KDE Plasma 6.3 Released

Today, the KDE Project announced the release of KDE Plasma 6.3, featuring improved fractional scaling, enhanced Night Light color accuracy, better CPU usage monitoring, and various UI and security refinements.

Some of the key features of Plasma 6.3 include:
- Improved fractional scaling with KWin to lead to an all-around better desktop experience with fractional scaling as well as when making use of KWin's zoom effect.
- Screen colors are more accurate with the KDE Night Light feature.
- CPU usage monitoring within the KDE System Monitor is now more accurate and consuming fewer CPU resources.
- KDE will now present a notification when the kernel terminated an app because the system ran out of memory.
- Various improvements to the Discover app, including a security enhancement around sandboxed apps.
- The drawing tablet area of KDE System Settings has been overhauled with new features and refinements.
- Many other enhancements and fixes throughout KDE Plasma 6.3.

You can read the announcement here.

Best DE

[johnsnails]

No question.

Re:

[OrangAsm]

Yes, question.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

I'm really enjoying the minimalism of plain XFCE4 right now. It does all the things I need a desktop to do. Granted I only have one big display, so I guess there's some weird use cases– But I've used nearly everything designed to be driven with a mouse, and this is almost as good as any of them. I do miss a few things from compiz, but it is just a little too flaky.

XFCE4

[JBMcB]

I switch between XFCE and KDE. They both excel at different things. Also when I upgrade KDE in Gentoo I have to drop into XFCE as I'm uninstalling the foundation libraries whilst upgrading, which running desktops apparently don't like.

Re:

[dskoll]

Another XFCE4 fan. Simple, stays out of my way. And since 99% of my time is spent in a browser, a terminal, an editor or my email client, I don't really need a fancy desktop.

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[Schoenlepel]

If only Linux Mint had a flavor with KDE...

Re:

[yet-another-lobbyist]

Only true if you use a traditional, old-school device. I recently got 2-in-1 laptop, only to find out that KDE still does not have a functional tablet mode! So after using KDE exclusively since 2006, I was forced to switch to a DE that actually works on a tablet. Yes, apparently, in 2025, the KDE way to have tablet mode is to install and run GNOME...
This comes from a super loyal and enthusiastic KDE user who suffered through the KDE 4 crisis/nightmare in 2008. Back then, the justification was that this wa

Re:

[johnsnails]

Wow, good to know!

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[transwarp]

Last time I looked (which was already years ago), it seemed like everyone involved in KDE 4, Plasma, and the semantic desktop had left. Plasma has certainly improved, but Akonadi is still there doing unspeakable things to its poor database.

Remember the KDE tablet that got delayed again and again as they found out the suppliers would swap out components whenever it was cost effective?

I do chuckle whenever someone asks why KDE doesn't write its own display manager.

Gnome out, KDE in

[hcs_$reboot]

Moving from Gnome to KDE was one of my best decisions of 2024.