The developers of the KDE project released recently the launch of version 5.20 of the KDE Plasma desktop environment, a massive version that introduces countless new features and improvements.
Utilities and toolssuch as dashboards, task manager, notifications, and system settings, have been revised to make them more usable, efficient and easy to use, reads an announcement posted by the KDE team.
KDE Plasma version 5.20 introduces a change in task manager only with icons and a slightly thicker default panel. The biggest new features in this latest version include support for center thumbwheel pasting in Wayland, a revamped system settings user page, redesigned OSDs for brightness and volume, Klipper compatibility on Wayland, and SMART monitoring and disk failure notifications.
Clicking through the grouped windows will cycle through them, each one bringing them to the foreground until you reach the document you want. According to the KDE team, it is up to the user to configure these behaviors. You can also keep the settings or abandon them later.
Although this change is less obvious, the system status popup now shows items in a grid instead of a list, and the icon display in the panel can now be configured to configure the icons to scale according to available space on the panel.
The web browser widget also allows you to zoom in and out of your content, to scale it, by holding down the [Ctrl] key and rolling the mouse wheel.
This version comes with revamped Digital Clock widget. It is now more compact and shows today's date by default. In all KDE applications in general, each toolbar button that displays a menu when clicked now displays a downward-pointing arrow to indicate the menu.
Enhanced on-screen displays, on-screen displays have been redesigned to be less distracting. When using the “increase maximum volume” setting, the on-screen volume display subtly alerts you when you exceed the volume by 100%.
The team brought this new feature into KDE Plasma 5.20 to improve hearing and protect your eardrums. Finally, when the screen brightness changes, the transition is now smooth, according to the announcement of the launch of this version.
Changes in the Kwin window manager, these changes affect the ease of use and the way you interact with your Plasma workspace.
Similarly, a window can be moved within a section of the screen to take up half or a quarter of the available space using a keyboard shortcut.
Revised notification system, according to the KDE team, the user is notified when their system is about to run out of space on your disk, even if your home directory is on another partition.
This is a very important change that lets you avoid awkward situations where you can't even save changes anymore in a document because you have run out of space on your hard drive.
The subprogram "Device Notifier" has been renamed to "Disks & Devices" And now it's easier to use, according to the ad, because now you can see all the disks, not just the removable ones.
Another new feature that makes things easier is that the pages "Standard Shortcuts" and "Global Shortcuts" have been combined and they are simply called "Shortcuts."
In addition, the Auto Launch, Bluetooth and User Manager pages have been redesigned by modern user interface standards, read the KDE team article.
Wayland improvements, the KDE team has taken Wayland fixes to the next level with this version.
For example, Klipper Clipboard Utility and Wheel Click Paste are now fully operational at Wayland, and Krunner, the Application Launcher, KDE's Find and Convert utility, now appears in the right place when you are using a top panel.
Mouse and touchpad support is nearly identical to their X counterparts and the screen cast is also compatible with Plasma 5.20.
The task manager shows window thumbnails and overall the entire desktop is more stable and no longer crashes except Xwayland. OBS Studio, which is live streaming and screen recording software, should now work properly in Wayland on KDE Plasma 5.20.