KDE He launched last Wednesday what they referred to as KDE 6 Mega-Release. Let's make one thing clear: KDE 6, with that name, does not actually exist, but if they used it it was because Plasma 6.0, Frameworks 6.0 and the KDE applications that depend on the rest of the six were released, including Qt6. There were many new features, including those that are not seen. Not only has performance been improved; The foundation has also been laid for future changes that will raise the bar even higher.
So and how do they explain, Plasma 6.0 is “harder, better, faster, stronger”, which could be said using other words like it is better in every way. Many new features arrived, some of them as new default settings, and in this article we are going to talk to you about the most notable changes which is worth keeping in mind.
KDE 6 Mega-Release: its new default settings
Especially if it is used Kde neon, There are many default changes that will be noticed here and there. Files and folders are now selected with a single click and opened with a double click. Until now they were opened with a single click, the behavior that most KDE developers prefer, but since the community prefers the other option and they decided to put it that way by default. They will change this setting back to how it was before, and we can do the same if we wish.
Another default change will be seen less, but it is present and with great prominence. Wayland is now used, but it is possible to use X11 sessions if it does not convince us.
I think the modification of the task switcher is something that more users will see with better eyes. In Plasma 5, pressing the combination Alt + TAB A sidebar appeared on the left with the cards of the open applications. Starting with Plasma 6.0, a grid with miniatures. Like everything, this can be changed from system preferences.
The other default setting that I think will catch your attention is in panels, which now float by default. The one we will be seeing all the time, if we don't hide it, is the bottom one, and also the doubly floating application launcher, since it is separate from the bottom panel itself.
At this point we have already talked about many of the most notable changes that came with the KDE 6 Mega-Release, but there is more.
The smart bottom panel
New to this combo release, there is now an option to smart bottom panel. Its behavior causes it to show itself when the desktop is empty or nothing is placed on it, but it hides when a window touches it. This way it is prevented from always being hidden, and I think it is the right decision, since, at least in my case, I have it hidden automatically, but because I don't want it to be seen when I have full screen windows. What I also don't want is for it to be hidden if I don't have anything on the desktop, and this option works for these cases.
The new overview
La general view Plasma 5 is not that it was bad, but Plasma 6 has shown that it could be better. What we have now is something more similar to what GNOME shows. It has two positions, accessible from the keyboard or with gestures on the touch panel (Wayland only):
- The first shows all the windows on a desktop and all the desktops above.
- In the second (shot above) we will see all the desks next to each other.
The turn of the cube
El cube (header capture) is something I loved when I first tried Ubuntu. With the mouse, I seem to remember, I could show a cube and move from one desktop to another. It was in KDE a while ago, they removed it and it has returned with Plasma 6.0.
The bad thing is that it cannot be accessed, at least by default and without making changes, with touch panel gestures. To get it out we have to press the combination GOAL + C, and to rotate it with GOAL + Ctrl + navigation arrows.
New Breeze theme
Breeze is the theme that Plasma uses by default, and they have taken the opportunity to give it a face wash. With this change, added to everything that Qt6 brings, we have sought to offer a more modern and clear image.
KDE 6 Mega-Release Applications
An article that is not intended to be long does not have space to talk about an entire application pool which have received major updates with new features. What to highlight here? A couple of the applications that are in every operating system with KDE:
Dolphin
Dolphin's settings received special care and were reorganized to make them easier to navigate. Accessibility improvements are also present in this new version. The toolbar buttons and status bar disk space are now accessible from the keyboard. When right-clicking on a folder, an option now appears to open the folder in split view.
Show
The newly introduced recording features in Spectacle have been improved and now display an icon in the system tray while recording. From this icon we can perform different actions. In addition to recording the entire screen or an app window, you can now also record any arbitrary part of the screen. That is, we can select which portion to record in the same way that we can take screenshots of just an area of the screen.
Try the KDE 6 Mega-Release on KDE neon
All of this will still take a while to reach most Linux distributions, but Kde neon It has been available since Wednesday. The best way to test it is Download your latest stable ISO, burn it to a USB and start a Live Session. It can also be done in a virtual machine, but the performance is not as good as one would expect and we can get a bad impression that has nothing to do with Plasma 6.