KDE is on a roll lately, and keeps on rolling with today’s release of KDE Plasma 6.5. As the project itself notes, this release focuses on relatively small improvements, refinements, and other niceties, without making any massive changes. With Linux desktops taking accessibility more seriously lately than ever before, I want to focus on the accessibility improvements first.
The Orca screen reader now announces caps lock state changes, and screen readers will now describe the Shortcuts and Autostart pages more optimally. There’s also a new grayscale colour filter for people sensitive to colours, developers have done Plasma-wide pass to eliminate bright flashes in the UI, and the desktop zoom feature will now follow the text insertion point as it moves around the UI. Keyboard navigation in various parts of Plasma have been improved, and a few other small changes have been to improve accessiblity.
Other changes include rounded bottom window corners (which can be turned off), automatic and scheduled theme and wallpaper transitions (e.g. from light to dark), and a new and improved applications permissions settings panel. A small new feature that will be a massive time saver for me is the ability to favourite items in your clipboard history, so they remain available over time. I reuse certain copied bits of text all the time, and I can’t wait to start using this little addition.
Remote desktop has also received a ton of love in Plasma 6.5. You can now share your clipboard, and you no longer need to create dedicated RDP user accounts; you can just log in with your normal account credentials as you would expect you could. Plasma’s Discover application, used for application and update management, has seen major work to improve its performance – very welcome, for sure. Of course, there’s a ton of other changes, too.
KDE Plasma 6.5 will find its way to your distribution soon enough.
Is it me, or KDE always feels “lifeless’?
It’s you.
It’s not just you, no. I’m a long-time Gnome user, but I try out KDE every couple of months, just to see if it feels any better, and so far, it doesn’t yet for me. A matter of opinion, of course, but yeah, it’s always felt like a poorly made windows XP clone to me.
Everything just always feels sort of cold and stale – like it’s been cobbled together based on a list of required features, rather than as a cohesive operating environment.
That said, I think it’s closer to feeling good than it ever has been in the past – as of when I last tried it a month or so ago – but it’s still a long way away from the warm glow of Gnome
Some of this new stuff sounds nice though – particularly the clipboard thing!
Yes exactly my view.
I mean, my main DE is XFCE, but I also use Cinnamon, Budgie, and even MATE, and all of them look more “life-live” than KDE
That’s really strange for me to hear, because I feel that way about XFCE (and to a certain extent Gnome and Mate). KDE Plasma was a major factor for me when I chose my new daily driver desktop distro last year. I absolutely love it.
I’m glad there are options so we all can enjoy our preferred DE.
Introvertgeek,
I am a KDE user too. I agree with you, henrypootel’s comment seems to describe XFCE more than KDE. Personally I don’t share those gripes. While “cold and stale” aren’t the adjectives I would choose, I wish more projects would focus on doing the basics well and not worrying about what’s trending. This is what I love about XFCE. The incessant push to change stuff needlessly for change’s sake rarely if ever feels useful to me as a user and yet many projects are guilty of it.
I concur.
I actually like XFCE a lot too – it’s probably my next favourite after gnome. Nice and solid, with options where needed. It just can’t match gnome for – for lack of a better word – elegance and speed of use for me.
I’m glad a lot of people enjoy what they get from KDE though – having so many options is fantastic
Nope, KDE Plasma appears very live to me, just as the other desktop environments if not more since you can customize it a lot more and set it exactly the way you want it ot look and feel.
I am not talking from a customization point of view, I am talking from a visual point of view.
KDE looks “plastic” or “cold” or “toyish”. At least the defaults I have tried.
> like it’s been cobbled together based on a list of required features, rather than as a cohesive operating environment.
Gnome is designed, KDE is grown.
Years ago, the jump from KDE 3 to KDE 4 lead to a lot of controversy. Since that event, KDE always evolves without major UX disruptions. It is just their way. Many people is happy with that.
I want to use it but its hour of customization for silly things, and then way to many option for those customization! I gave up!!!
The paradox of choice is real.
People always cite how customizable the various Linux DEs are, but all I want are iconic sensible defaults that, ideally, I would never have to customize.
And since I’m ranting on this topic, I never really got why people cite the variety of DEs on Linux as strong point. Having at least four different active projects all trying their hand at coming up with yet another clumsy implementation of the Windows 9x (or macOS) desktop metaphor seems like a waste of effort.
It gets worse when the platforms are so flexible that you can write plug ins to coerce your DE of choice into exhibiting the opposite desktop metaphor. “Yes, our Windows 9x clone still has obvious usability and performance issues, but maybe you’d like to see how it cosplays as macOS using a lot of JavaScript and CSS?”
The new-ish metaphor is tiling DE with virtual workspaces. Even macOS now has them.
FriendBesto,
You do make a valid point, but when a project goes out and pulls a gnome 3, I am so glad there are alternatives. When we lose meaningful alternatives, we end up losing the leverage we need to protect our interests. Even when it comes to FOSS, monopolies are bad.
Or even when they pull a Windows 11
Finally it has automatic dark mode switching. Hallelujah!
Yes. It’s even more useful for people with some disabilities.