178074479
submission
jrepin writes:
Plasma is a popular desktop (and mobile) environment for GNU/Linux and other UNIX-like operating systems. Among other things it also powers the desktop mode of Steam Deck gaming handheld. The KDE community today announced the latest release: Plasma 6.4 . This fresh new release improves on nearly every front, with progress being made in accessibility, color rendering, tablet support, window management, and more.
Plasma already offered virtual desktops and customizable tiles to help organize your windows and activities, and now it lets you choose a different configuration of tiles on each virtual desktop. The Wayland session brings some new accessibility features: you can now move the pointer using your keyboard’s number pad keys, or use a three-finger touchpad pinch gesture to zoom in or out. Plasma file transfer notification now shows a speed graph, giving you a more visual idea of how fast the transfer is going, and how long it will take to complete. When any applications are in full screen mode Plasma will now enter Do Not Disturb mode and only show urgent notifications, and when you exit full screen mode, you’ll see a summary of any notifications you missed. Now when an application tries to access the microphone and finds it muted, a notification will pop up. A new feature in the Application Launcher widget will place a green New! tag next to newly installed apps, so you can easily find where something you just installed lives in the menu. The Display and Monitor page in System Settings comes with a brand new HDR calibration wizard, and support for Extended Dynamic Range (a different kind of HDR) and P010 video color format has been added. System Monitor now supports usage monitoring for AMD and Intel graphic cards, it can even show the GPU usage on a per-process basis. Spectacle, the built-in app for taking screenshots and screen recordings, has much improved design and more streamlined functionality. The background of the desktop or window now darkens when an authentication dialog shows up, helping you locate and focus on the window asking for your password. There’s a brand-new Animations page in System Settings that groups all the settings for purely visual animated effects into one place, making it easier to find and configure them. Aurorae is a newly added SVG vector graphics theme engine for KWin window decorations.
You can read more about these and many other other features in the Plasma 6.4 anounncement and complete changelog.
176181951
submission
jrepin writes:
Almost after a year since the first release in the sixth generation of the popular Linux and UNIX desktop environment, KDE community announces the release of the latest version of KDE Plasma 6.3 . In this major release the System Settings’ Drawing Tablet page has been overhauled and split into multiple tabs to improve how things are organized, and new configuration options have been added to each section. KWin window manager makes a stronger effort to snap things to the screen’s pixel grid, greatly reducing blurriness and visual gaps everywhere and producing sharper and crisper images. In the color department, screen colors are more accurate when using the Night Light feature both with and without ICC profiles, and KWin offers the option to choose screen color accuracy. Hardware and system monitoring and information tools have also received new features and performance optimizations. KRunner (the built-in search tool that also does conversions, calculations, definitions, graph plotting, and much more) now let you jump between categories using keyboard shortcuts. A security enhancement landing in Discover software management/app store application highlights sandboxed apps whose permissions will change after being updated. If you’re a fan of the forecasts provided by Deutcher Wetterdienst, you’re in luck: Plasma 6.3’s weather widget allows using this source for weather data. You can now configure its built-in touchpad to switch off automatically, so it doesn’t interfere with your typing. When you drag a file out of a window that’s partially below other windows, it no longer jumps to the top, potentially obscuring what you wanted to drag it into. Plasma panels can now be cloned You can also use scripting to change your panels’ opacity levels and what screen they appear on. And there’s much more. To see the full list of changes, check out the complete changelog for KDE Plasma 6.3.
175210219
submission
jrepin writes:
Plasma is a popular desktop (and mobile) environment for GNU/Linux and other UNIX-like operating systems. Among other things it also powers the desktop mode of Steam Deck gaming handheld. The KDE community today announced the latest release: Plasma 6.2 .
This release includes 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.
When it comes to power management 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, KDE have 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 these and other features in the Plasma 6.2 anounncement and complete changelog.
174182153
submission
jrepin writes:
The KDE community announces the latest release of their popular desktop environment: Plasma 6.1 . While Plasma 6.0 was all about getting the migration to the underlying Qt 6 frameworks correct, Plasma 6.1 is where developers start implementing the features that will take you desktop to a new level.
In this release, you will find features that go far beyond subtle changes to themes and tweaks to animations (although there is plenty of those too). Among some of the new features in this release you will find improved remote desktop support with a new built-in server, overhauled and streamlined desktop edit mode, restoration of open applications from the previous session on Wayland, synchronization of keyboard LED colors with the desktop accent color, making mouse cursor bigger and easier to find by shaking it, edge barriers (a sticky area for mouse cursor near the edges between screens), explicit sync support eliminates flickering and glitches for NVidia graphics card users on Wayland, and triple buffering support for smoother animations and screen rendering.
For detailed information see the KDE Plasma 6.1 release announcement.
173174200
submission
jrepin writes:
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. KDE Gear 24.02 brings many applications to Qt 6. In addition to the changes in Breeze, many applications adopted a more frameless look for their interface.
170338571
submission
jrepin writes:
Plasma is a popular desktop environment, which is also powering the desktop mode on the Steam Deck hand-held gaming console. Today, KDE Community announced release of KDE Plasma 5.27 , a Long Term Support (LTS) release and the final release in the Plasma 5 series which is based on Qt 5.
This release brings a welcome wizard, which will guide you through setting up the desktop, and a new tiling system for KWin window manager, allowing you to set up custom tile layouts and resize adjacent tiled windows simultaneously. The settings for touch-enabled devices such as touchscreens and drawing tablets have been improved and expanded. For those lucky owners of Valve's Steam Deck gaming console, Discover can now perform system updates from within the desktop. Digital Clock desktop widget can now show the Hebrew calendar in its calendar view, and the Media Player widget is now touch-sensitive. The Bluetooth widget shows the battery status of connected devices when you hover the cursor over it. Those of you who use multiple monitors should benefit greatly from a major overhaul of how Plasma handles them. KDE Plasma now comes with Flatpak permissions settings integrated into the System Settings app.
For details and other new features and improvements be sure to check out the full announcement.
163301640
submission
jrepin writes:
Plasma is a popular desktop environment, which is also powering the desktop mode on the Steam Deck portable gaming console. The KDE Community announced release of KDE Plasma 5.25 . This new version brings many improvements: the accent colour can now be set based on the prominent colour from the current desktop background image (it updates if you use slide-show wallpapers) and it applies to more graphical elements, Floating Panels add a margin all around the panel to make it float while no window is maximised. Touch-screen mode can now be activated by detaching the screen, rotating it 360, or enabling it manually. The Overview effect can be activated by gestures on touchpad or touchscreen. The Global Theme settings page lets you pick and choose which parts to apply. The Application page for Discover has been redesigned and gives you links to the application’s documentation and website, and shows what system resources it has access to. Panels can now be navigated with the keyboard, and you can assign custom shortcuts to focus individual panels.
158471853
submission
jrepin writes:
Plasma is a popular desktop environment, which will also be powering the desktop mode on Steam Deck hand-held gaming console. Today KDE Community announced release of KDE Plasma 5.24 , a Long Term Support (LTS) release that will receive updates and bugfixes until the final Plasma 5 version, before transition to Plasma 6. This new Plasma release focuses on smoothing out wrinkles, evolving the design, and improving the overall feel and usability of the environment. Highlights include: Overview effect for managing all your desktops and application windows, easy discovery of KRunner features with the help assistant, and unlocking screen and authentication using fingerprint reader. You will also notice a new Honeywave wallpaper, the ability to pick any color for accent, and critically important Plasma notifications now come with an orange strip on the side to visually distinguish them from less urgent messages.
131944612
submission
jrepin writes:
KDE community have release Plasma 5.19 , the popular free and opensource desktop environment. In this release developers have prioritized making Plasma more consistent, correcting and unifying designs of widgets and desktop elements; worked on giving you more control over your desktop by adding configuration options to the System Settings; and improved usability, making Plasma and its components easier to use and an overall more pleasurable experience.
The first change you will see is the new wallpaper, Flow. Another personalization detail you will probably appreciate is that there is a completely new collection of photographic user account avatars. The panel spacer, can now automatically center widgets. Users that want more control over the file indexing process will appreciate the new configurable file indexing options for individual directories. You can also completely disable indexing for hidden files if you so wish. Display settings page now shows the aspect ratio for each available screen resolution. The KWin window manager includes subsurface clipping. This feature greatly reduces the flickering in many apps. The Default Applications, Online Accounts, Global Shortcuts, KWin Rules and Background Services settings pages have all been overhauled.
125186466
submission
jrepin writes:
In June 2019, the International Astronomical Union expressed concern about the negative impact that the planned mega-constellations of communication satellites may have on astronomical observations and on the pristine appearance of the night sky when observed from a dark region. Now IAU presents a summary of the current understanding of the impact of these satellite constellations, and considers the consequences of satellite constellations worrisome. They will have a negative impact on the progress of ground-based astronomy, radio, optical and infrared, and will require diverting human and financial resources from basic research to studying and implementing mitigating measures.
125109204
submission
jrepin writes:
The KDE community today announces the release of Plasma 5.18 . This version of the popular desktop environment is the latest long-term supported release and brings an emoji selector, user feedback capabilities, a global edit mode, and improvements to System Settings, the Discover software manager, widgets, GTK integration and much more.
124010986
submission
jrepin writes:
Linus Torvalds has announced Linux 5.5 release, code, named as Kleptomaniac Octopus.The latest version of the opensource operating system kernel brings RAID1 with 3- and 4- copies to btrfs filesystem, ext4 gets direct I/O via iomap together with fscrypt supporting smaller block sizes, and you can now use SMB as root filesystem. AMD OverDrive overclocking is now supported on Navi GPUS, wake-on-voice on newer Google Chromebooks is now supported. Added was a Logitech keyboard driver. KUnit is a new unit testing framework for the kernel. There are many more new features which you can read about on Kernel Newbies changelog page. For downloads visit The Linux Kernel Archives.
110236764
submission
jrepin writes:
KDE community has released Plasma 5.16, the newest iteration of the popular desktop environment. It features an improved notification system, Not only can you mute notifications altogether with the Do Not Disturb mode, but the system also groups notifications by app. Developers also focused on user's privacy. When any application accesses the microphone, an icon will pop up in your system tray, showing that something is listening. Vaults, a built-in utility to encrypt folders, are easier and more convenient to use. Dolphin file and folder manager now opens folders you click on in new tabs instead of new windows. Discover software manager is cleaner and clearer as it now has two distinct areas for downloading and installing software. The Wallpaper Slideshow settings window displays the images in the folders you selected, and lets you select only the graphics you want to display in the slideshow. For a more comprehensive overview of what to expect in Plasma 5.16, check out the official announcement or the changelog for the complete list of changes.
106570610
submission
jrepin writes:
Today KDE launches Plasma 5.15 , the first stable release of the popular desktop environment in 2019. For this release the Plasma team has focused on hunting down and removing all the papercuts that slow you down. Plasma 5.15 brings a number of changes to the configuration interfaces, including more options for complex network configurations. Many icons have been added or redesigned to make them clearer. Integration with third-party technologies like GTK and Firefox has been improved substantially. Discover, Plasma's software and add-on installer, has received tonnes of improvements to help you stay up-to-date and find the tools you need to get your tasks done.
103365538
submission
jrepin writes:
KDE community released Plasma 5.14 desktop. Among many other things, Plasma 5.14 simplifies managing multiple displays thanks to its new Display Configuration widget; Global Menus à la macOS now work also with GTK applications like GIMP; a new safeguard feature warns you if other users are logged in when you log out; and Discover now lets you install Snaps from all available channels and not just the default, orders software by release date, and shows package dependencies.
