Plasma 6.8

Improvements you can use today

Better accessibility

Part of our continued effort to bring digital control to everyone, a new “dwell clicker” feature can send a mouse click when the pointer stops moving. Designed especially for users with mobility issues, an external app is no longer required to use your system in this way; now it’s built right in!

Serving more users worldwide

Plasma 6.8 gains support for the Bikram Sambat calendar in the Digital Clock, and the Amharic language in the on-screen keyboard. These are just two more additions of the dozens incorporated into Plasma over recent versions in our effort to make Plasma a truly universal desktop.

Bikram Sambat calendar

Amharic on-screen keyboard

System monitoring

Gain an extreme level of control over your system with Plasma’s System Monitor. In Plasma 6.8, you can assign compute-intensive tasks to only the CPUs of your choosing from directly within the monitor, and keep your machine running smoothly.

You can also monitor your VRAM more easily, as it now shows the load as an easy-to-read percentage.

Remote desktop

We’ve invested a great deal of time into polishing the experience provided by Plasma’s built-in remote desktop server. In Plasma 6.8, you’ll be able to enjoy the following improvements — with more in the pipeline:

• Much better performance and quality that prioritizes latency and responsiveness by adapting to slow networks and rapidly-updating screen content.
• Exclusive mode optionally locks the server’s screen and provides the client with a virtual screen that exactly matches its window size.
• Bi-directional clipboard synchronization makes it easier to exchange content between the server and client.

Screen casting and recording

Spectacle can now optionally include both system audio and microphone input in its screen recordings, making it possible to narrate a recording or accurately record everything that’s going on.

Plasma’s screen sharing portal dialog lets you create a virtual screen to share, instead of an existing display. In Plasma 6.8, you can now specify the resolution of the virtual screen instead of being limited to only 1920 × 1080.

In addition, the quality of screen recordings and screencasts has been improved.

Nicer-looking third-party app windows

We’ve added support for window rules that add desktop shadows, outlines, and rounded corners to client-side-decorated windows that can’t provide these visual niceties themselves. Plasma 6.8 ships with one such rule for Steam, making it feel more at home in Plasma.

Window management

We’ve added new global shortcuts to help power users manage their open windows with the Task Manager widget. By pressing Meta + Ctrl + Page Up or Page Down, you can cycle between the previous and next tasks. By also holding Shift, you can move the active task backwards and forwards.