KDE developers are preparing an important change for the upcoming Plasma 6.9 desktop environment, scheduled for release in late February. According to the latest update, XWayland, the compatibility layer that allows X11 applications to run in Wayland sessions, will now start only when needed instead of running continuously in the background.
Until now, Plasma kept XWayland active even when no X11 applications ran. The change means that Plasma’s Wayland session will no longer need to keep XWayland running simply to support applications that users may never launch.
Apart from this improvement, Plasma 6.9 is receiving a redesigned Task Switching page in System Settings. The page was ported to QML, with a refreshed interface that also includes configuration options for the Overview effect.
The Date & Time settings page is also undergoing a similar transition. Its new QML-based interface consolidates controls into a single page, making it quicker to change the system’s time zone.
KDE is also refining desktop customization. The wallpaper configuration page will have more room for browsing images after the desktop layout selector moved to a separate page. Moreover, desktop icons and the Folder View widget will gain additional size options, filling a noticeable gap between the two largest existing sizes.
Regarding performance improvements, Spectacle, KDE’s screenshot utility, will launch faster thanks to optimizations and parallelization. The Add Widgets sidebar has also been optimized to open substantially faster, with smoother animations.
On top of that, the Task Manager will handle window previews more efficiently by avoiding unnecessary thumbnail regeneration when the pointer leaves and returns to a preview, thus eliminating a minor flickering issue. Additionally, when a grouped application requests attention, opening its group popup will now identify the specific window responsible.
On the network management side, users will be able to forget saved connections directly from the Networks widget without opening System Settings. The network share configuration wizard will also automatically recognize more information from pasted URLs, including the protocol and whether encryption is required.
For system monitoring, Plasma 6.9 adds a sensor showing the number of physical CPU cores, available in both the System Monitor application and its widgets.
Other desktop refinements include named presets for the Wobbly Windows effect, fade animations for Spectacle’s screen capture overlay, and more convenient duration editing in the Timer widget. The Keyboard settings page will make it clearer when the system-wide keyboard layout is used rather than a custom configuration.
Finally, if the login via Plasma Login Manager fails, it will provide a basic terminal fallback instead of leaving users with a black screen, allowing them to access the system for troubleshooting.
For more information about the upcoming changes, see KDE’s “This Week in Plasma” blog post.
