KDE Plasma 5.27 released with multi-monitor & Wayland upgrades, Steam Deck updater

KDE Plasma 5.27 sounds like a really great update to this desktop environment, the same one used on the desktop mode for the Steam Deck and my personal choice for my PC too.

Coming in on Valentines Day and the "I Love Free Software Day" (that's apparently a thing?), it brings an absolute ton of enhancements to the desktop experience including a new introduction wizard to guide you through a first time install that might help a few confused users. There's also a window tiling system, updates to app themes, upgrades to the widgets system, adjustments to system settings so it's not so overloaded, Discover now supports full Steam Deck system upgrades and so much more.

KDE Plasma 5.27 is also a Long Term Support release so it will continue to see fixes until some time in 2024 when the next LTS release of Plasma becomes available.

Some of the other changes includes:

• Multi-monitor overhaul: Those of you who use multiple monitors should benefit greatly from a major overhaul of how Plasma handles them. Arrangements will now be more robust, without the chance of panels and desktops getting lost after monitors are unplugged or re-arranged.
• Use global shortcuts to run terminal commands: The Shortcuts page in the System Settings utility now lets you configure keyboard shortcuts not only for apps, but also to launch terminal commands and scripts.
• Activate "Do Not Disturb" mode from the command line: If you spend most of the time in the terminal and are being overwhelmed with notifications, just type kde-inhibit --notifications and Plasma will enter "Do Not Disturb" mode.
• Send windows to Activities: Do you use Activities to compartmentalize your private work, public life, and play time? If so, now you can move or copy windows to one, some or all of your Activities by right-clicking on the titlebar and choosing where you want it to go.
• Save power with one keystroke: While on the lock screen, hit the Esc key to turn off the screen and save some power.
• Customized menu entries. If you like customizing how apps launch, KDE's Menu Editor has always let you set environment variables when opening your apps, but now it's much easier to do so, as Plasma 5.27 gives the editor a specific text box for exactly that purpose.

By far my favourite bit is the focus on multi-monitor support, which has been a real nuisance at times. Looking forward to seeing that in action on both my Desktop and my often-docked Steam Deck. Hopefully now there will be less dancing around to get it to actually remember layouts.

As for when to expect the update? That all depends on what Linux distribution you use for Desktop Linux. For Steam Deck specifically, it will likely come in the next major SteamOS update.

See the full announcement for more.