new, useful, interesting in the new version of the shell
Users who work with the KDE Plasma shell can be satisfied –
, KDE Plasma 5.24. It was built on KDE Frameworks 5 and Qt 5 using OpenGL/OpenGL ES to optimize rendering. About what appeared or changed in the new release – under the cut, and this list is quite impressive.
Of the improvements that can be considered major, it is worth highlighting the following:
- Optimized task manager. Now the user has the ability to change the direction of the alignment of tasks in the panel, for example, to correctly place the task manager in the panel along with the general menu. The context task manager now has an element for moving a task to an Activity. And the “Start New Instance” item received a new name “Open New Window”. Improved tooltip speed for applications with a large number of open windows.
- Optimizing the display of notifications. In order for the user to immediately notice important notifications, the developers implemented their output using an orange strip on the side. In addition, the title text has been made more visible. Some notifications show a thumbnail of the content. Well, system notifications about working with files via Bluetooth have also been added.
- Authentication using fingerprinting has appeared. A new interface has been added to link your fingerprint and work with previously linked fingerprints.
- Boring wallpaper. The joke is about a modified Breeze theme. It has been changed in such a way that when displaying directories, the highlight color of active elements is taken into account. The developers have also removed the high-contrast Breeze High Contrast color scheme.
- The configurator now has a new look for pages with large lists of settings. The developers have removed unnecessary elements so as not to distract attention.
- Important changes have been added to the power consumption section – here the ability to determine the top charge of not one battery, but several at once has been added. In the sound settings, the design of the speaker test has been changed. Monitor settings have been optimized – now the scaling factor and physical resolution are shown for each connected faucet. In addition, when automatic login is activated, a warning is displayed to inform you that you need to change your Kwallet settings.
- The interface for configuring keyboard parameters has also been changed – a new option has appeared to highlight the changed settings. There is support for over 8 keyboard layouts. If a language other than English is selected, the option to search for settings by keywords in English is provided.
- Discover added a mode to automatically reboot the system after updating it. With a large window width, it is divided into two columns for the convenience of the user. The developers have greatly simplified the update selection interface and added information about the update installation source. Well, in the process of updating the elements, only the progress bar is shown. If a problem occurs, you can report it using the “Report this issue” button.
- Optimized the management of repositories for Flatpak packages and packages offered in the distribution. It is possible to open and install Flatpak packages from local media, in addition, there is also an option to connect the repository associated with it to install updates later. A small but nice moment – the developers have added protection against accidental deletion of a package with KDE Plasma. The process of checking for updates has been streamlined.
Shells for Linux distributions is a very interesting topic, but we have other articles, check it out – we talk about:
- In addition, the developers have optimized the Wayland-based session. For example, support for color depths greater than 8-bit per channel has been added. Also added is the “master monitor” concept, which is similar to the tools available in X11-based sessions. Support for virtual reality helmets has returned thanks to the “DRM leasing” mode and optimization of work with such devices. Moreover, the developers have added a video helmet settings page.
- The support team has made the decision to change the default application from Kate editor to Kwrite. Perhaps this was done to please ordinary users who do not need all the “bells and whistles” and features of Kate.
In addition, the developers have added a lot of minor improvements and features:
- Unify the style of scrollable areas in the system tray.
- Added a dialog for setting the location and user parameters for displaying the weather forecast. Added automatic search for compatible weather services.
- In the widget for working with screen brightness and battery control, the interface has been improved to disable sleep mode and screen lock.
- In the sidebar of Kickoff, to unify the appearance with other side menus, the arrows after the section names have been removed.
- Media partitions are not monitored in read-only mode in the low disk space widget.
- There is an indication of pairing with the phone.
- There was a correct indication of the termination of playback when the player is closed.
- It is now possible to set the desktop wallpaper directly from the context menu for images.
- There was a setting that allows you to set non-standard icon sizes.
- Added animation when dragging widgets with the mouse.
- Now creation of stickers when clicking the middle mouse button on the panel is disabled by default.
- New default windows open in the center of the screen.
- Plasma scrollable controls and QtQuick-based applications now have protection against accidentally changing values when trying to scroll the visible area.
In general, this is the most important and additional changes. With the whole list
.
You can rate the new release by Live assembly from openSUSE or a build from a project KDE Neon User Edition. Well, different versions of the package – here.
