Linux desktop: Open Beta of KDE Plasma 6 available for testing

Along with GNOMEX and Xfce, KDE is one of the veterans of Linux desktop interfaces that has been serving Linux users since 1996. The KDE team has now announced Beta 1 of the Plasma 6 desktop suite, which is scheduled for final release at the end of February 2024. In addition to the actual KDE Plasma Desktop, the developer tools "KDE Frameworks" 5.246.0 and the application collection "KDE Gear" 24.01.80 are also on board.

According to the blog of KDE developer "Nate", Beta 1 introduces several exciting features to the desktop interface: wallpapers can now be set directly via the KDE settings app and the Linux store front end "Discover" now displays a "Newly Published and Recently Updated" section. The "Night Light" system settings subpage has been revised by KDE developers and active windows are now highlighted with the selected accent color for better differentiation.

In addition, Plasma 6 now has a "thumbnail grid" desktop switcher as standard, which can also be switched to a three-dimensional cube effect as known from older KDE versions. In addition, KDE Plasma 6 will be the first to use the Wayland display server protocol as standard instead of the venerable X11, which has not been actively developed for some time.

For what is now the sixth major version of the Linux desktop, the KDE Plasma team is using the latest version of the Qt GUI toolkit (version 6), which has always been the basis of KDE. If you want to try out KDE Plasma 6, including the latest version of the KDE Framework and the KDE Gear software collection, we recommend the Linux distribution KDE neon in the "Unstable Edition" based on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Long-Term Support). Alternatively, the Linux distribution KaOS also offers a preview edition with Plasma 6.