Nearly four months after the release of Plasma 6.1, followed by four minor versions, with the last one being Plasma 6.1.5, the beloved KDE desktop environment has rolled out the much-anticipated Plasma 6.2 today.
This edition focuses mainly on making it more artist-friendly, smarter, and accessible. Here are the improvements made in this direction.
KDE Plasma 6.2 Highlights
For Digital Artists
Plasma 6.2 brings a plethora of new features for drawing tablet users. You’ll find a new “Drawing Tablet” section in System Settings with tools for configuring your hardware.
This update introduces a tablet calibration wizard and test mode, a feature to define the tablet’s screen coverage, and an option to re-bind pen buttons to various mouse actions.
Best of all, it’s all built into Plasma, so there is no need for additional drivers or software from device manufacturers.
However, if your drawing tablet isn’t supported yet, the “We care about your Input” project aims to add support for more unique input devices. Simply inform the community about your device, and they’ll work on it.
Color Management
Plasma 6.2 includes improved support for the Wayland color management protocol, enabled by default to ensure consistent colors across monitors—crucial for creative projects.
Brightness handling for HDR and ICC profiles has also been enhanced, improving the visual experience for everything from graphic design to gaming.
Additionally, a new tone mapping feature built into Plasma’s KWin compositor will ensure better handling of bright images or scenes with intense colors, reducing the “blown out” look they can sometimes exhibit.
Power Management
With Plasma 6.2, you can now override applications that prevent your system from sleeping or locking, saving more power. You can even adjust the brightness of each monitor individually.
The Power and Battery widget now offers more control over power profiles. Holding down the Meta (Windows) key and pressing “B” lets you cycle through power options, with a helpful leaf badge indicating power-saving mode and a rocket for performance mode.
Discover and System Updating
Control over your software is crucial, and Plasma 6.2’s app store, Discover, now offers even more capabilities. It now supports PostmarketOS packages for mobile devices, helps users write better app reviews, and accurately presents app license information.
Plus, you can now shut down your system after applying an offline system update, giving you more flexibility.
Accessibility
The new version includes a major overhaul of the System Settings Accessibility page. The update also adds colorblindness filters and full support for “sticky keys” on Wayland, making navigating the system easier for users with different needs.
UI and Visual Design Improvements
Plasma 6.2 desktop environment also enhances the user interface with tweaks to accent colors, the System Tray, and the Widget Explorer.
In light of this, dialogs and pop-ups now have a more unified appearance, and the Welcome Center, sound effects, and actions have all received updates to improve the overall experience.
Other Plasma 6.2 Improvements
- The Weather Report widget now includes “feels like” temperatures and more data for BBC forecasts.
- You can now turn off window borders in the Pager widget.
- The Minimize All widget only affects windows on the current virtual desktop and activity.
- Custom shortcuts can be given unique names.
- Setting a new user avatar now includes an integrated cropping tool.
And, of course, there’s much more: numerous stability and performance enhancements, visual tweaks, and new Wayland protocols.
Refer to the official announcement or check out the full Plasma 6.2’s changelog for the complete list of changes.
For those eager to explore the new features of the updated desktop environment right away, the simplest route is to opt for Linux distros that are heavily focused on Plasma, such as KDE Neon, which already has version 6.2 readily available.
Additionally, users of rolling-release distros like Arch and openSUSE Tumbleweed can expect it as an update to their repositories in the coming weeks.
