Plasma 6.1: the BEST LINUX DESKTOP (in my opinion)

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Timecodes:
00:00 Intro
00:50 Sponsor: Ground News
02:29 Edit Mode
05:17 Desktop changes
10:10 Under the hood
12:48 Plasma is the best?
15:01 Sponsor: Tuxedo Computers
16:02 Support the channel

#plasma #linuxdesktop #kdeplasma #linux

So, the major change here is the new edit mode for Plasma's desktop.
For example, if you want to configure the panel, you just left click it, and the pop-up introduced in plasma 6 appears on the right, with your desktop moving out of the way. The command bar appears on top of the desktop, and if you want to add a widget, the widget sidebar makes the desktop move right, so you can drag things where you want them. You also get a clear "exit edit mode" button" in the top right of the desktop.

You also get some changes to the desktop itself. The one everyone should notice first, is the new rounded corners everywhere. Plasma already has these in a lot of places, but they were inconsistent, and didn't have the same radius everywhere.

For Wayland users, you now get a form of session restore: it will restore your open apps from the last session before you logged out or restarted your PC.Wayland users also get "corner and edge barriers". You can set these in the display settings, and they're basically an additional distance you can move your mouse cursor in before it moves to another display.

The overview effect now has a better layout algorithm as well, you can sync your computer's keyboard backlight color to your plasma accent color.

You'll also get the "shake cursor to find it" effect enabled by default, you can middle click the power and battery applet in the tray to block or unblock automatic sleep and screen lock, and you can scroll over that applet to switch between power profiles.

Kwin now supports triple buffering on Wayland, meaning that when you're using weaker integrated GPUs. The explicit sync protocol has also been implemented.

Another important change is that you can now set a single key as a shortcut, so for example you can decide you want to trigger the overview by pressing Super, something you needed the command line to set previously. Same with mouse buttons, you can map them to a single modifier key.

Plasma 6.1 also added support for the Input Capture Portal, letting applications capture the input from a device, like a mouse or keyboard. This means apps like Barrier for example, which let you seamlessly move mouse and keyboard input between different PCs, could work properly under wayland and KDE.

Plasma 6.1 can also now find color profiles that are embedded in the display itself and use them. Not all displays have that, it's generally provided with their EDID file, but if the file exists, it should be an easy way to have good color accuracy without too much fussing around.

You can also decide to lock your screen without requiring a password to unlock it, if you just want to have a screensaver but don't want to unlock your screen each time, there's a new effect to let you hide the mouse pointer after you've been inactive for a while, although this one is disabled by default, and the keyboard settings page has been rewritten to use more modern components, it now has nice visual tabs up top, bold headers for categories, and it's generally a lot more legible.

There a new Kwin window rule you can use to configure adaptive sync for specific windows,

Finally, Discover, KDE's app store, now lets you replace a flatpak app that is now end of life by another flatpak that is still updated, if that end of life flatpak has provided that information. It can also display banners to show upgrades to a new version of a distro

[lordkordus]

White text on white background is the best UX design ever

[PetersonSilva]

If you place the panel inside the wallpaper in edit mode, you kind of have to guess how it will look once you exit edit mode. So things like setting panel height can become guesswork instead of straightforward. There may be other reasons but this was the first I thought of and I think it's great that the panel "pops" and stays out of the way, it's a very important element and I think it's intuitive that it is highlighted this way

Agree on the top bar though

[miguelguthridge]

Even though I'm a Gnome user now, KDE was my first love, and it's awesome seeing it grow and improve.

[Akselmoi]

I have rounded the corners. Pray I do not round them further.

[JureRepinc]

KDE Plasma is not just best on GNU/Linux but also in general. I have to use proprietary OSes at work and nothing even comes close to customizability and power of KDE Plasma. All looks just as slick and if not more, especially when you customize it.

[TheRyuKetsueki]

From what I have read, the blurry/pixelated enlarged cursor is a limitation of XCursor directly, something that I think HyprCursor aimed to fix, but you know the rest of the story. I would have submitted a bug to KDE otherwise.

[AndyGait]

The superkey to overview was something I just looking for this morning. 👍

[AslamNazeerShaikh]

Hey thanks for creating this video. Just 3hours ago before you posted this video, i was searching Review video for 6.1 release and i did not got much but thankfully you upload now, its awesome. ❤🎉

[Beryesa.]

Imagine the deck gamers if they jump from 5.27 to 6.1 😂🌟

[coleshredzz]

okay but can we talk about how gorgeous the KDE desktop is getting?

[jackwoodhead]

KDE Plasma is so freaking smooth and polished now. I've switched my gaming PC back and forth between Windows and Linux a few times over the years. Plasma used to be a stuttery mess on my system, Gnome was a little better, but I ended up using XFCE without a compositor because every Linux DE had at least a tiny bit of stutter.

After pretty much exclusively running Windows for the past 2 years, I loaded up Fedora with Plasma 6. To say it was smooth would be an understatement. Windows was smooth (for the most part). Plasma 6 was pure butter. The difference can't be described. Zero micro-stutters. Not even the slightest slowdown while launching apps. Relentlessly smooth transitons and animations. Needless to say, my jaw was hanging low.

And apparerently there were still optimizations that were yet to come out? I love the Gnome interface, but Plasma is easily the best desktop. I'm so excited to switch away from Windows for the last time (but I'll be patient and wait for 6.1 to become mainstream).

[imnotexpecting]

I'm using plasma 6.1 on arch testing and I used the beta. It was extremely smooth without crashes and the NVIDIA support on latest driver was supreme

[KiraHerdman]

I use KDE neon and the biggest fix over 6.05 for me was the disk space widget displaying the correct information and not doubling my SSD space !!!

Keep up the good work.

[diefrogman]

Great 6.1 overview. I guess i will give it another shot after having issues with 6.0. Glad to see Nick is alive. I was worried when I didn't see a news video over the weekend.

[Alyx]

Basically kde plasma 6.1 is a ui and Nvidia update

[Art-of-War-yg]

In my opinion, the feature to start a session with all applications open will be a game changer. As a power user who relies heavily on automation for daily processes, I always open my sessions in a specific order to easily switch between windows using my notebook's touchpad. This helps me focus on what’s important instead of aimlessly navigating around. If my desktop can manage the autostart on its own, it will be a huge win for me.

[nikkehtine]

Plasma is gradually looking less like a "nerdy open source project for Windows immigrants" and much more like a gorgeous, polished commercial-grade solution. Now is the time more worthy of being called "the year of the Linux desktop" and it makes me so happy

[DiverseInBits]

This guy putting the time stamp for the entire ad is so great we don’t need to waste ur time 😊🎉

[DREAMmediaCreativeStudio]

KDE, please bring back the mouse gestures! I'm so used to this and it's now vital to me.

[Kermitk]

Nick with the masterclass in title selection for maximum user engagement. Well played sir.