KDE PLASMA 6 review: was it worth the wait?

[@TheLinuxEXP]

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[@dennisderuiter7071]

For some reason, on Firefox this link closes my browser tab immediately when opening it. Even when right click -> open in new window. Never seen a website do that before. It works in Edge however...?

[@dnkmmr69420]

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[@lachlanwilger5044]

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[@schmecklesonwright]

Thanks for being sponsored by an actual quality VPN instead of shit like Nord, Air, etc.

[@phanipavan6809]

15:35 I fixed that, that was my first contribution to KDE : D

[@zeta_eclipse]

nice :D

[@RenderingUser]

Good job soldier

[@ryoukaip]

props to you

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Nice!!

[@Deggo]

Someone give this man a reward.

[@SyRose901]

I don't know what's happening with the bottom comments, quite the negative feedback towards KDE. I guess the default settings are not for everyone, but come on. I have never used anything else than GNOME, but I can't deny that KDE and XFCE and a lot of others look good as well

[@TomJakobW]

Comments on super fresh videos are always quite… wild and raw. People are used to sifted (through likes/interactions) comments on slightly older vids.

[@mckendrick7672]

​@@عازم-ح7كI guess your eyes aren't functional, because it looks perfectly fine to me. I despise the design language of GNOME.

[@catto-from-heaven]

@@mckendrick7672 You should try something else than Plasma, and you'll realise how AWFUL the breeze theme is

[@robertheinrich2994]

I would say that too. it's a fine desktop, they had a lot of work under the hood to bring it to this level. generally, as a beginner, I would suggest testing a few desktops before settling. and hint, you can install several desktop environments simultanously, and swap between them. it's not a choice where you are set for all time.

[@yorimirus]

​@@عازم-ح7كNot sure what you are talking about. It may not be as good as other OSses and desktop environments but it's good enough.

[@niccoloveslinux]

Thanks for the "Stellar improvement" compliment

[@chriskasprzyk6235]

Nice job by the team. KDE is easily my favorite DE and 6 looks like it will only solidify that feeling further.

[@Bob-of-Zoid]

Hi Nicco!🤩 I am a plasmazoider!🥳😁 Thanks for helping to make it so good!

[@CallumAnthony-r9o]

Is there a way to stop it defaulting to Wayland on boot? Wayland doesn't play properly with my Nvidia card (GTX-750TI 4gb) (only allows 30hz). Unfortunately I need to stay on x11 for that reason and that is resulting in me needing to change it manually every time I start the pc, which is even more annoying as it's a media PC that I allow to login automatically with no password. I think it is fantastic that you are prioritising Wayland but this defaulting-to-wayland issue will be affecting a lot of KDE-users who have Nvidia cards. It's a real shame since Wayland operates very well for me outside of this but there seems to be no way to get it to do anything about 30hz on my card.

[@devincurrie4145]

Congratulations Nicco and to the KDE team! Looking forward to trying out Plasma 6 soon. :)

[@viarnay]

Switched to kde long time and no regrets 😊

[@light-gray]

For me, the HDR Feature is personally the greatest thing about this release. So great that it made me switch from GNOME to KDE Plasma.

[@light-gray]

Also One thing to note, HDR does not work inside Firefox yet. I heard Chromium inside Gamescope is possible but honestly, it's easier to use mpv paired with vk-hdr-layer-kwin6.

[@MKR3238]

@@light-grayFirefox dragging their feet so much with HDR support, its ridiculous

[@malek6129]

HDR feature is amazing, I can finally go full Linux since it doesn't make my monitors paperweight since without the option enabled, the screen looked horrible colours wise and also sharpness

[@MKR3238]

@@malek6129 if SDR looks so borked on your screen there's something wrong with your monitor settings sharpness should never be different (or an issue in general) what screen do you have?

[@TehObLiVioUs]

sometiems sharpness is different because HDR is a different TV/monitor profile like my asus pa329c has a separate sharpness setting for rec709/rec2020 (HDR) mode, just sayin@@malek6129

[@tettorotto]

To be fair I remember Nico mentioning that the goal for this release was a smooth transition to Qt6, leaving new features for future releases.

[@basdfgwe]

yeah he said that they intended this to be a evolution as opposed to a revolution since users don't like huge changes. But I did think why a major change for a evolution (but I understand being in aligned to QT versions, not sure if a end user needs to be aware of this for a desktop env).

[@night_fiend6]

I think that HDR and NVIDIA Wayland are the big changes. Those are huge.

[@mr.shplorb662]

​@@night_fiend6yeah, I agree but its not very flashy, I think people were expecting they could show their friends

[@marccaracal7443]

That makes sense.

[@groos3449]

HDR support is huge for Linux. Makes the Steam Deck even better

[@armpitz8694]

YYYEEEESS!

[@fedora]

Nothing more hype than the return of the desktop cube 🎉 Props to the KDE team for the great work!

[@teklife]

yea but we've had the ol glorious desktop cube in KDE Plasma already

[@enkiimuto1041]

Single click is not more logical because sometimes I want to do something with the folder or file, not open it.

[@costascostas1760]

All depends is what you do most often. If itnis navigating and opening stuff then single click is awesome. If it is selecting files for moving them around then I understand.

[@computerfan1079]

You can right click the icon for that. With double click it means that you need to do an extra unnecessary click

[@themedleb]

@@computerfan1079 What about multiple files at once? It's harder this way.

[@Agryphos]

​@@themedlebwhat does (shift/Ctrl)+click do?

[@colbyboucher6391]

There's a button on the folder that lets you select and drag it...

[@Irremnent]

Can’t wait for Windows 12 to copy this in 4 years.

[@Kurobari94]

​@marblexeno To be fair, KDE plasma was released 1 year before windows 10, if you said Windows 8/8.1 I would agree that, well apart from the whole start screen (Gnome 3 got you covered in that part 😂)

[@linuxsever5727]

While windows 7 had huge borders, KDE had borderless design. And then windows copied it after win 10

[@Tehstroyer]

I think I've already seen floating taskbar in some supposed Win12 alpha screenshots?

[@cameronbosch1213]

@marblexeno Windows 11 literally looks like a theme for modern KDE Plasma.

[@Hr1s7i]

@@linuxsever5727 I wondered why KDE Plasma feels so snug to use. Didn't know it's because the window bois nicked w10 style out of this thing.

[@thebozzIDW]

I like that KDE plasma 6 seems more of an incremental upgrade rather than the huge jump from KDE 3 to KDE 4.

[@guss77]

Plasma Tips: - Setting application hot keys is super easy - open the menu and find the option you want to set/change the shortcut for, right click it (yes - right click on the menu) and select "Configure Shortcut". - Kate can run any bunch of text you want through a command line filter - great for `grep`ing and `sed`ing: select a bunch of text and press CTRL+\ - you'd get a dialog that asks you what command to run (and it has a history). It will then pipe the selected text into that command, grab the output and put it instead of the selected text. Don't like the result? just undo. No need to even save. - Did you know Krunner's unit converter can convert currency values? try it: press META to open the main menu and type "5 usd" to see how much is $5 in your favorite currencies.

[@PDD555]

The currency tip is very useful

[@marinlos]

Nice to see Plasma doing so many improvements. I've never really felt comfortable on Plasma but this version looks tempting. Gnome team has to work hard to keep up with the competition and that's good for everyone

[@davebassi7340]

I hope they do!

[@ArisPLteles]

Never was a fan of Breeze and default setup of KDE. But customization of this DE is superb. And right now more things can be altered out of the box without spending a lot of time - for example behavior of the bottom panel. It is good that they made "just" a port to new QT, I remember what happend with KDE 4. Anyway I hope they will spend some time to make a replacement for Breeze.

[@p0358]

Yeah, Breeze looks VERY dated

[@mckendrick7672]

I just think they should use a different color theme (both light and dark), but otherwise Breeze looks fine to me. Maybe some of the icons could be better, but I don't find them too bad.

[@mckendrick7672]

​@@p0358It doesn't really. If you're judging by GNOME standards anything which doesn't look like a useless phone toy will look dated.

[@clankfish]

they should integrate the lightly application style officially imo, it modernises breeze massively

[@dijikstra8]

I guess that's the problem for someone like me. My endless customization days are behind me, 15 years ago I was distro hopping, I was constantly switching between all the various distros. But now I have a lot of other things to do in my life and I really don't have the time or interest in spending my days customizing the desktop. I use GNOME for this reason, it works well enough and the defaults just work for me.

[@_xolari]

KDE is amazing

[@s1nistr433]

KDE Plasma is just Windows 7 2

[@draftofspasiba2]

@@s1nistr433but way better

[@catto-from-heaven]

@@s1nistr433 It looks worse than W7 tbh

[@lucass8119]

@@catto-from-heavendefinitely not. Windows 7 is clearly dated - plasma looks somewhat modern. In terms of usability it aims for that traditional desktop experience - which (surprise!) makes it MUCH better to use on a desktop than something like gnome.

[@Anonymous-jh3gy]

True that

[@mat_max]

PROPS TO NICCOLO FOR HIS WORK ON THE PANEL!!!!!

[@tanmaypatel4152]

Can't wait to experience it on my debian stable after 10 years.🎉

[@absor2820]

😂

[@Arvigeus]

You clearly don’t understand how Debian works. Such changes doesn’t happen that fast 😂

[@tanmaypatel4152]

@@Arvigeus I know how debian works. It was just a joke 😄

[@Arvigeus]

@@tanmaypatel4152 I was adding to your joke. Sorry if it sounded offensive!

[@tanmaypatel4152]

@@Arvigeus No problem, bud. After all we are united by Linux. 🤝

[@TorpedoBench]

Little bit of feedback: at 5:49, it was rather confusing when the Plasma 6 and 5.27 swapped sides. For the purposes of a video comparing two things, I'd prefer consistency of the comparison over maintaining the continuity of the background. And thanks so much for all the videos you make, you've been a big part of me getting back into Linux. I don't comment much, so I didn't want to just nitpick something then vanish without a trace 😆

[@johndescy7904]

I agree. That threw me off for a moment, too. I also think that the newer version should always be on the right side. Time flows from left to right. (At least in our left to right reading culture.)

[@DFGdanger]

"Before time began, there was The Cube" - Optimus Prime Glad to see this timeless effect return! :D

[@RobertMcGovernTarasis]

Reminds me of Compiz (last time I really used a Linux Desktop, apart from my Steam Deck)

[@Daniel-wn5ye]

Too bad that they didn't add the possibility to set a different wallpaper for each cube side!

[@CoffeeOnRails]

Plasma here making me re-consider my plan to try out cosmic when it drops (plasma user here). It looks amazing!

[@TheLinuxEXP]

It does! Cosmic also looks super interesting, but plasma 6 feels like a very polished release

[@maksympletiuk5311]

Also: "We combined the Overview and Desktop Grid effects into one and massively improved its touchpad gestures". Yeah, that's great!!!

[@SifatUllah-12]

I'm glad KDE is focusing on subtle design changes which make the desktop more polished. For me, Linux Desktops always felt like "Good programmers, but bad designer". But I think it's going to change soon, seeing the polish of KDE 6.

[@giorgos-4515]

i think the inherent implicit assumption that Linux Desktops will be used by programmers is the thing that does not let the year of the linux desktop happen.

[@britneyfreek]

look at mint and elementary. the latter being the pinacle of linux ui design. this kde thing looks like an ugly black-tinted wireframe.

[@peterschmidt9942]

@@britneyfreekThere's some great features in Linux Mint. Although there's just as much that doesn't work properly as well. I can't say I'm fan of Elementary OS either. I'd imagine Mac users would be right at home with it though.

[@azenyr]

I absolutely love the new Ocean sounds. You talked too little about this feature. They sound amazing and I love that you can easily change this like you change the theme. Props to KDE team.

[@terryleach5108]

I've been a KDE fan for a number of years. Tried GNOME, Cinnamon, LXQT, XFCE, etc. but always came back to a KDE distro sitting on Debian. I may be one of the folks that don't care a lot about Plasma 6 since I have my computers looking and doing what I want, however, I will get my inner nerd out and try it on another machine. Thanks for the great video!

[@johnrieley1404]

I share you experience, somewhat. Plasma is the island to stay on. Nice content from Experiment.

[@peterschmidt9942]

For me, I've tried all the desktops. However there's always something or other that bugs me about some way they work. KDE just works and if it doesn't, its easy to change it to the way I want.

[@PDD555]

Same. Cinnamon and XCFE are good in specific cases but I cannot live without all the options that KDE offers. I'm looking at you, Gnome

[@gobbledygook5011]

Only two things I didn't like: 1. The buttons to turn off and reboot the system don't work for some reason ._. (I'm using KDE Neon) 2. Wayland: My laptop hates it, whether I'm on KDE Neon, Arcolinux with Hyprland, EndeavourOS with Sway, etc. Else... it's Plasma, and Plasma is love. Plasma is life.

[@rafaelmartines]

The buttons is not working for me either, need to "try change the user" and then turnoff from lock-screen

[@thafluu]

This is a Neon-specific bug which has been reported already and a fix is on the way.

[@51pegb]

For the shutdown button to work you need to create a file named "org.kde.LogoutPrompt.service" on /usr/share/dbus-1/services/ with the contents: [D-BUS Service] Name=org.kde.LogoutPrompt Exec=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libexec/ksmserver-logout-greeter

[@jeinnerabdel]

Same here. I had to open the terminal and shutdown from there.

[@mrnero4486]

Same here

[@dacresni]

all that in ONE YEAR!? that's pretty amazing!

[@hazelora]

good one if sarcasm

[@RoyaltyInTraining.]

I honestly thought the video switched to Gnome for a second there. That overview effect is so perfect!

[@Ubeleili]

Yes! I was one of those recruited to Linux when I saw that fancy Compiz Cube haha. Wow... we have come a long way.

[@gorrumKnight]

I started on GNOME, moved to KDE because I wanted more customization, and moved to hyprland because I wanted tiling. Plasma 6 definitely looks nice though.

[@GER_Jan]

This is exactly how it was for me too. Started with GNOME on Ubuntu then switched to Fedora KDE and now I am on Arch with hyprland.

[@nezunskyfire292]

Can't wait till Plasma 6 ships on Nobara!

[@_tsu_]

The desktop cube was what got me into linux first when i was 12y/o. So glad it's back. I would pend hours on end trying to install arch It was half my childhood.

[@sonicstarman9663]

I've always liked KDE's personality, but I've always had stability issues so I'm glad that's being worked on.

[@Kiaulen]

I wonder how long before it comes to the steam deck's desktop mode 🤔 Looks amazing, great job KDE team!

[@davidwayne9982]

I CHANGE the sounds-- like a toilet flush for DELETE , etc.. and minions announcing incoming mail!! :)

[@basilcat3111]

The haters chose Plasma 6 to hate for some reason.

[@Luc484]

There is one thing I tested and I consider AWESOME: hardware cursor for Intel GPUs. It worked great.

[@ryanics2291]

I've used KDE for years, and the longer I use it, the more in love with it I am. Also with the new sound profile options for the system for notifications, that makes me SUPER excited, as I can totally see a new update in the future where they update KDE to allow for custom sounds. I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR YEARS. ADHD go brr, and sounds help with that on KDE (for me) so if they do that, I'm not leaving (not that I was going to anyways :D)

[@wikingagresor]

What are you talking about dude ? You can change sounds in plasma 5 without any problems...

[@ryanics2291]

@wikingagresor I havent found those settings, also because I struggled to get them working. Particularly, I wanted to meme it out with sounds foe when I plug in or remove usb drives. The option barely existed, and didnt ever work

[@gwgux]

That's great news! I'm looking forward to upgrading to it! I've been running 5.27 on wayland for a long time now and I'm really looking forward to the "everything wayland" approach they're taking. :)

[@iodreamify]

Great review! Straight to the point and no bs. I like the analogy of plasma 5.50, while i recognize the absolute importance of the underlying stack improvements and the amount of work it took(with the already small kde team size and funding) i also have to say that as someone who is still not on Wayland, doesn't have an hdr monitor, doesn't like either floating panels or the gnome workflow of workspaces, i wasn't as hyped for this release as the others. But i am glad the Kde Plasma team have succeeded in breaking this stereotype that big new Plasma transitions are always buggy.

[@KingArthurDent]

I agree with most of what you said, though maybe the workspaces thing will be more enticing for me now if it works better. Couldn't get into it before. The one thing I am keen on is the better Wayland support, because I have poor eyesight and would like to scale my secondary, smaller screen up a bit. So far I've just made do with setting font sizes in applications on that screen, but separate, fractional global scaling would be nice.

[@iodreamify]

@@KingArthurDentoh absolutely, Wayland is the important way forward. The only reason i've reverted back to x11 for now is Wine/Proton gaming and maybe some stability around video conferencing.

[@KingArthurDent]

@@iodreamify Last I tried Plasma Wayland, Zoom went down to like 0.5 fps, so had to go back to X11. I have a suspicion that wasn't really a Plasma issue but more of a Zoom/NVIDIA driver issue, however, I have nothing to confirm that either. I just hope that Zoom and NVIDIA have improved their stuff as well, so that this time it'll work as expected.

[@tablettablete186]

I wonder how if VRR is working on Plasma 6 🤔 Especially on NVIDIA Overall, super excited for this launch as it looks awesome!

[@guss77]

On Wayland, if the screen and driver supports it (not sure about Nvidia) then in the display configuration you'd have the option to enable "Adaptive Sync", which is how VRR is called in Plasma. When set to "Automatic" it will let full screen Wayland applications control the refresh rate. I'm not sure what "Always" in that option means.

[@yag-yet_another_gamer]

@@guss77 NVIDIA user (RTX 3060) here, i set it to "Always" if i want VRR when i'm gaming, and it works like a charm, honestly Wayland just works, besides from plasmashell freezing occasionally (with me needing to kill it and relaunch from a terminal with setsid prepended), Xwayland apps flickering (i originally thought it might be because i have a 360Hz display, but it happens even if i set it to 60, but with the flickering slower in that situation), and the whole thing shitting itself after a few days of uptime, where sometimes i can't even Ctrl + Alt + PrntSc + B out of it, and have to hold my PC's power button (i'm not too sure what causes any of this, but if it continues when Plasma 6 gets unmasked on the Gentoo repos, then i'll update, and report it to them, i'd try to see if it works on the KDE Neon LiveCD, but it does not want to display anything after booting, probably an NVIDIA thing, iykyk)

[@kirekocev2587]

I absolutely love KDE, it just looks very elegant and sleek. Installed Kubuntu 24.04 today and it is awesome!

[@jess_o]

Really excited to try this out! I have been waiting migrating to Wayland until KDE was ready for it out of the box

[@ayanned]

KDE understands its PC users!. Unlike gnome garbage who pushes tablet ui to my throat.

[@agoston9835]

You know you can change default look and theme of gnome , if you do not like default theme .

[@yag-yet_another_gamer]

@@agoston9835 ask libadwaita

[@LRM12o8]

@agoston9835 why do that when Plasma is just better out of the box?

[@ayanned]

@@LRM12o8 IKR. KDE SUPREME LINUX DE

[@Thorned_Rose]

I've been using KDE for a number of years now (before that Deepin and Pantheon were my go tos as I'm rather fond of more minimalist aesthetics) but as I've watched Plasma 6's progress along the way my biggest concern is how "OOOH SHINY KEYS" people can be. I'm for sure looking forward to 6 but for me the improvements with switching to QT6 and the usability improvements are what I'm most happy about. Second to that would be Wayland improvements (I've been using Wayland for about 2 months now). But I can see a lot of people not understanding all the improvements that are under the bonnet and getting all angry and disappointed because visually, there's not a massive change. I like my eye candy, don't get me wrong, but just because Plasma 6 isn't going to visually change heaps doesn't make it a shit update.

[@stancooper5436]

Couldn't agree more. This way all about transitioning to QT6, improving Wayland to be fit for default, and maintaining stability whilst doing so. Anything else is a bonus and I think they've struck a good balance.

[@MaryamMaqdisi]

Honestly improvements to the backend are big hype for me, I wish more people understood the amount of work it takes to migrate things, test, fix and polish

[@trs5127]

I will be honest, I tried to install Fedora KDE recently, and I really liked how many options there were but I genuinely felt like a lot of them stood in the way of making basic customizations and using my desktop. I wanted to stay on it for a little while longer, but I just like GNOME so much and feel like it doesn't really lack anything for my tastes, and so I just switched to Fedora GNOME almost immediately. I will give KDE a fair shot when I have a lot more time on my hands than I do now, because I recognize how powerful it is as a DE, but I just love GNOME's simplicity and the modularity of extensions a bit too much at this point.

[@themadoneplays7842]

Eh I still say KDE is superior because it doesnt break extensions every 2 seconds.

[@trs5127]

@oneplays7842 I don't disagree that KDE is superior when it comes to how powerful and versatile it is. And yeah, some extensions break way too often on GNOME. But honestly, all extensions I use work consistently and work great, and so I don't feel like I am missing out.

[@rhodaborrocks1654]

That's the beauty of a Linux desktop, it's all about choices, go with what you know and like ..

[@WaltFrampusFrye]

I switched to Gnome when plasma 5 first came out because I didn't like how plasma was. I am a Fedora user when plasma 6 beta came out I downloaded a nightly build to check it out and fell in love again. I am running a nightly build of Fedora KDE on my main laptop and have had no issues. I am really impressed with what they did.

[@CodeEnthusiast78912]

single click is for selecting the file, not opening it. Not because windows does it, but it is the sensible way.

[@TheLinuxEXP]

The sensible way is to open something by clicking it once, like you’d do on a smartphone. But no one is used to that.m, so it makes sense to have single click to select

[@JamesCusano]

@@TheLinuxEXP Not familiar with KDE yet, so I’ll ask for clarification: When it’s in single-click-to-open mode, how do you select an item?

[@mckendrick7672]

​​​​@@TheLinuxEXPThat's hardly sensible because a computer is not a smartphone. Edit: There's far more that can be done on a computer. For example you may select something to drag it onto a program. Or you may select multiple things, but they may not all be next to one another. Or you may be selecting something just to show it in the preview. Single click to open only makes sense for folders in miller column view, or perhaps with the details view in the drop-down. Or you may select something to run a keyboard operation.

[@CodeEnthusiast78912]

@@TheLinuxEXP well, smartphones don't have a keyboard interface, how can you select a single file and cut or copy it on single click to open, my one hand is on the keyboard and other is on the mouse, i can click a file and ctrl + x or c faster than left click cut or copy.

[@omagnocruz]

@@JamesCusanoThere is a "+" icon on the top-left of the file/folder, just click that. You can see it at 2:14.

[@jeffdooley5462]

I've been following Plasma 6 pretty closely, but I still learned a lot in this video! Thanks!

[@tomsanton440]

Given the amount of bug reports I've been seeing, calling it "perfect" is nothing short of laughable. 🤣🤣

[@rallealyt]

my problem with the default KDE style for many years has always been: too many lines and details/too cluttered, not very refined/minimalistic. I much prefer the minimalistic look of Gnome. But I understand the customization power of KDE that allows one to make a lot of changes. And it's always good to have options/competition.

[@LRM12o8]

Lines and details are beautiful. I HATE the minimalist look that became so en vogue with Windows 10 and is now the standard where everything looks the same and you have to search through a dozen of flat, monochrome icons to find what you're looking for, rather than being able to tell them apart from a glance!

[@Sqwert-g6h]

I'm convinced KDE will never fix the ugly flatpak theming with web browsers. That's the only complaint I have continued to have with Plasma

[@mckendrick7672]

Is that something *they* can fix?

[@draftofspasiba2]

Is that related to KDE or QT? Because afaik, flatpak takes your system GTK theme and if you don't configure it, that will result into the wrong theming.

[@mckendrick7672]

@@draftofspasiba2 Idk about browsers, but many GTK flatpaks are influenced by libadwaita now, so the only way to override the theme for them is to create a filesystem override for ~/.themes and maybe ~/.local/share/themes and then manually set the GTK_THEME environment variable.

[@Sqwert-g6h]

@@mckendrick7672 It's something that Gnome doesn't seem to have an issue with.

[@xellaz]

I like KDE Plasma much more than GNOME for how much customization it offers. 👍

[@marcrindermann9482]

funny how kde decides to go with double click as default. Whenever I have to use a windows computer, first thing I do is to change double click to a single click

[@medfadil0]

I'm not a fan of how square KDE is. and there's too much stuff visually

[@frustratedalien666]

I don't generally deal with the UI a lot, so I was an xfce person for the last 8-10 years. I tried kde last year and I liked it so much that right now all of my Linux systems that have a GUI are all using kde. It just gets out of the way for me. Most of my workflow is cli based, so I probably end up interacting with the GUI less than 10% of the time so I like that kde allows me to customize things how I like instead of trying to force me to use a different workflow or instead a bunch of extensions that break with every update

[@amaralbc]

Plasma has always been my choice for desktop/large displays, that's their focus anyway. Smooth and configurable. Much prefer it to gnome, which I think it's better designed for laptops. Better Wayland support and better gaming is awesome. Makes me (almost) forget my ideal system, which would be an up-to-date Pantheon in a modern base.

[@treyquattro]

I now have Fedora 40 with KDE 6 on a couple of machines, desktop & laptop. It's a revelation! It's the proverbial quantum leap forward. Overview mode and Alt+tab are game changers. It is really, really very nice. Excellent even. Struggling to think what improvements I'd like to see. This brings KDE at least on a par with Windows for ease-of-use and professionalism. (There are a couple of bugs with multi-monitor config but nothing major. I'm sure they'll be sorted if not already.) Bravissimo/a!

[@ChrispyNut]

GJ and thanks to all the contributors. ❤ E2A: Except for Nicco. He gets my appreciation on his own channel and I don't want him double dipping. I only have so much thanks to share. :)

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Hahah Nicco is awesome!

[@weab]

I love how the floating panel conforms to the different sized shortcuts and tray icons at 9:00, that looks super cool!

[@hotrodjones74]

KDE is looking better and better each day. I say this as a Cosmic Gnome user. The Linux experience is constantly improving. Just think we could be using Windows on our personal computers.

[@no-no-noku]

I'm glad that you had a much better experience with Plasma 6 than I did. When I upgraded from Fedora 39 to 40, it resulted in various missing elements (not just because my icon set was not Plasma 6 ready, it was and could be fixed by switching to another icon theme and back, it would just nuke the icons on every boot), settings being randomly changed and general unresponsiveness. It was compounded by glitches and errors with Fedora itself, unrelated to KDE, which resulted in me having to reinstall my OS. This is especially annoying as in-place upgrades between major versions of Fedora worked fine for me years previously. Now that I've got a reinstalled OS with Plasma 6 working as intended, it's nicer. Some of the settings being shuffled around are a bit questionable to me, but as you said it's different, not necessarily an improvement or a downgrade. The improvements to KDE Connect are also greatly appreciated, as connecting new devices is a breeze now, although they didn't fix the shared clipboard bug which routinely clears your clipboard.

[@antoniomromo]

Im excited to give this a try.

[@AM-yk5yd]

I'm so hyped for HDR

[@MeMyself-gf7fn]

So many people want HDR and video games to just work and be as good as windows. That's the only reason they don't switch to Linux, myself included. I only watch these videos to see if they have figured that out yet and fixed everything where it just works, and to its fullest potential with NIVIDA cards.

[@StephenMcGregor1986]

Rec 2020, calibration, diff profiles for diff monitor modes, I can't wait

[@MrTripi]

@@MeMyself-gf7fn Yea I'm in a similar boat as well. No one with the necessary hardware to support these features is going to make the switch until they're finally supported. It just feels too much like you're throwing money away.

[@galactustales]

Looks super nice 🙂 I think the lack of bugs is fantastic. People were turned off by the jumble

[@BenjaminWheeler0510]

Yesss gnome activity overview. Finally virtual desktop switching is good in KDE

[@lennart3100]

Wait spectacle can record videos now? Pretty sure that in and of itself is new. Glad to have a native screen recording tool, because using OBS to do basic screencasts felt pretty overkill.

[@RogerioPereiradaSilva77]

It could tap onto SimpleScreenRecorder which is quite small and pretty good at what it does. No need to launch OBS for such a simple thing. But I agree that by itself Spectacle was not able to record videos up till now.

[@postnozet]

Only on Wayland

[@kizurura]

when will it be the day where spectacle runs without any input delay?

[@pixels_per_minute]

Coming from Windows, it really didn't take me long to learn KDE Plasma. Maybe an afternoon at most. I honestly feel like this will be my go-to desktop environment.

[@unnainconnu9098]

7:50 Double-click interval setting The new printer add assistant is much better even though it's not talked about anywhere.

[@michadybczak4862]

Clicking scrollbar and window moving to that exact point (no need to scroll) was also present on Plasma 5, but it wasn't the default. I switched it on and I love it. Every time I am on Windows, it bothers me that I have to scroll long sites instead one-click it. Unfortunately, in Arch. Plasma 6 is still not on stable repos, so Manjaro users, like me, can't get it yet (on Manjaro unstable we get the same packages as Arch stable). Can't wait!

[@yag-yet_another_gamer]

i just enabled it on Plasma 5, and it looks like everything but Firefox obeys that change, unfortunately (browsers are such a joke in general)

[@michadybczak4862]

@@yag-yet_another_gamerFor me Firefox obeys it 100%. Only in situations where site is not loaded fully, when you go to the bottom, it loads and scrollbar jumps up. Otherwise, it works just like with other apps or windows. If this doesn't work for you, there has to be some setting on your system that is preventing it to work. Check your settings or refresh the browser.

[@CyborgZeta]

I personally love the new default settings for Plasma 6. A lot of stuff that I've already been using. I'm on Kubuntu, so it will be a bit before I can use Plasma 6 myself, but I can't wait. It sounds like a nice upgrade from Plasma 5, which is impressive considering how stable Plasma 5 has gotten.

[@cotneit]

HDR support alone is huge!

[@ThorstenSO]

Hey man, thank you for your work! Please increase your video resolutions. :)

[@merthyr1831]

Plasma 6 is what the project needed -- Cutting out a lot of the unused and less useful features and bringing focus onto what the user . Amazing work, Plasma!

[@The88shrimp]

I've been using wayland for over a year with an AMD and KDE and haven't had any issues. I also think wine is getting native wayland support quite soon.

[@theodoros_1234]

I've been hyped about Plasma 6 for nearly a year, and I'm so excited that it's finally here! I use KDE Neon, so Plasma 6 is already available for me, but I'm holding off installing it since this week I need my laptop for some really important stuff, and with my luck, something's gonna go wrong and bork everything if I update now😅 The fact that Discover is teasing me to update isn't helping. Thank you Nick for reviewing Plasma 6!

[@orlovskyconsultinggbr2849]

Finally Linux desktop ! which we wanted all that time! finally!

[@The8BitPianist]

Click on scrollbar to jump there is what I need, I hope this comes to Tuxedo OS soon!

[@Slugbunny]

I do love the various settings, but am undecided on whether I like having to go through everything for every update. But so far: yes! Much more fun than reining in Windows. 😜

[@KuruGDI]

It's actually a good thing that most distros do not include Plasma 6 right away. It does not seem to have any _crippling_ bugs, but it needs more polish before it can be presented to the newcomer (one major bug for example is that it seems you can not shut it down using the UI on some machines [Bug ID 481938]).

[@marsovac]

Wow almost full HDR implementation! Plasma 12 with Wayland 26 will finally work well and look good :D

[@DorE3k]

Seems to be more focused on the backend, with Wayland being the default and using QT6, though there are still quite a few of very welcome and nice changes. Overall not the most exciting update if you were looking for big graphical changes but I imagine upgrading the backend was a lot of effort which will enable the team to work on more fun stuff way easier and to introduce new fun things

[@Torviticus]

I'll probably always prefer GNOME but I've got a small project I've spun up a VM for and I'm using KDE Plasma there. I find the experience a bit noisy but customization options are great. Looking forward to when Fedora pushes the update sounds good.

[@Akselmoi]

And we're just getting started ;)

[@olbluelips]

Looks great! When I get a new desktop I’ll definitely check out plasma 6

[@gavinjones]

I hope the oxygen application style works with plasma 6 too

[@Zubbbz]

Single click to select and double to open is a must. Especially on touch devices like steam dexk

[@_nishantk_]

Plasma 6 is a almost perfect, the only gripe I have are the dated icons, everything looks polished but are rendered less polished due to icons, especially the folder icon of breeze

[@joseoncrack]

I personally use the Newaita-reborn icon set, which I prefer. It's clean. But as for Plasma themes, I haven't found better than Breeze overall so far. Others I've tested all looked less polished. So, that's Breeze for me, just with a different icon set.

[@_nishantk_]

@@joseoncrack exactly breeze itself is pretty nice, but those icons are not meshing well

[@vanillabeans32087]

This is really looking slick - I can't wait for Fedora 40 to officially drop!

[@freemansfreedom8595]

People talk crap about X11. Yet I dock my Thinkpad with a secondary monitor on Wayland, and it flickers like mad. It ain't a new thinkpad, a 440p. Guess what protocol works *exactly* as intended? X11

[@johnterpack3940]

Right, the old software works on old equipment and old equipment has difficulty with new software.

[@sonicsaviouryouwillnotgetm6678]

Update from 5.27 in Arch went seemless. So far zero issues and as this video states only improvements. Thanks KDE Team!

[@AdityaBhargava]

Even with its current limitations, HDR is super encouraging to see. I'm on GNOME for the time being and am looking forward to when HDR gets enabled as an experimental feature in 2028! Hopefully they'll be able to sort out the UI details quickly and get the full release out in decent time. Fingers crossed for 2034!

[@bubbles581]

Always been a KDE fan ❤ even contributed some back in the day. Glad to see everything is continuing to get better and better

[@MrSociofobs]

As a decades long Windows user who's occasionally tried out various Linux distros, the new KDE makes me wish I had the option to drive Linux daily. Heck, I would, if I had more beefy/spare hardware to run Windows within a VM instead. The stranglehold that MS has on the desktop software ecosystem is super annoying.

[@Daniel-wn5ye]

KDE Plasma is the best desktop environment for Linux! But I don't like the new floating panel default and I always turn that off. Also I don't like that the UI is so flat, I want more 3D things, more shadows, transparency, etc... And I don't like that I cannot set different walpapers for each cube side.

[@gloriouschoices]

90% of my widgets broke. Can't "shutdown" without forcing it off with power button. Hopefully updates come to the rescue

[@poudink5791]

Former is probably because third party widgets need to be ported to Plasma 6 and yours haven't been. Latter is an unfortunate KDE Neon packaging issue.

[@johnrieley1404]

Thanks for prepping me Experiment. I declare, Plasma is the Cadillac for solid Linux desktop users.

[@9a3eedi]

I'm very happy that the kde theme decided to stick with what works, and didnt do a complete overhaul like what they did from 3 to 4, or what the gnome devs did from 2 to 3

[@rkadowns]

FYI, you are by far the best Linux content youtuber i have come across. Thanks so much for your work.

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Wow, thanks!

[@Rohinthas]

Sounds like the major release is mostly due to the technical changes the user is not supposed to notice, except for the increased stability and seamlessness. In my book thats great, most Desktops already offer everything I need in terms of functionality since my work is more terminal-focussed. For me the stability and polish is where it is mostly at, so I for one am glad that they focussed on technical work and making the experience more coherent. Will give it a try asap!

[@rael_gc]

During my time in the university, I remember one nice course that was Human Computer Interaction, basically the same as people know today by "UX". One of the rules was: you have to offer sane defaults, but options to the advanced users. KDE fails in the first part, Gnome in the second.