Plasma 6.5 Nears Release With Critical Bug Fixes
The KDE development team is reportedly in the final stages of preparing Plasma 6.5 for its imminent stable release, with sources indicating the desktop environment update is merely three days away from launch. According to the latest development update, the team has addressed several critical issues that should significantly improve user experience across various hardware configurations and use cases.
Display and Performance Improvements
Sources indicate that KDE’s window manager KWin has received important adjustments in the upcoming release. The Dim Inactive effect has been clamped to strength levels between 10 and 90 percent after developers discovered settings outside that range produced what they described as “nonsensical results.” Additionally, analysts suggest the team has resolved a persistent software bug that caused KWin to crash when waking laptops from sleep after disconnecting external displays.
Display performance has also been enhanced for users requiring accessibility features. Reports confirm that screen content will now update more frequently when full-screen colorblindness correction effects are enabled, addressing a previous limitation that affected visual clarity.
Connectivity and Hardware Fixes
Remote desktop functionality has received attention in Plasma 6.5, with the development team correcting a problem that caused connections to fail when using recent versions of ffmpeg. This fix comes amid broader industry developments in remote access technologies.
For NVIDIA GPU users, a significant correction has been implemented for System Monitor sensors that previously displayed incorrect values for certain graphics cards. This hardware-specific fix aligns with related innovations in system monitoring across different platforms.
Follow-up Release and Interface Refinements
Even before the official launch of Plasma 6.5, the KDE team is reportedly already preparing Plasma 6.5.1, a bugfix release that will address multiple user interface issues on System Settings‘ Remote Desktop page. The report states this maintenance update will also resolve minor visual glitches that occurred when moving pointers in and out of certain application windows.
Future Development: Plasma 6.6 Preview
While finalizing the current release, KDE developers are simultaneously working on Plasma 6.6, which sources indicate will introduce several user-requested features. The updated Application Dashboard widget will be configurable to follow system color schemes, though the default will remain dark mode. Users will also gain the ability to resize the area between the widget’s “Favorites” and “Applications” sections.
Visual refinements in Plasma 6.6 include slightly rounded highlights for top-level menu items and improvements to the Bing Picture of the Day wallpaper provider, which will now display thumbnails reflecting actual image aspect ratios rather than defaulting to portrait versions. These interface enhancements come as part of broader market trends toward customizable user experiences.
Scheduled Bug Fixes for Next Major Release
According to the development roadmap, Plasma 6.6 will address several specific issues that have affected users. The Discover application will no longer crash when Flatpak is installed but unavailable, resolving a frustrating instability. Additionally, a bug that incorrectly stored IPsec passwords for certain VPNs has been fixed, eliminating the need to re-enter credentials with each connection.
These security-related improvements align with recent technology enhancements across the software industry. The KDE community continues to refine the KDE ecosystem, building on nearly three decades of development since the project’s inception.
More detailed information about the upcoming releases can be found in the official KDE blog post covering this week’s Plasma developments.
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