Few days ago Plasma 5.25 custom shell beta release released, which is now available for testing.
In this beta version that is presented, it is highlighted that in the configurator, the page to configure the general theme has been redesigned. You can selectively apply theme elements, such as desktop and application style, fonts, colors, window frames, icons, and cursors, as well as apply a separate theme to the home screen interface and lock screen.
It is also highlighted that added the ability to apply the highlight color of active elements (accent) in relation to the desktop background, as well as using an accent color for headers and changing the hue of the entire color scheme. The Breeze Classic theme has built-in support for coloring headers with an accent color.
In addition to this, it is also highlighted that added setting to control whether display control mode touch is enabled (On x11 systems, you can only enable or disable touchscreen mode by default, and when using wayland, you can also automatically set the desktop to touchscreen mode when a special event occurs from the device.) When touch screen mode is enabled, the indents between icons on the taskbar automatically increase.
In the list of open documents recently in the context menu of the task manager, display of unrelated items is allowed with files, for example, recent connections to remote desktops can be displayed.
El KWin window manager supports the use of shaders in scripts with the implementation of effects. KWin-KCM scripts translated to QML. A new fusion effect has been added and the change effects have been improved.
Improved support for on-screen gestures, Besides that se added the ability to activate the overview mode with gestures on the touch screen or touch panel. Added the ability to use gestures anchored to the edges of the screen in scripted effects.
On the system information page (Information Center), the general information in the "About this system" block has been expanded and a new "Firmware Security" page has been added, which, for example, shows whether UEFI Secure Boot is enabled.
Of the other changes highlights of this beta version:
- In the Program Control Center (Discover), the display of permissions for applications in Flatpak format is provided. The sidebar shows all the subcategories of the selected app category.
- The page with information about the application has been completely redesigned.
- Added display of information about the selected desktop background (name, author) in the settings.
- Continuous improvement of the session based on the Wayland protocol.
- Support for floating panels is provided for layout themes.
- A fade effect has been added to smoothly switch between the old and new color schemes.
- Keyboard navigation is enabled in panels and in the system tray.
- Added a separate animation effect that is applied when an incorrect password is entered.
- Added a dialog for managing widget groups (Containment) on the screen in edit mode, which allows you to visually control the placement of panels and applets relative to different monitors.
- The position of the icons in Folder View mode is saved with reference to the screen resolution.
Finally, if you are interested in being able to know more about it, you can consult the details in the following link.
Try the KDE Plasma 5.25 beta
For those interested in this new version, you can test the new version via a live build from the openSUSE project and a build from the KDE Neon Testing edition project. On this page you can find packages for various distributions.
As for the release of the stable version, it is mentioned that it is scheduled for June 14.