KDE Plasma 6.2 Released

"Plasma is a popular desktop (and mobile) environment for GNU/Linux and other UNIX-like operating systems," writes longtime Slashdot reader jrepin. "Among other things, it also powers the desktop mode of the Steam Deck gaming handheld. The KDE community today announced the latest release, Plasma 6.2." From the report: Plasma 6.2 includes a smorgasbord of new features for users of drawing tablets. It implements more complete support for the Wayland color management protocol, and enables it by default. There is also improved brightness handling for HDR and ICC profiles, as well as HDR performance. A new tone mapping feature built into Plasma's KWin compositor will help improve the look of images with a brightness or set of colors greater than what the screen can display, thus reducing the "blown out" look such images can otherwise exhibit.

You can now override misbehaving applications that block the system from going to sleep or locking the screen (and thus prevent saving power), and you can also adjust the brightness of each connected monitor machine separately. Plasma's built-in app store and software management tool, Discover, now supports PostmarketOS packages for your mobile devices, helps you write better reviews of apps, and presents apps' license information more accurately. In Plasma 6.2, we overhauled System Settings' Accessibility page and added colorblindness filters. They've also added support for the full "sticky keys" feature on Wayland. You can read more about what's new in the complete changelog.

Linux desktop lives on

[oblom]

It's great to see that Linux desktop movement continues to evolve. Perhaps, the goals are less ambitious than in the earlier days. But the niche is there and KDE is an important player.

Re:

[jrepin]

Couldn't agree more. Still forced to use Windows (And macOS, which is evne worse) at work to test our software and yeah it is a good opportunity to remind me how much better GNU/Linux, especially with KDE Plasma desktop is. Not to mention all that sypware and ads and climate destroying "AI" they are recently forcing into Windows. It is even more terrible than it was when I switched to GNU/Linux years ago and by the looks of it just getting worse and worse.

oh God

[systemd-anonymousd]

I fear running pacman -Syyu now. Everytime there's been an update to KDE my system has broken for a while due to old versions being compiled.

KDE

[johnsnails]

The only DE the world needs !/sarcasm

Oh yes, wayland!

[Gravis Zero]

Wayland: the solution to the problem that nobody has!

Re:

[JThundley]

Different refresh rates on multiple monitors is a nice feature that I don't have because I'm stuck on Xorg. My main monitor can do 120hz but I'm stuck to the 60 that my secondary monitors max out at.

Re:

[jrepin]

Also proper support for scaling, including fractional scaling, and really tear-free rendering. There is a lot of solutions that Wayland brings. Unfortunately there are also some regressions. I especially miss the proper session management and restoration of applications from X11. But even here KDE Plasma did a very nice job, much better than any other desktop environment out there.

Re:

[Gravis Zero]

Different refresh rates on multiple monitors is a nice feature that I don't have because I'm stuck on Xorg.

It would have been better to simply improve Xorg than making Wayland. Wayland is a problem to a solution.