In recent months, the news about KDE has focused on everything that is to come. The most significant changes will come from the hand of plasma 6, but Qt6 will improve some things and Frameworks 6 others. What isn't being talked about much is what they will remove, and there is software that will have to drop sooner rather than later. It won't be the icons on the desktop, nor the minimize button, nor the panels and docks, which Nate Graham has joked about, but other things.
Among what will fall on the list we find KHotkeys, which was an initial implementation for the global shortcut system. This grew and grew, but no longer works on Wayland. plasma 6 will use Wayland by default, so there is little point in continuing to maintain it. Other removals have similar reasons that can be read in the pointieststick note, and we are going to make a summary of what will cease to be from the end of this year, but not with the reasons.
Plasma 6 will no longer have outdated software
- KHotkeys- Old global shortcut system that had issues with important features like mouse gestures not working in Wayland. Also, the code was outdated and unstable. It was decided to remove it and focus on the new KGlobalAccel system.
- Windowed Widgets in KRunner: feature that allowed displaying widgets as independent windows. However, this confused users, who started using widgets as standalone applications instead of using KDE applications. Therefore, it was removed to avoid confusion.
- Icon size and DPI font scaling settings in Wayland– There were multiple ways to scale the interface in Plasma 5, causing confusion for users. To simplify the process and improve stability, some of these options have been removed in Plasma 6.
- Various Low-Quality Task Changer Alternatives– Removed several task changers that were turning out to be worse versions of other available options. The idea was to guide users towards the best alternatives.
- Plasma Style «Air»: old Plasma style that had been abandoned and didn't make much sense to stick with it when there was already a way to get new themes from the KDE store.
- Activity-specific power settings: rarely used options and with problems that affected the stability of the system. It was easier to remove them than spend time repairing them.
- Icon View in System Preferences: A view that has been deprecated and replaced by a sidebar view.
- Icons in Plasma Styles– Removed the feature allowing Plasma styles to include their own icons, as this caused visual inconsistencies with the rest of the system.
- Unsplash Picture of the Day: Unsplash image display plugin that had to be removed due to changes to the Unsplash terms of service.
Comment for the haters that delete things
Nate Graham has posted a point «I don't care, I still hate you for deleting things", in which he explains that sometimes there is no other choice. The old may not work very well and has to be removed to make room and free up resources for new components that will work better.
I am one of those who do not like changes very much, but there are movements that are for the better. Something like this was also discussed in Garuda Linux, a system I use occasionally, when they had to remove Latte Dock and switch to using a dock-shaped native Plasma panel. In the end the result is similar: while it is true that Latte was easier (or would I say intuitive?) to configure, it is also true that the native Panel perfectly fulfills its purpose and you are not using something that has been discontinued.
You have to think of the removals they will do in Plasma 6 as in the new Garuda "dock": they leave, but what is coming does, at least, the same thing, and all this will allow things to arrive soon that will still make the experience be better.
Plasma 6 will arrive in the second half of 2023, pulling towards the end of the year.