This Week in Plasma: Getting Plasma 6.3 in Great Shape - KDE Blogs

Welcome to a new issue of "This Week in Plasma"! Every week we cover as much as possible of what's happening in the world of KDE Plasma and its associated apps like Discover, System Monitor, and more.


This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://blogs.kde.org/2025/01/18/this-week-in-plasma-getting-plasma-6.3-in-great-shape
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Speaking of Krunner has the issue of it having to be relaunch from terminal cause it disappeared been addressed? Thanks

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Ehā€¦ one thing that constantly bugs me about KDE Plasma (especially in the blog posts screenshots) - default system (contour) icons. Would it be possible to make them ā€œsofterā€? Something like icons offered by Edna Light (edit: Iā€™m also limited to posting links so instead of nice link: www.pling.com/p/1529191/ )?

See the difference:
(there were two images for comparison bus a new user on discuss, because it uses yet another credentials Iā€™m limited to single image embed so hereā€™s the screenshot of the previous embeds :man_facepalming: )

IMHO having completely black icons (#000) with 100% square corners results in very jarring and unpleasant experience

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For me, the colour follows my theme. I soften them up and it works great (reason #203489723 why I love KDE).

If you only want the softness on your panel, not the entire theme, plasma-panel-colorizer has got you covered.

Boo to Fisher-Price corners tho. booooo. :joy:

Could you share a screenshot + name of the theme? :slight_smile:

Hmmā€¦ interesting project thoughā€¦ looking at the examples - even it sports way nicer icons in the preview screenshots:

I know that itā€™s a matter of taste but IMHO the default icon set is justā€¦ ā€œuhmā€ :wink:

And considering that each newer plasma tries to be even so slightly more round (look at the panels!) it would be nice that icons would follow :wink:

What do you mean? and why? :wink:

I still think the same, breeze should be redesigned in 2025, I donā€™t like it currently and I have to use the papirus icons

https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved

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New icons are in progress; see New Plasma Icons: A Visual Design Update ā€“ KDE and Plasma Design.

The challenge here is that icon style preferences are extremely subjective. Yes, thereā€™s broad consensus that Breeze icons could use an overhaul (hence the project to do so), but how?

More roundness? How much? Someone will complain about that.

ā€œThese icons look like toys now, where are the adults?ā€

Thicker strokes? Someone will complain about that too.

ā€œThey look so heavy! Where did that nice breezy aesthetic go?ā€

Stop strictly following the color schemeā€™s text color to reduce contrast, at the expense of reducing color consistency between text and icons and reducing readability for people who need that contrast? Needless to say, someone (in this case probably a lot of someones) will complain about that too.

Ultimately this is why we have an icon theming system. Itā€™s truly impossible to please everyone. Ideally the new icon theme will please more people, but there will always be a long tail of people dissatisfied with the default theme and want to replace it with something else. Thereā€™s no way to prevent that.

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In Spectacle ā€” which has moved to Plasma so Iā€™ll be mentioning it here

What does that mean? Is Spectacle now integrated into Plasmashell/KWin, similarly to the screenshot tool from GNOME?

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It just means that Spectacle leaves the KDE Gear release schedule and adopts Plasmaā€™s release schedule. So there will be Spectacle 6.4.0, 6.5.0, etc. It remains a standalone app, like other apps on the Plasma release schedule such as Discover and System Settings.

This was done to sync up Spectacle with the major software libraries it depends on (KPipeWire and KWin) which also use the Plasma release schedule. Not matching has been a source of bugs in the past.

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Oh I donā€™t mean the icon theme, Iā€™m just using breeze, and my colours from System Settings apply there.

It just now occurred to me, my plasma theme is Breeze AlphaBlack, and Iā€™m using the AlphaBlack Control widget with it, that allows a custom colour, too. So thatā€™s another option for ā€˜just the panelā€™ softening of colour. But I tested it with vanilla breeze plasma theme and it does get my colours applied too.

See Nateā€™s reply above :wink:

Breeze does a pretty outstanding job honestly. Anyone whoā€™s tried other icon themes or, bless their hearts, tried to make one, knows that it can go wrong 1000 ways. Even the best alternatives all seem to be based on breeze.

Anyway back on topic, Iā€™m hyped for 6.3. For those of us interested in testing it, letā€™s say we had to roll back to 6.2.5 for some reason, is it expected that our config would probably be OK? Or is that more of a ā€œyouā€™ll probably have to restore from that backup you tookā€ kind of thing?

I mean, itā€™s testing, I expect nothing, and obviously you canā€™t make promises at this point, butā€¦ Iā€™m just trying to get a rough idea of how risky it is.

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Iā€™m not aware of any significant config changes that wouldnā€™t be compatible between 6.2 and 6.3.

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Hmmā€¦ the thing is - would any proposal be accepted?

Looking into more details (non clickable as forum refuses to accept it)

  • https://develop.kde.org/hig/icons/
  • https://community.kde.org/Guidelines_and_HOWTOs/Submit_an_icon
  • https://community.kde.org/Guidelines_and_HOWTOs/Icon_Workflow_Tips

I see more focus on:

  • more general HIG (what the icon should convey)
  • technical aspect (how to save/optimize it)

The last link mentions in passing ā€œpixel perfectā€ which seems to exclude any concept of slight visual roundednessā€¦

OMG! #TIL! This looks sooooo awesome :heart_eyes: :heart_eyes: :heart_eyes:

Havenā€™t watched whole video yet but I do like the approach to monocrome approach where the icons colour could automatically adjust.

Iā€™m fully aware of that (I mentioned as much originally) :slight_smile:

One of the non-written conventions in Free Software is that those who do, decide.

You will not be able to go in and impose your criteria on people who have been contributing day in and day out for years on day one, no. obviously. But by helping out, you will be in a better position to make the change you think should come about.

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I know, I do maintain couple, of projects and contribute to others, but mostly codeā€¦ with KDE I mostly donate (and test stuff) as C-land not my forte (I mostly work in backend)

This was my question - each project has itā€™s goals, aims and (design) principles. One could suggest something and get immediate feedback. You initially replied with ā€œget involvedā€ link but if the maintainers have certain vision what to do, even if I came with whole set of (probably very subjective) ā€œbetterā€ (quote canā€™t even start to to convey how impossible is to define that term) then it would most likely be rejected.

Hence initiall inquiry about general outlook :slight_smile: I noticed for some time migration from colourful to monochrome icons (very welcomed) and also sticking with ā€œsquareā€ motif which would suggest that itā€™s the preferred Look & Feel / design choice :slight_smile:

Another thing you should consider is that most aspects of your desktop can be modified. If you donā€™t like your icons, install a new set from a trusted source or design your own.

Digital freedom comes at the cost of users taking responsibility for their own software. Always delegating on to others is how we got into the current proprietary pickle in the first place.

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From the description itā€™s a lot more than just colorization. NICE

I feel like I offended youā€¦ (?!) that was not my intention :expressionless:

Iā€™m aware of that and I have already customised the desktop to suite my needsā€¦

Bouncing this off: collaborative, public project could also use input/suggestions from the users especially if they to absolutely love the software and want it to be used more and more. And having better default experience is one way of achieving thatā€¦

These improvements:

KWin is now smarter about choosing a default scale factor for devices with small screens; now it wonā€™t choose a scale factor too high to be practical. (Vlad Zahorodnii, 6.3.0. Link)

KWinā€™s automatic scale factor chooser now chooses a scale factor thatā€™s rounded to the nearest 5%, no longer to the nearest 25%. (Xaver Hugl, 6.3.0. Link)

together with this from last month:

Landed a huge overhaul of how fractional scale factors are handled in KWin. Now it makes an effort to always snap things to the screenā€™s pixel grid, greatly reducing blurriness and visual gaps everywhere. Iā€™ve been using these patches with a 175% scale factor for a week, and everything looks just fantastic! (Vlad Zahorodnii and Xaver Hugl, 6.3.0. Link)

should help a lot of folks have a much better first-run experience in Plasma, regardless of their screenā€™s characteristics. Folks spending less time tweaking display settings in those first few minutes of use should lead to more of that time being available to appreciate the design and features that are now available to them.