KDE developers took advantage of Valentine’s Day to release Plasma 5.27 as the latest version of the Plasma 5 series, with development attention now turning to Plasma 6.0. Plasma 5.27 is a Long Term Support (LTS) release, the last in the Plasma 5 series. The plan is to maintain it until the next LTS release in 2024.
The KDE Project has announced the general availability of the KDE Plasma 5.27 desktop environment for GNU/Linux distributions, a major release that introduces several new features and many improvements.
The first thing you’ll notice following installing Plasma is the easy-to-follow welcome wizard. It can help you connect to the Internet, learn more regarding Plasma features, how to make settings adjustments, install new software and more.
Speaking of features, check out the new tile system: it will let you set up custom tile layouts and simultaneously resize adjacent tiled windows. Enable it in System Settings > Workspace Behavior > Desktop Effects, then you can tile windows by dragging them while holding the Shift key. To create custom tile layouts, hold down the Meta (“Windows”) key, then press T.
Please note that this feature is still in its infancy and is not yet designed to fully replicate all functionality of a more mature window manager. Still, it’s a godsend for people who like to have their windows tidy and organized!
Each new version of Plasma brings visual improvements that make it more appealing. Along with the Andy Betts wallpaper, the Breeze-themed windows are now surrounded by a subtle outline, which not only looks stylish, but also helps prevent the dark-themed windows from blending into each other. . Another theme-related tweak is a nice full-screen blending effect when manually editing Plasma themes.
System Setup
The KDE designers have worked hard to reduce the number of pages in Plasma’s System Settings utility and move smaller options with other settings. This is the case for the configuration of the animation when launching applications, which now lives on the Sliders page. Additionally, the button Highlight changed settings has been moved to the hamburger menu for a cleaner look.
In a similar vein, all global volume settings have been moved to the Audio Volume page of the System Settings, and the Audio Volume widget no longer has its own settings page. Clicking on its configure button now takes you to the system settings page.
Settings for touch-enabled devices such as touchscreens and graphics tablets have also been improved and expanded.
Discover
Discover is Plasma’s application/software manager. In Plasma 5.27, Discover now features an all-new homepage design with dynamically updated categories. This shows popular apps, plus a new set of popular apps, showcasing the best of KDE.
Discover also makes it easier to find items: if it doesn’t find a match for the search term in the current category, it will now offer a search in all categories, just in case.
And for those lucky owners of Valve’s Steam Deck gaming console, Discover can now perform system updates from the desktop.
Locker
KRunner is Plasma’s search and run utility, originally designed to allow you to run applications or commands from your desktop. Over the years, KRunner has developed many more features, including full desktop search, unit and exchange rate conversions, dictionary definitions, calculator functionality, and it can even display graphical representations. of mathematical functions. Just press Alt + Space and start typing.
In Plasma 5.27, KRunner can now show you the current time of other locations! Just enter time , a space and the name of a country, a major city or even a time zone code (like UTC ).
KRunner has also become much smarter regarding its results in general. Over the years there have been complaints regarding some results not being the first item when they should have been. The developers tackled the problem and this problem is now fixed*: the most relevant results now appear first. Additionally, if KRunner can’t find what you’re looking for on your own machine, it will now offer a web search.
KRunner is not only powerful, but also easy to use! Type “define”, a space and a word, then KRunner will display a dictionary definition of the word. Click on the definition and Plasma will inform you that the definition has been copied to the clipboard, ready to be pasted and used elsewhere.
Panel, miniature box and graphical components
Widgets provide you with tools built into the desktop that make using Plasma really enjoyable. They are always being improved, with more features to cover a wider variety of needs.
For example, the Digital Clock widget can now display the Hebrew calendar in the calendar view. And the Media Player widget is now touch sensitive. It lets you change the volume and playback position just by swiping up and down or left and right (respectively).
The Color Picker (literally Color Picker) has had quite a few improvements this time around, including the ability to display up to 9 preview color circles (up from 1 in previous versions of the widget). You can also drag an image over it to calculate the average color of that image. Finally, left clicking on any color will show that it has been copied to the clipboard.
When setting up a VPN, the Networks widget will now intelligently detect missing packages and offer to install them for you, making the process quick and easy.
And finally, monitoring your system using widgets just got easier. The Bluetooth widget displays the battery status of connected devices when you hover over it*; the system monitor (both widget and application) can detect monitor power consumption for NVIDIA* GPUs; and widget tooltips now inform you that a middle click or scroll on a widget will change something. For example, middle-clicking the Networks widget will put your device in airplane mode, and middle-clicking the Audio Volume widget will mute all sound, while scrolling it will increase or decrease the volume.
Wayland
Migrating Plasma to the new Wayland display server technology was no small feat. But despite the difficulty of the job, it pays off, as Wayland opens up many new ways to interact with your desktop. Wayland support for Plasma 5.27 is better than ever, with lots of bug fixes and reliability improvements everywhere!
Also, artists will be happy to know that design apps like Krita can now be notified of pen tilt and rotation on graphics tablets. Plasma under Wayland also supports high-resolution scroll wheels for smoother scrolling of long displays.
Plasma under Wayland has also gained support for the Global Shortcuts portal. This allows apps under Wayland to offer a standardized user interface for configuring and modifying global shortcuts.
Finally, Plasma under Wayland is now more elegant for automatically setting the appropriate scale factors for your screens, which you no longer need to do.
Plasma for experienced users
Plasma offers ease of use, but also raw power. Here are some tips and tricks you can use in Plasma 5.27 to increase your productivity:
- Multi-monitor redesign: Those of you who use multiple monitors should greatly benefit from a major overhaul of how Plasma handles them. Layouts will now be more robust, with no risk of losing panels and desks following unplugging or rearranging monitors.
- Use global shortcuts to launch terminal commands: The Shortcuts page of the System Configuration utility now allows you to configure keyboard shortcuts not only for applications, but also for launching terminal commands and scripts.
- Enable do not disturb mode from the command line: If you spend most of your time in the terminal and are overwhelmed with notifications, just type kde-inhibit –notifications and Plasma will switch to do not disturb mode.
- Send windows to activities*: do you use activities to compartmentalize your private work, public life and playtime*? If so, you can now move or copy windows to one, several, or all of your Activities by right-clicking the title bar and choosing where you want them to go.
- save energy with just one keystroke: When you are on the lock screen, press the ESC key to turn off the screen and save power.
- Custom menu entries: If you like to customize how applications launch, KDE’s menu editor has always allowed you to set environment variables when opening your applications, but now it’s much easier to do so, as Plasma 5.27 gives the editor a specific text box for this purpose.
Other improvements
Permission settings for Flatpak packages
A growing number of Plasma users install software through containerized packages such as Flatpak. These packages provide no access to the rest of the system by default. They will ask for permissions when needed, which means malicious code is less likely to be able to disrupt your computer. A new system configuration module has been added to easily control these settings for Flatpak packages.
The great multi-monitor configuration manager
The Display Configuration widget now appears by default, in the thumbnail box. It’s inactive when you only have one screen or have a multi-monitor desktop setup. It is active when your laptop is connected to one or more external screens. This makes it easier and faster to modify the parameters of these screens, when necessary.
Behind the scenes, there is a big overhaul of the handling of multi-monitor mode to make working with notches much more reliable. There are also new control tools for finer adjustments, when the user has 3 or more screens connected.
Systme de tuiles de KWin
For people with large screens, KWin has long been able to place one window on the left and one on the right. Now with the shortcut Meta + T quick tiling is launched allowing full control over where your windows will be placed. Drag the windows with the Shift key held down and it will remain in the tile layout.
Source : release note
And you ?
Have you ever used this desktop environment? If yes, what do you think?
If not, what desktop environment do you use?
What improvements/new features are you most interested in?