The next main release of the KDE Plasma desktop is coming soon, and a first Beta is available for you to check it out and go hunting for bugs. It continues to be my favourite way of using Linux (Fedora KDE), thanks to lots of sane defaults and plenty of options for configuring things exactly how you want.
With Plasma 6.8 Beta there's plenty of great new stuff.
Key Highlights
- New accessibility options for clicking and auto-scrolling.
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Kup joins Plasma, making automatic backups using an external disk simple.
- Higher quality for all screencasts and lower latency for all screencasts.
- Their new Union theme system gains initial support for QtWidgets applications.
- HDR improvements.
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Triple buffering on NVIDIA GPUs by default.
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Faster load times for plasmashell.
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Shadows and rounded corners for Steam.
What's your favourite change coming to KDE Plasma 6.8?
🌐 External Sources: kde.org
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
About the author - Liam Squires-Hand
I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly checked 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.
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7 comments
Turkeysteaks 11 Sep 2026
Faster load times I'm excited for, a while back I went through arch's recommendations for reducing load time and it is much better but plasma is still the biggest wait I believe. KDE is worth it though.
Not sure how I feel about Steam actually playing along with themes though lol, it having square corners is nostalgic. Not that I'd notice after a day of it though either to be fair!
Not sure how I feel about Steam actually playing along with themes though lol, it having square corners is nostalgic. Not that I'd notice after a day of it though either to be fair!
0 Likes
pleasereadthemanual 11 Sep 2026
And no more X11.
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I used to care about load times, then I got a full SSD instead of a hybrid disk for my home partition, now I don't care about load times. I _really_ don't care about the Union theme because it's a massive eyesore. That said, the previous update was so good that I'm gonna stick with Plasma until I need X for something.
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Quoting: tmtvlI _really_ don't care about the Union theme because it's a massive eyesore.Just to clarify, Union isn't a theme, but a theme *engine.* It allows users to theme things how they like.
Source: I work on the widgets side of things.
It's a lot of legacy stuff to go through so bug reports are most welcome.
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Union is a great idea! The Breeze replica currently shipped looks very close to the original already. I've been using it for months now.
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Caldathras 12 Sep 2026
Quoting: pleasereadthemanualAnd no more X11.I was going to say. You'd think that the move to Wayland exclusively would be getting more press.
Of course, it's also making Plasma incompatible with legacy GPUs whose drivers can't handle Wayland ...
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