Yes, it’s that time of the year again when we can check out the many new features and
enhancements of the next major Plasma desktop environment, in this case KDE Plasma 5.21,
due for release in early 2021.
Coming up on run boxing.
Like all major Plasma releases, KDE Plasma 5.21 is packed with lots of exciting changes
and I am happy to break them down to you in this Video that I’ll update from time to
time with more interesting improvements as they are revealed by the KDE development team.
Let’s dig in, shall we? First and foremost, KDE Plasma 5.21 promises to ship with a new
look and feel called consisting of a new “Breeze Twilight” global theme that features a Dark
mode for Plasma and a Light mode for apps, smaller shadows for inactive windows, more
distinct colors for Plasma pop-ups, notifications and windows, as well as colorful icons for
sidebars in settings windows. You can see a preview in the image above!
Apart from the new look and feel, under the hood, KDE Plasma 5.21 promises faster startup
and load times due to the use of the systemd init system on GNU/Linux distribution where
it’s available. While the use of systemd will be optional in Plasma 5.21, the KDE devs
say that it brings several benefits like better logging, better session cleanup during logout,
improved responsiveness and clarity in system monitoring apps, and much more. Better networking
is coming to the Plasma desktop as well. The upcoming Plasma release promises to notify
you when your network connection is poor and you risk to lose Internet access, provide
a fancy new Network Interfaces page in the Info Center app to better view network details,
and offer clearer and more consistent terminology for all network authentication dialogs and
VPN-related notifications. System Settings received many changes during this cycle, such
as support for the “Highlight Changed Settings” feature for the Window Decorations, Window
Rules, Shortcuts, Task Switcher, Window Behavior and General Behavior pages, a new fancy and
simpler layout for the Audio Volume page, the ability to open pages in the icon view
with a single click, as well as support for displaying the same set of frequently-used
items that are shown on the home screen. KRunner, which could be renamed to Plasma Search, also
saw many changes, including the enablement of the Spellcheck plugin by default, an optional
“Keep Open” feature to force it to stay open when losing focus, changes to how uninstalled
apps are being displayed to no longer confuse users, the ability to close it with the return
or enter keys if there’s no text in the text field, and the use of DuckDuckGo-style
“bangs” for invoking web shortcuts. Some KWin and Wayland improvements are present
as well. For example, the “iGPU multi-monitor” feature is now supported on Wayland to let
you use multiple monitors from both a dedicated graphics card and and the on-board Intel GPU,
support for KWin to use a connected VR headset as another screen, changes to the opaque effect
for windows to improve productivity, and support for the Wayland virtual keyboard on GTK apps.
Moreover, it will be possible to configure the Desktop Grid effect to only activate desktops
on click and KWin should no longer eat a lot of CPU resources when drawing hardware-accelerated
cursors. Also, the Plasma Wayland session now allows pasting of text copied inside an
XWayland app, and it won’t crash when dragging an icon from the Kickoff Application Launcher
to the Konsole app or from an XWayland app to a Wayland app. Smaller improvements were
also brought to the layout of the screen chooser OSD, the touchscreen right-click interaction
with files and folder for mobile devices, as well as the multi-monitor support. KDE
Plasma 5.21 also brings a new option to let you change the first day of the week in the
calendar popup of the Digital Clock, as well as a new “Move to Trash” item in the context
menu for file-based notifications. Other than that, you’ll be able to more quickly choose
the available audio streams controlled by the Media Player applet through a new tab
bar, easily configure buttons for individual configurable applets in a single Entries page
in the System Tray config window, and you won’t have to restart Plams after installing
a third-party applet that adds a System Tray item, which will be displayed immediately.
That’s it for now. Check this [RUNBOXING] Channel in the coming weeks for more features
and improvements of the upcoming KDE Plasma 5.21 desktop environment, which is expected
to hit the streets in early February 2021, with the beta version ready for public testing
in mid-January. Until then, I highly recommend that you use the latest stable release, KDE
Plasma 5.20, and update it regularly as new point releases become available.
Thanks for watching,
I hope you enjoyed this video,
If you did hit that thumbs up button, it helps me to make good content for you, other then
that, I will see you in tomorrow's video, peace out.