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KDE Plasma 5.15 Released (kde.org)

Posted by BeauHD on from the new-and-improved dept.

jrepin writes: Today, KDE launched Plasma 5.15, the first stable release of the popular desktop environment in 2019. For this release the Plasma team has focused on hunting down and removing all the paper cuts that slow you down. Plasma 5.15 brings a number of changes to the configuration interfaces, including more options for complex network configurations. Many icons have been added or redesigned to make them clearer. Integration with third-party technologies like GTK and Firefox has been improved substantially. Discover, Plasma's software and add-on installer, has received tons of improvements to help you stay up-to-date and find the tools you need to get your tasks done. For a more detailed list of features/changes, you can browse the full Plasma 5.15 changelog.

4 of 44 comments (clear)

  1. Better but still glitchy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    KDE has improved drastically from the KDE 4 shitshow, but it still feels unfinished and glitchy.

    Also, while again things have improved, the multi-monitor experience in particular still feels half-baked. It has a fancy new prompt when it detects new monitors.. and it shows up _sometimes_, and works _sometimes_, but then other times it doesn't. Also trying to get a panel on each monitor feels like boxing with your computer. You want it on the left screen, it _insists_ on being on the right. You finally trick it into being on the right, you reboot, and it's back on the left.. or on the top maybe.

    Also SDDM sends Microsoft-y chills down my spine even more so than their application chooser. I mean KDE was always the "Windows clone", but yeesh. This isn't even subtle.

    1. Re:Better but still glitchy by Anrego · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It's not even just plasma. The xfce4 panel is the only thing I've ever found to sanely handle my multi-monitor setup, and even then only just. I currently run it with openbox, and that's been my basic setup for the last several years.
      At the insistence of a few people, I recently gave plasma a try (within the last month), and yeah, while much better than KDE4, it's still not there. I think I'm ready to accept a well integrated desktop environment into my life and wouldn't mind changing my workflow a little if everything mostly just work and I could tweak the little things that I really care about. Despite giving it a few weeks however, I just couldn't warm up to it. No one big thing, just a lot of little things that made the experience feel like it was still an unpolished pre-release.

  2. Re: KDE Neon by zwarte+piet · · Score: 3, Funny

    Engineering more crashes in Linux and KDE just to be more equal to Win10 is not gonna happen soon, but you have the source code. Be creative...!

  3. Re:KDE Neon by caseih · · Score: 3, Informative

    To me the default UI theme in Plasma these days looks far more like MacOS than Windows 8/10. Also there are plenty of Plasma themes (which use Qt themes to style the widgets) available to make the desktop look to your liking. Of course many Linux themes for Qt and GTK copy other platforms, but in general Windows clones aren't very popular.