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Posted
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BeauHD
ber 21, 2025 @03:25PM
from the new-and-improved dept.
"Plasma is a popular desktop (and mobile) environment for GNU/Linux and other UNIX-like operating systems," writes longtime Slashdot reader jrepin. "Among other things, it also powers the desktop mode of the Steam Deck gaming handheld. The KDE community today announced the latest release: Plasma 6.5." From the announcement: This fresh new release is all about fine-tuning, fresh features, and a making everything smooth and sleek for everyone. The new version brings automatic light-to-dark theme switching based on the time of day. You can configure which global themes it switches between. You can also configure whether you want the wallpaper to switch between its light and dark versions based on the color scheme, the time of day, or be always light or dark.
Next up is a "Pinned clipboard items" feature, which lets you save text you use regularly into the clipboard. Breeze-themed windows will now have the same level of roundness in all four corners, even the bottom one. Flatpak Permissions page has been transformed into a general Application Permissions page, where you can configure applications' ability to do things like take screenshots and accept remote control requests. The utility that reads the level of ink or toner from your printer now informs you when it's running low or empty.
For the gamers out there, you can now see more relevant info about game controllers on System Settings' Game Controller page. Artists among you can now configure any rotary dials and touch rings on your drawing tablet. Users sensitive to color can now make use of a grayscale color filter, which desaturates or removes color systemwide.
Plasma 6.5 implements support for an experimental version of the Wayland picture-in-picture protocol that promises to allow apps like Firefox to eventually display proper PiP windows that stay above others automatically. Support for "overlay planes" was added, which can reduce CPU usage and power draw when displaying full-screen content using a compatible GPU. You can read more about these and many other new features in the Plasma 6.5 release announcement and complete changelog.
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
bycen1 ( 2915315 ) writes:
I've been running Debian with KDE for a few years now and it's pretty much perfect. Just recently upgraded to Debian 13 and Plasma 6 and yes, I had to overcome a few issues during upgrade and sure, you'll face an occasional Linux glitch but it is essentially rock solid. If you are just a little bit tech savvy you can overcome these small issues and enjoy it. I don't have to care about upgrades for the next 2+ years on an LTS distro. During that period, I will mostly be getting just security udates and there
bysound+vision ( 884283 ) writes:
The version of Plasma in Debian 13 seemed excellent during the brief time I used it. The version in Ubuntu 24.04 wasn't quite as good, and it's still on X Windows. But still much better than Gnome.
bysg_oneill ( 159032 ) writes:
How is it for folks more atuned to Gnome? Back in the ancient days I used to use KDE but came to find it bloated and a little too expensive on the machines I'd run it on. Nowdays though, I'm finding gnome a little too sparse and it seems like even baseline laptops have caught up, power wise.
byjrepin ( 667425 ) writes:
Not only this, nowdays KDE Plasma is lighter on CPU and memory than GNOME despite being much more feature-full and customizable and such. And yeah it is so customizable you can configure it to look and work almost exactly as other desktops. So yeah it reaquires a bit of work to do it but you can turin it almost into what GNOME does.
bybrickhouse98 ( 4677765 ) writes:
Honestly, it's ok enough to use but very cluttered. That and it is far, far uglier than Gnome which has a more cohesive experience. I've set some people up with Debian KDE and they like it but I myself won't switch from Gnome personally. JMHO.
bymea_culpa ( 145339 ) writes:
Been using Plasma on FC42 and love it.
bydremon ( 735466 ) writes:
Recent KDE Plasma versions are stable, polished, fully customizable. Perfect? probably not, there are some occasional issues, but nothing truly irritating. I use openSUSE Tumbleweed (rolling distro) as a main OS on my laptop and desktop. While many distributions focus on GNOME environment, Tumbleweed has first-class support for Plasma. Wayland works great out of the box, also for most third-party apps. Built-in snapshot support makes sure the system stays stable all the time. As a software engineer, I think it's the best setup I can have today.
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byJohn.Banister ( 1291556 ) * writes:
My primary personal use OS has been OpenSuse with KDE since November 2014 and Tumbleweed since 2017. I am not a software engineer, but I'm very happy with Tumbleweed Plasma nonetheless.
bytest321 ( 8891681 ) writes:
KDE used to be the cathedral of customization
KDE is still the cathedral of customization.
* KDE lets you customize the curvature radius in pixels of the rounded corners; choose a different curvature radius for in-focus and inactive windows; the existence of an animation in between the two; activate or de-activate the rounded corners in tiled and/or in maximized windows; see Plasma 6.3 last May https://ubuntuhandbook.org/ind... [ubuntuhandbook.org]
* The new thing in Plasma 6.5 is now the borderless windows also can have bottom rounded corners. This time it's a Breeze effect
byjrepin ( 667425 ) writes:
I agree. I also find openSUSE (using Tumbleweed and Slowroll) to be one of the best when it comes to proper KDE Plasma support (next to KDE Neon, Fedora and Kubuntu). Also their YaST system configuration GUI os one of the thngs many other distros do not have. I have only used Mandriva/Mageia which had something similar. And openSUSE also has great integration of BTRFS snappshotting and snapper and their system configuration utilities. So snappshost are automatically made when changing system settings or ins
● threshold.
byallo ( 1728082 ) writes:
People may laugh about things like the same roundness, but I appreciate how KDE pays attention to detail and also fixes the small issues. Maybe you didn't notice the roundness, but what about when the popup that opens next to a panel isn't completely aligned? No show stopper, but nevertheless something one notices until they fix it. Certain other projects would probably close the bug or let it expire with "no activity since 30 days" in their bugtracker, but KDE tries to catch them all.
byElektroschock ( 659467 ) writes:
Calling KDE Plasma is like calling Linux GNU/Linux. You will find some persons who do that.
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