KDE Plasma 5.24 will allow us to configure any image as a background, and it continues to improve Wayland

I don't think that at this point we can say that Plasma is a poorly customizable graphical environment or that the changes are difficult to apply, but KDE he is always thinking about how to improve things. And as an example, the image that heads this article: in Plasma 5.24 we can right-click on an image and put it as a desktop background, which actually only saves us a couple of clicks, but it can make things easier for those who « fingering 'is a little scary.

This is the first novelty mentioned by Nate Graham in his This Week in KDE article which has been called "all sorts", that is, changes, improvements and tweaks in everything a little. Some of the changes will arrive in Plasma 5.23.5, the fifth and final maintenance update of the 25th Anniversary Edition, but others will arrive already in KDE Gear 22.04, Plasma 5.24 and Frameworks 5.90.

To see all the following with more details (links) and screenshots, it is best to read the original article in english (Google Translate).

New Features Coming to KDE

• Now you can change the wallpaper for any image using its context menu that appears with the right click (Fushan Wen, Plasma 5.24).
• It is now possible to manually reverse the alignment of the Task Manager tasks, which can be useful in some panel configurations, including having a Task Manager alongside a Global Menu (Tanbir Jishan, Plasma 5.24).
• In the Plasma Wayland session, there is now a drawing tablet page in System Preferences, although it doesn't have much at the moment (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.24).
• It is now possible for Global Themes to specify and change Latte Dock layouts (Michail Vourlakos, Plasma 5.24).

Bug fixes and performance improvements

• Restarting Elisa no longer removes files from the playlist that were added using the "Files" view (Matthieu Gallien, Elisa 21.12.1).
• All Elisa icons now completely change their colors as expected when the global color scheme is changed (Nate Graham, Elisa 21.12.1).
• Hovering over Gwenview's zoom combo box to change the zoom level now works more predictably and reliably (Felix Ernst, Gwenview 21.12.1).
• In the Plasma Wayland session:
  • The setting to have Spectacle automatically copy a freshly taken screenshot to the clipboard when invoked using global keyboard shortcuts now works (Méven Car, Spectacle 22.04).
  • Mouse and touchpad settings that allow toggling between "Flat" and "Adaptive" acceleration profiles now work (Arjen Hiemstra, Plasma 5.23.5).
  • Applying a window rule "No title bar and frame" no longer makes the window super small (Ismael Asensio, Plasma 5.23.5).
  • Changing activities no longer causes a strange dummy entry to appear in the task manager (David Redondo, Plasma 5.23.5).
  • Several Chromium-based web browsers now display their windows correctly (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.24).
  • Now you can use the keyboard shortcut Meta + Tab to cycle through more than two activities at the same time (David Redondo, Plasma 5.24).
  • The "Minimize all windows" applet now works (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.24).
  • Drag and drop now works on FreeBSD distributions (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.24).
• Fixed a memory leak in the thumbnail preview generator (Waqar Ahmed, kio-extras 22.04).
• Konsole scrolling performance is now 2x faster. (Waqar Ahmed, Konsole 22.04).
• Fixed various memory leaks that could cause KWin to crash when opening various third-party apps or the new Overview effect (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.23.5).
• System Preferences no longer hangs sometimes when trying to install or update global themes (David Edmundson, Plasma 5.23.5).
• The Kickoff app launcher no longer fails to search correctly when there are multiple instances of it (Noah Davis, Plasma 5.23.5).
• Searching for installed apps in Discover no longer shows all Flatpak apps, regardless of the installation status (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.23.5).
• Plasma no longer sometimes crashes when unmounting a removable disk using the Disks applet (Fushan Wen, Plasma 5.24).
• The "Show in all activities" option in the Task Manager context menu works again (Fushan Wen, Plasma 5.24).
• When rotating a monitor that is displaying content in full screen, the content is redisplayed correctly (Jiya Dong, Plasma 5.24).
• Pressing the Escape key while dragging a panel applet in edit mode now cancels the drag instead of making it strangely stuck where it is (Ismael Asensio, Plasma 5.24).
• The first of the upcoming multi-display fixes has been merged, which should help the panels and desktops blend in when the displays are removed and replaced (Marco Martin, Plasma 5.24).
• Linked buttons in GTK applications designed with the Breeze GTK theme now have a raised (highlighted) appearance and joint so that they can be said to be linked (Jan Blackquill, Plasma 5.24).
• Fixed the way KDE Connect could crash with certain clipboard texts (Méven car, Frameworks 5.90).
• Certain tooltips in Plasma applets no longer show visual corner glitches when using the Breeze Plasma theme (Noah Davis, Frameworks 5.90).
• Indeterminate progress bars no longer visually overflow while animating (Noah Davis, Frameworks 5.90).

Improvements in the user's interface

• When using Okular's "Digitally Sign" function, it now immediately warns if there are no valid digital certificates, instead of allowing first to try to sign and then warn (Albert Astals Cid, Okular 22.04).
• When it comes to using the Gwenview camera importer without the support package you require, it now detects it and guides you to install it (Fushan Wen, Gwenview 22.04).
• Discover now allows you to open and install Flatpak applications downloaded locally from repos that are not active on the system, and says that installing them will add their repo (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.24).
• It is now possible to open the Information Center via a button on the "About this System" page in System Preferences (Harald Sitter, Plasma 5.24).
• When using system-wide double-click settings, in Dolphin you can now ctrl-double-click a folder to open it in a new tab, and shift-double-click a folder to open it in a new window (Alessio Bonfiglio , Dolphin 22.04).
• Searching for "Version" now finds the Information Center page "About this System" (Nikolai Weitkemper, Plasma 5.24).
• The Display and Monitor page of System Preferences now shows the scale factor used for each display in the display view of the screen (Méven Car, Plasma 5.24).
• When uploading an image to Imgur, the result is now shown through a system notification and the delete link is now also shown, so that the uploaded image can be deleted if something has been uploaded that we did not want or regret (Nicolas Fella, Frameworks 5.90).
• Status jobs performed by KDE software no longer generate a notification saying "Browsing" as they are not useful or actionable at all; instead, operations are performed silently (Nicolas Fella, Frameworks 5.90).

When will this all come to KDE?

Plasma 5.23.5 will arrive on January 4, KDE Gear 21.12.1 two days later, on the 6th, and KDE Frameworks 5.90 two later, on the 8. We will be able to use Plasma 5.24 from February 8th. 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.