How do you make a great desktop into a fantastic desktop? Easy — chip away at the rough bits, polish the good stuff, and add awesomeness. After 29 years of development, KDE’s got the foundation nailed down. Plasma 6.5 is all about fine-tuning, fresh features, and a making everything smooth and sleek for everyone.
Ready to see what’s new? Let’s dive into Plasma 6.5!
Highlights:
- Automatic Theme Transitions: Configure when your theme will transition from light to dark and back.
- Caret Text Navigation: Zoom now swoops in to where you type
- KRunner Fuzzy Search: Even if you type it wrong, KRunner will find it!
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Aww, I will always love XFCE and save a place for it in my heart … but I moved to Plasma 2 years ago and haven’t really looked back either >_>
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Agreed. I was actually afraid to modify my KDE desktop for months because of the trauma sustained from just trying to customize Gnome a bit. My configuration is still pretty vanilla, but it’s got enough personal flair to it that it feels uniquely mine and I’m the happiest I’ve been.
GNOME is Mac’s DE for Linux.
Including the limitations of options, albeit worse than Apple. I really don’t understand the hubris of that team.
I’d argue that it’s Android’s DE for Linux.
At least Mac has the whole menu bar going for it. I started out on GNOME but the empty bar in the top just bothered me. Then I went XFCE but I kept running into small annoyances, that probably could be fixed somehow but I don’t really have time to fight/tweak my computer. And now I’m on Plasma and so far it just works and the small tweaks I have done were quick.
Well, itwas a long road getting front he first Plasma version to today’s
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Yeah, I went down a similar path.
It turns out ever since a few years ago, Plasma takes comparable resources to XFCE.
What really sent me over the edge was Plasma’s support for Wayland.
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happens to me on random websites and it wakes me tf up when i’m surfing just before bed. lol
What a banger release! Last time they focused on bug hunting, this time its about features. This ping pong focused development is very nice.
- KRunner Fuzzy Search: Not earth shattering, but welcome. I hope there is a way to dynamically force to enable or disable it. Sometimes fuzzy search can be in the way (I know it from other fuzzy search tools). My recommendation is
~character to toggle the functionality:"~file"to enable fuzzy in example, if its disabled by default. I may even make a suggestion in the issue tracker, but I don’t know what options they integrated into it yet.
- KRunner Fuzzy Search: Not earth shattering, but welcome. I hope there is a way to dynamically force to enable or disable it. Sometimes fuzzy search can be in the way (I know it from other fuzzy search tools). My recommendation is
Great, but when kbigscreen.
I need a decent Chromecast replacement
biKscreen
BigSkreen
It’s the little things that matter.
Every time I try KDE I get burned by some bugs. How is stability?
Baloo for example was some source of pain for me. And if I look at the bug tracker I do not get confidant. https://bugs.kde.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=UNCONFIRMED&bug_status=CONFIRMED&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&field0-0-0=product&field0-0-1=component&field0-0-2=alias&field0-0-3=short_desc&field0-0-4=status_whiteboard&field0-0-5=content&order=changeddate+DESC%2Cbug_status%2Cpriority%2Cassigned_to%2Cbug_id&query_format=advanced&type0-0-0=substring&type0-0-1=substring&type0-0-2=substring&type0-0-3=substring&type0-0-4=substring&type0-0-5=matches&value0-0-0=baloo&value0-0-1=baloo&value0-0-2=baloo&value0-0-3=baloo&value0-0-4=baloo&value0-0-5="baloo"
Works fine for me. ¯\_( ᵔ ~ ᵔ )_/¯
the only issues I had with KDE when I was recently using it all revolved around the panel. Random crashes with “too much” interaction. Adding widgets for the panel or desktop is still to this day hit or miss. clicking the “get new widget” option is a roll of the dice if it will actually work or not or even find the thing you want. It’s still horrible at loading stuff in there. and installing whatever, again, is a roll of the dice if it will actually do it or not.
I like KDE, it’s a good and solid DE but man do they really need to focus on fixing the panels and the installation/discovery of widgets. The alternative is using the pling store and that’s just a headache on it’s own.
Am I the only one who thinks it looks ugly? Don’t get me wrong, they are improving it in many ways and it’s going in the right direction, plus a ton of features and customizability, but when I look at Gnome I don’t doubt for a second where I want to be.
They are two opposite styles of UI.
However, KDE has a fuckton of customization possibilities that I have always been dreaming of in GNOME.
And I’m saying this as a GNOME guy, absolutely zero fanboyism here.
I don’t think anyone would think you were a fanboy, just beacuse KDE has ton of configuration and customization. That’s the opposite of GNOME. I always think of GNOME like Apple, who decides what you can and cannot do, what you are allowed to. I used GNOME 2, then Unity, then GNOME 3 all the way from Ubuntu 2008 to what, 2020 (I forget when I switched to different distro for the first time).
Well, that’s kind of the thing, except for a few things I don’t want to customize it that much, when I’ve tried KDE in the past I just customized it a bit and it looked like shit because I didn’t spend that much time into it. I know you can make it look pretty, but I’d rather waste that time learning how to use Hyperland to be honest since it’s way more customizable and offers something else completely. Except for a better KDE Connect integration I don’t think I’m missing anything I would need on Gnome.
I also think Gnome is much prettier than KDE but KDE is a fully working desktop environment that does not need extensions to get it to a working state so here I am.
(Although I would not call KDE ugly)
when I look at Gnome I don’t doubt for a second where I want to be
Yeah me neither, from the other side, lol
You are not the only one. Its a taste. I personally like the KDE look the most, its beautiful to me. No other desktop environment looks this good.
A colleague always complains that KDE looks like Windows. She does also get jealous, though, when she sees me using poweruser features.
End of 2025 and still missing a replacement for Khotkeys. Plasma is still great all in all, but after almost two decades on KDE I feel like I’ve outgrown it and tried to switch away a couple times now. Time to stop procrastinating and getting on with writing my own wlroots compositor.
Unfortunately, KDE is quantity over quality. I like the look and feel for the most part, but out of all the mainstream DEs, I’d say it’s the buggiest. GNOME with too many extensions is absolutely less stable, but vanilla KDE is embarrassing for stability, even on Linux Approved hardware.
If you knew/remember the first days of KDE 5, it was the buggiest DE ever invented at that time. However nowadays I barely even see any bug in KDE, at least for my use cases. And I’m a WM guy who use KDE out of laziness.
Came to say what most have already: It works already as well / better than Gnome, doesn’t require superduper hardware, stable, why the feck did I wait until 2025 to try it? Not looking back.
honestly I would say it hasn’t really gotten into it’s groove/good until like a few months into this year. It’s gotten A LOT better than what it was. So waiting until now to try it was a good call actually.
