Plasma is arguably one of the prettiest Linux desktop environments around, and it's highly configurable too. The KDE team just released a huge upgrade with Plasma 5.20. This is a massive release that upgrades all parts of the Plasma desktop.
Fans of Wayland which is gradually replacing X.Org, compatibility continues being a focus and they've managed to make more steps as of this release. They mentioned that since 2019 they set a priority goal to adapt everything to support Wayland and it's "starting to pay off big time" now. As of this release middle-click paste with the Klipper clipboard app now works, plus the launcher/search tool KRunner now shows up correctly. Mouse and Touchpad support is getting close to being on par with X too, screencasting is now supported and more. Lots of steps taken.
That's just the under-the-hood stuff, tons of user-facing changes and improvements can be found across the whole desktop like the task manager being icon-only by default. A nicer default I think, as grouped icons look great and save precious space.
There's also new on-screen displays when you perform various actions like adjust volume, the system tray pop up now uses a grid rather than a list which looks a huge amount better, the digital clock widget is a bit more compact and has the date by default, the ALT keybind to hold and then drag windows around was moved to the Super key (also known as the "Windows" key) which is a nicer default with so many games needing the ALT key it was a common interference and the list of subtle improvements goes on for some time. Little things add up, and sane defaults are seriously important.
You can also find a newer Plasma Disks application which will add storage drive S.M.A.R.T monitoring directly into your System Settings — nice!
Check out their new release video:
Direct Link
See the release announcement here. Full changelog here.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: appetrosyanYou did. :DQuoting: tuubiQuoting: appetrosyanYou can get a similar experience on BSPWM, and Sway, and to a much more experimental extent on river, but not on Compiz (XFCE, unity), Metacity forks (Cinnamon, Mate, XFCE, Gnome), Clutter (Gnome) or OpenBOX.Just a small correction: Neither Xfce's compositing window manager Xfwm nor Compton (probably the most popular replacement compositor among Xfce users) are Metacity forks.
My mistake, should have said compiz.
Xfce still uses Xfwm by default and it was developed from scratch.
I'd argue you can count Xfce users who use anything but Xfwm or Compton with your fingers ;)
Last edited by const on 15 October 2020 at 3:45 pm UTC
appetrosyan Oct 15, 2020
Quoting: TermyQuoting: rustybroomhandleNot sure if it's the compositor or sddm or what, but for some reason games just feel like they run better on KDE. Have not benchmarked and purely going on feels here.I agree - but only until you try kwin-lowlatency xD
KDE is still my favorite by a long shot. I just hope this icon-only task manager crap will not be the only option in the future ^^
Cool! Should probably give it a try!
Quoting: constAlso just to make this clear, Compton is based on Xcompmgr, not Compiz or Metacity.Quoting: appetrosyanYou did. :DQuoting: tuubiQuoting: appetrosyanYou can get a similar experience on BSPWM, and Sway, and to a much more experimental extent on river, but not on Compiz (XFCE, unity), Metacity forks (Cinnamon, Mate, XFCE, Gnome), Clutter (Gnome) or OpenBOX.Just a small correction: Neither Xfce's compositing window manager Xfwm nor Compton (probably the most popular replacement compositor among Xfce users) are Metacity forks.
My mistake, should have said compiz.
Xfce still uses Xfwm by default and it was developed from scratch.
I'd argue you can count Xfce users who use anything but Xfwm or Compton with your fingers ;)
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