KDE Plasma 5.17 to get modernized look and feel, several new features confirmed

From what we’re hearing, KDE Plasma 5.17 will feature significant user interface and performance improvements — not to mention several new features.

The 81st week of the KDE Usability and Productivity initiative was all about KDE Plasma, which is one of the most popular desktop environments out there right now. Its only competition being the almighty GNOME. Furthermore, the desktop environment ships with several popular Linux distros, such as openSUSE and Kubuntu.

Nate Graham, who is one of the top KDE developers, recently revealed that the KDE team has worked on modernizing the user interface of KDE Plasma. Accordingly, the settings window of the new KDE Plasma will come with a more modernized look.

He also mentioned that a lot of effort went into this design, and users should expect more UI changes in the future.

But that’s not all. The widget positioning code has gone through a complete overhaul to improve the widget locations, and pretty icons have been added to Discover’s sidebar as well. Also, if you have a touchscreen, icons and widget resize handles will become more prominent when you touch them.

Now coming to the new features, the KDE team has integrated several of them in their upcoming KDE Plasma release. Firstly, users will now be able to choose the sort order for the image slideshow wallpapers, which were previously random.

Desktop Folder Settings

Besides, the screen DPI and NumLock key status will be synced along with the user settings to the SDDM login screen. Users will also be able to turn on/off the Night Color feature with the new “Manual” mode.

Conclusion

Considering the UI enhancements and new features mentioned above, Linux enthusiasts should definitely be on the lookout for the latest KDE Plasma 5.17, which is expected to drop this October. If you want to delve deeper into this week’s KDE Usability and Productivity initiative, make sure to check out their official blog post.