As we publish here on the blog that on February 12 the new version of KDE would arrive and in this article we rectify that The new version of the KDE Plasma 5.15 desktop environment has already been released, created with the KDE Frameworks 5 platform and the Qt 5 library with OpenGL / OpenGL ES.
KDE Plasma 5.15 adds many new features and novelties as well as fixes some bugs from the previous version of the environment.
KDE Plasma 5.15 Key New Features
In the battery charge control widget, the display of the battery status of external Bluetooth devices is implemented (the function is only functional when new versions of upower and bluez are installed).
The desktop background customization dialog has built-in functions for downloading and installing new plugins with the implementation of a dynamic wallpaper.
KDE Plasma 5.15 improves readability of file names under desktop icons- Sufficient horizontal space is provided for text, regardless of icon size, and adequate contrast is provided for easy reading of text displayed on very light or intricate desktop wallpapers.
We can also mention that usability is improved in the program search interface (K Runner).
With that the correct handling of duplicates was implemented in the output (now duplicate Firefox bookmarks and duplicate items are not displayed when a found file is split into multiple categories).
The widget for notification of new media connections now correctly handles attempts to perform dangerous system operations (for example, unmounting the root filesystem).
Interface to configure the system.
The design was modified and the code for the virtual desktop configurator was rewritten. The new implementation works fine in Wayland-based environments, is more convenient to use, and visually corresponds to the other KDE configurators.
In this new version worked on a unified layout of the clock settings and the folder view interface, which is summarized in common with the other configurators.
In the same way in the unification of icons, scripts and buttons in different pages of the Interface to configure the system.
We can also highlight that now third-party desktop effects are displayed, installed through the catalog store.kde.org. The desktop effects configurator implementation has been translated to use QtQuickControls 2.
GTK and GNOME integration
Integration modules xdg-desktop-portal-kde and plasma-Integration have added portal support to access settings, allowing access to Plasma configuration parameters (fonts, icons, widget themes and color schemes) from isolated Flatpak and Snap applications.
The global scale factor for high pixel density (high DPI) displays is now taken into account for the output of GTK and GNOME applications.
Resolved a variety of issues that arose when using the Breeze-GTK theme, including removing inconsistencies between the dark and light versions of this theme.
Added support for plugins distributed in Flatpak packages.
Although support was also improved for handling local packages, for which dependencies are now defined and the "Start" button is shown to start the application after installation.
Improved support for Wayland
Protocols XdgStable, XdgPopups and XdgDecoration are fully implemented.
En Wayland-based environments, virtual desktop support is provided, including the ability to selectively place a window on a given virtual desktop (With X11, this is not possible and the window can be placed on one virtual desktop or all). Added support for moving items in drag and drop mode using a gesture on the touch screen or touch pad.
How to get this new version of KDE Plasma?
They can evaluate the work of the new release via live build of openSUSE project and the KDE Neon build. Packages for various distributions can be found in this page.
Plasma 5.15 as of yesterday also available on FreeBSD;)
Ufff! sometimes I think that KDE team are some kind of robots. They work at an insane rate. It makes me yesterday when they released Plasma 5.14 and already released 5.15.