I was a bit (quite) surprised that the this week's article about news in KDE include the word GNOME in its title. The idea you are considering to borrow is a new effect in KWin that will resemble the GNOME "Activities" view. On the desktop used by the main version of Ubuntu, when we enter activities we see the desktops and we can perform searches, and that is more or less what we will see in Plasma 5.24.
Although not mentioned this week, it is not the first time they have noticed GNOME, although the overview of open applications of the future is also used (I think I remember) in Windows. And, although Plasma 5.23 was the 25th anniversary edition and introduced important new features, In Plasma 5.24 some visuals will arrive that will greatly improve what we see in KDE.
New Features Coming to KDE
- The new KWin Overview effect has gained the ability to display KRunner results when searched. This brings it closer to feature parity with GNOME's core Activity Summary feature.
- Gwenview now has "Print Preview" functionality (Alexander Volkov, Gwenview 22.04).
- Discover now prevents us from doing something that uninstalls Plasma in the process, which is probably not what we wanted to do (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.24).
Bug fixes and performance improvements
- When an image is printed in Gwenview or Kolourpaint, it is now automatically printed in portrait or landscape mode according to the aspect ratio of the image, rather than manually (Alexander Volkov, Gwenview 21.12).
- Konsole now frees memory when text is cleared (Martin Tobias Holmedahl Sandsmark, Konsole 22.04).
- Konsole now has better text display performance (Waqar Ahmed and Tomaz Canabrava, Konsole 22.04).
- The Alacritty terminal reopens with the correct window size (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.23.4).
- Toolbar buttons in GTK3 applications that don't use CSD header bars (like Inkscape and FileZilla) no longer have unnecessary borders drawn around them (Yaroslav Sidlovsky, Plasma 5.23.4).
- Open / save dialogs in Flatpak or Snap apps now remember their previous size when reopened (Eugene Popov, Plasma 5.23.4).
- The text "Show in file manager" in Plasma Vaults can now be translated (Nicolas Fella, Plasma 5.23.4).
- The textual list of grouped applications in the Task Manager is now much faster and more efficient (Fushan Wen, Plasma 5.24).
- Discover now stops searching when no more search results are found, instead of always displaying "Still searching" at the bottom (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.24).
- Fixed an issue with playing certain videos embedded in the Plasma Wayland session (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.24).
- Fixed a major performance issue in QtQuick-based KWin effects for NVIDIA GPU users (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.24).
- The new Panorama effect is now much faster to activate (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.24).
- Fixed lots and lots of little bugs with Breeze icons (Andreas Kainz, Frameworks 5.89).
- Fixed a visual glitch in the Plasma tooltip that would flicker when appearing or disappearing (Marco Martin, Frameworks 5.89).
- Icons and text on Plasma applets tabs are re-centered properly (Eugene Popov, Frameworks 5.89).
Improvements in the user's interface
- Elisa's default album icon is now prettier and more semantically appropriate (Andreas Kainz, Elisa 22.04).
- The new Overview effect is now touch-friendly (Arjen Hiemstra, Plasma 5.24).
- The touchpad applet has been restored after being removed in Plasma 5.23, and is now back as a read-only status notifier that simply visually shows when the touchpad is disabled, such as the caps lock and notifier applets microphone (Nate Graham, Plasma 5.23.4).
- The weather applet's location setting dialog now automatically searches through all available weather sources instead of having a few selected manually (Bharadwaj Raju, Plasma 5.24).
- Discover now features an easier-to-use set of messages when there is an update installation problem (Nate Graham, Plasma 5.24).
- Discover's search field no longer self-accepts a few seconds after you stop typing; now only starts a search when the Enter or Return key is explicitly pressed (Nate Graham, Plasma 5.24).
- When opening a Plasma Vault and displaying its contents in the file manager, a new file manager window is now created for this purpose, instead of reusing any of the existing ones, as this did not work with various combinations of activities and desktops and especially when using the "Limit to selected activities" setting (Ivan Čukić, Plasma 5.24).
When will this all come to KDE?
Plasma 5.23.4 is coming November 30 and KDE Gear 21.12 on December 9. KDE Frameworks 5.89 will be released on December 11th. Plasma 5.24 will arrive on February 8. KDE Gear 22.04 has no scheduled date yet.
To enjoy all this as soon as possible we have to add the repository backports from KDE or use an operating system with special repositories like Kde neon or any distribution whose development model is Rolling Release, although the latter usually take a little longer than the KDE system.