Check out our Monthly Survey Page to see what our users are running.
We do often include affiliate links to earn us some pennies. See more here.

Plasma 5.21 rolls out as one of the best looking Linux desktops available

By - | Views: 31,498

Love your PC to look flashy? The KDE team put in a lot of effort to be both beautiful and functional with the latest Plasma 5.21 release which is out now. Part of the ongoing work to make KDE Plasma look as good as possible, with lots of work big and small going into many areas in this release.

Plasma 5.21 from KDE brings in the brand new application launcher, featuring two panes to make it simple to find the programs you want to launch long with improved navigation for different input types. The older Kickoff launcher is still available too for anyone who prefers it. Plenty of improvements to the default Plasma theme with a refreshed colour scheme and header style, a new Breeze Twilight theme combining dark and light together, there's a brand new Plasma System Monitor for keeping an eye on your system, huge progress towards great KWin and Wayland support as part of their mission to have first class support for Wayland and much more.

Check out their release video:

YouTube Thumbnail
YouTube videos require cookies, you must accept their cookies to view. View cookie preferences.
Accept Cookies & Show   Direct Link

The team dedicated this release to Gustavo Carneiro, a KDE contributor from Brazil that died in January of COVID-19.

See the full announcement here.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
29 Likes
About the author -
author picture
I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
See more from me
The comments on this article are closed.
37 comments
Page: «3/4»
  Go to:

furaxhornyx Feb 17, 2021
View PC info
  • Supporter Plus
Quoting: denyasisAlso for those that thought the K and G brandings weren't so bad, I have one word for you.....

Galculator

Enough said.

This one gets installed by default with the Cinnamon edition of Manjaro, and each time I want to open the calculator, I curse whoever had this brilliant idea...
TheRiddick Feb 17, 2021
Wonder how long it will be until this rolls out in Manjaro main distro. Outside of the -git packages which I've had issues with before (some apps compiled against the main non-git version).
tuubi Feb 17, 2021
View PC info
  • Supporter
Quoting: denyasisAlso for those that thought the K and G brandings weren't so bad, I have one word for you.....

Galculator

Enough said.
To be fair, the Gnome calculator is just Calculator, and Galculator is an unrelated project. But yeah, the name is silly.
starfarer Feb 17, 2021
Pretty cool. Will take some time until it gets into Debian, though.

I always liked KDE. I don't know why. Maybe because it was default on Knoppix when I tried Linux for the first time about twenty years ago but I always had a soft spot for it.

Over time I used fluxbox and then the awesome enlightenment DEs, e16 and e17. Unfortunately the alpha version of the last e17 desktop environment I tried ran more stable than the subsequent beta and release versions so I switched back to KDE.
axredneck Feb 17, 2021
Quoting: kokoko3kI'd prefer qtcurve, but as far as i know the visual configuration tools are no more, so it is a bit hard to craft a new theme.
In the kde4 era i've had a lot of fun making themes with it :)
QtCurve 1.9 from official Arch repos
Grimfist Feb 17, 2021
Quoting: CatKillerYou don't need to run Kate with sudo. If you really must, you can do the sensible thing and use sudoedit, but Kate will prompt for authorisation when saving a privileged file when run as a normal user anyway.

Not having an easy solution for privileged use of Dolphin is a pain: some file management tasks, particularly as a new user, are much less error-prone when done in a graphical file browser. But you wouldn't have been using sudo with Dolphin in the old days anyway: it would have been kdesu.

Finally someone with a brain, thank you!
Instead of complaining that KDE forbids running some apps as root, read up why and how to do privileged actions in those apps...
ronnoc Feb 17, 2021
KDE Plasma continues to evolve as a stable, robust, and beautiful desktop. What amazes me is how much FUD that still exists when I read about this wonderful desktop environment everywhere on the Internet. Unstable, bloated, uses too much ram; those things have not been true since forever. There are so many unique things about KDE that lead the way on the Linux desktop whether it be KDE connect, vaults, latte dock...

As for Dolphin as root going away, may I introduce you to the best file manager around - Krusader? Thank me later.
kokoko3k Feb 17, 2021
Quoting: axredneck
Quoting: kokoko3kI'd prefer qtcurve, but as far as i know the visual configuration tools are no more, so it is a bit hard to craft a new theme.
In the kde4 era i've had a lot of fun making themes with it :)
QtCurve 1.9 from official Arch repos
So, are you able to configure it without manually modifying style text files?
Because for me i just can't click on the edit button as i do for oxygen or breeze, it is grayed out.
Last time i was able to do it was with kde4.

 
koko@slimer# ls -la /usr/lib/qt/plugins/ks*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  67400 10 nov 22.01 /usr/lib/qt/plugins/kstyle_breeze_config.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 112456 10 nov 22.00 /usr/lib/qt/plugins/kstyle_oxygen_config.so

koko@slimer# pacman -Ql qtcurve-qt5|grep plugins
qtcurve-qt5 /usr/lib/qt/plugins/
qtcurve-qt5 /usr/lib/qt/plugins/styles/
qtcurve-qt5 /usr/lib/qt/plugins/styles/qtcurve.so


Also, qtcurve window decoration is gone

Am i missing something?

--EDIT--
Yes, i was missing qtcurve-kde :-P
Now i miss just the window decoration part.
Is it available somehow?


Last edited by kokoko3k on 17 February 2021 at 2:06 pm UTC
oldominion Feb 17, 2021
Quoting: TheRiddickWonder how long it will be until this rolls out in Manjaro main distro.
I bet it will take some time since it is still in the testing on Arch. And as far as I know Manjaro takes like two weeks after Arch release (correct me if I'm wrong, haven't used Manjaro for over a year.)
Frawo Feb 17, 2021
View PC info
  • Supporter Plus
Quoting: slaapliedjeVim wasn't installed, Nano wasn't installed... tried kate, but it wouldn't let me open it with sudo... talk about annoying.
For some reason Garuda comes with Micro preinstalled... I was stumbling across this, too. But other than that, I'm very happy with Garuda Dragonized. For me, after some tweaks, it is solid as a rock and looks amazing.
While you're here, please consider supporting GamingOnLinux on:

Reward Tiers: Patreon. Plain Donations: PayPal.

This ensures all of our main content remains totally free for everyone! Patreon supporters can also remove all adverts and sponsors! Supporting us helps bring good, fresh content. Without your continued support, we simply could not continue!

You can find even more ways to support us on this dedicated page any time. If you already are, thank you!
The comments on this article are closed.