In recent weeks, the open-source community has been buzzing about Plasma 6. This excitement is well-founded because this new release sets the stage for future improvements. It focuses on creating a more enjoyable user experience, promising enhancements that will benefit them for years.
Now that Arch, KaOS, CachyOS, and Armbian already have Plasma 6 available in their software repositories, openSUSE Tumbleweed users have also joined the party and can experience all the great features Plasma 6 offers.
The recently released snapshot 20240311 introduced KDE Plasma 6.0.1, Gear 24.02.0, and Frameworks 6.0.0. Following this release, an update to Plasma 6.0.2 was quickly rolled out, positioning openSUSE Tumbleweed users among the first to experience the newest advancements within the KDE ecosystem.
Here’s what you’re getting with the Plasma 6:
- Build on top of the Qt 6.6 and Frameworks 6
- Wayland as display server protocol by default
- The latest in the KDE Gear 24.02 app collection
- New floating panels and redesigned panel’s settings
- Return of the Desktop Cube effect
- New Overview effect
- Settings to choose your preferred sound theme
- New default Task Switcher
- More relevant Accent Colors
- Improved search functionalities and better Night Light
- Accessibility improvements
Please be aware that this update encompasses more than 1,000 packages. In other words, be patient until the downloads and updates are complete.
On top of that, to avoid crashes, we highly recommend applying these updates outside of the Plasma desktop environment itself. So, switch to a virtual console (for example, “Ctrl+Alt+F3 “) to mitigate potential issues during the upgrade from Plasma 5 to 6.
