I wanted to try this and it has left me half satisfied. At the end of 2022, Nate Graham spoke to us for the first time of an advanced window stacking system that would arrive with Plasma 5.27. This week, KDE has released the beta of the next version of its graphical environment, and the best way to test it is with the latest KDE neon Testing ISO image. After a few hours of downloading it, which the servers tend to be slow for, I was able to verify for the first time what they themselves say: initially it is not designed to replace advantage managers such as i3wm.
Yes it is totally true we can stack the windows as we want, but it will require more than just using a key combination. The idea is to create as a template (with GOAL + T) and then mount the windows as we had designed (keeping Shift and dragging), and everything will move together. It's in such early steps that the stable version hasn't even been released, so we can't know if those keyboard shortcuts will be added in the future or, why not dream, allow a reduced plasma session in the purest style i3. Although, I insist, they also insist that it is not what they have in mind.
New Features Coming Soon to KDE
One of the most important news this week in KDE has been the arrival of Plasmsa 5.27 Beta, but they have also advanced the following:
- The growing list of alternative calendars for the Digital Clock widget now includes the Islamic Astronomical and Umm al-Qura (Fushan Wen, Plasma 6) calendars.
- Wallpaper creators can now define a custom accent color for their wallpaper that will be automatically used when the user uses the “Wallpaper from Accent Color” feature, instead of letting the system calculate a color for them. accent color automatically (Fushan Wen, Plasma 5.27).
- You can now enter Do Not Disturb mode using the command line by running
kde-inhibit --notifications(Jakub Nowak, Plasma 5.27).
Improvements in the user's interface
- High-resolution skins in Elisa are now sharper and look better when scaling is used (Nate Graham, Elisa 22.12.2.).
- KWin now does its best to force smoother animations by default (user configurable balance between smoothness and latency), which improves performance on Intel GPUs embedded in the Plasma Wayland session (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.27).
- In the Plasma calculator widget, you can now copy the result or delete a digit with the backspace key (Martin Frueh, Plasma 5.27).
- The Plasma Calculator widget no longer appears as a search result in KRunner, Kickoff, and Overview, where activating it would open in a separate window, leading people to believe it was the default calculator app or confusing them as to why there were two calculators installed (Nate Graham, Plasma 5.27).
- The Flatpak Shortcuts and Permissions pages of System Preferences now use the more modern style without frames (Nate Graham, Plasma 5.27).
- The window list widget now shows the appropriate icons when the active application icon is invalid, or when the Plasma desktop is active (Guilherme Marçal Silva, Plasma 5.27).
- In the systray settings window, some items no longer have "(Autoload)" appended after their names, which we realized was an implementation detail that didn't communicate anything important to the user (Nicolas Fella , Plasma 5.27).
- In QtWidgets-based KDE applications, tooltips can no longer display the same text twice (Joshua Goins, Frameworks 5.103).
Correction of minor bugs
- Fixed the possibility of KWin crashing when closing an instance of a multi-instance application with the "Dim Inactive" effect enabled (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.27).
- An older version of the Wayland text input protocol has been implemented in KWin, making the input methods work in Chromium and Electron applications (Xuetian Weng, Plasma 5.27).
- Basic sticky key support is now implemented in the Plasma Wayland session. There will be more soon (Nicolas Fella, Link Plasma 5.27).
- Fixed several recently introduced visual bugs affecting Panel and System Tray icons, including some Qt6 application tray icons that were constantly blinking. Also fixed the autotest that covers this so it works and doesn't go back again. (Arjen Hiemstra, Frameworks 5.103).
This list is a summary of the fixed bugs. The complete lists of bugs are on the pages of 15 minute bug, very high priority bugs and overall list. This week a total of 118 bugs have been fixed.
When will this all come to KDE?
plasma 5.27 It will arrive on February 14, while Frameworks 103 should arrive on February 4, and there is no news on Frameworks 6.0. KDE Gear 22.12.2 will arrive on February 2, and 23.04 is only known to be available in April 2023.
To enjoy all this as soon as possible we have to add the repository backports of KDE, use an operating system with special repositories like Kde neon or any distribution whose development model is Rolling Release.
Images and content: pointieststick.com.