This week marked the release of the KDE Plasma 6.7 beta and even so there were some last-minute features being squeezed into this popular Linux desktop option. Plasma's built-in remote desktop server enhancements and improved Plasma notification effects are among the changes topping out this week.
With today's KDE Plasma 6.7 beta release there has been a surprising amount of interest in the new revival of Plasma Big Screen as the TV-sized UI for Plasma. I've been trying it out today and it has worked out rather well, a very smooth experience, and in good shape for making its debut in next month's Plasma 6.7 release.
In working toward the stable Plasma 6.7 desktop release in mid-June, out today is the first beta of KDE Plasma 6.7.
KDE today announced a significant investment into the project by Germany's Sovereign Tech Fund. KDE will be receiving €1,285,200 EUR (or roughly 1.5 million USD) over the years 2026 and 2027 to make some significant improvements into their software stack.
KDE developers continue to be quite busy in preparing additional Plasma 6.7 desktop features ahead of the stable release due out in mid-June.
KDE developer Xaver Hugl has whipped up another nice improvement for the upcoming Plasma 6.7 desktop release. Due to QtWidgets still relying on CPU-based rendering and finding the performance subpar with Wayland shared memory "wl_shm" usage, Xaver has leveraged UDMABUF for avoiding excess buffer copies to provide a much more fluid experience when dealing with CPU-based rendering / shared memory usage on KDE under Wayland.
KDE Linux continues making progress as the in-house Linux distribution to best showcase the latest KDE Plasma desktop innovations.
We are now just one month out from the planned release of Plasma 6.7 in mid-June. Feature activity continues to be brisk for Plasma 6.7 while KDE developers also continue landing more fixes for the current Plasma 6.6 series.
KDE developers continued to land more feature changes for the upcoming Plasma 6.7 desktop release. It's a busy spring of fixes, optimizations, and shiny new features for Plasma 6.7.
KDE Plasma 6.7 enjoyed a lot of recent feature development work thanks to a developer sprint in Graz, Austria. Also because of that developer sprint, This Week In Plasma wasn't published last week and so in turn a new issue is now available to highlight the changes over the past two weeks.
Following the recent KDE Plasma 6.6 desktop release, KDE Gear 26.04 is out today for shipping all the latest updated KDE desktop applications.
A request made a KDE user all the way back in June 2005 on KDE 3.3.2 is finally resolved. After being sought after for 21 years, the latest KWin code now has support for per-screen virtual desktops.
KDE Plasma developers continue working on new features for Plasma 6.7 while continuing to land more fixes and hardening for the current Plasma 6.6 stable series.
KDE Linux as the in-house, leading-edge Linux distribution for showcasing the latest KDE Plasma innovations has promoted itself as being an atomically updated Linux distribution. But these atomic updates didn't quite work out as planned recently with some users finding their system(s) unbootable. But improvements are being made now for better robustness moving forward.
It's been another busy week in the KDE space as Plasma developers continue working on new feature activity for the big Plasma 6.7 release.
Framework Computer as the company behind the modular Framework laptops and incredible Ryzen AI Max "Strix Halo" Framework Desktop has stepped up their support for the KDE community.
Merged today was the very first step toward implementing Vulkan support within KDE's KWin compositor as an alternative to OpenGL rendering.
Krita 6.0 debuted today as the Qt6 port of this digital painting program aligned with KDE/Qt development. Krita 6.0 also brings improved Wayland support while Krita 5.3 is being simultaneously released for running on the mature Qt5 toolkit.
In addition to releasing Plasma 6.6.3 this week, KDE developers remain quite busy working on new features for the Plasma 6.7 desktop while also already queuing some changes for the next Plasma 6.6.4 point release.
In addition to GNOME OS seeing recent improvements, KDE Linux continues seeing more enhancements too for this leading reference platform for showcasing the KDE Plasma desktop.
KDE developers continue being very busy working on Plasma 6.7 feature development as well as continuing to drive new fixes and refinements to the current Plasma 6.6 stable series.
The KDE/Qt-aligned digiKam software for managing RAW digital photos is out today with the big digiKam 9.0 release.
Nate Graham and John Veness are out today with the newest issue of This Week in Plasma. Notable for KDE Plasma 6.6.x~6.7 development this week were a lot of bug fixing -- including multiple crash fixes -- and some UI polishing too.
KDE Plasma 6.7 development continues heating up following the Plasma 6.6 desktop release earlier this month.
Following last week's Plasma 6.6 release, KDE developers today shipped Plasma 6.6.1 as the first point release with an assortment of different bug fixes.
This week marked the release of KDE's Plasma 6.6 desktop as a very successful release that overall is in very robust shape and performing well. While Plasma 6.6 overall is in great shape, there are various bugs - including crash fixes - that have already been queued for the upcoming Plasma 6.6.1. KDE developers are also quite busy on the trek toward Plasma 6.7.
KDE Plasma 6.6 is now officially out as the newest feature update to this prominent open-source desktop environment. Plasma 6.6 is self-described by KDE developers as "the best desktop in the known universe (according to us). Plasma 6.6 is all about making your life as easy as possible without sacrificing any of the flexibility."
KDE's Plasma 6.6 desktop release is due out next week (17 February) and there's been some last minute fixes to land. Additionally, KDE Plasma developers continue to be quite active in already landing feature work for Plasma 6.7.
Following the September release of the KDE LInux reference distribution for the KDE desktop in alpha form, KDE Linux developers have been working toward the beta release with more improvements to this open-source desktop distro.
There is less than two weeks to go until the official KDE Plasma 6.6 desktop release. Plasma 6.6 is still seeing bug fixes in this final stretch of development while KDE developers are also busy already on Plasma 6.7 feature work.
The first beta release of Krita 6.0 is now available for this featureful digital painting program. Krita 6.0 is re-based against the Qt6 toolkit while Krita 5.3 Beta is also being released at the same time for those sticking to Qt5.
KDE Plasma developers remain quite busy preparing for the Plasma 6.6 desktop release coming up in a little more than two weeks while at the same time continuing to land early features for the Plasma 6.7 release coming later in the year.
In light of Plasma 6.8 looking to go Wayland-exclusive and retire their X11 session support, SonicDE (formerly "KDE-Lite") is getting off the ground as a fork of the relevant X11 support within the KDE desktop.
Following the KDE Plasma 6.6 Beta from two weeks ago, a second beta of the upcoming Plasma 6.6 desktop is now available for testing. KDE Plasma 6.6 stable remains on-track for a mid-February release.
KDE Plasma 6.6 feature development work continues winding down while Plasma 6.7 has begun seeing more feature work. This week also saw at least nine different crash fixes affecting Plasma/KWin.
KDE developers have been quite busy this week in preparing for the upcoming Plasma 6.6 release in February while also beginning to land features for what will be the Plasma 6.7 desktop.
The KDE Plasma 6.6 beta release is available today for helping to test this next iteration of the Plasma 6 desktop.
With new volunteers stepping up for This Week in Plasma, there is a new issue out this week to highlight more development activities going into the upcoming KDE Plasma 6.6 desktop release.
KDE developer Nate Graham is out with the first issue of This Week in Plasma for 2026. Last week was a warning that This Week in Plasma could become less frequent without new volunteers to help takeover. Nate Graham announced that John Veness has stepped up to help co-author these weekly KDE development posts.
In addition to today's blog post calling out the need for others to takeover the This Week In Plasma series, KDE developer Nate Graham also published another blog post to highlight the successes of the Plasma desktop over 2025. In particular, the KDE Plasma Wayland transition "nears completion" as it works to become Wayland-only in early 2027.
The This Week In Plasma series written by KDE developer Nate Graham has been a great way to keep-up with all of the interesting KDE Plasma desktop developments over the past eight years. This Week In Plasma is regularly featured on Phoronix and always provides an interesting weekend look at the very newest innovations to land in Plasma. Unfortunately, This Week In Plasma will become less frequent or even go on hiatus without new volunteer contributors.
There are some nice KDE Plasma 6.6 improvements that were merged ahead of Christmas.
Announced one year ago was KDE Internet of Things "Kiot" with an emphasis on providing nice integration between the KDE Plasma desktop and Home Assistant for handling open-source home automation. Development on Kiot sadly fell through the cracks for most of the year but development on it recently restarted.
It's an exciting week in KDE Plasma development land ahead of the holidays. Plasma 6.6 continues tacking on more feature work for Wayland.
KDE Gear 25.12 is out today as the collection of the latest KDE desktop/mobile applications for running nicely on the Plasma 6 desktop.
It was a busy start of December for KDE Plasma developers in working out several hardware fixes for the current Plasma 6.5 series while also working on new Plasma 6.6 features like the per-DRM-plane color pipelines.
KDE developers have been busy ending out the month of November with a number of new features and fixes queued up for next year's Plasma 6.6 desktop release.
KDE developers announced they are going "all-in on a Wayland future" and with the Plasma 6.8 desktop it will become Wayland-exclusive. The Plasma X11 session is going away.
More features continue piling on for the KDE Plasma 6.6 desktop, including an important performance fix this week for those running displays with a higher than 60Hz refresh rate.
KDE Plasma 6.6 continues seeing a lot of development activity while the Plasma 6.5 series is calming down after its first few point releases. Plasma 6.6 landed many more features and improvements this week.
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