The KDE Plasma 5.23 custom shell release is available, built using KDE Frameworks 5 and Qt 5 library using OpenGL/OpenGL ES for faster rendering. You can evaluate the work of the new version through a Live build from the openSUSE project and a build from the KDE Neon User Edition project. Packages for various distributions can be found on this page.
The release is timed to the day of the 25th anniversary of the project - October 14, 1996 Matthias Ettrich (Matthias Ettrich) announced the creation of a new free desktop environment focused on end users, and not on programmers or system administrators, and able to compete with commercial ones available at that time. products such as CDE. The GNOME project, which had similar goals, appeared 10 months later. The first stable release of KDE 1.0 was on July 12, 1998, KDE 2.0 was released on October 23, 2000, KDE 3.0 on April 3, 2002, KDE 4.0 on January 11, 2008, and KDE Plasma 5 in July 2014.
Key improvements:
- The Breeze theme has been redesigned for buttons, menu items, radio buttons, sliders, and scroll bars. To improve the convenience of working with touch screens, the size of the scroll bars and control bars (spinbox) has been increased. A new loading indicator has been added, designed as a rotating gear. Implemented an effect that highlights widgets touching the edge of the panel. Background blur for widgets placed on the desktop.
- The code has been significantly redesigned with the implementation of the new Kickoff menu, performance has been improved, and interfering bugs have been eliminated. You can choose between showing available programs as a list or a grid of icons. Added a button to pin an open menu to the screen. On touchscreens, holding down a touch now opens a context menu. Provided the ability to customize the display of buttons to manage the session and shutdown.
- When switching to tablet mode, the icons in the system tray are enlarged for easier operation from touch screens.
- In the interface for displaying notifications, support is provided for copying text to the clipboard using the Ctrl + C key combination.
- The global menu applet has been made more similar to a regular menu.
- The ability to quickly switch between power consumption profiles: "energy saving", "high performance" and "balanced settings" is provided.
- In the system monitor and widgets for displaying the status of sensors, the display of the average load indicator (LA, load average) is provided.
- The clipboard widget remembers the last 20 elements and ignores selected areas for which the copy operation has not been explicitly performed. It is possible to delete selected items on the clipboard by pressing the Delete key.
- The volume control applet implements the separation of applications that play and record sound.
- Added display of additional details about the current network in the network connection management widget. Provided the ability to manually set the speed for an Ethernet connection and disable IPv6. Added support for additional protocols and authentication settings for connections via OpenVPN.
- In the media player control widget, the album art is permanently displayed, which is also used to form the background.
- The logic of wrapping the text of thumbnail titles in the Folder View mode has been expanded - labels with text in the CamelCase style are now wrapped as in Dolphin along the boundaries of non-space-separated words.
- Improved interface for configuring system settings. The Feedback page provides a summary of all the information previously sent to the KDE developers. Added option to enable or disable Bluetooth during user login. The login screen setup page now has an option to synchronize the screen layout. The search interface for existing settings has been improved, additional keywords are attached to the parameters. On the night mode settings page, notifications are displayed for actions that lead to access to external location services. The color settings page provides the ability to override the base color in the color scheme.
- After applying the new screen settings, a change confirmation dialog with a countdown timer is provided, which allows you to automatically return the old settings in case of a violation of normal screen output.
- In the App Control Center, loading is faster and the app's source is displayed on the install button.
- Significantly improved session performance based on the Wayland protocol. Implemented the ability to paste from the clipboard with the middle mouse button and apply a drag-and-drop interface between programs using Wayland and those launched using XWayland. Fixed several issues that occurred when using NVIDIA GPUs. Added support for changing the screen resolution at startup in virtualization systems. Improved background blur effect. Preservation of virtual desktop settings is provided.
Provided the ability to change the RGB settings for the Intel video driver. Added new screen rotation animation. When the application records the screen content, a special indicator is displayed in the system tray, which allows you to turn off the recording. Improved touchpad gesture control. The task manager has a visual indication of a click on the application icons. To indicate the beginning of the launch of programs, a special animation of the cursor is proposed.
- Ensured screen layout consistency in multi-monitor configurations between X11 and Wayland sessions.
- The implementation of the Present Windows effect has been rewritten.
- Bug Reporting App (DrKonqi) added notification of unmaintained apps.
- The β?β button has been removed from the titles of windows with dialogs and settings.
- It is forbidden to use transparency when moving or resizing windows.
Source: opennet.ru