This is still a Beta, but the results are impressive

Oct 1, 2014 14:10 GMT  ·  By

The KDE Community has just announced that a Beta version for the second Plasma 5 update has been released and that it's now available for download. The changes are quite consistent and users should take a good look at the screenshots because they show the future of the KDE project.

The Plasma desktop is one of the first things a user sees when he boots up a KDE-powered system, and the devs have made some huge changes in the 5.x branch. They are still working on it and the new Plasma version hasn't been integrated yet in any major distribution. You can test it in a few OSes, like Kubuntu for example, but it still has a long way to go until it will be default.

Some old-time users have complained that the new Plasma is taking a wrong direction and that it looks too much like Windows, but others see it like a natural evolution of the project. The end result of the work done by the KDE devs looks like it still needs a little bit more polish, but it's very different from what has been done until now.

New features for Plasma 5

Even if the project is actually pretty advanced, more features are being added. It will be hard to please everyone with the new look, but the devs are doing everything in their power to implement many customization options. Some new features might not be to the liking of the community, but at least they will be able to turn them off.

"The new Breeze artwork concept introduces cleaner visuals and improved readability. Central work-flows have been streamlined, while well-known overarching interaction patterns are left intact. Plasma 5.0 improves support for high-DPI displays and ships a converged shell, able to switch between user experiences for different target devices."

"Plasma 5 was released three months ago with many feature refinements and streamlining the existing codebase of KDE's popular desktop for developers to work on for the years to come. This release is for testers to find bugs before our second release of Plasma 5," reads the announcement.

The devs have explained that Plasma panels now have new switchers to easily swap between different widgets, the icon only task manager has been brought back, a new System Settings module that allows users to easily pick a new theme has been implemented, and a few other changes have been made as well.

Fortunately for the users, the new KDE Plasma update can be found in some repositories, so installing it should not be a problem.

KDE 5 Plasma (3 Images)

KDE Platform 4 apps theme with the new Breeze
Applet switcher in KDEA new System Settings module
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