Today the KDE Community is announcing a new najor release of Plasma 6.0, and Gear 24.02. KDE Plasma is a modern, feature-rich desktop environment for Linux-based operating systems. Known for its sleek design, customizable interface, and extensive set of applications, it is also open source, devoid of ads, and makes protecting your privacy and personal data a priority.
With Plasma 6, the technology stack has undergone two major upgrades: a transition to the latest version of the application framework, Qt 6, and a migration to the modern Linux graphics platform, Wayland. They will continue providing support for the legacy X11 session for users who prefer to stick with it for now. The new version brings the new windows and desktop overview, improved colour management, a cleaner theme, more effects, better overall performance, and much more.
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All that matters is… THE CUBE IS BACK BABY!
THE CUBE IS PROOF KDE IS RUN BY THE PEOPLE
Had to look up what exactly the cube is and it looks awesome!
A new cube user in 2024. Checkmate, atheists.
PRAISE THE CUBE
The KUBE
All hail the CUBE.
… now we wait for … the jiggly cube!! :D
Resistance is futile!
HELL YEAH
How long until this trickles down into the major distros?
Fedora 40 (April) should have it I think
It will reach Slackware about 6 months before the heat death of the universe.
It’s currently in Arch Testing.
It’s not hard to install from testing actually, may give it a shot…
However, one should first read through https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/official_repositories#Testing_repositories and consider whether it is really worth the risk.
For my part, I will simply wait until Plasma 6 arrives in the official package sources.
Yeah I hope it’s quick. Really fun upgrade.
If I had to guess, I would say that the updates to Plasma 6 will be offered at the end of the week or in the course of next week. But I’m not an Arch developer, so that’s really a guess.
It’s just been merged to master for NixOS. Next stable would be 24.05
https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/286522
https://nixpk.gs/pr-tracker.html?pr=286522Fedora at the end of April with fedora 40
Already switched to AMD to enjoy it
Nice. I’ve kept coming back to try Plasma for years and years, but there’s always been some jank, bug, complete lack of polish, or random annoyance that forced me off it again.
Much of these have been improved with Plasma 6, and I’m glad that they took extra time to release rather than quickly shoving it out, a la Plasma 4 and early Plasma 5.
Honestly the only big showstopper in Plasma 5.27 for me was the lack of proper session restore - if Kwin crashes, it takes all my work down with it. Plasma 6 will be fixing that.
I think I’m going to try this on my laptop once Fedora 40 releases
Compliments to the devs, it’s a thankless job sometimes
Well yeah, about session restore. In X11 mode it is better. But on Wayland, well it is missing completely, since Wayland does not support it just yet. KDE developers are pushing hard to make it happen in Wayland and in the meantime they are also working on workarounds.
Excellent, thanks for this info.
and I’m glad that they took extra time to release rather than quickly shoving it out, a la Plasma 4 and early Plasma 5.
As far as I can remember, this was also the fault of some distributions that wanted to release Plasma 5 quickly, even though the developers of Plasma pointed out existing bugs.
I love KDE. Been using it for 10 years
One question i’ve always had though… Does anyone actually use the default KDE software like konqueror, kmail, kontacts, etc? Why not just focus on the desktop environment?
That software played a much bigger role back in the day (i.e Konqueror’s. KHTML was forked by both Apple and later Google for Safari and Chrome), so it’s kind of a proud legacy. Konqueror is deprecated though. The other apps are useful for KDE mobile.
But the real reason people work on them is “cause they wanna”
Konsole is fantastic.
Yeah I use a lot of KDE software, main reason because it fits so nicely with the desktop and it also integrates functions with Plasma so usage is even smoother. One of the main applications I do not use from KDE are browser, I use LibreWolf (the desktop integration package+plugin does quite a nice job for integration here), and LibreOffice,
Yes, using them is probably the closest one can get to the macos ecosystem on Linux.
I’d argue GNOME has a better native app ecosystem. they have the resources to maintain a massive selection of “official” apps
I don’t know, I used gnome for a while and I just felt like I was using toy apps. But I think that comes down to personal preference. KDE definitly has the bigger apps like Kdenlive and Krita.
KDE’s weakness to GNOME is definitely the range and quality of its homegrown apps, but the ‘core’ apps like Kate, Kalculator, Konsole are really solid.
The default software was one of the main reasons KDE was created. The original creator didn’t like that every app on their system seemed to use a different UI toolkit, and wanted a consistent appearance across everything.
A bunch of them: Kate, Konsole, Dolphin, KCalc, Kdenlive, Okular, Gwenview, Ark, Spectacle, KDEconnect, Elisa and probably a couple more I missed.
I like Plasma but the bug where the OS goes to sleep when using a joypad is pretty frustrating. It’s an old bug now too.
I experienced that too and ended up just disabling the timed sleep mode. Not sure if it’s actually related to KDE software or just a Linux bug in general though.
Last time I mentioned it someone posted the bug report for it (KDE). It was like 5 years old or something
Use gamemode
And already merged into NixOS. Insane how quick that was.
i’ve been using rc2 for a couple of weeks and it’s really good improvement over 5.27, which was also a quite solid release.
Just look at that lineup. Plasma 6 is absolutely awesome.
FYI: an interesting video on How KDE Plasma 6 Was Made
Congratulation to the KDE team! Well done!!
Always been more of a gnome guy, but 6.0 is making me look over the fence with a little envy! Kongratulations to the KDE team and community. Fantastic work.
Wow. They just lifted the horrific Desktop management paradigm from MacOS.
But I don’t know, I guess people like it, and fortunately I’m not forced to use KDE.
What do you mean? Which desktop management paradigm?
I think he’s referring to Gnome, which kind of feels like MacOS?
I’m not sure what he means either, but if he meant gnome he’d have said Gnome, and probably posted it on a submission about Gnome.
And Gnome really doesn’t feel like MacOS at all. Beyond a black bar at the top with a few bits in it, they’re very, very different.
E: I think they’re referring to the new overview menu that’s essentially a clone of Gnome’s Activities view. But that’s not really how it is on MacOS either.
And I’m not sure why you immediately downvoted lol. Have I done something to upset you?
I didn’t downvote you lol
No, I’m referring to KDE. Check the link in the post and watch the videos. The desktop switching is now working almost exactly like in MacOS.
Of course KDE wins by allowing to configure it.
What exactly are you referring to?
Can always change whatever you don’t like, that’s the strong part of KDE, unlike Gnome where you have to rely on 3rd party extensions and hope they don’t break next update.
They just lifted the horrific Desktop management paradigm from MacOS.
I’m amazed that people like this style of desktop switching. Linear? Why? It’s easier to picture my place “in a small grid” than in a “long line of desktops”. Since “forever” I’ve used a 3x3 grid of desktops that I navigate with
++. Turn off all of the stupid animations, effects, etc. and make it an instant desktop change. I assume KDE being KDE this will still be configurable as it is in Plasma 5 though.Yup it is configurable, There are many switchers to choose from
I think this just comes down to differences between people, 3x3 grid is far more confusing for me than finding my place in line. Instant desktop change is also super jarring, but if it works for you then keep on doing your thing.
