KDE Plasma 6.5 arrives followed very closely by a bug-fix • The Register

The KDE Plasma 6.5 graphical shell arrived final week for Unix-like working programs, and now 6.5.1 is right here for the extra cautious. The crew’s squashed over 60 bugs – and so they’re on no account all new.

KDE Plasma 6.5 is a major launch with a variety of small enhancements in match and end; the undertaking’s announcement refers to this launch as an “inflection level” and says “KDE is on the verge of constructing it large for most of the people.” This model has efficiency and accessibility enhancements, simplifies connecting to and sharing Wi-Fi networks, and may robotically change between gentle and darkish show modes (optionally altering the wallpaper to match).

So it is inevitable that some bugs discovered their manner in – Plasma is a big and really complicated suite of software program. One week later, KDE Plasma 6.5.1 adopted, which has no new options in any respect however incorporates fixes for, by our reckoning, 63 different bugs. The bugs are usually not all newly launched – as an example, bug #385856 includes panel shortcuts rearranging while you drop a brand new merchandise on the panel, and that one dates again to 2017. That was simply after the discharge of KDE Plasma 5.11. There have been some new ones, although, comparable to display corruption when including or eradicating displays, and AMD GPU customers seeing a corrupted mouse pointer.

One of many new options in Plasma 6.5 will not be seen to many present customers, because it targets OEMs transport new {hardware} with KDE Plasma pre-installed. The brand new Plasma Setup software, which was announced back in August, offers an improved KDE Preliminary System Setup – or as some distributors name it, “out-of-box expertise.” This isn’t to be confused with the Plasma Welcome app, which runs in your first login to a brand new account. Plasma Setup runs on the primary boot of a brand new pc, and is the software that units up that preliminary account – together with selecting a language, keyboard format, and so forth. Corporations comparable to Tuxedo Computer systems promote Linux {hardware} with KDE, such because the Pulse G2 and Stellaris Gen 4, working the corporate’s personal modified model of Ubuntu, Tuxedo OS.

For these already snug with KDE, there are many different enhancements. Utility permissions have been improved and so they’re now dealt with in a single place underneath Settings, which covers numerous sorts of installations together with Flatpaks, native apps, and extra. The Discover app store now can deal with flatpak+https:// URLs, so it should open straight from utility hyperlinks on internet pages. Uncover now can show and set up machine drivers too – no less than on suitable OSes.

One of many very helpful options that is not instantly apparent is Krunner, which is KDE’s clever app and file launcher software. It is particularly helpful within the “desktop grid” overview display, which appeared way back – it is talked about within the Plasma 4.0 announcement – however acquired much more capable in Plasma 5.24. Krunner may carry out calculations and conversions, change desktops, and rather more: it is akin to KDE’s “Siri,” missing solely the speech recognition. Now it does fuzzy matching on utility names, so a fraction of the title or description ought to discover what you need.

The Plasma clipboard supervisor allows you to title and save fragments for later use, which might save this vulture a lot of desktop textual content recordsdata we use every day. Sticky notes could be resized, and digital desktops could be rearranged straight within the Pager widget – or within the Overview, by which case the widget rearranges itself to match.

There are additionally smaller beauty enhancements, comparable to panels robotically scrolling when too full to show all their contents, and a minor function to which the discharge announcement mystifyingly provides high billing: home windows styled with KDE’s default Breeze theme now have their backside corners curved to match the highest corners.

KDE Plasma 6.0 was a very long time coming, however the speedy cycle of releases and new options since then is nice to see. Mixed with the new showcase KDE Linux distro, which as we reported in late 2024 attracts inspiration for its robustness from Steam OS 3 on the Steam Deck, KDE hasn’t seemed so vigorous in a few years. ®