KDE PLASMA 6 review: was it worth the wait?
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#KDE #Plasma #Linux #linuxdesktop #kdeplasma
Timecodes:
00:00 Intro
00:26 Sponsor: Proton VPN
01:46 Qt6 and Wayland
05:15 Visual changes
07:21 New desktop features
12:03 Settings changes
14:00 Applications changes
16:15 Was it worth the wait?
18:21 Sponsor: Tuxedo Computers
19:32 Support the channel
Plasma 6 moved to Qt6 entirely, and it's also the first version with fully complete wayland support, and Wayland is actually the default session. And that Wayland support is pretty flawless in my experience.
And this release also brings a few cool things, courtesy of Wayland: HDR is now supported, provided your display also support it. You can also set a color profile for each display individually, on Wayland as well. And finally, you also get color blindness correction filters in the settings.
First, the theme is now lighter on the eyes. They have removed a bunch of the blue borders that every single panel inside of an app had, so the whole feel of the desktop is similar, but also nicer, you don't have that many lines that draw your eyes. Highlighted items in list views are also different, now with rounded corners and a little bit of spacing.
Another visual change is the floating panel by default.
The defaults have changed drastically First, single click to select is now the default, with double click to open. Tap to click on touchpads is also the default now, and they've disabled scrolling on the desktop to switch workspaces.
It's now way easier to change panel configuration. The previous messy pop-up was replaced by something much more visual, which will absolutely be a better experience. You get visual representations of the settings you're changing, with combo boxes to select what you want, and tou can now auto hide the panel.
Another big change is the combination of the overview and the present windows effect. It feels like the older overview, except, it looks a lot like GNOME's. What has changed is the touchpad gestures, and these are much, much better. You also get the desktop cube back.
Another change is the ability to just click inside of a scrollbar's area to move the content directly to that area. Finally, Krunner got faster, way faster, and now lets you reorder the various elements that it shows when you search for something.
Visually, the settings are less busy. Gone are the double rows of icons at the bottom of a page, they now mostly moved to the toolbar of the settings app, meaning that settings pages now look a bit nicer. They've also reduced the number of pages that were opened by clicking a button inside of another page, so things are easier to find, and the settings were reordered into other categories.
You get a new sound theme preference page, and, easier configuration of which app will open a broad category of file.
Dolphin received changes to its settings as well, reordering a bunch of things, and it gained kjeyboard shortcuts to access the toolbar buttons and the disk space usage bar that lives in the status bar. You can also now right click a folder to open it in split view.
Spectacle, the screen recorder, now shows a tray icon when it's recording your screen, you can click it to end the recording. It also support recording a part of your screen, and has new keyboard shortcuts to handle all of this. Everything will now be saved by default in the pictures screenshots directory, you can change that of course. It also support VP9 to record videos, and can be used using the CLI
Konsole has redesigned settings, and will use less ram. Text selection now works for chinese, korean or japanese, and every tab now uses a separate cgroup, meaning the entire app will no longer be killed if your system needs to kill a process to save somle resources - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
![🔴 [TRỰC TIẾP] Tứ Xuyên (Trung Quốc) VS U20 Thái Lan | Cúp VTV9 - Bình Điền 2024 | JET STUDIO](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/bguJ41PcW0c/mqdefault.jpg)
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For some reason, on Firefox this link closes my browser tab immediately when opening it. Even when right click -> open in new window. Never seen a website do that before. It works in Edge however...?
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15:35 I fixed that, that was my first contribution to KDE : D
nice :D
Good job soldier
props to you
Nice!!
Someone give this man a reward.
I don't know what's happening with the bottom comments, quite the negative feedback towards KDE. I guess the default settings are not for everyone, but come on. I have never used anything else than GNOME, but I can't deny that KDE and XFCE and a lot of others look good as well
Comments on super fresh videos are always quite… wild and raw. People are used to sifted (through likes/interactions) comments on slightly older vids.
@@user-qy2fu5cn6yI guess your eyes aren't functional, because it looks perfectly fine to me. I despise the design language of GNOME.
@@mckendrick7672 You should try something else than Plasma, and you'll realise how AWFUL the breeze theme is
I would say that too. it's a fine desktop, they had a lot of work under the hood to bring it to this level.
generally, as a beginner, I would suggest testing a few desktops before settling. and hint, you can install several desktop environments simultanously, and swap between them. it's not a choice where you are set for all time.
@@user-qy2fu5cn6yNot sure what you are talking about. It may not be as good as other OSses and desktop environments but it's good enough.
Thanks for the "Stellar improvement" compliment
Nice job by the team. KDE is easily my favorite DE and 6 looks like it will only solidify that feeling further.
Hi Nicco!🤩 I am a plasmazoider!🥳😁 Thanks for helping to make it so good!
Is there a way to stop it defaulting to Wayland on boot? Wayland doesn't play properly with my Nvidia card (GTX-750TI 4gb) (only allows 30hz). Unfortunately I need to stay on x11 for that reason and that is resulting in me needing to change it manually every time I start the pc, which is even more annoying as it's a media PC that I allow to login automatically with no password.
I think it is fantastic that you are prioritising Wayland but this defaulting-to-wayland issue will be affecting a lot of KDE-users who have Nvidia cards. It's a real shame since Wayland operates very well for me outside of this but there seems to be no way to get it to do anything about 30hz on my card.
Congratulations Nicco and to the KDE team! Looking forward to trying out Plasma 6 soon. :)
Switched to kde long time and no regrets 😊
For me, the HDR Feature is personally the greatest thing about this release. So great that it made me switch from GNOME to KDE Plasma.
Also One thing to note, HDR does not work inside Firefox yet. I heard Chromium inside Gamescope is possible but honestly, it's easier to use mpv paired with vk-hdr-layer-kwin6.
@@light-grayFirefox dragging their feet so much with HDR support, its ridiculous
HDR feature is amazing, I can finally go full Linux since it doesn't make my monitors paperweight since without the option enabled, the screen looked horrible colours wise and also sharpness
@@malek6129 if SDR looks so borked on your screen there's something wrong with your monitor settings
sharpness should never be different (or an issue in general)
what screen do you have?
sometiems sharpness is different because HDR is a different TV/monitor profile
like my asus pa329c has a separate sharpness setting for rec709/rec2020 (HDR) mode, just sayin@@malek6129
To be fair I remember Nico mentioning that the goal for this release was a smooth transition to Qt6, leaving new features for future releases.
yeah he said that they intended this to be a evolution as opposed to a revolution since users don't like huge changes. But I did think why a major change for a evolution (but I understand being in aligned to QT versions, not sure if a end user needs to be aware of this for a desktop env).
I think that HDR and NVIDIA Wayland are the big changes. Those are huge.
@@night_fiend6326yeah, I agree but its not very flashy, I think people were expecting they could show their friends
That makes sense.
I'm glad KDE is focusing on subtle design changes which make the desktop more polished. For me, Linux Desktops always felt like "Good programmers, but bad designer". But I think it's going to change soon, seeing the polish of KDE 6.
i think the inherent implicit assumption that Linux Desktops will be used by programmers is the thing that does not let the year of the linux desktop happen.
look at mint and elementary. the latter being the pinacle of linux ui design. this kde thing looks like an ugly black-tinted wireframe.
@@britneyfreekThere's some great features in Linux Mint. Although there's just as much that doesn't work properly as well. I can't say I'm fan of Elementary OS either. I'd imagine Mac users would be right at home with it though.
HDR support is huge for Linux. Makes the Steam Deck even better
YYYEEEESS!
Nothing more hype than the return of the desktop cube 🎉
Props to the KDE team for the great work!
yea but we've had the ol glorious desktop cube in KDE Plasma already
Single click is not more logical because sometimes I want to do something with the folder or file, not open it.
All depends is what you do most often. If itnis navigating and opening stuff then single click is awesome. If it is selecting files for moving them around then I understand.
You can right click the icon for that. With double click it means that you need to do an extra unnecessary click
@@computerfan1079 What about multiple files at once? It's harder this way.
@@themedlebwhat does (shift/Ctrl)+click do?
There's a button on the folder that lets you select and drag it...
Little bit of feedback: at 5:49, it was rather confusing when the Plasma 6 and 5.27 swapped sides. For the purposes of a video comparing two things, I'd prefer consistency of the comparison over maintaining the continuity of the background. And thanks so much for all the videos you make, you've been a big part of me getting back into Linux. I don't comment much, so I didn't want to just nitpick something then vanish without a trace 😆
I agree. That threw me off for a moment, too. I also think that the newer version should always be on the right side. Time flows from left to right. (At least in our left to right reading culture.)
I like that KDE plasma 6 seems more of an incremental upgrade rather than the huge jump from KDE 3 to KDE 4.
Can’t wait for Windows 12 to copy this in 4 years.
To copy what? Isn’t the whole Breeze theme and layout on KDE copied from Windows 10
@@marblexeno To be fair, KDE plasma was released 1 year before windows 10, if you said Windows 8/8.1 I would agree that, well apart from the whole start screen (Gnome 3 got you covered in that part 😂)
While windows 7 had huge borders, KDE had borderless design. And then windows copied it after win 10
@@Kurobari94 if I remember correctly the first release of Plasma 5 looked somewhat different from how Breeze. The visual changed happened gradually.
I think I've already seen floating taskbar in some supposed Win12 alpha screenshots?
Nice to see Plasma doing so many improvements. I've never really felt comfortable on Plasma but this version looks tempting. Gnome team has to work hard to keep up with the competition and that's good for everyone
I hope they do!
Plasma Tips:
- Setting application hot keys is super easy - open the menu and find the option you want to set/change the shortcut for, right click it (yes - right click on the menu) and select "Configure Shortcut".
- Kate can run any bunch of text you want through a command line filter - great for `grep`ing and `sed`ing: select a bunch of text and press CTRL+\ - you'd get a dialog that asks you what command to run (and it has a history). It will then pipe the selected text into that command, grab the output and put it instead of the selected text. Don't like the result? just undo. No need to even save.
- Did you know Krunner's unit converter can convert currency values? try it: press META to open the main menu and type "5 usd" to see how much is $5 in your favorite currencies.
The currency tip is very useful
"Before time began, there was The Cube" - Optimus Prime
Glad to see this timeless effect return! :D
Reminds me of Compiz (last time I really used a Linux Desktop, apart from my Steam Deck)
Too bad that they didn't add the possibility to set a different wallpaper for each cube side!
Can't wait to experience it on my debian stable after 10 years.🎉
😂
You clearly don’t understand how Debian works. Such changes doesn’t happen that fast 😂
@@Arvigeus I know how debian works. It was just a joke 😄
@@tanmaypatel4152 I was adding to your joke. Sorry if it sounded offensive!
@@Arvigeus No problem, bud. After all we are united by Linux. 🤝
PROPS TO NICCOLO FOR HIS WORK ON THE PANEL!!!!!
KDE is amazing
KDE Plasma is just Windows 7 2
@@s1nistr433but way better
@@s1nistr433 It looks worse than W7 tbh
@@gato-rsdefinitely not. Windows 7 is clearly dated - plasma looks somewhat modern. In terms of usability it aims for that traditional desktop experience - which (surprise!) makes it MUCH better to use on a desktop than something like gnome.
True that
Never was a fan of Breeze and default setup of KDE. But customization of this DE is superb. And right now more things can be altered out of the box without spending a lot of time - for example behavior of the bottom panel. It is good that they made "just" a port to new QT, I remember what happend with KDE 4. Anyway I hope they will spend some time to make a replacement for Breeze.
Yeah, Breeze looks VERY dated
I just think they should use a different color theme (both light and dark), but otherwise Breeze looks fine to me. Maybe some of the icons could be better, but I don't find them too bad.
@@p0358It doesn't really. If you're judging by GNOME standards anything which doesn't look like a useless phone toy will look dated.
they should integrate the lightly application style officially imo, it modernises breeze massively
I guess that's the problem for someone like me. My endless customization days are behind me, 15 years ago I was distro hopping, I was constantly switching between all the various distros. But now I have a lot of other things to do in my life and I really don't have the time or interest in spending my days customizing the desktop. I use GNOME for this reason, it works well enough and the defaults just work for me.
Also: "We combined the Overview and Desktop Grid effects into one and massively improved its touchpad gestures". Yeah, that's great!!!
Plasma here making me re-consider my plan to try out cosmic when it drops (plasma user here). It looks amazing!
It does! Cosmic also looks super interesting, but plasma 6 feels like a very polished release
I absolutely love the new Ocean sounds. You talked too little about this feature. They sound amazing and I love that you can easily change this like you change the theme. Props to KDE team.
all that in ONE YEAR!? that's pretty amazing!
good one if sarcasm
I've been a KDE fan for a number of years. Tried GNOME, Cinnamon, LXQT, XFCE, etc. but always came back to a KDE distro sitting on Debian. I may be one of the folks that don't care a lot about Plasma 6 since I have my computers looking and doing what I want, however, I will get my inner nerd out and try it on another machine. Thanks for the great video!
I share you experience, somewhat. Plasma is the island to stay on. Nice content from Experiment.
For me, I've tried all the desktops. However there's always something or other that bugs me about some way they work. KDE just works and if it doesn't, its easy to change it to the way I want.
Same. Cinnamon and XCFE are good in specific cases but I cannot live without all the options that KDE offers. I'm looking at you, Gnome
Only two things I didn't like:
1. The buttons to turn off and reboot the system don't work for some reason ._. (I'm using KDE Neon)
2. Wayland: My laptop hates it, whether I'm on KDE Neon, Arcolinux with Hyprland, EndeavourOS with Sway, etc.
Else... it's Plasma, and Plasma is love. Plasma is life.
The buttons is not working for me either, need to "try change the user" and then turnoff from lock-screen
This is a Neon-specific bug which has been reported already and a fix is on the way.
For the shutdown button to work you need to create a file named "org.kde.LogoutPrompt.service" on /usr/share/dbus-1/services/ with the contents:
[D-BUS Service]
Name=org.kde.LogoutPrompt
Exec=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libexec/ksmserver-logout-greeter
Same here. I had to open the terminal and shutdown from there.
Same here
Looks a lot more stable. Really great work with everyone involved 👏👏
I honestly thought the video switched to Gnome for a second there. That overview effect is so perfect!
That's great news! I'm looking forward to upgrading to it! I've been running 5.27 on wayland for a long time now and I'm really looking forward to the "everything wayland" approach they're taking. :)
I wonder how long before it comes to the steam deck's desktop mode 🤔
Looks amazing, great job KDE team!
Can't wait till Plasma 6 ships on Nobara!
Really excited to try this out! I have been waiting migrating to Wayland until KDE was ready for it out of the box
The haters chose Plasma 6 to hate for some reason.
I started on GNOME, moved to KDE because I wanted more customization, and moved to hyprland because I wanted tiling. Plasma 6 definitely looks nice though.
This is exactly how it was for me too. Started with GNOME on Ubuntu then switched to Fedora KDE and now I am on Arch with hyprland.
Yes! I was one of those recruited to Linux when I saw that fancy Compiz Cube haha. Wow... we have come a long way.
I hope someone will update or make a new port of the KDE4 Oxygen theme. I still have a soft spot for it and it has been looking great on my Plasma 5 desktop :)
I've used KDE for years, and the longer I use it, the more in love with it I am. Also with the new sound profile options for the system for notifications, that makes me SUPER excited, as I can totally see a new update in the future where they update KDE to allow for custom sounds. I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR YEARS. ADHD go brr, and sounds help with that on KDE (for me) so if they do that, I'm not leaving (not that I was going to anyways :D)
What are you talking about dude ? You can change sounds in plasma 5 without any problems...
@wikingagresor I havent found those settings, also because I struggled to get them working. Particularly, I wanted to meme it out with sounds foe when I plug in or remove usb drives. The option barely existed, and didnt ever work
Finally! I was looking forward to this video, and it didn't disappoint. 😊
I've been following Plasma 6 pretty closely, but I still learned a lot in this video! Thanks!
I wonder how if VRR is working on Plasma 6 🤔
Especially on NVIDIA
Overall, super excited for this launch as it looks awesome!
On Wayland, if the screen and driver supports it (not sure about Nvidia) then in the display configuration you'd have the option to enable "Adaptive Sync", which is how VRR is called in Plasma. When set to "Automatic" it will let full screen Wayland applications control the refresh rate. I'm not sure what "Always" in that option means.
@@guss77 NVIDIA user (RTX 3060) here, i set it to "Always" if i want VRR when i'm gaming, and it works like a charm, honestly Wayland just works, besides from plasmashell freezing occasionally (with me needing to kill it and relaunch from a terminal with setsid prepended), Xwayland apps flickering (i originally thought it might be because i have a 360Hz display, but it happens even if i set it to 60, but with the flickering slower in that situation), and the whole thing shitting itself after a few days of uptime, where sometimes i can't even Ctrl + Alt + PrntSc + B out of it, and have to hold my PC's power button (i'm not too sure what causes any of this, but if it continues when Plasma 6 gets unmasked on the Gentoo repos, then i'll update, and report it to them, i'd try to see if it works on the KDE Neon LiveCD, but it does not want to display anything after booting, probably an NVIDIA thing, iykyk)
KDE understands its PC users!.
Unlike gnome garbage who pushes tablet ui to my throat.
You know you can change default look and theme of gnome , if you do not like default theme .
@@agoston9835 ask libadwaita
@agoston9835 why do that when Plasma is just better out of the box?
@@LRM12o8 IKR.
KDE SUPREME LINUX DE
I love how the floating panel conforms to the different sized shortcuts and tray icons at 9:00, that looks super cool!
I've always liked KDE's personality, but I've always had stability issues so I'm glad that's being worked on.
single click is for selecting the file, not opening it. Not because windows does it, but it is the sensible way.
The sensible way is to open something by clicking it once, like you’d do on a smartphone. But no one is used to that.m, so it makes sense to have single click to select
@@TheLinuxEXP Not familiar with KDE yet, so I’ll ask for clarification: When it’s in single-click-to-open mode, how do you select an item?
@@TheLinuxEXPThat's hardly sensible because a computer is not a smartphone.
Edit: There's far more that can be done on a computer. For example you may select something to drag it onto a program. Or you may select multiple things, but they may not all be next to one another. Or you may be selecting something just to show it in the preview. Single click to open only makes sense for folders in miller column view, or perhaps with the details view in the drop-down. Or you may select something to run a keyboard operation.
@@TheLinuxEXP well, smartphones don't have a keyboard interface, how can you select a single file and cut or copy it on single click to open, my one hand is on the keyboard and other is on the mouse, i can click a file and ctrl + x or c faster than left click cut or copy.
@@JamesCusanoThere is a "+" icon on the top-left of the file/folder, just click that. You can see it at 2:14.
Im excited to give this a try.
Great review! Straight to the point and no bs. I like the analogy of plasma 5.50, while i recognize the absolute importance of the underlying stack improvements and the amount of work it took(with the already small kde team size and funding) i also have to say that as someone who is still not on Wayland, doesn't have an hdr monitor, doesn't like either floating panels or the gnome workflow of workspaces, i wasn't as hyped for this release as the others.
But i am glad the Kde Plasma team have succeeded in breaking this stereotype that big new Plasma transitions are always buggy.
I agree with most of what you said, though maybe the workspaces thing will be more enticing for me now if it works better. Couldn't get into it before. The one thing I am keen on is the better Wayland support, because I have poor eyesight and would like to scale my secondary, smaller screen up a bit. So far I've just made do with setting font sizes in applications on that screen, but separate, fractional global scaling would be nice.
@@KingArthurDentoh absolutely, Wayland is the important way forward. The only reason i've reverted back to x11 for now is Wine/Proton gaming and maybe some stability around video conferencing.
@@iodreamify Last I tried Plasma Wayland, Zoom went down to like 0.5 fps, so had to go back to X11. I have a suspicion that wasn't really a Plasma issue but more of a Zoom/NVIDIA driver issue, however, I have nothing to confirm that either. I just hope that Zoom and NVIDIA have improved their stuff as well, so that this time it'll work as expected.
Great video! I have been interested in the Merkuro apps, specifically their email client. I know the Calendar portion was pushed out a bit ago. I assumed that they were going to roll out the full Merkuro suite with Plasma 6 but I haven't seen anyone talking about it.
Looks great! When I get a new desktop I’ll definitely check out plasma 6
I'm glad that you had a much better experience with Plasma 6 than I did. When I upgraded from Fedora 39 to 40, it resulted in various missing elements (not just because my icon set was not Plasma 6 ready, it was and could be fixed by switching to another icon theme and back, it would just nuke the icons on every boot), settings being randomly changed and general unresponsiveness. It was compounded by glitches and errors with Fedora itself, unrelated to KDE, which resulted in me having to reinstall my OS. This is especially annoying as in-place upgrades between major versions of Fedora worked fine for me years previously.
Now that I've got a reinstalled OS with Plasma 6 working as intended, it's nicer. Some of the settings being shuffled around are a bit questionable to me, but as you said it's different, not necessarily an improvement or a downgrade. The improvements to KDE Connect are also greatly appreciated, as connecting new devices is a breeze now, although they didn't fix the shared clipboard bug which routinely clears your clipboard.
Thanks, Nick, for the great review
Clicking scrollbar and window moving to that exact point (no need to scroll) was also present on Plasma 5, but it wasn't the default. I switched it on and I love it. Every time I am on Windows, it bothers me that I have to scroll long sites instead one-click it.
Unfortunately, in Arch. Plasma 6 is still not on stable repos, so Manjaro users, like me, can't get it yet (on Manjaro unstable we get the same packages as Arch stable). Can't wait!
i just enabled it on Plasma 5, and it looks like everything but Firefox obeys that change, unfortunately (browsers are such a joke in general)
@@yag-yet_another_gamerFor me Firefox obeys it 100%. Only in situations where site is not loaded fully, when you go to the bottom, it loads and scrollbar jumps up. Otherwise, it works just like with other apps or windows. If this doesn't work for you, there has to be some setting on your system that is preventing it to work. Check your settings or refresh the browser.
I don't generally deal with the UI a lot, so I was an xfce person for the last 8-10 years. I tried kde last year and I liked it so much that right now all of my Linux systems that have a GUI are all using kde. It just gets out of the way for me. Most of my workflow is cli based, so I probably end up interacting with the GUI less than 10% of the time so I like that kde allows me to customize things how I like instead of trying to force me to use a different workflow or instead a bunch of extensions that break with every update
I've been hyped about Plasma 6 for nearly a year, and I'm so excited that it's finally here! I use KDE Neon, so Plasma 6 is already available for me, but I'm holding off installing it since this week I need my laptop for some really important stuff, and with my luck, something's gonna go wrong and bork everything if I update now😅 The fact that Discover is teasing me to update isn't helping. Thank you Nick for reviewing Plasma 6!
Looks good. I'm a relatively new Desktop Linux user and after starting with Qtile and I was liking it. I've had some issues though, so I've decided to test drive all other options for an extended period of time, one after another, just so I get to know what's out there and can then decide what I want to stay on. Currently I'm on gnome. Looking forward to trying KDE next.
There is one thing I tested and I consider AWESOME: hardware cursor for Intel GPUs. It worked great.
Glad to hear about color profile improvements
Yesss gnome activity overview. Finally virtual desktop switching is good in KDE
The desktop cube was what got me into linux first when i was 12y/o. So glad it's back. I would pend hours on end trying to install arch It was half my childhood.
I CHANGE the sounds-- like a toilet flush for DELETE , etc.. and minions announcing incoming mail!! :)
All of the new features seem really good - like fixing the mouse movements under wayland (hopefully scrolling is working correctly now too), double click to open as default is great also (it's one thing I always change with new installs and because it's buried, its hard to find to change).
Definitely looking forward to Fedora 40 when it's released.
I do love the various settings, but am undecided on whether I like having to go through everything for every update. But so far: yes! Much more fun than reining in Windows. 😜
Hey man, thank you for your work! Please increase your video resolutions. :)
Nobara upgraded to Plasma 6 for me today so I came here to see what the differences were. Anyone on KDE 5.x really has nothing to worry about. It's very familiar and works fine! Everything just feels a bit more polished. Thanks for the overview!
Always been a KDE fan ❤ even contributed some back in the day. Glad to see everything is continuing to get better and better
I now have Fedora 40 with KDE 6 on a couple of machines, desktop & laptop. It's a revelation! It's the proverbial quantum leap forward. Overview mode and Alt+tab are game changers. It is really, really very nice. Excellent even. Struggling to think what improvements I'd like to see. This brings KDE at least on a par with Windows for ease-of-use and professionalism. (There are a couple of bugs with multi-monitor config but nothing major. I'm sure they'll be sorted if not already.) Bravissimo/a!
Seems to be more focused on the backend, with Wayland being the default and using QT6, though there are still quite a few of very welcome and nice changes. Overall not the most exciting update if you were looking for big graphical changes but I imagine upgrading the backend was a lot of effort which will enable the team to work on more fun stuff way easier and to introduce new fun things
Single-click to open acts under the delusion that you will _never_ mis-click, and _never_ make a mis-take. Double-click to open may wear out a mouse more quickly for file browser interaction tasks (twice the clicks, duh) but you can click on something, have it highlighted and have that buffer of time to ensure with confidence you are clicking on the right thing before you click _again_ to confirm.
It is also more able-friendly as some people have less refined control over their fine motor muscles. If you try to move the mouse but constantly click things by accident because a movement of the arm or hand causes fingers to accidentally press the mouse buttons, _rejoice_ as KDE has seen reason.
Well for what it is worth so far I've been very impressed. So much so that yesterday I ditched my long-standing venerable Arch install, and hopped across to the new Plasma 6 Neon. There are a few bugs, for example the need to write two missing scripts to enable the shutdown and restart GUI buttons to work... but on the whole, so far it has been pretty smooth, and I love the new cleaner less bloated design. Also - to my surprise - the Nvidia driver, whilst still a fiddle to install, does now seem to work reasonably well with wayland.
happy about the dock, needs more settings but its a great start
I switched to Gnome when plasma 5 first came out because I didn't like how plasma was. I am a Fedora user when plasma 6 beta came out I downloaded a nightly build to check it out and fell in love again. I am running a nightly build of Fedora KDE on my main laptop and have had no issues. I am really impressed with what they did.
GJ and thanks to all the contributors. ❤
E2A: Except for Nicco. He gets my appreciation on his own channel and I don't want him double dipping. I only have so much thanks to share. :)
Hahah Nicco is awesome!
Great review Nick thanks!
Single click to select and double to open is a must. Especially on touch devices like steam dexk
A bit of a mixed bag for me. Upgrading from Neon 5 to 6 was disastrous. Probably because I was not using the default themes and they were not compatible with Plasma 6. So I reinstalled the OS and that fixed the theme issues.
However there are things that for me are worse than Plasma 5.
Getting to the desktop from the login screen is currently taking around 30 seconds when it was probably around 5 before. No idea why, but it is a big step backward.
EDIT> OK the 30 seconds to desktop only happens when using a Wayland session. X11 is still around 5 seconds.
I hate the fact that you can no longer disable the touchpad when a mouse is being used. I am forever brushing the touchpad and moving the cursor.
The pager now has less config options. Before you could make it a grid to take up less space. That is no longer possible. I have dual monitors and 6 virtual desktops and now the pager takes up a quarter of the panel.
For me editing the panel and changing the positioning does not work. Set it to a different edge and it stays put. Not like in the video. Could be because I am currently in an X11 session.
I am sure there will be other issues and just as sure that the KDE will fix them (hopefully)
Looks super nice 🙂
I think the lack of bugs is fantastic. People were turned off by the jumble
Good work KDE team! I'm happy to see the improvements you made.
I'm not a fan of the floating task bar though, as all I see there is wasted screen space. Happy it can be changed though.
This looks neat! I kind of want to try it in place of Cinammon.
I absolutely love KDE, it just looks very elegant and sleek. Installed Kubuntu 24.04 today and it is awesome!
Click on scrollbar to jump there is what I need, I hope this comes to Tuxedo OS soon!
I like the default changes. I also like that they left the options in if I do want to use them. Best of both worlds. IMO the defaults should be similar to other OS for simplicity and ease of use.
I've been using KDE for a number of years now (before that Deepin and Pantheon were my go tos as I'm rather fond of more minimalist aesthetics) but as I've watched Plasma 6's progress along the way my biggest concern is how "OOOH SHINY KEYS" people can be. I'm for sure looking forward to 6 but for me the improvements with switching to QT6 and the usability improvements are what I'm most happy about. Second to that would be Wayland improvements (I've been using Wayland for about 2 months now). But I can see a lot of people not understanding all the improvements that are under the bonnet and getting all angry and disappointed because visually, there's not a massive change. I like my eye candy, don't get me wrong, but just because Plasma 6 isn't going to visually change heaps doesn't make it a shit update.
Couldn't agree more. This way all about transitioning to QT6, improving Wayland to be fit for default, and maintaining stability whilst doing so. Anything else is a bonus and I think they've struck a good balance.
Honestly improvements to the backend are big hype for me, I wish more people understood the amount of work it takes to migrate things, test, fix and polish
Plasma has always been my choice for desktop/large displays, that's their focus anyway. Smooth and configurable. Much prefer it to gnome, which I think it's better designed for laptops.
Better Wayland support and better gaming is awesome. Makes me (almost) forget my ideal system, which would be an up-to-date Pantheon in a modern base.
I've been using wayland for over a year with an AMD and KDE and haven't had any issues. I also think wine is getting native wayland support quite soon.
Sounds like the major release is mostly due to the technical changes the user is not supposed to notice, except for the increased stability and seamlessness. In my book thats great, most Desktops already offer everything I need in terms of functionality since my work is
more terminal-focussed. For me the stability and polish is where it is mostly at, so I for one am glad that they focussed on technical work and making the experience more coherent. Will give it a try asap!
I'll probably always prefer GNOME but I've got a small project I've spun up a VM for and I'm using KDE Plasma there. I find the experience a bit noisy but customization options are great. Looking forward to when Fedora pushes the update sounds good.
Awesome! but honestly I wish there were new theme and icons
For me Breeze feels outdated
Update from 5.27 in Arch went seemless. So far zero issues and as this video states only improvements. Thanks KDE Team!
I personally love the new default settings for Plasma 6. A lot of stuff that I've already been using. I'm on Kubuntu, so it will be a bit before I can use Plasma 6 myself, but I can't wait. It sounds like a nice upgrade from Plasma 5, which is impressive considering how stable Plasma 5 has gotten.
7:50 Double-click interval setting
The new printer add assistant is much better even though it's not talked about anywhere.
I hope the oxygen application style works with plasma 6 too
And we're just getting started ;)
The Wayland to X11 bridge is also present on my (wayland session) Fedora 39 KDE btw
11:00 Can the scrollbar click behavior be changed to *not* jump to the click point and just go page-by-page?
Just installed KDE 6 on Open Suse what I could see is the improvements has less clicking with a few improvements and there are some KDE applications still not ported over to 6 such as Latte but soo far so good.
Wayland is cool and all, but it's really hard to turn on my keyboard's RGB lights. I can't wait to distro hop again and try out KDE 6!
Nice updates! Personally, I am an XFCE fan, so I genuinely prefer it's simplistic & minimalistic style, but I got to say GNOME & KDE have made great improvements overall!!
A floating clock would be great. Like some others I've set up one but it wasn't straightforward.
Desktop cube is _not_ useless. For a quick overview of applications _on a small display_ things that would get lost in the wash when viewing all workspaces would be more visible if observed as a 3D object.
- That, and it's _cool-as_ so why not?
Wait spectacle can record videos now? Pretty sure that in and of itself is new. Glad to have a native screen recording tool, because using OBS to do basic screencasts felt pretty overkill.
It could tap onto SimpleScreenRecorder which is quite small and pretty good at what it does. No need to launch OBS for such a simple thing. But I agree that by itself Spectacle was not able to record videos up till now.
Only on Wayland
when will it be the day where spectacle runs without any input delay?
For HDR and colour profile per display support alone makes it a massive upgrade. Then you have all the QT6 upgrades on top, isn't it supposed to be more multi-threaded now?
A lot of things are still being worked on for the next release, core features like Vulkan support for the desktop instead of OpenGL.