The plasma team announced the beta availability of the KDE Plasma 5.25 version today. Here are the new features and how you can download and test them.
KDE Plasma 5.25 would be the 27th version of the KDE Plasma desktop, bringing several exciting changes across the Plasma desktop with “under-the-hood” improvements. The changes impact Plasma Workspaces, Desktop, Kwin, Software manager Discover and applications.
KDE Plasma 5.25 – New Features
Firstly, the important visual change you get in this release is your desktop’s dynamic accent colour which is based on the wallpaper you choose. The option is at Appearance > Global Theme > Colors -When activated, the accent colour (includes folder colour, selection highlighter, etc.) changes on the fly when you change the wallpaper.
Secondly, a new floating panel option is introduced in the panel settings. Once activated, your panel looks like floating on your KDE Plasma desktop.
For both options, you can look at our demo video below on how it behaves.
Moreover, the login and logout page is refined in this release with a more consistent view of the avatar and support for long user names with proper spacing of icons and texts.
Other than that, the native software manager Discover sees a handful of updates. Firstly, the main application view shows a more detailed software description, with proper spacing of details, ratings and other application metadata.
Also, if you have uninstalled any Flatpak, Discover can identify the leftover data of those Flatpak packages for you and give you a button to clear it up.
These are just a very fraction of the full update of this release. For more details, visit our detailed round-up of KDE Plasma 5.25 on the below page.
Distro Availability
Considering mainstream distros, this version is expected to arrive in Fedora 37 and Ubuntu 22.10 releases which are due in Q4 2022.
Beta Download
Finally, you can download the KDE Plasma 5.25 BETA using the testing edition via the below link.
If you found bugs or faced problems, make sure to report them via any below channels.
Via the beta announcements.
