDE developers. Added option to enable or disable Bluetooth during user login. On the login screen customization page, an option has been added to synchronize the screen layout. The search interface for the existing settings has been improved, additional keywords are attached to the parameters. On the night mode settings page, notifications are provided for actions that lead to access to external location services. The color settings page provides the ability to override the base color in the color scheme.

After applying the new screen settings, a change confirmation dialog with a time countdown is provided, which allows you to automatically return the old parameters in case of a violation of the normal display.

In the Application Control Center, the download is accelerated and the source of the application is shown on the install button.

Significantly improved session performance based on the Wayland protocol. The ability to paste from the clipboard with the middle mouse button and use the drag-and-drop interface between programs using Wayland and launched using XWayland has been implemented. Fixed several issues with NVIDIA GPUs. Added support for changing the screen resolution at startup in virtualization systems. Improved background blur effect. The settings of virtual desktops are saved.Provided the ability to change RGB settings for the Intel video driver. Added new animation for screen rotation. When the application records the contents of the screen, a special indicator is displayed in the system tray, which allows you to turn off the recording. Improved touchpad gesture control. The task manager has a visual indication of a click on application icons. To indicate the start of the start of programs, a special cursor animation is proposed.