KDE Plasma 5.26 has been relaunched as the latest stable series of this widely-acclaimed GNU/Linux distribution environment, including mobile devices and smart TVs.
KDE Plasma 5.26 is working on a series of exciting new features, starting with a new user interface for smart TVs called Plasma Bigscreen. KDE''s new Plasma Bigscreen interface is compatible with postmarketOS or Manjaro Linux, and promises to transform your TV or set-top box (STB) into a fully hackable device.
Plasma Bigscreen is a new web browser for a deep-immersed Big Screen experience, as well as a Plank Player, a multimedia player for playing local files, both of whom are fully controlled with the remote control of your television or set-top box.
The KDE Plasma 5.26 release, which talks about Wayland, adds a number of significant modifications, including the ability to force the Maliit virtual keyboard to appear when in Touch mode, the ability to adjust the screen maps of a graphics tablet to your screen coordinates, and the ability to disable middle-click paste.
The Plasma Wayland session should now be able to improve on HiDPI displays thanks to two approaches of scaling apps, which now look much better than they had previously. The first one uses a compositor for uniform scaling with blurriness, while the second one is done by the apps themselves, citing pre-existing X11 HiDPI capabilities to reduce blurriness.
Additional significant improvements in the KDE Plasma 5.26 desktop environment include the addition of re-bindable mouse buttons for multi-button mice so you may assign keystrokes or keyboard shortcuts, full-screen reader support for all Plasma widgets, keyboard navigation support in several applets, and a new Compact mode for the Kickoff applications menu.
The Plasma Discover graphical package manager now supports displaying content ratings of apps, enables the frequency of update notifications, a new feature to change the name used for an app review, a new Share button on an apps details page to enable users to share apps for free.
When using a horizontal panel, the Kickoff applications menu has been updated as well to display text and remove its icon, and the Night Color page in System Settings received a fresh option to allow you to change the day color, as well as the ability to use a map to select a manual location, and the Task Switcher was given the possibility to sort minimized tasks to be listed after all unminimized tasks.
The Plasma System Monitor app and plasma widgets of the same name now support computing sensors for minimum, maximum, and average temperature and frequency. It is also now possible to add a keyboard shortcut for activating the Present Windows effect when showing only the windows from the current app on the current workspace.
KDE Plasma 5.26 provides additional support for configuring what happens when you activate a window on another workspace, assistance for setting a default paper size when printing, support for changing the way the system formats addresses, names, and phone numbers, and support for Light and Dark wallpapers.
For now, please note that KDE Plasma 5.26 comes with support for the Array, F5, and Fortinet protocols in the Plasma Network manager''s OpenConnect VPN, the ability for Global Themes to modify the titlebar buttons, as well as support for a broad range of hardware and firmware in the About This System page in System Settings, as well as the possibility to set an alternate calendar inside the main calendar.
For a more stable and reliable Plasma desktop experience, there are also numerous bug fixes and performance improvements. Check out the full changelog for more details and keep an eye on the stable software repositories of your favorite GNU/Linux distribution for the KDE Plasma 5.26 desktop environment.