Power Management Enhancements
KDE Plasma 6.2 introduces a range of power management improvements, providing greater control over system behavior. Users can now adjust brightness settings on a per-monitor basis, giving them more granular control over their display's illumination. The update also addresses the issue of applications interfering with sleep or screen locking, allowing users to override these limitations.
A new keyboard shortcut, Meta+B, enables seamless cycling through different power profiles, offering users quick access to various power-saving options. Furthermore, the Battery Monitor widget now displays a power profile badge on its icon, providing a visual indication of the current power profile. This widget has also been enhanced to remain visible even while the system is charging, offering continuous battery status updates.
Visual Enhancements
KDE Plasma 6.2 introduces a novel tone mapping feature in the KWin compositor, designed to enhance image quality and visual fidelity. This feature complements improved brightness handling for HDR and ICC profiles, ensuring a more nuanced and accurate display of visuals. The update also brings performance improvements for HDR content, delivering a smoother and more immersive visual experience.
Accessibility Features
KDE Plasma 6.2 prioritizes accessibility, adding several new features to enhance the user experience for individuals with disabilities. Colorblindness filters are now integrated into the Accessibility KCM, providing users with options to adjust color palettes for improved readability and visual comfort.
Full Sticky Keys support is now available on Wayland, enabling users to activate modifier keys by pressing them multiple times. The Accessibility KCM UI has also undergone a comprehensive overhaul, making it more intuitive and accessible for all users.
Input Device Enhancements
The release includes notable improvements for input devices, offering users greater control and customization. The update introduces support for enabling the “autoscrolling” feature in the Libinput driver, allowing for seamless scrolling through documents and web pages. Additionally, users can now disable smooth scrolling in KDE applications, providing a more precise and controlled scrolling experience.
Plasma Discover Enhancements
Plasma Discover, KDE's graphical package manager and app store, has been enhanced with several new features in KDE Plasma 6.2. The update includes support for the postmarketOS mobile operating system, enabling users to install and manage applications for their mobile devices.
The release also adds the ability to shut down the system after applying an offline system update, providing a seamless and convenient update process. Users can now access more accurate license information for applications, ensuring greater transparency and clarity. Furthermore, the app review system has been improved, enhancing the discovery process and providing more valuable feedback.
Networking Enhancements
KDE Plasma 6.2 features enhanced networking capabilities, improving connectivity and security. The update includes support for Enhanced Open (OWE) Wi-Fi security, offering robust protection against potential network vulnerabilities. Additionally, WebAuth support has been added for SAML-based network authentication, facilitating secure access to networks and services.
System Settings Enhancements
The System Settings application has received a significant overhaul in KDE Plasma 6.2, with redesigned user interfaces for the Accessibility, Keyboard, and Thunderbolt KCM modules. These improvements enhance usability and provide a more streamlined experience for configuring system settings.
Digital Artist Enhancements
KDE Plasma 6.2 brings a range of improvements for digital artists, enhancing their workflow and creative capabilities. A new drawing tablet calibration wizard simplifies the process of configuring drawing tablets for optimal performance. Users can now rebind the drawing tablet stylus buttons to different types of mouse clicks, allowing for customized shortcuts and commands.
The update introduces the ability to map the drawing tablet area to the screen area, ensuring accurate and responsive input. A test mode for drawing tablet settings enables users to fine-tune their configurations for precise control. Additionally, KWin now supports the Wayland color management protocol, enabling seamless integration with drawing tablet features. Users can now also utilize the color profile data built into their monitor, ensuring accurate and consistent color representation.
Other Notable Changes
Beyond the major features, KDE Plasma 6.2 brings a plethora of smaller yet significant improvements. The System Tray expanded grid view has been optimized for a better layout, ensuring a more organized and visually appealing presentation of system icons. The Widget Explorer UX has been revamped, making it more user-friendly and efficient.
The Welcome Center now features rich visualizations of Plasma features, providing a more engaging and informative introduction to the desktop environment. Accent color settings now respect the Breeze Dark Plasma theme and the Breeze Twilight global theme, ensuring consistent and visually appealing color schemes throughout the system.
KDE Plasma 6.2 introduces a new sound effect when connecting or disconnecting a screen, providing an audible cue for users. The update also adds the option to disable window outlines in the Pager widget, offering a cleaner and more minimalist visual experience. A new Memory page has been added to the Info Center app, providing users with detailed information about system memory usage.
The release introduces an alpha-modifier KWin protocol, enabling developers to create more dynamic and interactive user interface elements. Initial implementation of SVG cursor theming allows users to customize their cursor appearance with visually engaging graphics.
Finally, KDE Plasma 6.2 now includes a once-a-year donation request notification, encouraging users to support the KDE project and its ongoing development efforts.
Changes and Improvements
This release introduces some notable changes, including a unified “Open With” dialog across all KDE applications, ensuring a consistent and intuitive experience. The KWin Morphing Popups effect has been removed due to persistent bugs, streamlining the user experience.
Users can now drag Breeze-themed windows only from header areas by default, enhancing usability and reducing accidental window movements. The ability to name custom shortcuts allows for more organized and easily recognizable keyboard shortcuts.
The “Minimize All” widget has been refined to only minimize windows on the current virtual desktop and activity, reducing the chance of unintended window minimization and providing a more focused user experience.
Availability
KDE Plasma 6.2 will soon be available in the stable software repositories of several popular rolling-release distributions, including KDE neon, openSUSE Tumbleweed, Arch Linux, and others. This release promises a smoother, more powerful, and visually appealing desktop experience for users of all skill levels.
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