KDE Plasma 6.4 is still working to fine-tune the next version of its graphical environment. It will be released in ten days, and it will bring a lot of new features. So many that I think it will be the most significant major update since 6.0. Right now, they don't include any new features, as they're frozen, but they don't need them either. Furthermore, the next iteration should arrive by the end of 2025.
The following is the list with the most outstanding news that have taken place over the past week. Anyone who wants to see the bugs fixed can also visit Nate's original post, which we'll link to at the end of this article.
KDE interface improvements
plasma 6.4
- On the Wi-Fi & Internet page of System Preferences, the network list is now fully keyboard navigable and uses the standard KDE list item style.
- The Kicker App Launcher widget's favorites list is now fully accessible via the keyboard.
- The ability to drag displays onto other displays in the Display & Monitor page of System Preferences has been disabled because this resulted in unsupported display layouts and caused many strange errors throughout the system.
- Waking a computer from sleep by pressing the power button no longer displays the logout screen after the system wakes and you unlock it.
- Improvements have been made to the Digital Clock widget configuration window interface, achieving better overall alignment.
- When there is a complex panel layout with variable-length panels on adjacent screen edges, horizontal panels now always have priority to fill the empty space, preventing multiple panels from competing for the same space and overlapping.
- Increased the visibility of per-process CPU line graphs in System Monitor for selected list items.
plasma 6.5
- Changing the time interval on the Energy page of the Information Center now smoothly animates the chart view to show the new time interval.
- The Fonts page in System Preferences now prevents system crashes when setting fonts smaller than 4 pt. Additionally, if you set a font size between 5 and 6 pt, it warns that Plasma isn't designed to handle this and that display scaling might be a better solution.
- The “Your disk has problems” notification text now fits correctly in the header.
Performance and technical improvements in KDE
plasma 6.4
- Improved cursor smoothness and reduced flickering associated with using the variable refresh rate feature.
- Unnecessary CPU usage was further reduced on the System Monitor Processes page. Many “Page flip failed!” warnings, which, while ignorable, appeared alarming in the system log when watching a full-screen video with MPV, were avoided.
plasma 6.5
- If you change the keyboard layout using the kwriteconfig command-line tool, those changes now take effect immediately.
Coming soon to your KDE distribution
As for bugs, the 3 high-priority bugs remain, and the 25-minute bugs have been reduced from 21 to 15.
KDE Plasma 6.3.6 is expected to arrive on July 8, Plasma 6.4 on June 17, and Frameworks 6.15 on July 13.
Images and content: KDE blog.