KDE Plasma 6 has arrived. The first stable release in an all-new series of the phenomenally popular Linux desktop environment is now available to download.
KDE Plasma 6 improves security, performance, usability, and hardware support
Naturally, a major milestone like this one includes a deluge of changes, enhancements, and shiny new features, the best of which I look at in this post.
But I want to touch on the “intangible” changes too. KDE Plasma 6.0 upgrades its underlying application framework, Qt, to a major new version, and fully embraces the Wayland display server.
“These under-the-hood upgrades benefit Plasma’s security, efficiency, and performance, and improve support for modern hardware. Thus Plasma [6. delivers an overall more reliable user experience, while paving the way for many more improvements in the future,” KDE says.
On top of these new foundations KDE Plasma 6.0 builds out with a clutch of other improvements. Developers have worked to finesse the look, feel, and workflow of the Plasma desktop experience and the myriad of applications and utilities that run on top of it.
For a closer look at the major changes in this release keep reading!
KDE Plasma 6.0’s New Features
KDE Plasma 6.0 defaults to Wayland (were supported; still works with X11 too). A major change with immediate impact — what’s it like in actual use?
Honestly? Imperceptible — which is very much a good thing! In my testing I saw no glaring giveaways, glitches, or gremlins, and performance didn’t seem hindered. If anything, Plasma 6 feels faster than the last few releases in the 5.x series and those weren’t exactly slouches!
Naturally Wayland experiences vary based on hardware support, the kind of apps being used/run/required, and the fact some of us are a tiny bit more sensitive/aware of quirks than others (not a bad thing; my “works great” is sure to be someone else’s “sort of works”).
Still, I feel confident enough in saying that in its first formal release KDE Plasma 6 is off to a solid start with regards to Wayland. No-one (whose hardware supports it optimally) should be fearful about the switch — the future is bright, the future is Wayland.
Plasma Desktop Design Changes
KDE Plasma 6.0 now uses a floating panel by default. This un-floats when an app window is maximised or touching it. Don’t like the new stock behaviour? Dive into the redesigned panel settings which, as well as a new look, has new options including window-dodging intelli-hide.
Another change I like is the new overview screen for switching workspaces. KDE devs combined the Overview and Desktop Grid effects into one, and bound them to touchpad gestures and the result is beautiful in use — I’m not a workspace-y guy but this makes me want to change my ways so bad!
Sticking with workspaces (or ‘virtual desktops’ as KDE calls them) you’ll find that in Plasma 6.0 scrolling on the desktop (with a mouse scroll wheel or or touchpad) no longer moves between workspaces. This, IMO, is a good thing as I found that behaviour triggered accidentally, too often.
Talking of moving — I know: these paragraph links are becoming increasingly tenuous — the alt + tab the task switcher now uses a gridded look when you have a ton of of apps open (or few apps but on a smaller-width screen):
Another big change, KDE Plasma 6.0 now defaults to double-click for file/folder selection, in keeping with the way most other desktop environments work. Single-click behaviour is easily re-enabled so if you’re used to/prefer single-click activation you needn’t fret – it’s still available.
On a similar note, tap-to-click is enabled by default for touchpads in KDE Plasma 6 on Wayland.
Visually, KDE Plasma 6.0 has never looked better. The Breeze theme has been given a good going over to effect a more modern guise by bumping the size of margins/padding around elements and reducing the number of “inset” frames within apps (those inset blue borders? gone):
The Dolphin file manager offers a more orderly set of settings, gains a number of accessibility buffs (like keyboard accessible toolbar buttons and disk space reading), and the ability to right-click on a folder and select ‘Split View’ from the context menu to open it so:
So far I’ve covered the changes you can feel and the changes you can see, but there’s also a change you will hear: KDE Plasma 6’s new default sound theme, Ocean.
If you used KDE Plasma on a laptop you’ll be innately in-tune with the old desktop sounds as they seem to activate if you so much as look at your device! Well, in the Plasma 6.0 you get to aurally orient (British meaning) to a plush new Plasma soundscape — these new sounds are honestly really good.
Other assorted changes:
- Click on the scrollbar to scroll to clicked location
- A much-improved Settings app
- Plasma Search is faster, lets you re-order search results + more
- Improved fingerprint unlock from lockscreen
- 3D desktop cube effect available
- Big update to KDE Gear, including Kdenlive, Kmail, and Itinerary
For more more details I highly encourage you to stop by the KDE Plasma 6 ‘megarelease’ webpage — it’s impeccably designed and chock-full of info, snippets, screenshots, and video demos for many of the features I have highlighted above!
How to try KDE Plasma 6.0?
So: now that the stable KDE Plasma 6.0 release is out you want to know how you can try it.
Well, KDE Plasma 6.0 won’t ship in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (out in April) but some sort of backport PPA/repo may possibly appear, if not soon then surely after the release of Ubuntu 24.10 in October (which is all-but nailed-on to ship KDE Plasma 6.0, or 6.1 if out in time).
Users of the (Ubuntu 22.04-based) KDE neon can upgrade to KDE Plasma 6.0 from today, and new ISOs are available to download — if you’re interested in trying this release I recommend KDE neon, it’s what I used to write this post.
Other distros? Er, well this isn’t a blog about those 😉 but I imagine most rolling-release distros will package this release up and push it out to their users as soon as they’re able to — the demand is too great to hold it back for too long!