The latest KDE Plasma 5.19 desktop environment is available now and there’s a bunch of updates to experience. Read on.
A brand new KDE Plasma desktop environment is here again with some neat features and updates. A month back when the KDE Plasma 5.19 beta was out – there was huge attention from all over the world about this version of plasma mostly because of the features and updates. And we have now the final release and with this release is out of the gate, the development of next KDE Plasma 5.20 will be on full swing.
Table of Contents
What’s New in KDE Plasma 5.19
Let’s take a look at what’s in store in KDE Plasma 5.19.
KDE Applications
- Dolphin has a nice feature in this release. You can now quickly move or copy the selected files in one pane of a split view into the folder in the other pane.
- Konsole tabs can now be assigned colors. This is handy.
- Plasma Vaults can now use GoCryptFS as an encryption backend.
- Okular document viewer now allows zooming in farther than 1600%.
- Internal links in Markdown documents is improved in Okular.
- Flatpak repositories in use are easier to remove now in Discover.
- KSysGuard has now shows info for systems with more than 12 CPU cores.
- KMail and other Kontact apps can once again connect to Google services, as Google has finally re-authorized access.
- Running an executable script in Konsole from Dolphin and other apps now work again.
System Settings
- Complete system settings application launches on the page you asked when launched within KRunner.
- The Display settings page now shows the aspect ratio for each available screen resolution.
- Plasma’s animation speed has more controls now.
- You can now disable indexing of hidden files along with configuration for individual directories.
- You can get your graphics hardware information in the Info Center.
- A couple of Wayland related updates:
- New option to control mouse and touchpad scroll speed
- New subsurface clipping reduces flickering
- Screen rotation now works for tablets and convertible laptops.
- Apps whose desktop files end in .desktop (such as Telegram) now display their icons on Wayland.
Widgets, Appearances, and Wallpapers
- A new “eye-catching Flow background” wallpaper is introduced in this release and can give your KDE desktop a refreshing look. Also, you can see the creator’s names of desktop wallpapers.
- The System Monitor widgets have been rewritten from scratch and it is now more visually appealing with functionality.
- Plasma now has a consistent design and header area in system tray applets as well as notifications.
- A new set of photographic avatars available for you!
- Sticky notes get usability improvements.
- GTK 3 applications immediately apply a newly selected color scheme and GTK 2 applications no longer have broken colors.
- Overall desktop default fixed-width font size is increased from 9 to 10.
- There are now 48px versions of Breeze theme Places icons, which means that folders now look pixel-perfect in Dolphin when using a 48px size.
Refer to the complete changelog for more details.
Download and Update
If you are running KDE Neon OS with Plasma 5.18 you can update it directly from the Discover app. Open up the Discover app in KDE Neon and check for updates. You should be getting the prompt to update to the latest KDE Plasma 5.19.
Alternatively, you can download the LIVE images from the below link and try.
This is indeed a good release before KDE head out to next major Plasma 5.20 release which is due later this year and it’s already looking exciting. Whether you are a fan of KDE or not, you should give KDE Plasma a try for some nice and refreshing desktop appearance. Sometimes, users say that KDE is resource-intensive due to its glossy look; but you should try the latest version which is far more optimized now and reports says that it is less resource-intensive than XFCE.
Via release annoucement.
