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KDE Plasma 5.4 Release

Image of Plasma 5.4

KDE Plasma 5.4

Tuesday, 25 August 2015

Today KDE releases a feature release of the new version of Plasma 5.

This release of Plasma brings many nice touches for our users such as much improved high DPI support, KRunner auto-completion and many new beautiful Breeze icons. It also lays the ground for the future with a tech preview of Wayland session available. We're shipping a few new components such as an Audio Volume Plasma Widget, monitor calibration tool and the User Manager tool comes out beta.

The new Audio Volume Applet

The new Audio Volume Applet

New Audio Volume Applet

Our new Audio Volume applet works directly with PulseAudio, the popular sound server for Linux, to give you full control over volume and output settings in a beautifully designed simple interface.

The new Dashboard alternative launcher

The new Dashboard alternative launcher

Application Dashboard alternative launcher

Plasma 5.4 brings an entirely new fullscreen launcher Application Dashboard in kdeplasma-addons: Featuring all features of Application Menu it includes sophisticated scaling to screen size and full spatial keyboard navigation. The new launcher allows you to easily and quickly find applications, as well as recently used or favorited documents and contacts based on your previous activity.

Just some of the new icons in this release

Just some of the new icons in this release

Artwork Galore

Plasma 5.4 brings over 1400 new icons covering not only all the KDE applications, but also providing Breeze themed artwork to apps such as Inkscape, Firefox and LibreOffice providing a more integrated, native feel.

KRunner

KRunner

KRunner history

KRunner now remembers your previous searches and automatically completes from the history as you type.

Network Graphs

Network Graphs

Useful graphs in Networks applet

The Networks applet is now able to display network traffic graphs. It also supports two new VPN plugins for connecting over SSH or SSTP.

Wayland Technology Preview

With Plasma 5.4 the first technology preview of a Wayland session is released. On systems with free graphics drivers it is possible to run Plasma using KWin, Plasma's Wayland compositor and X11 window manager, through kernel mode settings. The currently supported feature set is driven by the needs for the Plasma Mobile project and more desktop oriented features are not yet fully implemented. The current state does not yet allow to use it as a replacement for Xorg based desktop, but allows to easily test it, contribute and watch tear free videos. Instructions on how to start Plasma on Wayland can be found in the KWin wiki pages. Wayland support will improve in future releases with the aim to get to a stable release soon.

Other changes and additions

View full changelog

Package Downloads

Distributions have created, or are in the process of creating, packages listed on our wiki page.

Note that packages of this release might not be available on all distributions at the time of this announcement.

Package download wiki page

Supporting KDE

KDE is a Free Software community that exists and grows only because of the help of many volunteers that donate their time and effort. KDE is always looking for new volunteers and contributions, whether it is help with coding, bug fixing or reporting, writing documentation, translations, promotion, money, etc. All contributions are gratefully appreciated and eagerly accepted. Please read through the Supporting KDE page for further information or become a KDE e.V. supporting member through our Join the Game initiative.

About KDE

KDE is an international technology team that creates free and open source software for desktop and portable computing. Among KDE's products are a modern desktop system for Linux and UNIX platforms, comprehensive office productivity and groupware suites and hundreds of software titles in many categories including Internet and web applications, multimedia, entertainment, educational, graphics and software development. KDE software is translated into more than 60 languages and is built with ease of use and modern accessibility principles in mind. KDE's full-featured applications run natively on Linux, BSD, Windows, Haiku, and macOS.


Trademark Notices.

KDE® and the K Desktop Environment® logo are registered trademarks of KDE e.V..
Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group in the United States and other countries.
All other trademarks and copyrights referred to in this announcement are the property of their respective owners.


Press Contacts

For more information send us an email: press@kde.org