This weekend Nate Graham posted an article highlighting support for sound themes in Plasma 6. The next version of the Plasma UI KDE It will be the first of a new series, and it is an important moment in which they want to include many new features. You may think that so many changes will reduce stability, but they have been working on all this for a long time, and it is also the distributions that will decide whether to add it soon or wait a little longer, when the three sixes (Plasma, Qt and Frameworks) are somewhat more mature.
For the sound themes to be applied, there need to be settings, and that's another new thing coming in Plasma 6: a page in System Preferences that lets you choose your sound theme. Because it is not that they are going to put sounds and force us to use them; We can choose the set that we like the most. They have not talked about it, but it is likely that more will be downloadable in the future, in the same way that we can do with the general or icon themes.
What's New in KDE Plasma 6
- Significantly reduced cursor latency under heavy load in Plasma Wayland session (Xaver Hugl).
- System Preferences now has a page that allows you to configure the sound theme that you want to use (Ismael Asensio):
- On the Notifications for Apps page of System Preferences, the event settings window has been merged with the main page to offer a cohesive and less fragmented user interface (Ismael Asensio):
- The Digital Clock time zone page now adopts a modern style without frames, fixing your scrolling view within a scrolling view problem (Nate Graham):
- The Networks widget now remembers the last visited tab when closing and reopening or switching to another network (Kai Uwe Broulik).
Not in Plasma 6, but new, Kate 23.12 will receive the ability to sync scroll for split views. This can be used to compare, for example, the code written in a program.
Correction of minor bugs
- Spectacle no longer exits into an exit loop when set to autosave, as well as exiting after manual saves (Noah Davis, Spectacle 23.08).
- Fixed two ways Plasma could crash when quickly unpinning or rearranging pinned apps from Task Manager (Will Horne, Plasma 5.27.7).
- Malformed or malicious desktop files can no longer clutter GTK application icons (Fushan Wen, Plasma 5.27.7).
- Fixed a recent regression that could cause grouped Task Manager tasks to display incorrect window thumbnails in tooltips (Fushan Wen, Plasma 5.27.7).
- The “Login Screen (SDDM)” page of System Preferences now internally remembers the last thing the login screen wallpaper was set to (Fabian Vogt, Plasma 5.27.7).
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 94 bugs.
When will this all come to KDE?
plasma 5.27.7 will arrive on Tuesday, September 19, and there is still no confirmed date on Frameworks 6.0 (5.109 should arrive on August 12). KDE Gear 23.08 will be available on August 24, KDE Gear 23.12 will arrive sometime in December, and Plasma 6 will arrive in the second half of 2023. The exact arrival date of Plasma 6 is also unknown, but there is a page where they will report about the releases of the next version of the KDE desktop. It is almost certain that it will arrive before the end of this 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.