14 DAY TRIAL // KDE developer Eike Hein gives more details about various improvements to pagers that will be implemented in the upcoming KDE Plasma 5.8 LTS desktop environment, due for release on October 4, 2016.
We reported a couple of months ago that the next major version of the KDE Plasma 5 desktop environment, build 5.8, would be a long-term supported one. KDE Plasma 5.8 will also be the first LTS (Long Term Support) version of the renowned desktop interface used in numerous GNU/Linux operating systems by default.
As you might have guessed already, the KDE developers are currently working very hard on implementing as many new features and improvements as possible on the KDE Plasma 5.8 LTS desktop environment, and there's now detailed information on the revamped Pager and Activity Pager widgets.
"On the heels of the Plasma 5.7's new Task Manager backend, the upcoming Plasma 5.8 LTS release will sport substantially rewritten Pager and Activity Pager widgets, aimed at improving efficiency and conserving resources in a typical Plasma Desktop setup," says Eike Hein in the announcement.
KDE Plasma 5.8 LTS to show per-screen pagers
The Pager widget in KDE Plasma 5 is used for displaying the windows that are currently opened on each workspace. It is usually available on the left side of the Task Manager widget, which now reports on the windowing system and shares the data, thus using less RAM and CPU power on your personal computer.
The KDE devs also managed to dramatically improve the dragging of a window on the Pager, as well as to the Activity Pager widget, and there's now a new "Only the current screen" option in Pager's preferences dialog to allow users to set per-screen Pagers on their KDE Plasma 5.8 LTS desktop environment.
A Beta release of KDE Plasma 5.8 LTS should be ready for public testing next week, on September 15, 2016, two days after the launch of the last maintenance update to the KDE Plasma 5.7 series, version 5.7.5, which will also mark its end of life. The final release of KDE Plasma 5.8 LTS will hit the streets on October 4, 2016.