It's coming soon to a GNU/Linux distribution near you

Jun 11, 2019 12:25 GMT  ·  By

The KDE Project released today the KDE Plasma 5.16 desktop environment, a major release that adds a plethora of new features and enhancements, along with many improvements to make your Plasma experience more enjoyable and reliable.

The KDE Plasma 5.16 has been in development for the past few months and it's now the latest version of the acclaimed graphical desktop environment for Linux-based operating systems. It's a major release that introduces several new features, more polishing, and dozens of improvements.

"For this release, KDE developers have worked hard to polish Plasma to a high gloss. The results of their efforts provide a more consistent experience and bring new features to all Plasma users," reads today's announcement. "We hope you enjoy using Plasma 5.16 as much as we did making it."

Here's what's new in KDE Plasma 5.16

Highlights of the KDE Plasma 5.16 desktop environment include a totally revamped notifications system that now offers a Do Not Disturb mode, support for critical notifications in full-screen apps, improved notifications for file transfer operations, a more intelligent history with support for grouped notifications by app, and better configuration options in System Settings.

The login, lock, and logout screens were improved as well in KDE Plasma 5.16 with a new hover behavior, new icons and labels, as well as support for adjusting the login button layout. Work on the Wayland support continues as well with this release, which adds the ability to use the Nvidia proprietary graphics drivers under the Wayland session.

It's also now possible to drag-and-drop items between XWayland and Wayland native windows. On the other hand, Plasma's software manager Discover is now easier to use thanks to the many improvements implemented in KDE Plasma 5.16, such as the ability to force quit the app during installation or update operations, and much-improved support for AppImages universal binaries.

The Plasma Network Manager widget now refreshes Wi-Fi networks faster and more reliable, makes it easier to find certain Wi-Fi networks, adds support for OTP (One Time Password) in the OpenConnect VPN plugin, implements a new "Configure" action in the right-click context menu to more easily configure networks, and adds support for WireGuard VPN and NetworkManager 1.16.

The overall desktop experience of KDE Plasma was enhanced as well in this release my modernizing all the widget configuration settings and making the panels easier to use. Users will now be able to lock and unlock Plasma Vaults directly from the Dolphin file manager, and they'll now see a microphone icon in the system tray when apps are recording audio.

Moreover, the Show Desktop icon is now available by default in the panel, the Task Manager now features better organized context menus, the Show Alternatives button is now visible in panel edit mode, the Breeze theme's window and menu shadow colors were switched to pure black, and all the pages in the System Settings received some polishing.

The KDE Plasma 5.16 desktop environment is a normal release that will be supported for the next four months with a total of five maintenance updates. The first two, KDE Plasma 5.16.1 and KDE Plasma 5.16.2, will be released later this month on June 18th and June 25th respectively. After that, KDE Plasma 5.16.3 and KDE Plasma 5.16.4 will follow in July, on the 9th and 30th.

KDE Plasma 5.16 reaches end of life on September 3rd, 2019, when the KDE Plasma 5.16.5 maintenance update will be released, as the next major release, KDE Plasma 5.17, is scheduled for launch in mid-October 2019. Until then, you'll be able to install or update to KDE Plasma 5.16 from the stable software repositories of your favorite GNU/Linux distribution in the coming days.

Revamped notifications
Revamped notifications
Improved login screen theme
Improved login screen theme
Improved SDDM theme
Improved SDDM theme
Show Alternatives available in Panel editing
Show Alternatives available in Panel editing

KDE Plasma 5.16 (11 Images)

KDE Plasma 5.16
Revamped notificationsImproved login screen theme
+8more