14 DAY TRIAL // As promised, today the KDE Project was pleased to announce the release of the Beta milestone of the upcoming KDE Plasma 5.10 desktop environment for GNU/Linux operating systems.
We gave you a quick preview of its coolest new features last week, but now we'll have a more in-depth look at KDE Plasma 5.10's major changes. First and foremost, a new version of the Plasma Discover package manager is included in KDE Plasma 5.10 with support for Snap and Flatpak packages.
"Support for forthcoming new bundle package formats has been implemented. Discover software centre has gained backends for Flatpak and Snappy. New plugin xdg-desktop-portal-kde has added KDE integration into Flatpak packaged applications," read the release notes.
Also new in Plasma Discover is support for GNOME’s Open Desktop Ratings Service (ODRS) for reviews and comments of KDE apps, which replaces the old Ubuntu popularity contest. The Task Manager was improved as well, and it now lets users group and ungroup apps using the middle mouse click.
Folder View is now the new default desktop
The enablement of Folder View as the default desktop in KDE Plasma 5.10 is something that most KDE fans know from early March, but it's finally here with its spring loading functionality (see the GIF below to see it in action), space-saving icon grid, better mouse behavior, redesigned rename interface, and unified drop menu.
The Folder View also saw massive performance improvements, and it looks like it now lets users resize widgets on the desktop just by dragging on their edges and moving them with Alt+left-click. But there are many other enhancements like better back button history, clickable location in the headings, and Undo shortcut support.
KDE Plasma 5.10 features a new Plymouth Splash Screen module in System Settings that allows you to choose your favorite Plymouth boot splash for the operating system, as well as to access new ones. Support for touchscreens got a lot better too by supporting the built-in virtual keyboard on the lock and login screens.
Touchscreen edge swipe gestures are now supported, allowing users to display auto-hiding panels, and left screen edge now defaults to window switching. A lot of work also goes into the porting of KDE Plasma to next-generation Wayland display server, but it's not yet ready for production use.
The latest Wayland improvements include the ability for the KWin window manager to support scaling of displays by different levels on setups with a HiDPI monitor and a normal DPI screen, and better keyboard layout support with a new layout switcher in systray, per layout global shortcut, policy-based layout switching, and an IPC interface.
But KDE Plasma 5.10 comes with even more small but important changes, and among them we can mention the ability to control media from lock screen, support for pausing music on suspend, better password dialogs for network authentication, app install suggestions in KRunner, and much more that you'll have to discover yourself.
KDE Plasma 5.10 Beta (5.9.95) is out now for public testing, but it won't be available in the software repositories of your favorite GNU/Linux distro. The final release is expected at the end of the month, on the 30th, and only then will KDE fans be able to upgrade their modern desktops to the new release. Check out the full changelog for more details and the screenshot gallery below.
