Plasma 6.1: the BEST LINUX DESKTOP (in my opinion)

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Published on June 19, 2024 12:00:00 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMZrIXjxrLI

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Timecodes:
00:00 Intro
00:50 Sponsor: Ground News
02:29 Edit Mode
05:17 Desktop changes
10:10 Under the hood
12:48 Plasma is the best?
15:01 Sponsor: Tuxedo Computers
16:02 Support the channel

#plasma #linuxdesktop #kdeplasma #linux

So, the major change here is the new edit mode for Plasma's desktop.
For example, if you want to configure the panel, you just left click it, and the pop-up introduced in plasma 6 appears on the right, with your desktop moving out of the way. The command bar appears on top of the desktop, and if you want to add a widget, the widget sidebar makes the desktop move right, so you can drag things where you want them. You also get a clear "exit edit mode" button" in the top right of the desktop.

You also get some changes to the desktop itself. The one everyone should notice first, is the new rounded corners everywhere. Plasma already has these in a lot of places, but they were inconsistent, and didn't have the same radius everywhere.

For Wayland users, you now get a form of session restore: it will restore your open apps from the last session before you logged out or restarted your PC.Wayland users also get "corner and edge barriers". You can set these in the display settings, and they're basically an additional distance you can move your mouse cursor in before it moves to another display.

The overview effect now has a better layout algorithm as well, you can sync your computer's keyboard backlight color to your plasma accent color.

You'll also get the "shake cursor to find it" effect enabled by default, you can middle click the power and battery applet in the tray to block or unblock automatic sleep and screen lock, and you can scroll over that applet to switch between power profiles.

Kwin now supports triple buffering on Wayland, meaning that when you're using weaker integrated GPUs. The explicit sync protocol has also been implemented.

Another important change is that you can now set a single key as a shortcut, so for example you can decide you want to trigger the overview by pressing Super, something you needed the command line to set previously. Same with mouse buttons, you can map them to a single modifier key.

Plasma 6.1 also added support for the Input Capture Portal, letting applications capture the input from a device, like a mouse or keyboard. This means apps like Barrier for example, which let you seamlessly move mouse and keyboard input between different PCs, could work properly under wayland and KDE.

Plasma 6.1 can also now find color profiles that are embedded in the display itself and use them. Not all displays have that, it's generally provided with their EDID file, but if the file exists, it should be an easy way to have good color accuracy without too much fussing around.

You can also decide to lock your screen without requiring a password to unlock it, if you just want to have a screensaver but don't want to unlock your screen each time, there's a new effect to let you hide the mouse pointer after you've been inactive for a while, although this one is disabled by default, and the keyboard settings page has been rewritten to use more modern components, it now has nice visual tabs up top, bold headers for categories, and it's generally a lot more legible.

There a new Kwin window rule you can use to configure adaptive sync for specific windows,

Finally, Discover, KDE's app store, now lets you replace a flatpak app that is now end of life by another flatpak that is still updated, if that end of life flatpak has provided that information. It can also display banners to show upgrades to a new version of a distro

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